Author: GT

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) CEO Michael Saylor believes that Bitcoin at $80,000 is a “historic entry point.” He made the observation while speaking to CNBC on March 17. Saylor reasoned that at this price point, Bitcoin has been stripped of all the risk. He seemed assured that Wall Street, banks, and the United States government will embrace Bitcoin eventually. The Bitcoin maximalist attributed the current slump in the market to concerns around the tariff war. But once the conditions get better, “Bitcoin will rip forward with a vengeance,” he argued. Saylor doubled down on the “suitability” of Bitcoin, riding on President Donald…

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber made a splash at SXSW last week, showing up at her keynote event in a T-shirt that subtly poked fun at Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Or, at least it seemed like it was subtle. But so many people appreciated the jab that users convinced Bluesky to reproduce and sell Graber’s shirt — even though it was an esoteric Latin language reference written in black ink on black fabric. Rose Wang, Bluesky’s COO, said that the company made more money in one day of T-shirt sales than in two years of selling custom domains. “That’s it. Pivoting…

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas believes the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is likely to approve a wave of new crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including those tied to Solana, Dogecoin, XRP, and HBAR. Speaking with TheStreet Roundtable host Scott Melker, Balchunas estimated the odds of approval for these ETFs at over 75%. “We’re really bullish on Solana, HBAR, and even Dogecoin,” he said. “Honestly, based on how the SEC has dropped all these lawsuits — and I heard the one with Ripple is pretty much being negotiated now — once those get dropped, the security thing doesn’t mean anything.”…

The Greenpeace logo on the green ecological awareness stand of the association in Lyon, France, on Oct. 23, 2024.Elsa Biyick | Afp | Getty ImagesA jury on Wednesday ordered environmental campaign group Greenpeace to pay more than $660 million in damages to Texas-based oil company Energy Transfer, the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline. A nine-person jury in Mandan, North Dakota, reached a verdict after roughly two days of deliberations. The outcome found Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars over actions taken to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline nearly a decade ago.It marks an extraordinary…

A senior research scientist at DeepMind who worked on robotics and AI has left Google to create his own robotics startup, called Generalist AI, and has already obtained investment from Nvidia, TechCrunch has learned. Pete Florence was listed as co-founder and CEO of Generalist AI at a panel at Nvidia’s GTC conference in San Jose yesterday. The panel was for portfolio companies of Nvidia’s VC arm, NVentures. NVentures has become an especially active venture capital firm since Nvidia has enjoyed skyrocketing financial success in this new age of AI.  “We are largely still in stealth,” Florence told TechCrunch, explaining that…

As a devastating wildfire burned through a Maui town, killing more than 100 people, emergency management employees traded dozens of text messages, creating a record that would later help investigators piece together the government’s response to the 2023 tragedy.One text exchange hinted officials might also be using a second, untraceable messaging service.“That’s what Signal was supposed to be for,” then-Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Herman Andaya texted a colleague. Signal is one of many end-to-end encrypted messaging apps that include message auto-delete functions.While such apps promise increased security and privacy, they often skirt open records laws meant to increase transparency…

Bitcoin’s price has been stuck in a tight range between $80,000 and $100,000, and some analysts believe institutional adoption is making it behave differently than in past cycles. Speaking with TheStreet Roundtable, Jeff LaBerge, Head of Capital Markets at Bitdeer, explained that Bitcoin’s increasing presence in traditional finance has changed how it reacts to market turbulence. “It used to be that Bitcoin was really hard to buy. It was hard to buy, hard to sell for individuals, anybody other than a Bitcoiner, right? But now it is in people’s portfolios. It’s an ETF,” LaBerge said. “There’s futures, and so it’s…

Newsletter platform Ghost, an open source competitor to Substack, is now connected to the fediverse, also known as the open social web. Federated apps run on the protocol ActivityPub, which powers apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, Threads, Flipboard, and others, allowing posts published on one app to be seen and engaged with by those on other federated platforms. Ghost said last year that it was working on an integration with ActivityPub, which would allow its publishers to share their blog posts with the broader open social web. The company expected the integrations to go live last year. However, Ghost this week…

In a new report, a California-based policy group co-led by Fei-Fei Li, an AI pioneer, suggests that lawmakers should consider AI risks that “have not yet been observed in the world” when crafting AI regulatory policies. The 41-page interim report released on Tuesday comes from the Joint California Policy Working Group on Frontier AI Models, an effort organized by Governor Gavin Newsom following his veto of California’s controversial AI safety bill, SB 1047. While Newsom found that SB 1047 missed the mark, he acknowledged last year the need for a more extensive assessment of AI risks to inform legislators. In…

On March 19, Republican senators Todd Johnson, Brad Overcash, and Timothy Moffitt introduced Senate Bill 327 (SB327) that mandates the State Treasurer to allocate up to 10% of public funds to Bitcoin. The bill attempts to position North Carolina as a “leader in state-level cryptocurrency adoption.” The bill urges the Treasurer to ensure that Bitcoin is stored in multi-signature cold storage and is audited on a monthly basis for transparency and security. It also outlines that liquidation of Bitcoin holdings would be permitted only if there is a “severe financial crisis,” subject to approval from two-thirds of the General Assembly.…