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During an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Altman expressed his excitement for Bitcoin and also said he was “super against” CBDCs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called Bitcoin (BTC) a " super logical " step on the tech tree, which is both free of government control while helping to fight corruption. "I’m excited about Bitcoin,” Altman told Joe Rogan during an Oct. 6 episode of  The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “I think this idea that we have a global currency that is outside of the control of any government is a super logical and important step on the tech tree." The OpenAI boss' wide-ranging interview with Rogan covered his thoughts on Bitcoin as a world reserve currency and his concerns about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Altman, who also serves as founder of Worldcoin, said the shift to a “techno logical ly enabled world,” including Bitcoin, could help reduce corruption. Creator of ChatGPT, Sam Altman says, “#Bitcoin is a super logical and im...

Marathon Digital, in particular, produced 1,232 Bitcoin in September, which accounted for a record 4.3% share of Bitcoin miner rewards. Bitcoin miners Marathon Digital, Riot Platforms, and CleanSpark recorded strong Bitcoin production increases in September, leading to a small boost in share prices on Oct. 4. The firm’s balance sheets also strengthened despite Bitcoin’s price (BTC) recording another month of sideways movement — hovering between the $25,100 and $28,500 mark. Marathon's Bitcoin production rises 245% Bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital produced a total of 1,242 BTC in September — a 16% increase from August and a massive 245% increase from September 2022. The huge spike in BTC production came from a 508% increase in the firm’s installed hashrate from 3.8 exahashes per second (EH/s) in September 2022 to 23.1 EH/s, according to Marathon’s September results. Marathon Digital Holdings’ September #Bitcoin Production Update is here: - Increased Monthly Average Operationa...

The newly created fake APT token called “ClaimAPTGift.com” made its way to 400,000 Aptos wallets, and users found they were able to deposit and sell it on the exchange. South Korea cryptocurrency exchange Upbit has resumed Aptos (APT) deposits and withdrawals again after fixing an issue that saw a scam APT token incorrectly recognized as the real deal. On Sept. 24, Upbit abruptly halted Aptos token services after noting an “abnormal deposit attempt,” prompting an inspection of the wallet system. The problem appears to have originated from a newly created fake APT token called “ClaimAPTGift.com” which had made its way to 400,000 Aptos wallets after its creation on Sept. 21. The fake token was likely part of a typical token airdrop scam, in which users are airdropped tokens that contain links pointing unsuspecting users to phishing websites. However, a reported failure by Upbit to properly verify the source code of the scam tokens led to the exchange recognizing the fake tokens as re...

The unlicensed exchange allegedly solicited than $128 million from users before being reprimanded by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. Troubled Hong Kong crypto exchange JPEX has applied for deregistration in Australia. According to a filing seen by Cointelegraph on September 20, Jieyi Chen, director of JP-EX Crypto Asset Platform PTY LTD (JPEX), has filed a deregistration application with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). In the filing, JPEX claims that all members of the company agree to the deregistration , the company is no longer carrying business, its assets do not exceed $1000 Australian Dollars, and carries no liabilities. On September 13, during the Token2049 conference in Singapore, the JPEX team allegedly abandoned its corporate booth after Hong Kong police arrested six JPEX employees on charges of fraud for operating an unlicensed crypto exchange . The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said on the same day that it...

As soon as a gamer cashes out an in-game asset, they realize monetary value, which is where the problem with the SEC comes in, a Shrapnel executive told Cointelegraph. The creators of blockchain game Shrapnel — an upcoming AAA first-person extraction shooter — will be cutting a part of its game for United States-based players, in order to avoid the potential ire of the country’s securities regulator. The game, which is due to launch in early access in December, will be unrestricted for players from Europe and Asia but gamers from the U.S. will not be able to cash out at all, says Shrapnel Head of Economy Francis Brankin in a Sept. 13 interview with Cointelegraph at Token 2049. “They [U.S. users] can do everything every other player can do, but they can't cash out. Because that's what makes it a security to the U.S. player, as soon as they can realize monetary value, that’s where the problem comes in.” He hopes the issue will be temporary and that Neon — the team behind Shrapn...

