On Oct. 6, the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued a preliminary notice to Snap Inc. and Snap Group, the parent companies of Snapchat, for the potential failure to “properly assess the privacy risks” posed by the chatbot.

The notice is based on a provisional investigation of the company conducted by the watchdog, which said the risks to several million My AI users, including children aged 13–17, were not adequately identified before its launch.

John Edwards, the U.K.’s information commissioner, commented on the notice, saying:

“We have been clear that organizations must consider the risks associated with AI, alongside the benefits. Today’s preliminary enforcement notice shows we will take action in order to protect U.K. consumers’ privacy rights.”

According to the notice, if a final enforcement notice is issued, Snap may be forced to stop data processing in relation to My AI, which would prevent it from offering the service to U.K.-based users without an “adequate” risk assessment.

Currently, ICO said a conclusion should not be made from the current stage of investigations.

Related: Friend​.tech offers login removal solutions after SIM-swap reports

Snapchat’s AI chatbot was rolled out to users of Snapchat+ in the U.K. in February 2023, with wider availability beginning in April 2023.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/snapchat-warning-ai-chatbot-risks-uk-watchdog

On Sept. 29, local media outlet Radio Television Hong Kong reported that two Hong Kong men involved in the JPEX case were arrested. According to the report, the two were responsible for creating accounts in casinos based in Macau to allegedly launder illegal funds. As the suspects were arrested, the police froze casino assets and seized cash worth over 14 million Hong Kong dollars ($1.7 million).

Meanwhile, another local publication, the South China Morning Post, reported that two additional people were arrested, with one suspect allegedly found destroying potential evidence with paper shredders and bleach in the bathtub of an apartment. This brings the total number of detained suspects to 18. Furthermore, cash and gold worth 8.7 million HKD ($1.1 million) were seized in three apartments in the latest police operation.

Related: JPEX blames partners for ‘maliciously’ freezing funds, causing liquidity crisis

The scandal started when Hong Kong’s financial watchdog issued a warning against JPEX for promoting its services in Hong Kong without the proper licenses. Following the wa

rning, the exchange hiked its withdrawal fees to almost $1,000, while its staff abandoned their booths at the recent Token 2049 event in Singapore.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/jpex-fraud-hong-kong-macau-police-seize-2-8-m

The new purchase comes as Bitcoin has traded sideways at around $26,000 over the past few weeks. After briefly touching $28,000 on Aug. 29, Bitcoin slipped to as low as $25,000 on Sept. 11. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $26,081, down 1.9% over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko. The cryptocurrency is also down around 4% over the past seven days.

In Q1 2023, MicroStrategy reported its first profitable quarter since 2020 due to a one-time income tax benefit. The company managed to retain profitability in the next quarter, reporting $22.2 million in net income in early August.

Michael Saylor, co-founder and executive chairman of MicroStrategy, took to X (formerly Twitter) on Sept. 25 to announce a 5,445 BTC purchase by the firm. The coins were bought for $147.3 million in cash at an average price of $27,053 per BTC.

According to a Form 8-K filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries acquired the amount between Aug. 1 and Sept. 24.

As of Sept. 24, MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries held an aggregate of approximately 158,245 BTC, which was acquired at an average purchase price of roughly $29,582 per coin, inclusive of fees and expenses, the filing notes. The aggregate purchase price for MicroStrategy’s total Bitcoin holdings amounts to $4.68 billion.

Another risk to the cryptocurrency recovery may come from the strength in the greenback, which has risen for ten straight weeks, its longest winning streak since 2014. The United States dollar index (DXY) has also formed a golden cross, indicating further potential upside in the near term.

Will the U.S. dollar extend its gains or witness a short-term correction? Can Bitcoin bulls hold off the bear pressure in the last week of September? Let’s analyze the charts to find out.

