Author: GT

The gold market is seeing a shift in activity, with central bank buying slowing and demand from exchange-traded funds and gold-backed cryptocurrencies growing. The latter recently moved to a three-year high, as measured by the net minting volume for tokens backed by the precious metal. Over $80 million worth of these tokens were minted over the past month, according to data from rwa.xyz. That boost helped push the sector’s market cap up 6% to $1.43 billion. Meanwhile, monthly transfer volume rose 77% to $1.27 billion, marking a sharp resurgence of interest in digital representations of the precious metal. The rise…

For as long as there have been video games, there have been people willing to find ways to cheat. Hobbyists have long dedicated themselves to finding vulnerabilities in games, often with the goal of developing cheats that they could share or sell. But ever since online competitive gaming became a legitimate profession, that hobby-hacking has morphed into an entire industry that aims to sell an unfair advantage to those willing to pay. Developing and selling video game cheats can be a lucrative business, and video game developers have in recent years had to beef up their anti-cheat teams, whose mission…

Like virtually every sector in the business world, the secondhand industry is grappling with the ramifications of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.  However, based on the comments made by eBay and Etsy earlier this week, both don’t appear to be overly concerned.  The companies recently reported Q1 2025 earnings results, both addressing the pressing topic of tariffs. eBay and Etsy are resilient to an extent, largely due to their sellers’ approaches to sourcing products. In contrast to import-reliant rivals like Temu and Shein, which recently raised prices in response to tariffs, many eBay and Etsy sellers in the U.S. mainly source…

Google’s most expensive AI model seems to have crossed a major milestone: Beating a 29-year-old video game. Last night, Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted triumphantly on X, “What a finish! Gemini 2.5 Pro just completed Pokémon Blue!” To be clear, the Gemini Plays Pokemon livestream was created by (in his own words) “a 30 year old software engineer unaffiliated with Google” who goes by Joel Z. But Google executives have been cheering the effort on. For example, Logan Kilpatrick, the product lead for Google AI Studio, posted last month that Gemini was “making great progress at completing Pokémon” and had…

Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got lots of news for you today: Amazon earnings, Apple earnings, ChatGPT sycophancy, Alibaba’s AI models, and much more. Let’s get to it! Well? During Apple’s earnings call yesterday, Tim Cook revealed that the company paid $900 million in tariffs last quarter. But despite this, the CEO didn’t announce any price increases — yet. Big bucks: Defense tech startup Mach Industries, which was founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, is about to close a fresh $100 million in financing, sources told TechCrunch. This new funding should bring the startup’s total funding to about $185…

CME Group’s cryptocurrency derivatives market posted a steep increase in trading activity in April, reaching a new average daily volume (ADV) of 183,000 contracts worth $8.9 billion in notional terms, the firm reported. That marks a 129% jump compared to the same month last year, suggesting growing institutional interest in crypto markets. Ether led the growth. CME’s ether futures ADV surged 239% to 14,000 contracts, while micro ether futures climbed 165% to 63,000. Micro bitcoin futures followed with a 115% increase to 78,000 contracts. The CME’s bitcoin and ether futures contracts have a larger notional value, of 5 BTC and…

BOSTON (AP) — Fans of the hugely popular video game series Grand Theft Auto will have to wait a little longer to play the latest version.In a post on X Friday, Rockstar Games said it delayed the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI until May 26, 2026. It apologized for the delay of a game, the release of which has been talked about for several years. It didn’t provide any specifics on why the release date has been pushed back from fall of this year.“With every game we have released, the goal has been to try and exceed your expectations…

Apple has changed its App Store rules in the U.S. to let apps link users to their own websites so they can buy subscriptions or other digital goods. This change comes after a U.S. court ruled in favor of Epic Games in a case against the iPhone maker, ordering the latter not to prohibit apps from including features that could redirect users to their own websites for making digital purchases. “The App Review Guidelines have been updated for compliance with a United States court decision regarding buttons, external links, and other calls to action in apps,” Apple said in a blog post.…

After a rough start to the year, Bitcoin recently regained the $95,000 price level. Bullish future price predictions for Bitcoin range from $200,000 to $13 million. A key factor in all of these price predictions is how much big institutional investors are willing to allocate to Bitcoin. Over the past 30 days, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is now up more than 15%. That’s a significant rebound, especially given the ongoing economic uncertainty about tariffs and Bitcoin’s slide earlier in the year. At one point, it looked like Bitcoin might dip below the $70,000 mark. Now it is close to regaining the…

Airbnb started rolling out an AI-powered customer service bot in the U.S. last month, CEO Brian Chesky said during the firm’s first-quarter conference call on Thursday. Chesky said 50% of Airbnb’s U.S. users are already using the AI bot for customer service, adding that the company plans to roll out the feature to all its users in the country this month. “One thing I’ll say about AI [is that] it is definitely making the customer experience easier … It has already led to a 15% reduction in people needing to contact live human agents,” he noted during the analyst call. Last…