For months it’s been the hottest trend in digital fashion, attracting the interest of industry titans like Louis Vuitton, Dior, Gucci, and Balmain. Now, “phygital” NFT collections have a new biggest fan: Donald J. Trump. On Tuesday, Trump announced his third NFT collection, which, like the last two, features a buffed up, thinned out version of the former president performing…
Microsoft Research has announced the release of Phi-2, a small language model (SLM) demonstrating remarkable capabilities for its size. Launched today, the model was first revealed during Microsoft’s Ignite 2023 event in which Satya Nadella highlighted its ability to achieve state-of-the-art performance with a fraction of the training data. Unlike GPT, Gemini and other large language models (LLMs), a SLM…
BlackRock has revised its spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) application to make it easier for Wall Street banks to participate by creating new shares in the fund with cash, rather than just crypto. The new in-kind redemption “prepay” model, will allow banking giants such as JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs to act as authorized participants for the fund — allowing…
On-chain data tracker DappRadar recently reported that another $600 million was poured into Web3 gaming projects in Q3 2023, making the total investments surpass $2.3 billion in the year so far. Another report from the blockchain gaming community, Game7, indicates a stabilization in Web3 gaming despite the market correction. The interest in Web3 gaming — a general term used to…
FIFA is launching a new set of NFT collectibles across Algorand and Ethereum scaling network Polygon ahead of the FIFA Club World Cup Saudi Arabia 2023, according to an announcement this week. The global soccer organization stated it will be the first collectibles release under a new collaboration with crypto startup Modex, which will now oversee strategic management of FIFA’s…
Paris-based startup Mistral AI, which recently claimed a $2 billion valuation, has released Mixtral, an open large language model (LLM) that it says outperforms OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 in several benchmarks while being much more efficient. Mistral drew a substantial Series A investment from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capital firm renowned for its strategic investments in transformative technology sectors, especially…
Online chess platform Immortal Game is no longer working on any NFTs or play-to-earn crypto elements for its game because such elements “encouraged heavy cheating” on the platform, the team announced in a Discord post last week. Immortal Game, which was built on Ethereum scaling network Immutable X, will no longer accept its Checkmate token CMT, is getting rid of…
Bitcoin (BTC) price continues to trade below its 2023 high, a sign that investors may have underestimated the strength of the $44,000 resistance. Even as BTC price trades below $42,000, it doesn’t necessarily mean that reaching $50,000 and beyond is no longer possible. In fact, quite the opposite seems more likely to occur. Looking at Bitcoin derivatives metrics, it is…
The European Central Bank (ECB) has taken a look at the environmental impact of using banknotes. It discovered 16 environmental impact categories. As with cryptocurrency, energy efficiency was a major issue. Banknotes continue to be the most common form of payment at points of sale in the eurozone. The use of cash requires an elaborate physical infrastructure for its production,…
Decrypt and Rug Radio are tying the knot—a union designed to create the first, honest-to-goodness, crypto-native media juggernaut. If it works, it’s going to change the way people think of “crypto media” forever. If it doesn’t, we’re keeping the kids. Jokes! Of course, we think it is going to work, and we’re looking forward to demonstrating how, exactly, all the…