The 20-day exponential moving average (4,422) has started to turn down and the relative strength index (RSI) is near the oversold territory, indicating that bears have the edge. If the price maintains below 4,325, the index will complete a bearish head and shoulders (H&S) pattern. This negative setup has a target objective of 4,043.

If bulls want to prevent the fall, they will have to quickly drive the price above the 20-day EMA. That could attract further buying and the bulls will then attempt to kick the price above the downtrend line. If they manage to do that, the index has a good chance of retesting the local high at 4,607.

U.S. dollar index price analysis

The U.S. dollar index bounced off the 20-day EMA (104.85) on Sep. 20, indicating that the sentiment remains positive and traders are buying on dips.

S&P 500 Index price analysis

The S&P 500 Index turned down sharply from the downtrend line and broke below the moving averages on Sep. 15. This started a downward move, which has reached the crucial support at 4,325.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/price-analysis-9-25-spx-dxy-btc-eth-bnb-xrp-ada-doge-ton-sol

The report said local scientists view this as a way to potentially circumvent current sanctions in place by the United States.

The particle accelerators would be replacing the role of the lithography machine in the steps to produce semiconductor chips for creating high-level AI systems.

At the moment, Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography — a company based out of the Netherlands — is the only company that owns the technology for such machines. The U.S. has barred the company from selling its top-end machines to the Chinese market, similar to its barring of Nvidia, the world’s leading manufacturer of AI chips, from selling its most powerful products to China.

The report from the SCMP said the Chinese mega-factory could house multiple lithography machines.

Related: US regulators deny blocking AI chip exports to Middle East

This is not the first time China has tried to combat sanctions through efforts on the home front.

In May, reports surfaced about Chinese companies studying methods to develop AI systems using weaker semiconductors and different combinations of chips amid U.S. sanctions.

Despite the sanctions, however, Chinese companies have released new AI systems after the country set its landmark AI legislation into motion. On Sept. 7, Tencent unveiled its own ChatGPT rival in the Chinese market.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has been tightening its grip on the AI manufacturing market. In a recent visit to Vietnam, the U.S. made deals worth billions of dollars focusing on AI chips and technology.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-builds-giant-ai-chip-factory

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has failed to win immediate access to Binance.US’s software, with the judge saying he isn’t “inclined to allow the inspection at this time.” The hearing was held on Sept. 18 to discuss the SEC’s motion to compel Binance to hand over detailed information and make its executives more available for depositions. In a hearing, Judge Faruqui said that he wasn’t “inclined to allow the inspection at this time.” Alternatively, he proposed that the SEC should come up with more specific requests for discovery and speak with a broader range of witnesses. In another headline, Binance global and its CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao requested dismissal of the SEC’s lawsuit filed against them in June, claiming the regulator overstepped its authority in the case.

Tether’s Treasury is set to provide a $1 billion near-term liquidity for the Tron network. The billionaire authorization was flagged by blockchain tracker WhaleAlert, which drew a quick-fire response from Tether chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino, who said that the USDT tokens would be used as inventory to “replenish” the Tron network.

https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/binance-us-scores-against-sec-mt-gox-delay-repayments-and-other-news-hodlers-digest-sept-17-23/

The show is set to debut with the first two episodes on Fox on Sept. 24 and will then feature on Fox’s Animation Domination series block alongside The Simpsons, Family Guy and Bob’s Burgers, starting from Oct. 1.

The project consists of 10,000 cartoon avatar NFTs and, to date, has generated 26,399 ETH ($42 million) of secondary sales, according to data from OpenSea.

DigiArt alleged that Casale “wholly ignored his contractual obligations” by launching the project but failed to list any specific monetary damages in the complaint. The firm also admitted to not attempting to enforce the agreement until months after the project had launched.

Additionally, DigiArt also did not provide a written start date on the contract with Casale, along with several other important details.

This ultimately led Judge Wendy Berger of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida to rule in favor of Casale and dismiss the case.