Shytoshi Kusama, the co-founder of the SHIB token, said the bridge was fixed with the help of Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. Shibarium, a new layer-2 blockchain for Shiba Inu (SHIB) has surpassed 100,000 wallet s on its platform with 35,000 coming within 24 hours of Shibarium's relaunch on Aug. 28. Shytoshi Kusama, the lead developer and co-founder of Shiba Inu, confirmed Shibarium was back up and running in an Aug. 28 blog post. At the time, Kusama noted that Shibarium tallied 65,000 wallet s across 350,000 transactions — however, those figures have rocketed upwards since, respectively increasing 55.8% and 20.2%, according to Shiariumscan.io. Shibarium’s block explorer shows that 101,277 wallets have now facilitated 420,897 transactions across 344,614 blocks, with an average block time of 5 seconds. The number of wallet addresses increased from 65,000 to over 100,000 within 24 hours of Shibarium re-opening. Source: Shiariumscan.io In a statement, Kusama said the relaun...

This decision has implications for users who utilize bridged tokens on networks such as BNB Smart Chain, Fantom, Ethereum and Avalanche blockchains. Binance cryptocurrency exchange has announced it is ceasing its support of deposit and withdrawal services for a range of Multichain-bridged tokens, effective from July 7, 2023.  Binance has officially stated in its blog that the tokens impacted by the decision are Polkastarter (POLS) via BNB Smart Chain, Alchemy Pay (ACH) via BNB Smart Chain, Beefy.Finance (BIFI) via Fantom Network, SuperVerse (SUPER) via BNB Smart Chain, Travala (AVA) via Ethereum Network, Spell Token (SPELL) via Avalanche C-Chain, Alpaca Finance (ALPACA) via Fantom Network and Harvest Finance (FARM) via BNB Smart Chain. This news comes after deposits for various Multichain-bridged tokens were earlier suspended on May 25, 2023, following days of stalled transactions that sparked uncertainty surrounding the Multichain protocol. This decision to now cease support has impl...

AI could prove to be a boon for investors looking for gains in today's “unusual” market. Global investment titan BlackRock, which manages some $10 trillion in assets, has declared artificial intelligence a “mega force ” that could create significant returns for investors in today’s “unusual” market. In its mid-year outlook report, the BlackRock Investment Institute detailed their thesis for increased investment in AI — pointing to multiple “disruptive” themes that could see the sector grow rapidly over the coming years. S&P market cap vs relative performance from 1990. Source: BlackRock. The report drew special attention to the fact that gains in the S&P 500 — the index that tracks the 500 largest companies in the United States — have become increasingly concentrated in a handful of tech stocks. The firm says investment in AI is a good way to capitalize on this concentration. "We think this unusual equity market shows a mega force like AI can be a big driver of retur...

"Explain This Bob," the popular AI-powered Twitter account also linked to a memecoin, was suspended shortly after Elon Musk alleged it was a "scam." Twitter has suspended the account of the popular memecoin-linked artificial intelligence-powered bot “Explain This Bob” after Elon Musk alleged it was a “scam crypto account.” Musk alleged the account was a scam in a tweet on June 18 in areply to the bot, the account was seemingly suspended soon after. This sure looks like a scam crypto account. If so, it will be suspended. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2023 The Explain This Bob account reportedly amassed over 400,000 followers before its suspension. The bot was created by Prabhu Biswal from India and used OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to comprehend and provide responses to tweets by those who tagged the account. The project was also linked to the ERC-20 memecoin Bob Token (BOB) that was launched in April 2023. The suspension sent the price of BOB down over 30% accordin...

