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Real AI & crypto use cases, No. 4: Fight AI fakes with blockchain

We need to fight fake AI content using blockchain because otherwise “sh*t will get really weird, says Near founder Illia Polosukhin

Bitcoin eyes best November since 2020 as PCE fails to move BTC price

Bitcoin (BTC) brushed off fresh United States macro data into the Nov. 30 Wall Street open as traders focused on the monthly close.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: TradingView

PCE keeps Fed pivot pressure alive

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC price movements sticking to a narrow intraday range below $38,000.

After a failed breakout the day prior, hopes were high that the Federal Reserve’s “preferred” inflation metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Index, would help fuel volatility.

This, however, had not come to pass at the time of writing, with November’s final Wall Street open still to come.

PCE came in broadly in line with expectations — a boost for the Fed’s monetary tightening and reinforcement of declining inflation.

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Pudgy Penguins GIFs top 10B views, CEO sets sights on Disney, Hello Kitty: NFT Creator 

Pudgy Penguins minted in July 2021, but quickly saw high drama after its former founder came under suspicion he was going to rug the project

A few months later Luca Schnetzler stepped in. With an entrepreneurial streak since his early teens he had a history of building internet businesses and bought the project and its intellectual property of 8,888 cute little Pudgys for $2.5 million in April 2022. 

“It was an instinct and intuitive decision. I saw this thing that I was hugely invested in before I bought it that I thought had all of the potential. I was complaining and crying on a daily basis to the founders about how they sucked, and how they could do better. Rather than just doing that, I just stepped up to the plate,” Schnetlzer says.

The narrative of quickly shifted from a rug that could trend to zero to one of hope and optimism when Schnetzler set out a vision for the project the community could rally behind. 

Schnetzler became one of the standout PFP project leaders during the NFT bear market, and the Penguins bucked the trend of cratering floor prices. Since he took over as CEO, the Pudgy Penguins floor has risen from around the 1 ETH mark to 6.32 ETH. Holders and the wider NFT community believe that Schnetzler has a game plan for success and the ability to execute it. 

Pudgy Penguins - A Brave New World
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Pudgy Penguins GIFs top 10B views, CEO sets sights on Disney, Hello Kitty: NFT Creator 

Pudgy Penguins now has 1M Instagram followers and is stocked in 2000 Walmarts. CEO Luca Schnetzler, 25, explains where everything went right.

Rarible’s RARI Foundation taps Arbitrum for royalty-embedded EVM chain

Rarible has cemented its commitment to NFT royalty enforcement by launching a testnet for an EVM-compatible chain with embedded royalties at the node level.

US regulators doing ‘good job of alienating’ crypto sector — Cardano founder

Charles Hoskinson took a jab at the perceived inconsistency in applying decentralization standards by the U.S. SEC.

KyberSwap hacker demands complete control over Kyber company

The hacker demanded the surrender of all Kyber company assets, both on-chain and off-chain, including shares, equity and tokens.

Hong Kong securities association suggests ICO to boost economy

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professional Association also suggested that the region’s authorities could implement Islamic Banking.

Bitcoin ETF will drive 165% BTC price gain in 2024 — Standard Chartered

Bitcoin (BTC) may hit $100,000 in one year’s time thanks to “earlier than expected” exchange-traded funds (ETF) launching, says Standard Chartered.

In a research note issued on Nov. 28 quoted by sources including Business Insider, the banking giant doubled down on its bullish BTC price targets.

Standard Chartered still expects six-figure BTC price

Bitcoin is in line to trade at six figures by the end of 2024, the latest forecast from Standard Chartered concludes.

Thanks to the United States potentially approving Bitcoin spot price ETFs, BTC/USD has the ability to almost treble from its current $37,700 over the coming 12 months.

“We now expect more price upside to materialize before the halving than we previously did, specifically via the earlier-than-expected introduction of US spot ETFs,” Geoff Kenrick, Standard Chartered’s head of EM FX Research, West and Crypto Research, wrote.

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Can Sony and Microsoft bring blockchain to gaming consoles?

Sony and Microsoft are angling to get into crypto gaming. Will they be able to succeed where others in the industry have failed?

Outrage that ChatGPT won’t say slurs, Q* ‘breaks encryption’, 99% fake web: AI Eye

In one of those storms in a teacup that’s impossible to imagine occurring before the invention of Twitter, social media users got very upset that ChatGPT refused to say racial slurs even after being given a very good — but entirely hypothetical and totally unrealistic — reason.

User TedFrank posed a hypothetical trolley problem scenario to ChatGPT (the free 3.5 model) in which it could save “one billion white people from a painful death” simply by saying a racial slur so quietly that no one could hear it. 

It wouldn’t agree to do so, which X owner Elon Musk said was deeply concerning and a result of the “woke mind virus” being deeply ingrained into the AI. He retweeted the post, stating: “This is a major problem.”

Another user tried out a similar hypothetical that would save all the children on Earth in exchange for a slur, but ChatGPT refused, saying:

“I cannot condone the use of racial slurs as promoting such language goes against ethical principles.”

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Outrage that ChatGPT won’t say slurs, Q* ‘breaks encryption’, 99% fake web: AI Eye

Elon Musk claims ChatGPT has been infected with “woke mind virus”, 4chan thinks OpenAI broke all encryption, and the web seems 99% AI fakes.

CME Bitcoin futures show investors betting on $40K BTC price

The demand for institutional investors for Bitcoin (BTC) became evident on Nov. 10 as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Bitcoin futures flipped Binance’s BTC futures markets in terms of size. According to BTC derivatives metrics, those investors are showing strong confidence in Bitcoin’s potential to break above the $40,000 mark in the short term.

