Stories by Nathan Reiff
What Is Pepe? The Ethereum Meme Coin Inspired by the Iconic Cartoon Frog
Launched in mid-April 2023, PEPE is an example of a meme coin, though one of a different variety than the oft-popular Dogecoin (DOGE) or Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens. Meme coins—cryptocurrencies based on internet memes, celebrities, and world events, and usually popularized and promoted by influencers or major figures in the space like Elon Musk—have drawn both investor attention and eye rolls over a perceived lack of seriousness. But the potential for investors to score big with meme coins is real,...
Trump Leads Harris by 12 Points Among Crypto Owners: Poll
A new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) finds that likely voters who own cryptocurrencies—about one out of every seven registered voters—favor former President Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election by 12 points. These results come as Trump and new ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have recently doubled down on support for crypto. “Trump has been reaching out to the crypto community, and it seems to have paid off,” wrote Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at FDU...
The 7 Oddest Political Betting Pools on Polymarket
Political turmoil in the U.S. has prompted surging interest in the decentralized prediction platform Polymarket, with users wagering hundreds of millions of dollars on the outcome of the presidential election in November. Polymarket allows anyone to create a market to wager the outcome of nearly any event. With fewer than 90 days until the election, political betting pools are on the rise. In July, activity on the platform surged, with close to 40,000 traders collectively betting well over $300...
Here Are the Hottest Political Betting Pools on Polymarket
Polymarket, the decentralized prediction platform that allows anyone to create a market about essentially any question, has rapidly gained recognition in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Now, users are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into bets on the outcomes of a variety of political contests and questions. One of Polymarket's draws is its simplicity: users bet on the outcome of a specified “event” by buying shares, which are priced between $0.01 and $1.00 and correla...
Bitcoin Firm Fold Plans to Go Public in $365 Million SPAC Deal
Bitcoin financial services platform Fold announced plans Wednesday to go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in a deal that values the firm at $365 million. To facilitate the transition, Fold has reached an agreement with FTAC Emerald Acquisition Corp. through which the businesses will combine, with the intended result being that Fold will be listed on the Nasdaq under a new ticker symbol at a later, unspecified date. The transaction implies that Fold has a pre-money equity...
XRP Pumps and Then Falls on SEC vs. Ripple Settlement Speculation
XRP surged by almost 40% to $0.64 earlier this week amid widespread speculation that Ripple Labs was nearing a settlement agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission—though it has since fallen back to $0.56 after regulators gave notice that a closed-door meeting was canceled. The rally early in the week, which briefly made XRP the sixth-largest cryptocurrency globally by market capitalization, appears to have been driven by investor speculation that a non-public SEC meeting was re...
Bitcoin Exchange Hack Leads Surging Tally of Crypto Stolen in 2024: TRM Labs
Hackers stole more than twice as much cryptocurrency in the first half of 2024—based on the U.S. dollar value of the coins—compared to the first six months of 2023, according to a recent report by blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs. Crypto thefts totaled $1.38 billion up through June 24 of this year, more than double the $657 million stolen as of the same time in 2023. Total crypto thefts thus far in 2024 have already nearly reached the $1.7 billion in value stolen across all of last year, pe...
Sorry Dogecoin Fans: Elon Musk’s Twitter Payments Plan Doesn’t Include Crypto
It appears that Twitter (aka X) users will not be able to use the platform to send or receive cryptocurrencies, at least not any time soon. Crypto enthusiasts have long speculated as to whether Elon Musk—a major proponent of the Dogecoin meme coin—would integrate digital tokens into the platform as he aims to build an “everything app.” However, new regulatory documents show that while Musk is indeed moving to launch a payments service, it does not appear to have crypto in its sights, per Bloombe...
GameStop Meme Coin on Solana Plummets as GME Fever Cools
The shares price of game retailer GameStop seem to have leveled off after last week’s spike, but the GME tribute meme coin hasn’t fared as well. The token, which trades on Solana and has no connection to the company, is down more than 58% in the last week and close to 16% in the past 24 hours, per data from CoinGecko. The meme coin has had a turbulent month. It spiked early in June when influencer Roaring Kitty (aka Keith Gill) made a comeback after several years and promptly upped his GameStock...
GameStop Stock Price Plunges as Short Seller Taps Out
Shares of game retailer and Reddit favorite GameStop fell sharply in afternoon trading on Wednesday, capping off a tumultuous few days that saw the meme stock soar to nearly $47 per share last week before closing the trading day at $25.46. The day's trading was particularly volatile, as GME rose to a high of $33.50 Wednesday morning before shedding more than 16% of its starting price by market close. The plunge comes the same day renown short-seller Citron Research—which lost billions on its sho...