Trezor doesn’t plan to introduce any private key recovery tools as it has provided all possible tools to help users secure the seed phrase, CEO Matej Zak said. Amid the expanding trend toward self-custody, hardware wallet  Trezor's CEO Matej Zak has highlighted the most relevant development vector for the company so far - enhancing usability to significantly increase the number of users over the next few years. Speaking to Cointelegraph at the BTC Prague 2023 conference on June 9, Zak said: “Educate hard and build simply” is currently Trezor’s most relevant strategy in developing its hardware wallet s amid the growing demand for self-custody." “You need to explain what self-custody is because it’s still a different concept. It’s nothing that existed before Bitcoin, and Bitcoin has only been around since 2009,” he added. While allowing investors to be their own banks, the concept of self-custody also makes users the sole responsible entity for the safety of their Bitcoin. T...

The passed measure ends the 1% USDC to DAI minting fee that was previously implemented. MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that governs the DAI stablecoin, has voted overwhelmingly to keep USD Coin (USDC) as the primary collateral for DAI. An alternative proposal to “diversify” collateral into Gemini U.S. Dollar (GUSD) and U.S. Dollar Paxos (USDP) has been reject ed in a 20% to 79% vote, according to the proposal’s official page. Vote totals for the proposal to normalize PSM Parameters. Source: MakerDAO official website In the proposal posted on March 17, the MakerDAO Risk Core Unit suggested that the risk of a cascading bank run in the U.S. has been reduced, thanks to responses from the U.S. federal government. As a result, the risk of using USDC as collateral “has declined significantly since last week and further solvency concerns or depegs are not expected at this time.” However, it also argued that some risks remain. USDC has “potentially more risky exp...

The lawsuit stems from a million-dollar exploit in November 2022 that allegedly took place due to a private key leak. On Mar. 20, GameFi project Gala Games announced it had recently filed a lawsuit against pNetwork, the cross-chain interoperability bridge used by Gala on the BNB Smart Chain. Last November, Gala Games was exploited after an unauthorized wallet address minted over $2 billion in GALA and dumped the tokens on PancakeSwap, draining $4.5 million from the liquidity pool and causing a substantial plunge in GALA's token price.  The lawsuit alleges that the incident was the result of "negligence and tortious interference" from pNetwork. On Nov. 7, 2022, Blockchain analytics platform SlowMist alleged that the incident may have stemmed from a plain text private key leak in one of three pNetwork affiliated smart contracts on Gala. The leaked private key, as told by SlowMist, was publicly viewable on GitHub. "The lawsuit states that (i) pNetwork admitted that...

Currency swap lines have been used during times of crisis in the past, such as the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. The United States Federal Reserve has announced a coordinated effort with five other central banks aimed at keeping the U.S. dollar flowing amid a series of banking blowups in the U.S. and in Europe. The March 19 announcement from the U.S. Fed comes only a few hours after Swiss-based bank Credit Suisse was bought out by UBS for nearly $2 billion as part of an emergency plan led by Swiss authorities to preserve the country's financial stability. According to the Federal Reserve Board, a plan to shore up liquidity conditions will be carried out through “swap lines” — an agreement between two central banks to exchange currencies. Swap lines previously served as an emergency-like action for the Federal Reserve in the 2007-2008 global financial crisis and the 2020 response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal Reserve-initiated swap lines are de...

Jimmy Fallon wants out of the BAYC trademark case while Blur is responsible for the NFT market’s 3-month high. Lawyers of Jimmy Fallon, star of NBC’s long-running comedy and variety series The Tonight Show , have filed a petition to "quash" a subpoena requiring him to testify in the Yuga Labs Inc. v. Ripps et al. case.  The lawyers claim that Fallon has no connection to the dispute, is not a party to the Ripps litigation, and has never met or interacted with Ryder Ripps, creative director of OKFocus and Jeremy Cahen, one of the founders of the alleged Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) “copycat.” Yuga Labs is suing Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen for issuing a "copycat" nonfungible token (NFT) collection that resulted in trademark infringement, false advertising, and unfair competition. The ongoing case has brought a focus to intellectual property (IP) and trademark rights within the NFT space. While Fallon acquired a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and talked about it on his sho...