“The draft contained several blanks, including the effective date, the name of the artist, and the allocation of net sale proceeds…in the body of the e-mail, [DigiArt’s] representative stated that the profit split would be ’50/50’ ‘on initial NFT drops,‘” the court document read.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/nifty-news-murakami-nfts-dan-harmon-nft-show

— Nansen (@nansen_ai) September 22, 2023

The users affected by the breach reportedly had their email addresses exposed, along with some password hashes, and some had their blockchain addresses compromised.

Nansen said it has identified and informed those affected and asked all to change their passwords. It also clarified that wallet funds were unaffected by the event.

Related: PayPal’s PYUSD struggles with early adoption — Nansen

Nansen is a prominent resource in the crypto space and provides on-chain analytics about many of the industry’s major players.

In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik said that he believes in the future, a protocol will exist that creates a balance between blockchain transparency and user privacy and is compliant with regulators.

In May, the company was among many suffering the effects of the ongoing bear market, laying off around 30% of its workforce.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/nansen-third-party-vendor-suffers-security-breach-affects-user-data

According to the report, Bitcoin mining can reduce global emissions by up to 8% by 2030. This can be done by converting the world’s wasted methane emissions into less harmful emissions. The report cited a theoretical case saying that using captured methane to power Bitcoin mining operations can reduce the amount of methane vented into the atmosphere.

Related: Bitcoin energy pivot achieves what ‘few industries can claim’ — Bloomberg analyst

The paper also presented other opportunities for Bitcoin to contribute to the energy sector. According to the report, Bitcoin can contribute to energy efficiency through electricity grid management by using Bitcoin miners and transferring heat from miners to greenhouses.

“We have shown that while Bitcoin is a consumer of electricity, this does not translate to it being a high emitter of carbon dioxide and other atmospheric pollutants. Bitcoin can be the catalyst to a cleaner, more energy-abundant future for all,” the authors wrote.

Within the report, the authors also highlighted the important function of energy and the increasing need for reliable, clean and more affordable energy sources. Despite the criticisms of Bitcoin’s energy intensity, the study provided a more balanced view of Bitcoin by showing the potential benefits BTC can bring to the energy industry.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-mining-reduce-8-global-emissions-study

The episode also serves as a sneak preview of an upcoming Cointelegraph documentary about life in Lugano. Subscribe to Cointelegraph’s YouTube channel here to catch it when it’s released.

Plus, hear from students who attended the school about what it’s like to live, breathe, sleep and study crypto for two weeks, 24/7. An Italian Ethereum fan comments on Bitcoin maximalism, Latin Americans observe Europeans’ behavior regarding recycling, and Taiwanese students settle into life around the cryptocurrency.

This week’s episode of Decentralize also investigates how deep Bitcoin and crypto adoption reaches in Lugano, the distinctly Italian city in the southern section of Switzerland. The city adopted Bitcoin as de facto legal tender one year ago, and there has been noticeable progress since then — with the Bitcoin “B” logo hard to miss in the town center.

More than 200 vendors accept Bitcoin in Lugano. Big brands like McDonald’s, Rolex and even Lamborghini will take the cryptocurrency, while some pharmacies, convenience stores and tobacco shops also accept it.

However, Bitcoin is still not deeply or broadly understood, and there’s a lot of work to be done if Lugano is to one day fully embrace it, as Ardoino explained:

”I wish I was able to say that our job is done, but I think we are just at the beginning. The most important part is the education of the merchants.”

AI Eye has been out and about at Korean Blockchain Week and Token2049 in Singapore over the past fortnight, trying to find out how crypto project leaders plan to use AI.

Probably the most well-known is Maker founder Rune Christensen, who essentially plans to relaunch his decade-old project as a bunch of sub-DAOs employing AI governance.

“People misunderstand what we mean with AI governance, right? We’re not talking about AI running a DAO,” he says, adding the AI won’t be enforcing any rules. “The AI cannot do that because it’s unreliable.” Instead the project is working on using AI for coordination and communication — as an “Atlas” to the entire project, as they’re calling it.

