Decrypt AI, Edited by Ryan Ozawa

Longevity Starts With Ending ‘Self-Destructive Behavior', Says Anti-Aging Obsessed Billionaire

Billionaire Bryan Johnson paused to take a look back at the past year and a half of developing and practicing an extreme anti-aging regimen, acknowledging that his solutions aren't for everyone but asserting that some helpful changes are accessible to anyone. In an interview with Emmy-nominated Bloomberg journalist Ashlee Vance, Johnson said he had spent millions pursuing biological age reversal through an intensive lifestyle protocol. The founder of Kernel, a company developing brain interfaces...

SAG-AFTRA members join WGA members on the picket lines outside of Hollywood studios. Image: Jason Nelson/Decrypt.

Writers Guild, Studios Reach Tentative Deal Covering AI, Streaming Services

The Writers Guild of America has reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after a 146-day strike that crippled Hollywood, the guild announced Sunday night. The tentative three-year deal ends one of the longest strikes in the guild's history and comes after marathon negotiating sessions between the WGA and AMPTP over the weekend, according to the Los Angeles Times. The agreement still needs to be ratified by the WGA's 11,500 members. The WGA and...

Headquarters of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. Image: DCStockPhotography / Shutterstock.com

SEC Responds to Ripple Filing, Doubles Down on Appeal Bid

The Securities and Exchange Commission pushed back Friday against Ripple Labs' efforts to block its appeal of a judge's ruling that largely favored the cryptocurrency company in its legal fight with the regulator. In the new court filing, the SEC argued that the summary judgment by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in July raised "precisely the kinds of 'knotty legal problems'" that warrant interlocutory—or provisional—review by a federal appeals court under a law that allowed certain rulings t...

Standards Board Approves Long-Sought Change in Crypto Accounting Rules

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) voted unanimously on Wednesday to change how companies account for and disclose holdings of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and other digital assets. The new rules will take effect starting in 2025 and are aimed at providing investors and other financial statement users with more transparency around these volatile assets. Established in 1973, the FASB is recognized by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as the designated accounting standard s...

Grayscale Prods SEC to Approve Bitcoin Spot ETF After Court Victory

Lawyers representing crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to "expeditiously" approve a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in a letter sent to the federal agency Tuesday, continuing its victory march following Grayscale's recent court win against the regulator. Today, our legal team and counsel at Davis Polk & Wardwell and Munger Tolles & Olsen delivered a letter to the SEC with important information to consider as it decides on next...

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Reveals His 10 Favorite Crypto Innovations

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong is having a good week, his company stock value soared as hopes for a Bitcoin spot ETF surged. Perhaps feeling generous, he shared ten emerging ideas in the cryptocurrency space that he said excite him. In a Twitter Spaces monologue that ran for more than 20 minutes, the executive said he wanted to "put these out in the ecosystem in the hopes that others would take these up." "We’re building lots at Coinbase, but we don't have time to tackle everything,...

NVIDIA Rides AI Boom to Record-Setting Revenue

NVIDIA revenue set new records in its latest quarter, fueled by surging demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs)—largely to power artificial intelligence and generative AI models. The Silicon Valley tech firm reported total revenue of $13.51 billion in its fiscal second quarter ending July 30,representing a 101% increase versus the same period last year. Revenue jumped 88% over the previous quarter. "A new computing era has begun," NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement....

Police officers at MetLife Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey in October 2018. Image: Shutterstock

Former Corrections Officer Charged in Crypto Fraud Targeting Police

A former New Jersey corrections officer has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with defrauding hundreds of law enforcement personnel and first responders in a cryptocurrency investment scheme. John A. DeSalvo was charged on Wednesday with illegally raising over $620,000 from about 220 investors through an unregistered crypto token called Blazar Token, which collapsed in May 2022. "What's particularly offensive about this case is that DeSalvo used his status as a former correc...

Tornado Cash Sanctions Affirmed by Federal Court

A federal court has upheld the Treasury Department's authority to impose sanctions on the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, rejecting a legal challenge brought by Tornado Cash users. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman sided with the government on all of its claims and granted summary judgment in the case, affirming that the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control's (OFAC) is entitled to cite Tornado Cash under sanctions statutes. The summary judgment requested by the plaintiffs—six Tornado C...

Token Founder Loses $250,000 and His House in Scam, Sues Crypto.com

A cryptocurrency startup is taking legal action against one of the industry's largest exchanges after falling victim to an apparent scam. Glow Token LLC has filed a lawsuit in a Florida court against Crypto.com, accusing the major exchange of breach of contract and claiming it owes over $250,000 in damages—even while acknowledging that Crypto.com may not have been involved in the fraud. According to court documents, Glow Token CEO Bryan Lawrence was approached earlier this year by individuals po...

