Friday August 11, 2023
◾ Digital Currency Group filed a motion to dismiss the Gemini lawsuit against the company and its CEO Barry Silbert claiming the lawsuit is a baseless continuation of the Winklevi’s year-long Twitter-based character assassination and public relations campaign to deflect blame from their own mismanagement of the Earn program. (DCGupdate)
◾ Researchers at the Bank of Canada believe “consumers face few payment gaps or frictions and therefore might have relatively weak incentives to adopt and—especially—to use [a] CBDC at scale.” (Bankofcanada)
◾ The Federal Election Commission is scheduled to discuss a ban on political parties and candidates misrepresenting their opponents in ads through the use of AI. (Washingtonpost)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ The Reserve Bank of India proposed a feature allowing users to converse with AI to initiate and complete a peer-to-peer mobile UPI payment. (Rbi.org.in)
◾ The US Department of Defense announced the establishment of a generative artificial intelligence task force to harness the power of AI in a responsible and strategic manner. (Defense.gov)
◾ India is looking to create an indigenous web browser with inbuilt root certificates to allow users to digitally sign documents using a crypto token. (Cointelegraph)
◾ Argentina’s Agency for Access to Public Information is investigating Worldcoin’s use of personal data. (Argentina.gob.ar)
◾ California’s Fair Political Practices Commission revised its campaign disclosure policies to establish declaration requirements for crypto contributions. (Fppc.ca.gov)
◾ Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police is seeking to develop a digital asset solution to facilitate the seizure and storage of cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from multiple public blockchains. (Ised.canada.ca)
◾ An unpublished UN report finds that North Korea is continuing to use cyber thefts to steal crypto to evade UN sanctions and fund its nuclear development. (Reuters)
Public Company Releases
◾ Hive Digital Technologies (HIVE) achieved revenue of $23.6 million last quarter representing $8 million in income from operations. (Hivedigitaltechnologies)
◾ Bakkt (BKKT) generated an adjusted EBITDA loss of $24 million driven by revenues of $347 million in Q2. (Bakkt)
◾ Mogo (MOGO) reported revenue of $16 million and adjusted EBITDA of $1.8 million in the second quarter. (Businesswire)
Restructuring, Losses and Legal News
◾ Lawyers for the SEC said the agency is not appealing a ruling as to whether XRP is a security but rater “programmatic and individual sales issues,” adding that “If the SEC wins the appeal on sales, then Ripple couldn’t use exchanges to facilitate sales.” (News.bitcoin)
◾ iTutorGroup, a Chinese-based tutoring company, settled the first US bias lawsuit claiming AI was used to illegally identify older job candidates. (Reuters)
◾ Sam Bankman-Fried is expected back in a New York court today for a hearing to discuss whether to rescind his bail. (Abcnews)
AI Announcements
◾ A group of major media companies is asking lawmakers to establish a legal framework to protect the content that powers AI. (Google)
Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ Circle reported six-month revenues of $779 million with EBITDA of $219 million generating over $1 billion in cash on its balance sheet. (Bloomberg)
◾ Bittrex agreed to pay $24 million to settle charges that the crypto exchange failed register with the SEC. (Sec.gov)
◾ Chinese technology company Huawei is expanding its cloud services into include blockchain node engines. (X)
◾ Binance is applying to register to offer virtual asset services in Taiwan under the country’s Money Laundering and Control Act. (Theblock)
Metaverse Briefings & Activations
◾ Outlier Ventures is launching a metaverse-focused startup accelerator. (X)
Exchange, Custody and Product Updates
◾ Gemini is adding support for the XRP blockchain. (Gemini)