Decentral Block Post

Tether AI, the forthcoming artificial intelligence platform from stablecoin giant Tether, will feature payments in major cryptocurrencies, including USDt and Bitcoin.

Tether CEO Paolo Adroino took to X on May 5 to tease the imminent launch of Tether AI, the company’s new AI platform designed to offer “personal infinite intelligence.”

According to Ardoino, Tether’s AI platform will be integrated with USDt (USDT) and Bitcoin (BTC) payments, allowing users to make transactions directly through a peer-to-peer (P2P) network.

The initiative builds on Tether’s December 2024 announcement that it was developing a website for the AI tool, targeting a launch by the end of the first quarter of 2025.

Support of “any hardware and device”

Ardoino emphasized that Tether AI will not use application programming interface (API) keys and will not depend on centralized control points.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin explained when rollup-based layer-2 platforms should go decentralized, and why “as soon as possible” is not the correct answer.

In a May 5 X post, Buterin said there is a right time for rollup-based scalability solutions to transition to a decentralized model. This moment depends on how low the proof system’s failure probability has fallen compared with the risks introduced by centralization.

Buterin’s thread came in response to a separate post by decentralized exchange Loopring founder and CEO Daniel Wang. Wang said in his thread that the maturity of a system matters to its security:

Rollup development is classified into stages: stage zero, stage one and stage two. Each stage is increasingly decentralized, with stage two being fully decentralized and trustless.

Related: Vitalik Buterin’s vision for Ethereum: Pectra, Glamsterdam and beyond

Opinion by: Shane Molidor, Founder, Forgd

For years, launching a crypto project in the United States has been a maze of uncertainty. Legal ambiguity and a hostile regulatory environment have driven founders offshore, turning places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands into global hubs for blockchain innovation. 

With Trump’s election, things finally started to change, with a US administration openly declaring its intention to be crypto-friendly. Yet, despite the rhetoric, nothing concrete has changed so far.

Launching a crypto project in the US is just as difficult as ever. US regulatory agencies continue to offer nothing but vague threats and “regulation by enforcement” lawsuits. America wants to be a leader in crypto, but, even under the Trump administration, it isn’t taking action to create the conditions that would make that happen. 

Killing crypto in America

Every crypto project faces the same fundamental problem: Achieving decentralization is critical to avoid regulatory scrutiny, but until a project launches its token, a degree of centralization is unavoidable.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s digital identity project, World, formerly known as Worldcoin, faces challenges in Indonesia after local regulators temporarily suspended its registration certificates.

The Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Digital (Komdigi) has halted the Electronic System Operator Certificate Registration (TDPSE) for World and World ID over suspicious activity and alleged registration violations, the ministry announced on May 4.

After the suspension, Komdigi plans to summon World’s local subsidiaries, PT Terang Bulan Abadi and PT Sandina Abadi Nusantara, to provide clarification on the alleged violations, it stated.

According to a preliminary investigation, World’s PT Terang Bulan Abadi was allegedly operating without TDPSE, while PT Sandina Abadi Nusantara — the subsidiary World was using for providing its services — is allegedly involved in legal misrepresentation.

Indonesian law requires registration by all digital service providers

In the statement, Komdigi emphasized that all digital service providers in Indonesia must receive electronic registration in accordance with local laws.

Notcoin, one of the most prominent Web3 gaming projects of 2024, said the tap-to-earn genre is “probably dead” as Web3 gaming shifts to more fun and engaging projects.

During Token2049 in Dubai, Notcoin co-founders Sasha and Vladimir Plotvinov, along with Uliana Salo, the head of design and product lead for NotGames, spoke with Cointelegraph about the state of Telegram-based Web3 gaming. 

Vladimir told Cointelegraph that game builders are shifting to different genres as tap-to-earn has failed to sustain players’ interests. 

“We’re going to see different types of games, as tap-to-earn games are probably dead because they’re not sustainable,” he said. 

Gamers want a “fun time” with friends 

In 2024, Notcoin was one of Telegram’s most popular tap-to-earn games, onboarding more than 30 million users within three months of its release. In a previous interview, Sasha attributed the game’s growth to its ability to “solve the issue” of onboarding Telegram users into crypto. 

Increasing institutional interest and moves toward legal frameworks for stablecoins have seen the space grow, with five major projects slated to expand the market in the near future.

In the EU, the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory package is in full force and has given stablecoin issuers clear guidelines by which they can enter European markets. In the US, the STABLE Act and the GENIUS Act, which would provide rules for stablecoins, are making their way through Congress. 

As a result, major payments firms like Mastercard and Visa are stepping up support for stablecoin systems, and new coins have appeared, boosting the overall market capitalization of the stablecoin market. 

Here are five major stablecoin initiatives projected to grow crypto adoption.

Tether to relaunch in the US

Stablecoin giant Tether is eyeing a relaunch in the US with a dollar-based stablecoin. 

Bitcoin (BTC) starts the first full week of May with yearly open support in focus ahead of a key US economic policy decision.

BTC price action attempts to hold the yearly open as support after some downside at the weekly close, but bullish perspectives remain intact.

