Author: GT

Romain Costaseca | Afp | Getty ImagesAs crypto prices rallied to record highs last year, venture investors piled into new bitcoin-related startups.The number of pre-seed transactions in the market climbed 50% in 2024, according to a report published Thursday from Trammell Venture Partners. The data indicates that more entrepreneurs entered the bitcoin arena despite a cautious funding environment for the broader tech startup universe.Bitcoin more than doubled in value last year, while ethereum rose by more than 40%. Early in the year, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved exchange-traded funds that invest directly in bitcoin and then extended the rule…

Nintendo unveiled new details on Wednesday about its hugely anticipated Nintendo Switch 2 gaming console, which will be the company’s first new console since the Nintendo Switch was introduced in 2017. The Nintendo Switch 2 will be released on June 5 and cost $450. At launch, the console will arrive both on its own and as part of a bundle with Mario Kart World, a new game for the Switch 2. What will the Nintendo Switch 2 look like? As its name suggests, the Switch 2 is an upgrade on the Nintendo Switch. It builds upon the existing design of…

The Wikimedia Foundation, the umbrella organization of Wikipedia and a dozen or so other crowdsourced knowledge projects, said on Wednesday that bandwidth consumption for multimedia downloads from Wikimedia Commons has surged by 50% since January 2024. The reason, the outfit wrote in a blog post Tuesday, isn’t due to growing demand from knowledge-thirsty humans, but from automated, data-hungry scrapers looking to train AI models. “Our infrastructure is built to sustain sudden traffic spikes from humans during high-interest events, but the amount of traffic generated by scraper bots is unprecedented and presents growing risks and costs,” the post reads. Wikimedia Commons…

It’s a risk-off day in Asia as traders look to Beijing’s response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs on China and other Asian nations. On Wednesday, Trump announced tariffs on imports from 180 nations, including trading partners identified as the worst offenders, such as China and the European Union. The president imposed a new 34% tariff on goods from China in addition to the existing 20% tax, bringing the total levy to 54%, the highest for any nation. The action did not affect Canada and Mexico. Observers say the ball is now in China’s court, and the nature…

A view shows the logo of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) during the United Nations climate change conference COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan November 13, 2024. Maxim Shemetov | ReutersEight key OPEC+ producers on Thuesday agreed to raise combined crude oil output by 411,000 barrels per day, speeding up the pace of their scheduled hikes and pushing down oil prices.The Ice Brent contract with June delivery was trading at $70.50 per barrel at 1:32 p.m. London time (8:32 a.m. ET), down 5.94% from the Wednesday close. The front-month May Nymex WTI contract was at $67.11 per barrel, 6.41% lower.Saudi Arabia,…

Senior members of the Trump administration’s National Security Council — including its top national security adviser, Michael Waltz — used Gmail to conduct government business, The Washington Post reported, citing documents and three unnamed government officials. The report follows last week’s news that several cabinet-level officials, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, discussed highly sensitive war plans in a Signal group chat that also inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Per The Washington Post, an aide to Waltz used the consumer version of Gmail, which is not cleared for government use, to discuss “highly technical conversations with colleagues at…

Even as he grows older, Microsoft founder Bill Gates still fondly remembers the catalytic computer code he wrote 50 years ago that opened up a new frontier in technology.Although the code that Gates printed out on a teletype machine may look crude compared to what’s powering today’s artificial intelligence platforms, it played a critical role in creating Microsoft in April 1975 — a golden anniversary that the Redmond, Washington, company will celebrate on Friday.Gates, 69, set the stage for that jubilee with a blog post reminiscing on how he and his old high school friend — the late Paul Allen…

Higher-than-usual market volatility affected bulls and bears alike as crypto futures racked up $450 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours as U.S. tariffs went into play. President Donald Trump officially levied a 25% tariff on auto imports and a minimum 10% tariff on all exporters to the U.S. Additional duties were imposed on the nation’s biggest trading partners in Asia and the European Union, with China facing a 50% hike on several goods and a 26% fee on some Indian goods. Turmoil in markets ensued with gains from the past three days wiped out in U.S. indices and…

Roblox, the popular gaming platform geared toward preteens, has made substantial updates to its safety policy in the last year following accusations of insufficient safety measures for children, which could expose them to risks like grooming, explicit content, and violent material.  The company announced Wednesday three new parental control features, including the option for them to block access to certain experiences or people on their kid’s friends list, as well as the ability to track which experiences their child spends the most time in.  These updates implement a more stringent approach regarding how children play on the platform. To access…

In a sector packed with assets that arrive on Monday and hit zero by Thursday, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) stands on its own as a cryptocurrency that’s practically guaranteed to survive and possibly even thrive over the long term. That makes it the smartest coin to buy and hold, and the longer your investing timeline is, the better it looks. Let’s examine three reasons that’s the case. One of the core pillars of Bitcoin’s long-term investment thesis is that it’s designed to maintain its purchasing power relative to fiat currencies. You’ve probably heard something along those lines before, but let’s take…