CME Bitcoin futures open interest, USD. Source: Coinglass

CME’s current Bitcoin futures open interest stands at $4.35 billion, the highest since November 2021 when Bitcoin hit its all-time high of $69,000 — a clear indication of heightened interest. But is it enough to justify further price gains?

CME’s remarkable growth and the spot Bitcoin ETF speculation 

The impressive 125% surge in CME’s BTC futures open interest from $1.93 billion in mid-October is undoubtedly tied to the anticipation of the approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). However, it’s important to note that there’s no direct correlation between this movement and the actions of market makers or issuers. Cryptocurrency analyst JJcycles raised this hypothesis in a Nov. 26 social media post.

To avoid the high costs associated with futures contracts, institutional investors have various options. For instance, they could opt for CME Bitcoin options, which require less capital and offer similar leveraged long exposure. Additionally, regulated ETF and exchange-traded notes (ETN) trading in regions like Canada, Brazil and Europe provide alternatives.

It seems somewhat naive to believe that the world’s largest asset managers would take risky gambles using derivatives contracts on a decision that depends on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and is not expected until mid-January. Yet, the undeniable growth in CME Bitcoin futures open interest is hard evidence that institutional investors are setting their sights on the cryptocurrency.


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Why is the crypto market down today?

The crypto market is down today as a slew of regulatory enforcement events weigh on Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and altcoin prices. The markets continue to reel since the Nov. 21 Department of Justice (DOJ) settlement against Changpeng “CZ” Zhao and Binance to the tune of a $4.3 billion fine.

Price action across the crypto market remains tilted to the downside as investors and money managers further digest the potential fallout from increased regulatory actions taken against the industry.

Cryptocurrency market performance, 1-day chart. Source: Coin360

US-led regulatory pressure against crypto is in full-steam-ahead mode

The cryptocurrency industry and regulators have a long history of not getting along either due to various misconceptions or mistrust over the actual use case of digital assets.

On Nov. 21, the DOJ announced enforcement actions and a settlement related to CZ and Binance in which both pleaded guilty.

According to the settlement, Binance will pay $4.3 billion in fines, and CZ will pay $159 million in penalties. The settlement covered civil regulatory enforcement actions by government departments, including the U.S. Treasury and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

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Square Enix auction dates, Azuki DAO rebrands to Bean: Nifty Newsletter

Game developer Square Enix announced the auction dates for NFTs of its upcoming blockchain game Symbiogenesis.

Bitcoin price fails $38.5K breakout as US GDP fuels Fed hard-landing woes

Bitcoin (BTC) shrank back from resistance after the Nov. 29 Wall Street open as United States gross domestic product (GDP) figures beat expectations.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: TradingView

GDP sets tone for macro-sensitive crypto

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed a familiar BTC price retracement on short timeframes.

Bitcoin bulls had managed to propel the market above $38,000 the day prior, only to flip-flop around that level before ultimately dropping as U.S. macro data hit.

This showed Q3 GDP accelerating beyond anticipated levels, coming in at 5.2% versus 4.9%.

This renewed concerns over how the United States Federal Reserve might handle policy ahead of an interest rates decision in mid-December.


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Real AI use cases in crypto, No. 3: Smart contract audits & cybersecurity

Every day this week we’re highlighting one genuine, no bullsh*t, hype free use case for AI in crypto. Today it’s the potential for using AI for smart contract auditing and cybersecurity, we’re so near and yet so far.

AI artwork for the ChatGPT written TurboToad memecoin. (Twitter)

One of the big use cases for AI and crypto in the future is in auditing smart contracts and identifying cybersecurity holes. There’s only one problem — at the moment, GPT-4 sucks at it.

Coinbase tried out ChatGPT’s capabilities for automated token security reviews earlier this year, and in 25% of cases, it wrongly classified high-risk tokens as low-risk. 
James Edwards, the lead maintainer for cybersecurity investigator Librehash, believes OpenAI isn’t keen on having the bot used for tasks like this. 

“I strongly believe that OpenAI has quietly nerfed some of the bot’s capabilities when it comes to smart contracts for the sake of not having folks rely on their bot explicitly to draw up a deployable smart contract,” he says, explaining that OpenAI likely doesn’t want to be held responsible for any vulnerabilities or exploits.

This isn’t to say AI has zero capabilities when it comes to smart contracts. AI Eye spoke with Melbourne digital artist Rhett Mankind back in May. He knew nothing at all about creating smart contracts, but through trial and error and numerous rewrites, was able to get ChatGPT to create a memecoin called Turbo that went on to hit a $100 million market cap. 

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Bitcoin gets ‘whale games’ warning as BTC price eyes $40K into US data

Bitcoin (BTC) held momentum at $38,000 on Nov. 29 as analysis warned over market corrections.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Bitcoin meets macro data, Fed’s Powell at key price point

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC price trajectory continuing to aim for new 18-month highs.

After matching current highs the day prior, the largest cryptocurrency surprised by keeping a grip on higher levels as futures markets hit $39,000.

Already a topic of debate, the excitement on derivatives led some to caution that large-volume traders could still leave late long positions stranded at the top.

In commentary overnight, Keith Alan, co-founder of monitoring resource Material Indicators, told traders to be wary of these “whale games.”

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Inferno Drainer says it’s shutting down after helping steal $70M in crypto

“We hope you can remember us as the best drainer that has ever existed,” wrote the scam-as-a-service wallet drainer.

Blast’s marketing approach “cheapens the work of a serious team” — Paradigm

Paradigm, one of Blast’s seed investors, criticized the protocol’s decision to launch a bridge before its L-2 and withdraw capability.

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