GameStop Short Seller Pulls Out: ‘We Respect the Market's Irrationality’
Short seller Citron Research has abandoned its short position in game retailer and meme stock GameStop as the company built up a $4 billion cash reserve amid the resurgence of stock influencer Roaring Kitty (a.k.a. Keith Gill), per an acerbic tweet Wednesday morning. Citron made it clear it did not close the position because it now has a bullish view of the game company. Rather, the company said, “with $4 billion in the bank, [GameStop has] enough runway to appease their cult-like shareholders.”...
Coinbase Debuts Smart Wallet, Gunning to Bring 1 Billion Users to Crypto
Top U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase today unveiled its promised Smart Wallet, a product it says it designed to reduce hurdles for new users looking to get started in the DeFi space. “Smart Wallets allows users to create a free, secure, self-custody wallet in just a few seconds,” wrote Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu, senior director of product management at Coinbase, in a blog post announcing the release. “They simplify onboarding, reduce the number of transactions to be signed, and seamlessly let you use...
Ethereum Layer-2 Networks Are Raking in Millions—With Base Leading the Way
Base, the Ethereum layer-2 scaling network launched by top U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase, generated more than $6 million in on-chain profits in May, making it the most profitable layer-2 network while topping the likes of Blast and Optimism in the process. Base’s surging profits have been fueled by a rapid increase in total value locked (TVL), according to L2BEAT, in turn driven by Ethereum’s implementation of EIP-4844 and proto-danksharding via the anticipated Dencun upgrade in March. According...
How Web3 Could Revolutionize Fashion
Web3 is what many imagine to be the future of the internet. A work in progress, Web3 refers to an internet that utilizes the power of blockchains and cryptocurrencies to shift from a centrally-owned system to one that is more broadly decentralized. Among the goals of Web3—though there is no single definition for this next iteration of the internet, and many participants in the development of Web3 have differing viewpoints of how it should operate—are the redistribution of control away from a sma...
Human vs. AI-Generated Music: Indistinguishable, or Uncanny Valley?
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has advanced to the point where AI systems can be used to create new musical works and songs. As AI becomes more ubiquitous in the process of making music, artists and listeners both will have to address a looming question: do humans or machines make better music? Before digging into this question, we must first acknowledge that taste in music, like all art, is subjective. Certainly there is no way to reach a consensus about which human artists create the...
How the Fashion Industry Uses Generative AI
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), a subgroup of AI that produces content ranging from text to music to images and more, has grabbed hold of public attention in recent years thanks to high-profile tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The famous chatbot is known for writing screenplays and bedtime stories as much as it is for helping students to cheat at writing papers, but it has myriad other applications as well. While ChatGPT is among the best-known generative AI tools, it is far from the only o...
What is MiCA? What the EU Crypto Governing Framework Means for You
Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) is a set of regulations in the European Union that governs the issuance and provision of services pertaining to cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and related assets. It is a landmark regulation in that it is the first such legislation worldwide, and when it takes effect in the coming years it could have a significant impact on the crypto space in Europe. Of course, because cryptocurrencies are not confined to central authorities and spaces like traditional currencie...
What Is Wearable Tech: Smart Clothing, Jewelry, and Other Stuff on Your Body
When people think of wearable technology today, they likely picture smart watches, fitness trackers, virtual reality headsets, and similar products. The history of wearable tech is an important part of the longstanding connection between the fashion world and the technology sector and in fact extends back to well before those products existed. Wearable tech is also one of the fastest-evolving areas of the fashion industry and one that is likely to continue to evolve with the development of artif...
Could Human Photosynthesis Be Possible?
Photosynthesis—the process by which plants turn sunlight into food—may be for many people a reminder of high school science class and nothing more. But a growing number of scientists, tech entrepreneurs, and health gurus are considering whether it may be possible for human beings to somehow replicate or at least approximate the way that plants gather nutrients to sustain and grow themselves. The increased interest in so-called “human photosynthesis” in the last several years is often considered...
How the Fashion Industry Uses Generative AI
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), a subgroup of AI that produces content ranging from text to music to images and more, has grabbed hold of public attention in recent years thanks to high-profile tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The famous chatbot is known for writing screenplays and bedtime stories as much as it is for helping students to cheat at writing papers, but it has myriad other applications as well. While ChatGPT is among the best-known generative AI tools, it is far from the only o...
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