Stories by Alys Key
Just 2% of Firms Cashing In on AI Hype Will Survive, Says Bitpanda CEO
Just 2% of companies raising money off the back of artificial intelligence hype will survive, the chief executive of trading platform Bitpanda has predicted. Amid the excitement surrounding AI and the influx of investment into the sector, Eric Demuth told Decrypt that there is “a lot of good AI stuff in the making,” but that the current cycle resembles previous goldrushes. “It's the same with every hype, right?” he said in an interview with Decrypt, which took place during the Sifted Summit 2023...
Not Your Keys, Not Your Crypto: What to Know Before the Next FTX-type Meltdown
The shockwaves of FTX’s collapse in November 2022 are still being felt even as its alleged perpetrator Sam Bankman-Fried stands trial. In the crypto world, one saying was uttered again and again: “Not your keys, not your coins.” But what does it actually mean? “Not your keys, not your coins” or “not your keys, not your crypto” expresses the belief that investors cannot be certain of their crypto holdings unless they are stored in a wallet for which they personally have the keys. FTX held onto us...
Debanking Row Revived By UK Regulator Review
The UK’s financial watchdog is expected to say it has found no evidence of people being “debanked” for their political views in a review of the issue due out later this week. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will publish findings showing there were no cases where political views were the “primary” reason for the closure of a personal account, the Financial Times reported. The review is based on information sought by the FCA from 34 banks and payment providers. It is separate to an ongoing p...
Crypto Exchange CoinEx Shuts Down Withdrawals Following Suspected Hack of $27M
Crypto exchange CoinEx has suspended withdrawals from its platform after a suspected hacker drained millions of dollars’ worth of tokens from the site. After several cybersecurity firms raised the alarm yesterday on X, formerly known as Twitter, Coinex said it had “detected anomalous withdrawals from several hot wallet addresses used to store CoinEx's exchange assets.” Initial alerts indicated that the losses could amount to $27 million in Ethereum (ETH), Tron (TRON), and Polygon (MATIC). CoinEx...
IMF, FSB Lay Out Roadmap To ‘Address Risks’ Posed by Crypto to Financial Stability
Efforts to reach a universal policy approach to crypto took a step further on Thursday as two major financial regulators set out their plans for coordinated action. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the G20’s risk watchdog, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), said in a joint white paper that a “comprehensive policy and regulatory response for crypto-assets is necessary to address the risks of crypto-assets to macroeconomic and financial stability”. While the authors of the paper acknowl...
UK’s Frontier AI Taskforce Appoints Advisors to ‘Start-Up Inside Government’
The British government’s efforts to stay abreast of artificial intelligence are moving forward apace, with the appointment of top industry advisors to its AI taskforce announced on Thursday. Housed within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the AI taskforce was first announced in June with £100 million ($125 million) in funding. Now the newly-renamed Frontier AI Taskforce, which chairman Ian Hogarth described as a “start-up inside government”, has an advisory board consisting...
Binance’s New General Counsel On the Cutting Edge of Crypto Regulation
For Binance’s newly-appointed General Counsel Eleanor Hughes, one of the most exciting aspects of the job is working on the frontier of an industry that is still new. “Every day I’m faced with a legal question which there’s no precedent for,” Hughes explained on a call with Decrypt. To tackle these, she and the team turn to examples in other jurisdictions, comparable situations in traditional finance, and general legal principles. But because crypto is its own category, she sees it as a lawyer’s...
Twitter's 'X' Rebrand: All the Things Elon Musk Has Planned for the 'Everything App'
Editor's note: This article has been updated on July 24 to reflect the latest updates to the social media platform. Twitter has today discarded its iconic bird logo as part of a move to rebrand the social network as X. While the latest change to the platform under Elon Musk may come as a shock to some, it fits with just about everything the new owner has so far said about his intentions for the micro-blogging site. Since acquiring Twitter in a $44 billion deal, the Tesla founder has voiced his...
Société Générale’s Crypto Division Is First To Gain Full License From French Regulator
A crypto business owned by banking group Société Générale has become the first entity in France to be licensed by the country’s financial regulator as a digital asset provider. The approval of SG Forge, an investment firm which operates a digital assets platform, is the highest level of French regulatory certification currently possible for businesses in the space. The current system of crypto regulation operated by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) has two tiers: crypto firms are requir...
Chinese Police Arrest 21 in $54M USDT Money Laundering Probe
Police in China’s northern Shanxi Province have uncovered an alleged Tether (USDT) money laundering scheme, leading to 21 arrests, according to local reports. The scheme, which used U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin USDT, is estimated to have generated more than $54 million for the supposed perpetrators, per China’s national broadcasting service CCTV. The police investigation alleges that the suspects, operating across six different cities in four provinces, were involved in purchasing discounted US...
