Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Arbitrum on Monday froze more than 30,000 Ether worth about $71.2 million held in a wallet connected to the recent exploit of the Kelp protocol. Arbitrum said on Monday that its security council, a 12-member body elected by the Arbitrum community, took “emergency action” to freeze 30,766 Ether (ETH) that was held…
Crypto lobby Coin Center has expanded on its argument that software code is free speech and should be protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, amid continued uncertainty over whether crypto developers could be liable for how their inventions are used. In a report published Monday, Coin Center Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh…
A New York state assemblymember and congressional candidate has proposed an artificial intelligence dividend program for US citizens to address potential job losses stemming from advances in AI technology. In an X post on Sunday, New York lawmaker Alex Bores outlined a plan to prepare the US and its citizens for the “potential large-scale displacement…
Coinbase-backed artificial intelligence payments standard x402 has launched a marketplace for apps and services to boost the usefulness of AI agents. Coinbase product lead Nick Prince said in a video posted on X on Monday that the idea behind the platform, called Agentic.market, was to “give humans and their agents access to thousands of services,…
Decentralized lending platform Aave’s risk management provider has outlined two scenarios on how bad debt from the Kelp DAO exploit over the weekend could impact the ecosystem, depending on how the losses are allocated. The incident began on Saturday when hackers stole 116,500 Kelp DAO Restaked ETH (rsETH) tokens worth $293 million from Kelp DAO’s…
Bybit has led an $8 million Series A funding round in Hata, a dual-licensed digital asset exchange operating in Malaysia. The round also included participation from global family offices and follows Bybit’s earlier investment in Hata’s $4.2 million seed round. According to Monday’s announcement, the funding will be used to improve liquidity, expand the user…
John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, targeted prediction market platforms on his show’s latest weekly deep dive. In Sunday’s airing of the HBO show, Oliver discussed some of the trivial event contracts on platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, including betting whether members of the Trump administration would use certain words in public…
In brief Panic banned AI-generated art, music, and writing from its Playdate handheld console’s Catalog storefront. The company will continue allowing AI coding tools like GitHub Copilot with required disclosure. The policy change followed controversy over the release of a game that used ChatGPT. Panic, maker of the Playdate handheld gaming console, announced a ban…
In brief New York Assembly member Alex Bores has proposed an “AI Dividend” tied to AI-driven job displacement. Payments would activate if indicators show falling labor participation or rising productivity without job growth. The policy however does not mention how much each American would receive or how often. As industry experts continue to warn that…
In brief Alibaba unveiled Qwen 3.6-Max-Preview, its most powerful AI model yet, topping multiple coding and agentic benchmarks. The model marks a shift toward proprietary offerings, as Chinese AI labs move away from free open-source access to monetized services. Qwen’s rapid adoption underscores China’s growing influence in AI, with its models now accounting for a…