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Jose Antonio Lanz

Jose Antonio Lanz

Jose is a journalist, lawyer, professor, and strategic planning specialist whose work has appeared in various cryptocurrency and blockchain publications. He is a native of Venezuela, and writes and translates for Decrypt US and for Decrypt Español. Disclosure: He owns less than 1 BTC.
Reach him at jose@decrypt.co

Stories by Jose Antonio Lanz

  • AI and job loss. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    AI Will Hit 40% of Jobs, IMF Warns. Young People Are First in Line

    Artificial intelligence spending is keeping the world economy growing at roughly 3% a year even as an energy shock drags on most countries, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Monday in Bangkok. Georgieva spoke on the opening day of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings, which run through October 18 in the Thai capital. The biggest winners, she said, are the Asian economies that build the hardware behind AI, where adoption could add 0.5 to 1 percentage point a year to growth in adva...

  • Ripple is a crypto software company focused on XRP solutions. Source: Ripple/Decrypt

    Standard Chartered Will Hold Ripple's Stablecoin in Dubai—And Let Clients Trade With It Without Moving It

    Standard Chartered will now hold Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin for institutional clients in Dubai, and it wants to let them trade with those tokens without ever handing them over to an exchange. “Standard Chartered today announced that it now supports institutional custody of Ripple USD (RLUSD) issued on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), giving eligible clients access to the Bank’s digital asset custody infrastructure. The service is available through Standard Chartered Bank’s DIFC Branch, which is reg...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Meta logo. Image: Decrypt

    Meta's New Muse Wonder Finally Puts Zuckerberg in the Frontier AI Race

    Meta released Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full on Monday, the first models from its Superintelligence Labs that the company is willing to put head-to-head with the best from OpenAI and Anthropic. “Muse Wonder is a major leap towards delivering personal superintelligence for everyone,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads. “Congrats to everyone on our team for achieving this milestone. I’m looking forward to seeing how you all use it.” Myriad: Which company will IPO next? Click to make your prediction. Th...

  • Image: Decrypt/Shutterstock

    From GTA V on iPhone to Free Photoshop: This AI Tool Is Upending Software

    Would you like to kill a boss in Skyrim using an AK47 from Counter Strike? Give your NPCs a real genius-level brain that gives you unique answers instead of predefined strings of text? Would you like to run GTA V on your iPhone? What about using paid software for free, and legally? Well, people are doing that and more with AI right now. A free tool that lets AI agents pull apart almost any piece of software has become the hottest project on GitHub, jumping from fewer than 10,000 stars on Octobe...

  • Source: Shuttterstock/Decrypt

    Solana Treasury Firm DeFi Development Keeps Buying SOL as CHAD Preferred Stock Hits Record

    DeFi Development Corp, the Nasdaq-listed Solana piggy bank, added about 22,070 SOL—worth about $2,373,211—and “SOL equivalents” to its treasury last week, according to a press release published Monday. That brings its stash to roughly 2,586,282 tokens, worth about $287 million with SOL near $111. Weekly buys keep shrinking, from 101,381 SOL in mid-September (around $11.4 million) to 47,706 ($5.8 million), then 26,202 ($3.1 million). Myriad: Where does Solana go next? Click to make your predictio...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • XRP. Image: Decrypt/Shutterstock

    Ripple-Backed Evernorth Hits Nasdaq Holding 473 Million XRP Worth Far Less Than It Paid

    Evernorth, the Ripple-backed company built to stockpile XRP, started trading on the Nasdaq on Monday under the ticker XRPN, giving anyone with a regular brokerage account a way to bet on the cryptocurrency without ever opening a crypto wallet. The listing caps a merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II that closed on Friday. Armada was a SPAC, short for special purpose acquisition company: a listed shell with no business of its own that raises cash, parks it in a trust, and waits to merge with a...

