Author: GT

The crypto market remains in prolonged consolidation with the overall market cap approaching $3 trillion as analysts eye a possible bitcoin (BTC) breakout that could push the market higher. Bitcoin hovered near $95,00 on Thursday, while ether (ETH), BNB Chain’s BNB and Solana’s SOL remained stagnant. XRP and Cardano’s ADA dropped 2%, while dogecoin (DOGE) fell 3%. Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) lost $56 million on Wednesday, breaking an eight-day streak that saw nearly $3 billion flow into these U.S.-listed products. Markets have been generally range-bound in the past week, setting the course for what could be an explosive move…

World, the biometric ID company best known for its eyeball-scanning Orb devices, on Wednesday announced several partnerships aimed at driving sign-ups and demonstrating the applications of its tech. World is partnering with Match Group, the dating app conglomerate, to verify the identities of Tinder users in Japan using World’s identity verification system. Additionally, World has established separate collaborations with both the prediction market startup Kalshi and the decentralized lending platform Morpho; these partnerships enable customers to sign in to these services using their IDs already registered with World. And World plans to team up with Visa to launch The World…

Crypto payments startup Mesh is planning to roll out Apple Pay support for crypto transactions, allowing shoppers to pay with digital assets while settling transactions in stablecoins for merchants. The feature, unveiled during Token2049 in Dubai, converts crypto to stablecoins at checkout using Mesh’s proprietary SmartFunding technology. The system sidesteps the need for merchants to handle crypto directly, offering what Mesh calls a “plug-and-play” payment option through Apple Pay’s interface. This way, brick-and-mortar retailers and webshops can accept crypto payments without the need for building out the necessary infrastructure. Mesh plans to launch the feature later in the second quarter…

If you’re building with AI, or trying to defend against the less savoury side of the technology, Meta just dropped new Llama security tools. The improved security tools for the Llama AI models arrive alongside fresh resources from Meta designed to help cybersecurity teams harness AI for defence. It’s all part of their push to make developing and using AI a bit safer for everyone involved. Developers working with the Llama family of models now have some upgraded kit to play with. You can grab these latest Llama Protection tools directly from Meta’s own Llama Protections page, or find them…

People walk past an advertisement feature Donald Trump with Bitcoin in Hong Kong. May James | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesAs President Donald Trump hit the 100-day mark this week for his second term in office, his approval numbers were lower than for any administration at this point in over seven decades.Don’t tell that to the crypto community.Trump ran for office on a promise to make America “the crypto capital of the world.” Those who got behind that message say he’s already delivered, or at least gotten off to a hot start.A blitz of executive actions, strategic appointments, and early wins, from…

Tools for Humanity, the startup behind the World human verification project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, unveiled Wednesday a mobile device designed to help people determine the difference between a human and an AI agent. Rich Heley, Tools for Humanity’s Chief Device Officer and a former Apple director, debuted the Orb Mini device during its “At Last” event in San Francisco. The device looks like a smartphone, and has two large sensors on the front to scan users’ eyeballs. Image Credits:Screenshot World, a web3 project started by Altman and Alex Blania that was formerly known as Worldcoin, is based…

Cathie Wood of Ark Invest recently revised upward her 2030 Bitcoin price forecast from $1.5 million to $2.4 million. The updated forecast reflects new thinking about Bitcoin’s active coin supply. Institutional investment via the new spot Bitcoin ETFs is the single-largest driver of Bitcoin’s valuation, and needs to be monitored regularly. When it comes to Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) price forecasts, the one investor who has my attention right now is Cathie Wood of Ark Invest. She is now predicting that Bitcoin will hit a price of $2.4 million by the year 2030. That’s an eye-popping prediction, especially given Bitcoin’s recent…

Microsoft on Wednesday launched several new “open” AI models, the most capable of which is competitive with OpenAI’s o3-mini on at least one benchmark. As it says on the tin, all of the new permissively licensed models — Phi 4 mini reasoning, Phi 4 reasoning, and Phi 4 reasoning plus — are “reasoning” models, meaning they can spend more time fact-checking solutions to complex problems. They expand Microsoft’s Phi “small model” family, which the company launched a year ago to offer a foundation for AI developers building apps at the edge. Phi 4 mini reasoning was trained on roughly 1 million…

According to a new, brow-raising WSJ report, Tesla’s board quietly began searching for Elon Musk’s potential successor about a month ago, approaching executive search firms as the carmaker faced protests, plummeting sales, and shrinking profits while Musk waded into Washington to slash government spending. Board members reportedly met with Musk to express concerns about his divided attention, telling him he needed to spend more time on Tesla and to publicly commit to doing so; per the Journal report, Musk didn’t push back and subsequently told investors he would “allocate far more time to Tesla” starting in May. Musk’s government work…

As the crypto market recovers from a historic rout, Robinhood, the online brokerage that offers digital assets, stocks and other investments, is planning to lean into its other offerings, despite becoming increasingly reliant on crypto trading volume in recent years. “It’s going to go up and down in terms of trading volumes,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in an earnings call with shareholders on Wednesday, acknowledging crypto’s trademark volatility. “We’re diversifying the business outside of the crypto business, which will make us less reliant on crypto transaction volumes.” Robinhood reported $927 million in Q1 revenue on Wednesday, a slight pullback…