This cycle's Bitcoin and altcoin lows are behind us, Pantera CEO Dan Morehead says as he looks to a "year of rebuilding trust." BItcoin (BTC) is beginning its “seventh bull cycle ” and investors should not be scared of crypto post-FTX, Pantera Capital believes. In its latest “Blockchain Letter” on Feb. 8, the asset management firm’s CEO, Dan Morehead, predicted that 2023 would be a “year for rebuilding trust.” Morehead: Cryptoassets have "seen the lows" this cycle With BTC price action retracing slightly after gaining 40% in January, some market participants still insist that new macro lows are due across crypto assets. While the timing for such a scenario varies, consensus remains absent when it comes to how the market will rebound. For Morehead, however, the time to flip bullish on crypto is already here. “Pantera has been through ten years of Bitcoin cycle s and I’ve traded through 35 years of similar cycle s,” he noted. “I believe that blockchain assets hav...

ASIC miners' price per terahash has fallen more than 80% from its peak in 2021 as Bitcoin mining machines continue to flood the marketplace. Bitcoin ASIC miner s — machines optimized for the sole purpose of mining Bitcoin — are currently selling at bottom-of-the-barrel price s not seen since 2020 and 2021, in what is being viewed as another sign of a deepened crypto bear market. According to the latest data from Hashrate Index, the most efficient ASIC miner s, those generating at least one terahash per 38 joules of energy, have seen their price s fall 86.82% from May. 7, 2021 peak of $119.25 per terahash down to $15.71 as of Dec. 25. Miners in these category include Bitmain’s Antminer S19 and MicroBTC’s Whatsminer M30s. The same statement holds true for the mid-tier machines, with price s now averaged out at $10.23 after falling a massive 89.36% from its peak price of $96.24 on May. 7, 2021. However, the least efficient machines, ones that require more than 68 Joules per TH, are ...

The JUSD stablecoin will allow real-time settlements for institutional investors in the territory. Institutions in Bermuda will soon be able to trade real-time settlements using a stablecoin with a 1:1 ratio with the United States dollar, Jewel Bank's founder and chairman Chance Barnett told Cointelegraph.  Called Jewel USD (JUSD), the first stablecoin to be released in the territory is powered by the Polygon blockchain, enabling transactions between wallets available to institutional clients. In the future, the bank plans to use the Polygon ecosystem for commercial and retail stablecoin -based payment solutions, including transactions between institutions, businesses, and payments between individuals. "The need for a USD real time settlement network outside of the US is significant for both fintechs and digital asset firms, so we’re filling a large gap in the market. The US has solutions like Signature Signet for real time settlement, and now Jewel Bank is providing a Bermu...

The move comes just one day after the crypto executive's arrest on Dec. 12. According to local sources, on Dec. 13, crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried's (SBF) lawyers have request ed bail in a Bahamas' Magistrate Court after his arrest on Dec. 12 pending extradition request by U.S. authorities. The move comes after presiding judge Chief Magistrate JoyAnn Ferguson-Pratt stated earlier today that SBF had the right to request bail. In supporting the application, the defense counsel for SBF argued that the 30-year-old crypto executive suffered from "depression" and "insomnia," does not possess a criminal record, and did not flee the Bahamas despite "ample opportunity" to do so. Counsel representing SBF also claimed that their client hasn't been taking medications, including "Adderall" and "anti-depressants" since his arrest. Lawyers also said that SBF doesn't object to electronic monitoring or reporting to a local...

Binance has faced compliance warnings from many countries over the past couple of years, but it managed to overcome those shortcomings in most nations barring the U.S. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is nearing the completion of its investigation into cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which started in 2018. A report from Reuters suggests there is a conflict among US prosecutors over whether the gathered evidence is enough to press criminal charges against the crypto exchange and its executive or not. The 2018 investigation revolve around Binance’s compliance with the U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) laws and sanctions. The U.S. prosecutors were investigating charges related to unlicensed money transmission, money laundering conspiracy and criminal sanctions violations. The report noted that Binance’s defense attorneys held meetings in recent months with Justice Department officials, and argued against any criminal proceedings. Binance reportedly claimed any criminal pr...