The former CEO of a small Kansas bank was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for looting the bank of $47 million — which he sent to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by scammers who had duped him in a “pig butchering” scheme that appealed to his greed, federal prosecutors said. The massive embezzlement by … Read more
Generative AI models require huge amounts of training data to enable their systems to produce advanced outputs. But the data that goes into them is often from sources where copyright restrictions are in place. Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images San-Francisco-based startup Story said Wednesday that it raised $80 million of funding for a … Read more
More and more Americans are losing thousands of dollars to a scheme that takes fraudsters weeks or months to pull off. “Pig butchering” scams earned the name from the idea that scammers use flattery and fake bonding to “fatten up” their victims. The strategy has amassed billions in stolen funds—particularly in the form of cryptocurrencies. … Read more
When the SEC opened the door in January for bitcoin exchange-traded funds to hit the mainstream, many traditional financial institutions across Wall Street and beyond finally had the opportunity to buy into crypto. Since then, money has poured in, but in fits and starts. On Wednesday, banks and hedge funds with more than $100 million … Read more
“Ensuring that a stablecoin retains its peg even under stressed market conditions is a solvable problem,” Catalini says. In an optimal scenario, he says, reserves would be made up of exclusively “high-quality, liquid assets,” like short-term US government bonds, and providers would maintain an “adequate capital buffer.” In the two years since Celsius filed for … Read more
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer presents US Vice President Kamala Harris with a “golden gavel” after she cast her 32nd tie-breaking vote in the Senate, the most ever cast by a Vice President, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, December 5, 2023. Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images Senate Majority Leader Chuck … Read more
WIRED: This year, Tether has moved to diversify its business model with a push into venture capital. Tell me about the rationale. Ardoino: Tether has become extremely profitable in the last two years thanks to the increase in interest rates. When Tether started, you could make 0.2 percent on the reserve, but today you can … Read more
The crypto markets appear calm heading into the weekend after a volatile week that tested how institutional investors new to the crypto trade would react to the mammoth swings that are old hat for more seasoned digital currency investors. The selloff in bitcoin and ether began earlier this week and wiped out $367 billion in … Read more
Omer Taha Cetin | Anadolu | Getty Images Cryptocurrencies resumed their rebound from their big sell-off earlier in the week, with bitcoin retaking $59,000. The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 8% at $59,385.40, according to Coin Metrics, rising above the $55,000 floor that has supported it for much of this year. … Read more
In January, U.S. bitcoin miner Core Scientific was bankrupt and battling angry lenders. Since its return to the stock market that month, the share price is up 140% as the company aggressively goes after building a business in artificial intelligence. On Tuesday, the mining firm announced an expanded deal worth $6.7 billion with CoreWeave, an Nvidia-backed startup that’s one … Read more