The US Federal Reserve interest rate decision is the key macro event of the week, with Chair Jerome Powell tipped to “move markets.”

Jobless claims and Coinbase earnings add to a mixed bag of potential volatility triggers as recession talk gets louder.

Bitcoin dominance hits 65% for the first time in over four years, but analysis thinks its days are numbered.

US President Donald Trump gave clashing answers to whether he has profited from the crypto memecoin he launched in January, just days before he re-entered the White House.

In a wide-ranging interview with Kristen Welker on NBC News’ Meet the Press released on May 4, Trump said he was “not profiting from anything” when asked to respond to critics who said he’s profiting from the presidency through the memecoin.

“So you’re not profiting off of the cryptocurrency at all?” Welker asked Trump.

“I haven’t even looked,” Trump admitted.

Trump launched his memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP), on Jan. 17, which hit a peak of $73.43 two days later, just a day before he was inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, according to CoinGecko.

Crypto exchange OKX has brought its decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator back online with new security upgrades after it was paused in March to prevent further misuse by the North Korean hacking crew, the Lazarus Group.

OKX founder and CEO Star Xu said in a May 4 statement to X that the DEX aggregator, OKX Web3, will resume with several new features, including a “real-time abuse detecting and blocking system.”

A DEX aggregator is a service that pulls data from multiple decentralized exchanges and market makers and then presents it to users to assist with trading. Xu says, “OKX Web3 is a browser and search engine for blockchain.”

At the same time, OKX said in a May 4 statement that the latest upgrade includes other new security measures to identify suspicious or fraudulent onchain activity from hackers and other bad actors.

“Our dynamic database of suspect addresses blocks hackers and bad actors real-time, while proactive alerts warn you about risky transactions,” the exchange said.

Early Bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem says he’s working on bringing back the Bitcoin faucet — a website that hands out Bitcoin to whoever solves CAPTCHA tasks, normally used to distinguish humans from machines.

Shrem shared his new Bitcoin (BTC) faucet website — 21million.com — in a May 4 X post, which mimics the first-ever Bitcoin CAPTCHA page created by early Bitcoin innovator Gavin Andresen back in 2010.

The 21million.com website currently displays a screenshot of a CAPTCHA task and a box to enter a receiving Bitcoin address, which was not functional at the time of writing. 

Shrem’s Bitcoin faucet website also shows that there are 0 Bitcoin available to claim.

Like Andresen’s old website, Shrem’s page explains what Bitcoin is and how to receive Bitcoin.

The Australian crypto industry has called on the newly reelected Labor government to urgently make digital asset legislation a top priority to ensure Australia doesn’t fall further behind global markets.

The incumbent Australian Labor Party was returned in a landslide on May 3, picking up 54.9% of the two-party-preferred vote, against the Liberal and National Parties on 45.1%. Both parties went to the election promising crypto law reform, but only the opposition pledged to deliver draft legislation within 100 days.

Coinbase managing director for APAC John O’Loghlen said on May 5 the reelected Albanese Government has the “opportunity and the responsibility to move quickly on this issue” and called for a Crypto-Asset Taskforce to be established within its first 100 days “with the aim of bringing forward legislation that protects consumers, promotes innovation, and stops the exodus of talent and capital to other markets.”

Joy Lam, Binance’s head of global regulatory and APAC legal, said the exchange has been consulting with Treasury officials since late 2023 about its proposed legislation, and it was now time for action.

“Timing is really quite critical now because obviously it's something that has been discussed and kicked around for quite a few years,” she told Cointelegraph in an interview on May 2.

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States bought up nearly six times as many Bitcoin as were produced by miners over the last week.

The US-based Bitcoin (BTC) funds bought a whopping 18,644 Bitcoin over the past week when only 3,150 BTC were mined for the period, reported asset allocator HODL15Capital on May 4.

This accumulation by institutions and ETF issuers represents almost six times the amount of the asset being produced since miners only generate 450 coins per day.  

The total inflow for the past five trading days was around $1.8 billion, with a net outflow on April 30, according to Farside Investors. There has only been one outflow day since April 16, as the inflows have mirrored market recovery. 

Last week’s accumulation followed an increase in BTC spot prices in early May when the asset gained 4% to reach a six-week high of $97,700 on May 2. However, the asset has since retreated to the $94,000 level, which is the same price it traded at this time seven days ago. 

OpenAI says it ignored the concerns of its expert testers when it rolled out an update to its flagship ChatGPT artificial intelligence model that made it excessively agreeable.

The company released an update to its GPT‑4o model on April 25 that made it “noticeably more sycophantic,” which it then rolled back three days later due to safety concerns, OpenAI said in a May 2 postmortem blog post.

The ChatGPT maker said its new models undergo safety and behavior checks, and its “internal experts spend significant time interacting with each new model before launch,” meant to catch issues missed by other tests.

During the latest model’s review process before it went public, OpenAI said that “some expert testers had indicated that the model’s behavior ‘felt’ slightly off” but decided to launch “due to the positive signals from the users who tried out the model.”