“So cryptography becomes like an instrument to ensure consistency and traceability. And then you need reputation around this cryptography, which is on-chain accounts and record keeping to actually ensure that [X] posted this and [X] is working for Cointelegraph right now.”

Sebastien Borget from The Sandbox says the platform has been using AI for content moderation over the past year. “In-game conversation in any language is actually being filtered, so there is no more toxicity,” he explains. The project is also examining its use for music and avatar generation, as well as for more general user-generated content for world-building.

https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/ai-eye-real-ai-usecases-crypto-gemini-gpt-4-rival-roblox-assistant-ai-cheating/

The rate pause bets have boosted investors' appetite for risky assets, with U.S. stocks and most crypto assets rising ahead of the decision. At the same time, the U.S. dollar has underperformed against a basket of top foreign currencies, with its benchmark index down 0.5% week-to-date, including selloffs on Sep. 19.

Litecoin and the dollar's weekly correlation coefficient has been negative since December 2021, meaning their probability of trending opposite to one another remains high. LTC is, therefore, moving higher on Sep. 19 simultaneous to the dollar's downside moves.

Litecoin's market gains on Sep. 19 come as a part of a rebound trend that started last week.

Notably, the buying started near what appears to be a long-term ascending trendline support, which has capped Litecoin's downside attempts since December 2018. The LTC price has bounced 18.5% eight days after testing the said trendline.

From a technical standpoint, a Litecoin price bounce from its long-standing ascending trendline support could extend toward its multi-month descending trendline resistance, as shown below.

As a result, LTC price can reach $78.50 as its next upside target in the coming weeks, up around 16.5% from current price levels. The $78.50-level has served as support in March 2023 and June 2023 and was also resistance in January 2023.

In addition, this level coincides with Litecoin's 50-week exponential moving average (50-week EMA; the red wave in the chart above).

https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-is-litecoin-price-up-today

SEC settled its first enforcement action involving PFP NFTs. SEC alleges each uniquely generated “Stoner Cat” itself to be a “crypto asset security in the form of a non-fungible token.” Mechanics of the offering were similar to most popular PFP projects. Some of my takeaways… /1

— Mike Selig (@MikeSeligEsq) September 13, 2023

Besides agreeing to the cease-and-desist order, SC2 will pay a civil penalty of $1 million. A fair fund will be created for disgorgement to reimburse “injured investors.” SC2 will destroy all NFTs in its possession or control. The company did not admit to or deny the charges.

The SEC first brought charges of unregistered securities sales charges against an NFT issuer in August in its case against Impact Theory.

toner Cats 2 LLC (SC2), the company behind the "Stoner Cats" animated series, has agreed to a cease-and-desist order and other measures imposed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission after being charged with conducting an unregistered offering of crypto-asset securities in the form of nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

According to the SEC, SC2 sold more than 10,000 NFTs for about $800 apiece. The sale took 35 minutes and occurred on July 27, 2021, and the proceeds were used to fund the series. The NFTs allowed purchasers to view the Stoner Cats animated series, which revolved around an elderly woman and her cats consuming cannabis. The first of six episodes premiered two days after the NFT sale.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-charges-company-behind-stoner-cats-nft-series-unregistered-securities-sale

According to the shareholders' report, FTX holds $3.4 billion in Digital Assets A, which is the top 10 assets the company holds, including Solana

SOL

$19

, Bitcoin, Ether, Aptos

APT

$5.21

and others.

FTX can enter into hedging arrangements using Bitcoin and Ether with the prior approval of the committees and can use them for staking, according to the guidelines. FTX Token

FTT

$1.04

cannot be sold without further court authorization.

Collect this article as an NFT* to preserve this moment in history and show your support for independent journalism in the crypto space.*

Bitcoin, Ether and insider-affiliated tokens can be sold through a separate decision by FTX after 10 days’ notice to the committees and the U.S. trustee. The U.S. trustee is appointed by the United States Department of Justice.