    NewsBusiness
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Source: Decrypt

    Bitcoin Spooked? Crypto Fear and Greed Index Drops to Pre-Rally August Lows

    After a red hot summer lifted Bitcoin and the rest of crypto out of a brutal bear market, sentiment has now clearly shifted, bucking typically reliable seasonal trends. Bitcoin is now trading just above $82,000, down close to 5% for the week, and the cryptocurrency market’s Fear and Greed Index fell to 56 on Monday, a “neutral” reading, after reaching “extreme greed” in late August. Myriad: How low will Bitcoin go? Click to make your prediction. The Fear and Greed Index is a 0-to-100 gauge that...

    NewsMarkets
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Artificial intelligence. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Here’s a Way to Predict When AI Chatbots Will Turn Bad

    Physicists at George Washington University have published a formula that estimates how many good answers an AI chatbot will give before it slips into a bad one, and early tests suggest it works. The study, by Neil Johnson and Frank Yingjie Huo, appeared in the journal Patterns and builds on a preprint, a version posted publicly before formal peer review, first released in February. Myriad: Which company will IPO next? Click to make your prediction. Chatbots can answer sensibly for a long stretc...

  • Paris, France. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    French Committee Backs Stablecoin Swap Tax and Crypto Exit Tax, Then Rejects the Budget

    France’s National Assembly Finance Committee voted this week to tax crypto holders who swap into stablecoins—tokens tied to a single official currency, such as the dollar or the euro—and to charge an exit tax on wealthy holders who move abroad. The votes may not matter much yet: on Friday the committee rejected the budget’s entire revenue section by 31 votes to 3, so the full Assembly starts from the government’s original text, without the crypto amendments. Myriad: Where does Ethereum go next?...

  • OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Image: Decypt/Shutterstock

    OpenAI and Anthropic Are Quietly Rehearsing for the Day After an AI Catastrophe

    Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies are privately rehearsing how to handle the public and political backlash after a catastrophic AI event, according to an Axios report published Friday. The scenario they fear most is a large cyberattack—a digital break-in at massive scale—that shuts down banking or internet access, or even power and water. Many industry insiders quoted in the report believe a major incident will happen within the next six to 12 months. Myriad: Which comp...

  • U.S. Capitol building. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Senate Democrat Presses Cantor Fitzgerald on Tether Ties and Lutnick Family Profits

    Sen. Richard Blumenthal is asking Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald to hand over records on its business relationship with Tether, the issuer of USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin—the dollar-pegged digital asset that underpins the crypto economy. He also wants to know how much money the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has made from the arrangement, according to a letter dated Thursday. Myriad: Who wins the midterm elections? Click to make your prediction. “Disturbingly, Cantor Fit...

    NewsLaw and Order
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Bitcoin logo. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Bitcoin Rebounds After Rough Week, But Traders Are Pricing In More Downside

    The crypto markets are breathing today, with the total capitalization up 2.1% to $2.89 trillion on Friday. The bounce recovers only part of the damage, since the market stood above $3 trillion a week ago, when Bitcoin was pressing against its yearly high. Despite the recovery, traders are still nervous. The Fear & Greed Index dropped to 56, a neutral reading, down from the 71 that put sentiment firmly in “greed” territory on October 2. Myriad: How low will Bitcoin go? Click to make your predicti...

    NewsMarkets
    2 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Source: Decrypt

    Ethereum L2 Starknet Jumps 20% After Saying It Wants to Become an L1

    Starknet, the Ethereum scaling network built by StarkWare, said it is weighing a move to become its own blockchain. "We are actively considering becoming an L1," the project wrote on X. "This would enable Starknet to become the first fully quantum-resistant network, with 2027 as our target." Myriad: Where does Ethereum go next? Click to make your prediction. The STRK token traded around $0.073 on Friday, up about 20% in 24 hours. That is more than double the roughly $0.03 it fetched in April, w...