Binance US Seeks Protective Order Against 'Fishing Expedition' by SEC

Binance.US has filed a motion seeking a protective order to limit the scope of discovery sought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its case against the cryptocurrency exchange. In June, the U.S. arm of Binance—operating under the names BAM Trading Services and BAM Management US Holdings—entered into a consent order with the SEC after the agency sought to freeze all of its assets over concerns about the security of customer digital assets held by the company. The consent order—whi...

Crypto Custodian Prime Trust Files for Bankruptcy

Las Vegas-based cryptocurrency custodian Prime Trust filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday, the latest setback for the troubled financial technology company. The bankruptcy filing follows Prime Trust's placement into receivership in late June by Nevada regulators, who determined the company was insolvent and unable to service customers. That action came after a series of difficulties for Prime Trust and companies connected to it over the past year. In June, Prime Trust made headli...

Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin: Crypto Community Never Really Respected Sam Bankman-Fried

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the crypto community had reservations about Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX from the beginning, despite Bankman-Fried's high profile in the mainstream media as an industry leader. "I think a lot of people have this misconception that everybody deeply respected Sam and that he caught the entire ecosystem by surprise," Buterin said in a podcast interview with Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy. “I think it is true that nobody expected a literal $8 billion blow...

Musician Grimes at the Governors Ball in New York in 2014. Image: Jordan Uhl/Flickr

Musician Grimes Is 'Pathologically Optimistic' About AI

Claire Boucher, better known as her musician persona Grimes, said that AI could give her the chance to live forever, while she meanwhile imagines traveling into space on a one-way trip to Mars. In a wide-ranging, 4,500-word interview with Steven Levy of Wired, the 35-year-old avant-garde musician shared her often hopeful outlook on how emerging technologies could reshape art, business, and society in coming years. But she also voiced concerns over handing too much control to machines. Grimes has...

Huobi Crypto Exchange Grapples with Rumors of Insolvency Amidst Hefty Outflows

The Huobi cryptocurrency exchange has been hit with outflows totaling a staggering $64 million this past weekend, continuing a long decline in the total value locked (TVL) on the exchange to $2.5 billion from $3 billion a month ago, according to DeFiLlama. Adam Cochran—a fintech executive, angel investor, and renown crypto Twitter analyst—recently raised eyebrows with a series of statements regarding the apparent financial instability of Huobi. He reported that global crypto heavyweight Binance...

United States District Court building located in New York City. Image: Pisaphotography/Shutterstock

Judge Refuses to Dismiss SEC Lawsuit Against Terraform Labs Despite Ripple Ruling

In a high-stakes ruling for the crypto industry, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff on Monday denied Terraform Labs' motion to dismiss the securities fraud lawsuit filed against it by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The decision allows the SEC's case against Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon to move forward, rejecting defense arguments that the agency lacked jurisdiction and that Terraform's TerraUSD stablecoin did not qualify as an unregistered security. Crucially, Rakoff declined to e...

Advanced AI Needs Machines That Learn More Like Humans

Scientists say they are one step closer to creating artificial intelligence that can mimic human learning. At a machine learning conference held in Honolulu this week, researchers at Ohio State University said they analyzed a process called "continual learning," which allows a computer to continuously acquire new skills without forgetting previous knowledge—much like humans build upon prior experiences to learn new things. The team said that artificial neural networks can suffer from "catastroph...

Congressman George Santos attends pro-Trump supporters rally at New York criminal court on April 4, 2023. Image: Lev Radin / Shutterstock.com

Embattled U.S. Rep. George Santos Pitched Crypto Deal to Donor: NYT

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) tried to broker a cryptocurrency transaction with a political donor while running for Congress in 2020, according to a New York Times report. In the previously unreported incident, Santos teamed up with Republican supporters to pitch a complex cryptocurrency investment scheme to a loyal donor during his first unsuccessful House bid. Santos and three associates claimed a wealthy Polish citizen wanted to buy crypto, according to the Times, but his funds were mysteriously...

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried outside Manhattan federal court. Photo: Decrypt/André Beganski

Sam Bankman-Fried Faces Bail Revocation Over Diary Leak, Witness Tampering Accusations

Federal prosecutors have submitted a motion seeking to revoke the $250 million bond granted to Sam Bankman-Fried, alleging the founder of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange engaged in new attempts to tamper with government witnesses while out on pretrial release. In a 12-page letter submitted to Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday, prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried of leaking “personal and raw” diary entries written by his ex-girlfriend and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison to Th...

A magnetic resonance tomography imaging scan machine. Image: Shutterstock

AI Can Find Signs of Disease in MRI Scans That Doctors Might Miss

A British startup in the health tech space has unveiled an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that can analyze MRI scans for early disease detection. The company's approach, using imaging biomarkers, promises improved decision-making in disease diagnosis and treatment. Twinn Health, backed by a $500 million venture capital fund from Saudi Aramco, says it is making strides in longevity and preventive healthcare. MRI technology has long been an instrumental tool in the healthcare industry. Alth...

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