Monday April 10, 2023
On Saturday I released a new format of the Week in Review which included an AI created news update featuring a human-like avatar. I added this to change-up my regular format, but I also wanted to show how artificial intelligence technology is evolving and can be used. Here is a link to Saturday’s issue if you want to see what I am talking about.
◾ The Federal Reserve released an FAQ stating “FedNow is not related to a digital currency…[and] is neither a form of currency nor a step toward eliminating any form of payment, including cash.” (Federalreserve.gov)
◾ Foundry, DCG’s mining division, plans to start charging its members pool fees. (Bloomberg)
◾ The Department of Treasury published its first illicit finance risk assessment on DeFi finding “illicit actors, including criminals, scammers, and North Korean cyber actors are using DeFi services in the process of laundering illicit funds.” (Treasury.gov)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ The US, South Korea and Japan said that North Koreans are using decentralized finance to transfer and launder their illicit proceeds. (Reuters)
◾ Thailand’s main opposition party plans to distribute a total of $15 billion in digital currencies to all citizens older than 16 if they win the upcoming May elections. (BankokPost)
◾ South Korean prosecutors announced that Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon has identifiable assets in his native South Korea. (Forkast)
◾ Arkansas’ Governor plans to review a bill that would regulate bitcoin mining and protect miners from discriminatory regulations and taxes. (Arleg.state.ar)
◾ Lawmakers in Texas introduced legislation to create a digital currency backed by gold as an alternative to a CBDC. (Capitol.texas.gov)
◾ The Bank of England is hiring a workforce of up to 30 people to develop its digital pound. (Thetimes)
Public Company Releases
◾ Applied Digital (APLD) reported revenue of $14.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of $0.9 million in Q3. (Applieddigital)
◾ Robinhood (HOOD) agreed to a $10 million settlement with state regulators over allegations that the company misled and failed to properly communicate with customers about its investment practices and services. (Dfpi.ca)
◾ Sphere 3D (ANY) filed a lawsuit against Gryphon Digital Mining for materially breaching the Master Services Agreement that called for Gryphon to manage Sphere 3D’s crypto mining activities as well as maintain fiduciary duties of Sphere’s digital assets. (Sphere3d)
◾ TeraWulf (WULF) mined 233 bitcoin (2.8 EH/s) in March. (Businesswire)
◾ Iris Energy (IREN) produced 173 bitcoin (2.5 EH/s) last month. (Globenewswire)
◾ Ault Alliance (AULT) announced a special dividend related to securities of Imperalis Holdings. (Businesswire)
Restructuring, Losses and Legal News
◾ FTX CEO John Jay released his first interim report on control failures at FTX saying “FTX Group was tightly controlled by a small group of individuals who showed little interest in instituting an appropriate oversight or control framework.” (Restructuring.ra.kroll)
◾ The fall of FTX is causing difficulties at top universities with researchers lacking funds they were promised and others trying to repay grants before they could be ordered to. (Reuters)
◾ Celsius Networks plans to file its Disclosure Statement with a summary of its reorganization plan, account holder recoveries, FAQs, and risk factors on April 12th. (Twitter)
◾ Mt. Gox’s Trustee issued a notice stating that first repayments from the 2014 bankruptcy will be made by October 31st. (Mtgox)
◾ SBI Crypto sued Riot’s Whinstone operation accusing the data center of misrepresenting its readiness to host a large-scale mining operation. (Decrypt)
Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ Binance.US is struggling to find a bank for its customers’ cash after the failure of Signature Bank. (WSJ)
◾ Crypto derivatives exchange dYdX is winding down its operations in Canada. (Dydx)
◾ Paxos application to receive a national bank charter from the OCC expired on March 31st. (Theblock)
◾ Self-described bitcoin creator Craig Wright believes that Apple (AAPL) infringed on his copyrights by integrating a copy of the bitcoin white paper into Apple’s macOS operating system. (Finbold)
AI Announcements
◾ Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) both knowingly released ChatGPT rivals that generated inaccurate and dangerous statements. (Nytimes)
◾ OpenAI plans to expand its Japanese language services following a meeting between CEO Sam Altman and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. (Bloomberg)
Metaverse Briefings & Activations
◾ Meta’s (META) dream to develop a metaverse are continuing with the social network company paying programmers turning this vision into a reality annual compensation from $600,000 to $1 million. (Washingtonpost)
◾ Electronic Arts (EA) unveiled its first glimpse of the interactive future of football away from FIFA, with EA SPORTS FC™ revealing its new brand vision, identity and logo. (Ea)
Market Data
◾ On Thursday, bitcoin’s difficulty adjusted up 2.23%, a positive move for the fourth consecutive time to reach a new all time high of 47.88 trillion. (Btc.com)
◾ Russia has become the second largest provider of power capacity to digital currency miners reaching 1 GW over the first three months of the year. (News.bitcoin)