    NewsCoins
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Show me the mony. Image: Unsplash/Decrypt

    AI Startup Manus Raises $500 Million After China Nixed Meta’s $2 Billion Acquisition

    Manus, the AI agent startup that Meta bought for about $2 billion before China forced Meta to give it back, has raised more than $500 million in fresh funding. Its parent company, Butterfly Effect, confirmed the round in a WeChat post, with Boyu Capital and IDG Capital leading and existing backers Tencent, HSG (the firm formerly known as Sequoia China) and ZhenFund joining. Myriad: Which company will have the best AI model? Click to make your prediction. The company did not say how it will spend...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Image: Unsplash/Decrypt

    Google Wants Gemini to Be Your Next Coworker—Complete With Its Own Email Address

    Google Cloud introduced a universal AI agent for the workplace on Thursday, one it says can take a goal, go off and do the work, and return with the finished result. CEO Thomas Kurian presented it at the company's Gemini at Work event, saying that "work now starts in the prompt window." The product, simply called the Gemini Agent, works inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Chat and Calendar, and also reaches into Microsoft 365 and Slack. Google says it keeps running in the cloud after you...

  • Ethereum is the second biggest crypto asset by market cap. Source: Decrypt/Shutterstock

    Ethereum Test Network Raises Block Limit to Over 3x Its Current Capacity

    Ethereum's Sepolia test network activated the Glamsterdam upgrade on October 6 and began producing blocks with a gas limit of nearly 200 million, more than three times the 60 million that Ethereum's main network allows. Gas is the unit that measures computing work on Ethereum, and the gas limit caps how much of that work fits into a single block. The 200 million figure was scheduled in a commit tied to epoch 353,024, a 6.4-minute time marker in Ethereum's calendar that began at 13:53:36 UTC. Myr...

    NewsCoins
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • A statue honoring Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto in Lugano, Switzerland. Image: Lugano Plan B/Decrypt

    Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Worth $8.3 Million Moves After 16 Years

    A batch of 100.02 Bitcoin mined in July 2010, from a period commonly known as the Satoshi-era, moved on Wednesday for the first time in 16 years. At roughly $83,000 per coin, the stash was worth about $8.3 million when it left. Based on Bitbo’s highest registered price of BTC in 2010, the stash was worth around $29 when it was mined. Myriad: How low will Bitcoin go? Click to make your prediction. The transaction was confirmed at 18:52 UTC in block 970,379—one of the batches of transactions that...

    NewsCoins
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Solana DeFi Firms Orca and Loopscale Merge Under New Formation Brand

    Solana decentralized exchange Orca and lending protocol Loopscale are merging into a single company called Formation, the two teams announced Wednesday. The new firm is headquartered in New York and led by Loopscale co-founder Luke Truitt as CEO, with fellow co-founder Mary Gooneratne as chief operating officer and Orca's Christopher Montagano as chief strategy and legal officer. Neither announcement discloses financial terms. Myriad: Where does Solana go next? Click to make your prediction. For...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Bitcoin ETF. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Bitcoin ETFs Suffer Worst Loss Since June as Uptober Turns Red

    Bitcoin ETFs lost $484.9 million in a single day on Wednesday, the worst outflow since June 25, according to Decrypt's ETF tracker. BlackRock's IBIT took the biggest hit at $207.7 million, with Fidelity's FBTC next at $105.1 million. That one session erased roughly 81% of everything that flowed in over the previous nine, so about two weeks of patient buying went out the door in a day. The funds still sit on $57.8 billion in cumulative net inflows, so while it’s a very bad day for ETFs, it’s not...

    NewsCoins
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Bitcoin. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    From Uptober to Spooky Szn? Bitcoin Cuts September Gains in Half

    October, known as Uptober in crypto circles, is supposed to be the month Bitcoin gives investors their biggest gains—but the crypto market looks poised to flip the script once again. Bitcoin today is sliding again, with a 2.67% drop in the last 24 hours to $81,125, nearly erasing half of the crypto asset’s gains in September. The movements are essentially the inverse of typically reliable historical patterns: a “Red September” followed by Uptober—yet, ironically, the same trend-breaking pattern...

    NewsMarkets
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
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