Those sales will also be conducted through an investment adviser. Information about the sales will be subject to professional eyes only and confidentiality restrictions with a redacted version accessible to the public. The sales will be subject to written objection by the committees and the U.S. trustee. In that case, the sales will be delayed until the objections are overcome or the court orders a sale.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/court-approves-sale-ftx-digital-assets

“I spent a total of 11 months and 15 days in pre-trial detention, and didn't have access to any of the evidence until about 7 to 8 months in,” he said.

By using supplies he’d gotten from the jail's store, Karpelès used folders and stickers to create an index of all the evidence he’d been sent by his legal counsel, which was all squeezed into a very complex eight-page file, he said.

Karpelès said he was even initially going to brave it with an abacus — an ancient counting tool that uses sliding beads to add and subtract — which was the only item listed that could assist with calculations. Luckily, a prison guard told him that he could use a calculator for accounting cases and thus spared him the headache.

pic.twitter.com/XuNzAdBvsI

— Mark Karpelès (@MagicalTux) September 14, 2023

“I spent around $120 to buy the best calculator they had, which could do additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions, square roots for some reason, and had buttons to add/remove consumption tax,” he explained.

Related: The Mess That Was Mt. Gox: Four Years On

Finally, four years after his initial arrest in August 2015, Karpelès was said he was cleared of all embezzlement and breach of trust charges, “all thanks to that little calculator” and “of course, the tremendous work” done by his lawyers.

Karpelès’ comments come days after lawyers for Bankman-Fried filed a request to have him released from prison, claiming that his poor internet access was a significant impediment to the preparation for the upcoming trial.

District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the request for temporary release on Sept. 12, declaring that poor internet access wasn’t sufficient grounds for release.

Bankman-Fried currently faces 12 criminal charges, which will be spread across two trials scheduled to begin on Oct. 2, 2023, and March 11, 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/former-mtgox-ceo-had-calculator-in-prison-while-sam-bankman-fried-prepares-for-trial

Holešky could see a lot of use, as Ethereum devs have an ambitious roadmap ahead of them. They intend to implement proto-danksharding, danksharding and other features they believe will reduce fees, as well as features like Verkle trees, which are intended to make running a node less expensive. Each of these features will need to be trialed on a testnet before being implemented on mainnet.

An initial supply of 1.6 billion Holešky testnet Ether (HETH) will be allocated to validators on Holešky’s launch day to bootstrap the network into operation, according to Ethereum developer Tim Beiko. This represents 10 times the amount of Ether

ETH

$1,638

present on mainnet. Beiko stated that developers were comfortable with producing this amount because “devnets [are] regularly using 10B supply.”

Previously, the Goerli testnet was used to test new staking, infrastructure and protocol developments. Goerli is the oldest Ethereum testnet in operation, having been launched in 2018. In October, protocol developers began complaining that Goerli had too low of a supply of Goerli ETH to adequately handle testing needs. Given its large initial supply of HETH, Holešky is expected to help alleviate this problem.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-launches-new-testnet-holesky-allocates-1-6b-eth-for-devs

Speaking at a keynote address during the latest edition of the Token2049 conference in Singapore, Nailwal touched on the development of “Polygon 2.0” scaling efforts and the promise of recursive ZK-proof technology to create a seamless interoperable blockchain ecosystem.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has expressed his endorsement of DeFi protocols. In a recent social media post, Armstrong urged DeFi protocols to consider legal proceedings in court to set a precedent, as the legal system has consistently demonstrated its dedication to upholding the rule of law. The current approach is mainly pushing a crucial industry toward overseas jurisdictions, he said.

According to his post on X (formerly Twitter), the United States Commodities Futures Trading Commission should avoid taking enforcement actions against DeFi protocols, as they do not function as conventional financial service businesses, and it’s questionable whether the Commodity Exchange Act is even applicable to them.