“Unfortunately, this was the wrong call,” the company admitted. “The qualitative assessments were hinting at something important, and we should’ve paid closer attention. They were picking up on a blind spot in our other evals and metrics.”

Malicious actors appear to have infiltrated the New York Post’s X account in an attempt to scam crypto users on the microblogging platform. 

Some X users from the crypto community have recently reported having received a private message from the New York Post’s X account inviting them to feature in a podcast and to contact them via Telegram. 

The spurious messages were first discovered on May 3 by Kerberus founder and CEO Alex Katz, who shared a screenshot of a message made out to be from author and journalist Paul Sperry via the official nypost account. 

“What’s interesting about this case is that the scammer gained unauthorized access but didn’t post a Pump.fun address or wallet drainer. Instead, they’re messaging users and then directing them to Telegram,” observed cybersecurity engineer and NFT collector “Drew”.

Related: ‘I’m sick’ — Scammers use AI, fake ID of crypto influencer to steal $4M

The Solana Foundation has confirmed that a zero-day vulnerability that allowed an attacker to potentially mint certain tokens and even withdraw those tokens from user accounts has been fixed. 

A May 3 post-mortem from the Solana Foundation said that the security vulnerability, first discovered on April 16, could have allowed an attacker to forge an invalid proof affecting Solana’s privacy-enabling “Token-22 confidential tokens.”

There is no known exploit of the vulnerability, and Solana validators have since adopted the patched version, the foundation said.

Solana zero-day security bug affected Token-22 confidential tokens

The Solana Foundation said the security vulnerability concerned two programs: Token-2022 and ZK ElGamal Proof.

Token-2022 handles the main application logic for token mints and accounts, while ZK ElGamal Proof verifies the correctness of zero-knowledge proofs to show accurate account balances.

Toymaking giant Mattel is putting the brakes on its Hot Wheels Virtual Garage non-fungible tokens, pending a decision on the collection’s future.

There will be no future releases of any new NFT series or feature drops for the “foreseeable future,” Mattel said in an update on its website. The company said it will decide on the “long-term future” of Mattel digital collectibles.

“Your unwavering support and enthusiasm for the Hot Wheels Virtual Garage has been legendary, and we’re incredibly grateful to have been on this journey with you,” the company said.

“As we evaluate the changing world of virtual collectibles, we’ve determined the time has come to end our Series and Feature Drops in 2025 and onward.”

In the meantime, users’ hot wheel NFT collections, the Mattel Digital Collectibles Marketplace, the community Discord and other channels will continue to operate as normal through at least 2025, according to Mattel.

Key points:

Bitcoin’s positive sentiment should remain intact if BTC price stays above the 20-day EMA near $92,000.

Several altcoins show bullish chart patterns in the 4-hour and 1-day timeframes.

Bitcoin (BTC) has given back some of the gains over the weekend, and the price has pulled back to the breakout level of $95,000. Buyers will have to successfully hold the $95,000 level to keep the bullish momentum intact.

Bitcoin network economist Timothy Peterson said in a post on X that Bitcoin could surge to a new all-time high and reach a target of $135,000 in the next 100 days if certain conditions are met. Peterson believes a drop in the CBOE Volatility Index below 18 could trigger a “risk-on environment” favoring Bitcoin. The other crucial points needed for the Bitcoin rally are a fall in interest rates and a solid performance in the above-average performing months of June and July. 

The father of an unnamed crypto entrepreneur was freed by police in Paris, France, during a law enforcement raid of the property where the man was held captive for ransom over several days.

According to reporting from Le Monde, the May 3 raid resulted in five arrests. Local outlet Le Parisien also said the kidnappers demanded between 5 million and 7 million euros, or up to $7.9 million, to release the captive man.

Although the details on the identity of the victims remain scant, likely for security reasons, the crypto entrepreneur and his father co-owned a crypto marketing firm based in Malta, French media reports.

This incident features similarities to the kidnapping of Ledger co-founder David Balland in France in January 2025. Balland was also held for a crypto ransom until he was freed by law enforcement officers in a rescue operation.

Unfortunately, this latest incident also follows a string of similar ransom attempts around the world targeting crypto users and their loved ones in an attempt to extort funds from individuals perceived to hold a sizable amount of wealth.

The government of Maldives signed an agreement with MBS Global Investments, a Dubai-based family office, to develop a $9 billion crypto and blockchain hub in Malé, the capital of the South Pacific archipelago nation.

According to a report from the Financial Times, the agreement, which was signed on May 4, was done in the hopes of moving the Maldives away from reliance on tourism and fisheries by attracting foreign direct investment into blockchain and Web3 technologies.

The project outlines plans for the Maldives International Financial Centre, an 830,000-square-meter facility that will reportedly employ up to 16,000 individuals.

Completing the project will take an estimated five years and the capital requirements for the ambitious development are more than the $7 billion in annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the Maldives.

The planned crypto hub reflects the growing importance of the crypto industry worldwide. However, the Maldives' ambitions to become a global center for financial technology must contend with well-capitalized, established jurisdictions like Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong.