Month: April 2025

Post-Disruption Behavior of KIWI FARMS Members

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:::info Authors: (1) Anh V. Vu, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Cybercrime Centre (anh.vu@cl.cam.ac.uk); (2) Alice Hutchings, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Cybercrime Centre (alice.hutchings@cl.cam.ac.uk); (3) Ross Anderson, University of Cambridge, and University of Edinburgh (ross.anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk). ::: Table of Links Abstract and 1 Introduction 2. Deplatforming and the Impacts 2.1. Related Work 2.2. The Kiwi Farms Disruption … Read more

Analyzing User Preferences and Performance in VR Tasks

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:::info Authors: (1) Rafael Kuffner dos Anjos; (2) Joao Madeiras Pereira. ::: Table of Links Abstract and 1 Introduction 2 Related Work and 2.1 Virtual avatars 2.2 Point cloud visualization 3 Test Design and 3.1 Setup 3.2 User Representations 3.3 Methodology 3.4 Virtual Environment and 3.5 Tasks Description 3.6 Questionnaires and 3.7 Participants 4 Results … Read more

TON’s Broxus launches blockchain app scalability platform TON Factory

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The Open Network (TON) ecosystem participant Broxus has unveiled TON Factory, a new platform designed to accelerate the development and scalability of high-throughput applications like decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and blockchain-based games. In an April 30 post on Telegram, the project said TON Factory aims to help developers rapidly build and scale projects with modular components, … Read more

SEC Filing Shows BlackRock Preparing $150 Billion Tokenized Treasury Trust Offering

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BlackRock is preparing to bring blockchain to the back office of one of its largest funds, filing to offer a digital share class of its $150 billion Treasury Trust money market fund through BNY Mellon. The new “DLT Shares,” short for distributed ledger technology, won’t hold crypto. But BNY Mellon, the fund’s exclusive distributor, intends … Read more

Telegram’s TON Takes On Real World Assets With Libre’s $500M Tokenized Bond Fund

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Libre, a tokenization firm that works closely with the likes of hedge fund Brevan Howard, investment management firm Hamilton Lane and Nomura’s digital assets unit Laser Digital, plans to tokenize $500 million worth of Telegram debt as the blockchain-based Telegram Bond Fund (TBF) on the TON network that’s linked to the messaging platform. TBF will … Read more

SEC drops investigation into PayPal’s stablecoin

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PayPal says the US Securities and Exchange Commission has abandoned its investigation into the payment giant’s US-dollar stablecoin. PayPal said in an April 29 regulatory filing that the SEC concluded its investigation into PayPal USD (PYUSD) and wouldn’t be taking any action. The company said it received a subpoena from the SEC’s Division of Enforcement … Read more

FTX sues NFT Stars and Kurosemi in push to recover tokens

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Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has filed lawsuits against the non-fungible token marketplace NFT Stars and the blockchain gaming firm Kurosemi, which operates as Delysium, accusing them of withholding tokens they owed. The lawsuits, both filed in the Delaware bankruptcy court, alleged that NFT Stars and Delysium failed to deliver all the tokens paid for by … Read more

SEC Delays Dogecoin and XRP ETF Decisions

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed approval decisions on spot xrp (XRP) and dogecoin (DOGE) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) late Tuesday, in line with analyst expectations. The SEC said it will wait until June 15 for the next steps for the Bitwise DOGE ETF and June 17 for the Franklin XRP Fund, separate filings … Read more

BlackRock files to create digital shares tracking one of its money market funds

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Asset manager BlackRock has filed to create digital ledger technology shares from one of the firm’s money market funds, which will leverage blockchain technology to maintain a mirror record of share ownership for investors. The DLT shares will track BlackRock’s BLF Treasury Trust Fund (TTTXX), which may only be purchased from BlackRock Advisors and The … Read more

OpenAI explains why ChatGPT became too sycophantic

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OpenAI has published a postmortem on the recent sycophancy issues with the default AI model powering ChatGPT, GPT-4o — issues that forced the company to roll back an update to the model released last week. Over the weekend, following the GPT-4o model update, users on social media noted that ChatGPT began responding in an overly … Read more

US Treasury’s OFAC can’t restore Tornado Cash sanctions, judge rules

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The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control can’t restore or reimpose sanctions against the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash, a US federal court has ruled. Austin federal court judge Robert Pitman said in an April 28 judgment that OFAC’s sanctions on Tornado Cash were unlawful and that the agency was “permanently enjoined from … Read more

Strategy’s Bitcoin buys should be ‘super careless’ to pump price — Exec

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Key takeaways: Richard Byworth says Michael Saylor’s Strategy could ramp up its Bitcoin buys by acquiring cash-rich companies and converting their cash into Bitcoin. He says that Strategy should consider accelerating purchases as the Bitcoin supply on exchanges continues to decline. Byworth argues that aggressively increasing Bitcoin holdings would boost Strategy’s mNAV, benefiting shareholders. Michael … Read more

Australia’s finance watchdog to crack down on dormant crypto exchanges

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Australia’s financial intelligence agency has told inactive registered crypto exchanges to withdraw their registrations or risk having them canceled over fears that the dormant firms could be used for scams. There are currently 427 crypto exchanges registered with the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), but the agency said on April 29 that it … Read more