Continue reading

Decentralized stablecoins could dominate crypto: MakerDAO founder

Decentralized stablecoins may eventually dominate the stablecoin market, so long as crypto “ends up living up to its potential,” says Rune Christensen, co-founder of DeFi pioneer MakerDAO.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-ceo-stands-up-for-defi-polygon-says-1b-zk-rollup-paying-off-finance-redefined

Lawyers representing Gemini Trust have pushed back against a plan proposed by Digital Currency Group (DCG) for creditors of Genesis Global.

In a Sept. 15 filing in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the legal team accused DCG of gaslighting Genesis creditors through “contrived, misleading, and inaccurate assertions” in the recovery plan. The plan, filed in bankruptcy court on Sept. 13, claimed that unsecured creditors could have a “70–90% recovery with a meaningful portion of the recovery in digital currencies” while Gemini Earn users could expect an “approximately 95–110%” recovery for their claims.

According to the legal team, DCG was attempting to “bait the Gemini Lenders into accepting a deal” that would allow the company to pay less than it allegedly owed. Lawyers called on the firm to “significantly improve the terms of the loans” provided to Genesis and not use Genesis’ bankruptcy proceedings as cover for justifications in the recovery plan.

“To distract the Genesis creditors from the inconvenient facts of its facially inadequate and inequitable proposal, DCG touts proposed recovery rates that are a total mirage — misleading at best and deceptive at worst,” said the Sept. 15 filing. “Make no mistake: Gemini Lenders will not actually receive anything close in real value terms to the proposed recovery rates under the current ‘agreement in principle.’”

https://cointelegraph.com/news/gemini-legal-team-accuses-dcg-gaslighting-genesis-creditors

DOT

$4.15

holders. The council members were experts in certain areas and were knowledgeable in evaluating proposals, according to PolkaWorld. PolkaWorld believes that this should be integrated into the current OpenGov system, where governance is decided by tokenholders directly.

Meanwhile, Markian Ivanichok, the founder of the platform Brushfam, which onboards businesses to Polkadot, has announced that the project is leaving Polkadot in an X thread. The founder expressed frustrations about Polkadot’s governance system, saying that it’s been “increasingly hard to get financing.”

Polkadot community PolkaWorld has announced that it has halted its operations after the community’s proposal to get funding from Polkadot’s treasury was rejected. The organization raised several concerns about the project’s treasury management and made several claims in a recent announcement.

In a post published on PolkaWorld’s official X (formerly Twitter) account, the organization claimed that the treasury management under Polkadot’s new open governance platform, OpenGov, is affecting long-term contributors to the Polkadot ecosystem. According to PolkaWorld, many organizations are being rejected by the treasury and are leaving the Polkadot ecosystem.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/polkadot-community-polkaworld-halts-operations-after-failed-funding-bid

“We see digital asset payments as faster and cheaper than traditional payment rails — and in this hyperconnected economy, we expect that to be a game changer for businesses,” Pat White, Bitwave’s co-founder and CEO, told Cointelegraph. The companies did not disclose the acquisition price.

Gilded was founded in 2018 by a group of developers and accountants on the premise of helping companies integrate crypto solutions into their financial reporting and accounting processes.

According to its Crunchbase profile, Gilded has over 130 enterprise customers across crypto startups, nonfungible token marketplaces, decentralized autonomous organizations, miners and accounting firms. Gilded’s client base will continue to use its existing products while also being introduced to Bitwave’s platform.

Bitwave, also founded in 2018, similarly offers crypto accounting and compliance services. The company closed a $15 million Series A funding round in December 2022 to expand its crypto solutions to meet complex accounting requirements for enterprises. Hack VC and Blockchain Capital led the round. In addition, Bitwave recently announced a partnership with Big Four accounting firm Deloitte to offer enterprise tools, such as connecting blockchain data to enterprise resource planning systems.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitwave-acquires-crypto-accounting-platform-gilded