AI deepfakes improving 🔱, White House concerns over AI 🔎, Pakistan train 1M IT in AI 🇵🇰
AI deepfakes improving 🔱, White House concerns over AI 🔎, Pakistan train 1M IT in AI 🇵🇰
Daily Crypto, Blockchain & Web3 Update 2023-05-25
CRYPTOCURRENCY
Coinbase’s Base network publishes ‘path to mainnet’ outlining roadmap (3 min read)
In the announcement, the Base team said it’s progressing toward mainnet launch. But before that can happen, 5 criteria must be fulfilled. First, the testnet must successfully perform the Regolith hard fork, which makes security-oriented changes to the way deposits are performed. Second, it must undergo an infrastructure review with the OP Labs team. These first two criteria have already been fulfilled, the announcement said.
The third criterion is a successful upgrade of the network to Bedrock. The fourth and fifth criteria are “successful completion of internal and external audits with no critical severity issues” and “demonstrated testnet stability.” The team has not set a specific date for either of these last two criteria to be fulfilled.
Pakistan aims to produce 1M AI-trained IT graduates by 2027 (3 min read)
Just days after announcing that cryptocurrencies will “never be legalized” in the country, Pakistan’s Ministry of IT & Telecom drafted a policy to spur the growth of artificial intelligence.
With the national AI policy, Pakistan aims to evolve into a knowledge-based economy by upskilling human capital on AI and allied technologies, among other investments and initiatives.
China Central Television airs crypto segment in rare move (2 min read)
CCTV programming has an audience of over 1 billion within mainland China.
On May 23, state broadcasting corporation China Central Television (CCTV) aired a segment on the adoption of cryptocurrencies in Hong Kong. As reported in the segment, Hong Kong regulators “have made final preparations” for the trading of virtual assets in the special administrative region and will accept applications from virtual asset trading platforms.
IMF optimism in Central African Republic, despite Bitcoin adoption (2 min read)
The Central African Republic (CAR) has received optimism from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) one year since it adopted Bitcoin. The IMF’s positive outlook reflects the country’s economic prospects and the impact of embracing the leading cryptocurrency.
The IMF published a report expressing a more positive view of the country’s economic prospects for 2023.
BLOCKCHAIN
Foresight Ventures pledges additional $10M for Web3 accelerator (2 min read)
On May 24, Singaporean venture capital (VC) firm Foresight Ventures announced it would pledge an additional $10 million to its Foresight X Accelerator, bringing its total to $20 million. The move comes as the firm opens the second phase of accelerator applications, which will focus on Web3 projects building in artificial intelligence (AI), zero-knowledge (ZK), machine learning, liquid staking derivatives and non-fungible token ecosystems.
Dispersion Capital launches $40M venture fund to ‘bring Web3 to the masses’ (2 min read)
Early-stage venture capital firm Dispersion Capital recently exited stealth to launch a $40 million fund for startups working on infrastructure for Web3 projects.
The firm aims to invest in startups working to “advance cutting-edge infrastructure needed for a multichain, multi-currency, and multi-platform world,” with a particular focus on Web3 and decentralized platforms.
Multichain token plunges 30% on backend upgrade delay (2 min read)
On May 24, the token price of cross-chain router protocol Multichain (MULTI) fell by 30% over 24 hours to trade at $4.97 at the time of publication.
The sell-off came after users reported that their multichain funds had not arrived due to a backend node upgrade “taking longer than expected.”
At the same time, a wallet address linked to layer-1 blockchain developer Fantom Foundation reportedly removed 449,740 MULTI ($2.4 million) from liquidity on the decentralized exchange SushiSwap.
Gaming is the ‘largest scale opportunity’ for crypto: Polygon co-founder (4 min read)
In a May 25 Ask Me Anything (AMA) in the r/India community on Reddit, Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of the Ethereum scaling platform Polygon, was asked what he sees as some genuine at-scale “real life” use cases for blockchain other than trading and payments.
In response, Nailwal stated: “I think gaming is the largest scale opportunity for crypto," adding: “There are some top games launching in Web3 in the next 6-18 months, and it would be very interesting to see if some of them are able to crack the crypto code. Last year itself there was $2 billion+ in funding for Web3 games.”
BUSINESS
Bitfinex partnership pushes crypto adoption in Latin America (2 min read)
On May 24, Bitfinex revealed a new investment in one of Chile’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, OrionX. According to the announcement, the partnership between the two digital asset companies aims to support local education programs, along with financial freedom and inclusion efforts.
The exchange also recently sponsored a three-week boot camp in Paraguay for women to learn basic coding skills.
White House questions impact of AI surveillance on workers (2 min read)
The forthcoming listening session comes only a few weeks after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris invited executives from major tech companies to the White House to discuss the dangers of AI.
In attendance were nine of the top advisers to the Biden administration in science, national security, policy and economics, along with the CEOs of OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta, among others.
AI deepfakes are getting better at spoofing KYC verification — Binance exec (3 min read)
The technology is getting so advanced that deepfakes may soon become undetectable by a human verifier, said Jimmy Su, Binance’s chief security officer.
Deepfake technology used by crypto fraudsters to bypass Know Your Customer (KYC) verification on crypto exchanges such as Binance is only going to get more advanced, Binance’s chief security officer has warned.
Chinese city launches gov’t-backed metaverse platform (2 min read)
On May 22, Nanjing, the capital city of China’s eastern Jiangsu province, inaugurated the China Metaverse Technology and Application Innovation Platform to advance metaverse research and development across the country.
The newly established state-backed entity is led by the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST). As per an announcement on NUIST’s official social media account, the platform consists of founding members representing diverse academic institutions and metaverse-related companies throughout mainland China.
QUICK LINKS
Project takes off with $31.6M in alleged exit scam (2 min read)
On-chain detective ZachXBT believes that the project has “likely exit scammed” after bridging $31.6 million to multiple addresses on Tron and Ethereum.
Ripple acquires Pantera’s stake in Bitstamp (1 min read)
Pantera was one of the largest shareholders in Bitstamp until 2014, when the exchange was acquired by Belgium-based investment firm NXMH.
Shaquille O’Neal hit with FTX and Astral NFT suits during NBA game (3 min read)
Process servers claim they were able to reach and serve the former basketball star during an NBA playoff game at the Miami sports stadium formerly known as FTX Arena.
Ticketing will be a huge use case for NFTs — Gary Vee (5 min read)
Popular entrepreneur and VeeFriends creator, Gary Vaynerchuck, shared his thoughts on NFT tickets, VeeCon 2024, cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption at VeeCon 2023.
Binance helped US authorities freeze $4.4M linked to North Korean cybercrime orgs (3 min read)
Following “lawfully served warrants,” Binance worked to flag the accounts and tie up the funds.
Gate Group launches new virtual asset trading platform in Hong Kong (2 min read)
As of May 23, users can deposit and withdraw virtual assets and participate in spot trading activities.
BTC-e founder seeks prisoner swap deal for detained WSJ journalist: Report (3 min read)
The detention of a United States journalist in Russia has sparked a renewed push from Alexander Vinnik, the co-founder of BTC-e, for a possible “prisoner swap” deal.