G20 Body Issues 9 Regulatory Recommendations to Rein in Crypto Industry
Fallout from last year’s crypto meltdowns could lead to tougher global oversight of the industry, as a G20 watchdog warned of wider financial risk if crypto firms are not regulated. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) said its global regulatory framework for crypto-asset activities, published for the first time on Monday, had been influenced by last year’s crypto crashes, alluding to the likes of FTX and Terra. As part of an effort to tackle these risks, the FSB set out nine top-level recommenda...
Kraken, Crypto.com Join Coinbase in Relisting XRP After Court Ruling
More major exchanges have reintroduced XRP to their platforms, following a U.S. court ruling on Thursday morning. Kraken, Crypto.com, and Bitstamp have all greenlit trading of the cryptocurrency, which is the native token of the Ripple protocol after Coinbase did the same. The rush to make XRP available again to U.S. users comes in the wake of a partial ruling in the Securities and Exchange Commission's case against Ripple Lab. Federal district judge Analisa Torres ruled that the XRP token “is n...
Bankrupt Celsius Demands StakeHound Return $150M in Ethereum, Polygon and Polkadot
Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius has accused StakeHound of failing to hand back $150 million worth of various tokens which it had entrusted to the liquid staking platform. In a complaint filed as part of Celsius’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings, lawyers also alleged that StakeHound had violated bankruptcy rules by commencing an arbitration proceeding against the business in Switzerland. Leveling claims of breach of contract and “willful misconduct” against StakeHound, the complaint says the firm s...
Sarah Silverman Sues Meta, OpenAI for Training AI Models on Her Book
Comedian Sarah Silverman has teamed up with two novelists to bring a potentially groundbreaking case against Meta and OpenAI, alleging that their copyrighted material was used to train chatbots without permission. The proposed class actions, brought by Silverman alongside authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, claim that their books were “ingested” to train OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA without their permission, according to documents filed to a San Francisco court on Friday night. C...
EU Regulators Warned: Don’t Ignore DeFi
Excluding DeFi from new crypto regulations could create “unintended risks to financial stability”, a European trade body has warned. In a white paper published on Thursday, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) argued that decentralized activities should not be overlooked, as both the European Union and the UK move ahead with crypto regimes. “We believe that decentralized finance (DeFi) and its associated activities must be brought within the regulatory perimeter in an appropria...
As EU’s Landmark Crypto Rules Come Into Force, Do We Already Need MiCA 2.0?
The European Union’s groundbreaking new crypto regulations will come into effect on Thursday, marking the end of two and a half years of legislating. But financial policymakers are already calling for a second version of the law to be introduced down the line. Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) was published in the EU’s official journal on June 9, and is scheduled to take effect on June 29, setting the clock ticking for firms to comply before its requirements are enforced. Certain regulations on st...
Ripple Gains In-Principle Payments License in Singapore
Blockchain payments firm Ripple has been granted an in-principle approval on its license application by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), in a move the company said deepened its commitment in the Asia-Pacific region. The preliminary approval of the Major Payments Institution License application will give Ripple the ability to offer regulated digital payment token products and services in the republic, the company said in a press release on Tuesday. “Singapore is a leading global financi...
Wimbledon 2023 to Feature AI-Generated Highlights Commentary
This year's Wimbledon tennis tournament will use AI-powered commentary and player analysis this year, in a bid to help fans engage on “a deeper level” with the championship. The world’s oldest tennis tournament will embrace the new technology across its online platforms, according to an announcement issued on Wednesday by organizers The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELT) and technology giant IBM. A new AI commentary feature will generate audio and captions for match highlights videos, offering...
Bank of England-Backed Project: CBDCs Could Enable 'Programmability' for Money
While central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are becoming a hot-button political topic in the U.S., central bankers on the other side of the Atlantic have been looking into what uses the technology actually has. According to the latest findings, there could be quite a few. Following a trial set up by the Bank of England (BoE) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub London Centre, a summary of the project’s findings concluded that a well-designed digital currency could “e...
Sam Bankman-Fried Trial Can Proceed on Original Charges Only, Says DoJ
Sam Bankman-Fried may only have to face the original charges brought against him at his U.S. trial this year after the Department of Justice said it was willing to postpone trying him on several additional counts. The FTX founder was originally hit with eight criminal charges by U.S. prosecutors in December, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He pleaded not guilty to the charges in January. A superseding indictment in February then added several new charges, includin...
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