Elon Musk is backing off his promise to slash $2 trillion in U.S. government spending as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—which, yes, shares its acronym with the ticker of Dogecoin, Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency—shortly after the budget-slashing target raised eyebrows among experts on Capitol Hill. In an interview with political strategist Mark Penn on Wednesday, Musk…
Category: News
Coinbase Receives CFTC Subpoena for Customer Data Related to Polymarket
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission served Coinbase with a subpoena in relation to the booming prediction market Polymarket, a person familiar with the matter told Decrypt Thursday. The regulator’s request sought “general customer information” in relation to Polymarket, the blockchain-based prediction platform that gained notoriety in the run-up to the November elections. A screenshot of an email sent by Coinbase…
Dogecoin Gives Up All of Its 2025 Gains as Bitcoin, Solana Keep Falling
It’s been a rough couple of days for the top dog-coin. Dogecoin, the original meme coin and one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies on the market, began the year with a hot streak, jumping from a price of $0.314 to just shy of $0.40 on January 7. But over the last two days, amid a broader market plunge, DOGE shed…
AI Deepfake Porn Scandal Rocks Sydney High School as Police Launch Investigation
A Sydney, Australia, high school student faces police investigation and disciplinary action after allegedly using artificial intelligence to create pornographic deepfake images of female classmates, marking one of Australia’s first major AI-related incidents in an educational setting. A deepfake is a fake image generated using deep learning algorithms. It is highly realistic and, depending on the quality, hard to differentiate…
Ethereum Shooter ‘The Machines Arena’ Coming to Steam and PS5—Without Crypto Features
Ethereum hero shooter The Machines Arena is coming to new platforms, and will release on leading PC marketplace Steam as well as the PlayStation 5 console. However, due to both platforms having restrictive crypto policies, those versions of the game will have zero or potentially limited crypto features. In its fullest form on PC via the Epic Games Store or…
Family of Dead OpenAI Whistleblower Raises $140K in Crypto to Fuel Investigation
The mother of the late Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI employee turned whistleblower, has raised over $140,000 worth of cryptocurrency to fuel an independent investigation after she claims her son didn’t die by suicide. Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in November, with authorities determining the manner of death to be suicide. However, his mother Poornima Ramarao…
Los Angeles Is Burning—And AI Deepfakes Are Fueling Misinformation
As firefighters continue to battle wildfires across Los Angeles, another scourge threatens recovery efforts: AI-generated deepfakes. On Wednesday, images began circulating on X (formerly Twitter) showing the iconic Hollywood sign engulfed in flames as fire raged across Mount Lee. However, these images were entirely fabricated using generative artificial intelligence tools. Following the Hollywood sign images, other fabricated visuals surfaced online,…
Midjourney Inches Closer to ‘Complete Overhaul,’ Plans Video Features
Midjourney is in the final testing stages of V7, a significant update that rebuilds nearly every part of the AI image generator’s system. During this week’s office hours session, developers explained that V7 features a new architecture, different data sets, and revised language processing approaches. Internal testing could take a week to a month, followed by a two-week tuning phase…
Here’s Every Crypto Firm That Shelled Out for Trump’s Inauguration
After sparing no expense on the 2024 election, American crypto-related firms are doubling down on lavish political spending—by donating in droves to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee. Inaugural funds like Trump’s pay for the days of lavish dinners, parties, and parades that typically surround an incoming president’s swearing-in, as well as the official ceremony itself. Donations to inaugural committees are commonplace…
Arbitrum Developer Names Former Nasdaq Digital Assets Chief to Lead Venture Efforts
Former Nasdaq digital assets head Ira Auerbach has joined Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs to lead Tandem, the Ethereum scaling project’s venture capital and partnership division. Auerbach brings extensive experience from traditional finance and crypto, previously serving as Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Assets at Nasdaq. Before that, he held leadership positions at Gemini, including Global Head of Gemini…