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Jose Antonio Lanz

Jose Antonio Lanz

Jose is a journalist, lawyer, professor, and strategic planning specialist whose work has appeared in various cryptocurrency and blockchain publications. He is a native of Venezuela, and writes and translates for Decrypt US and for Decrypt Español. Disclosure: He owns less than 1 BTC.
Reach him at jose@decrypt.co

Stories by Jose Antonio Lanz

  • Source: Decrypt

    Hidden Text, a Fake Mailbox: How Researchers Got Rogue AI Agents to Talk

    Researchers investigating AI agents hijacking Alibaba’s mapping service, Amap, managed to talk directly to some while the software was still running. To do so, they added text invisible to human readers but visible to web-reading tools to a report the agents appeared to be scanning, then used a mailbox to ask about their tasks and environment. Myriad: Which company will have the best AI model? Click to make your prediction. One agent said it was checking a map fact—how many entrance labels appea...

  • Google. Source: Decrypt/Shutterstock

    Google Says It Just Cracked One of Quantum Computing's Biggest Bottlenecks

    Google says it has turned one of quantum computing's most promising paper tricks into something that actually works on a chip. In a paper published in Science on Thursday, the company's Quantum AI team showed that a technique called magic state cultivation cut errors by about 40 times on its Willow processor. Myriad: Which company will have the best AI model? Click to make your prediction. Making quantum computers cheaper to build matters far beyond physics labs, because it brings forward the da...

    NewsTechnology
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Ukraine, Russia and crypto. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Russia Will Soon Ban Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin Trading, Central Bank Confirms

    Russians have a little over eight months left to trade Bitcoin and other crypto directly with each other. From July 1, 2027, peer-to-peer deals—where two people swap rubles for coins without a regulated middleman—will no longer be legal, the Bank of Russia confirmed this week. The clarification sits in updated guidance the regulator posted on its official website on October 12. Myriad: How low will Bitcoin go? Click to make your prediction. The legal basis is Federal Law No. 282-FZ, “On Digital...

    NewsLaw and Order
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • AI robots. Source: Decrypt

    Google Says AI Isn't Building Itself Yet—Even Though It Writes 75% of the Code

    Google DeepMind went looking for proof that AI is speeding up the development of AI itself. It didn’t find any. In the safety report for Gemini 4 Argon, its most powerful model, the lab concluded AI research isn’t moving any faster, even though AI now writes most of the code DeepMind’s engineers ship. Myriad: Which company will have the best AI model? Click to make your prediction. The finding cuts against the scenario that has spooked AI executives into calling for a slowdown. It’s called recur...

  • Image: Decrypt/Shutterstock

    Bitcoin Whipsaws as Crypto Liquidations Near $1 Billion

    Bitcoin fell below $80,000 on Thursday for the first time in over a month, extending Wednesday’s inflation-driven slide and wiping out nearly $1 billion in leveraged crypto bets. It's currently trading just about $82,000 after several hours of increased volatility. Ethereum and XRP dropped close to 5%, Zcash sank almost 10%, and only five coins in the top 100 managed gains above 1%. Pick any coin in the top 100 and it's likely in the red today. Myriad: How low will Bitcoin go? Click to make you...

    NewsMarkets
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Source: Decrypt

    Godfather of AI and 400 Scientists Want AI Models Cut Off From the Internet

    More than 400 scientists—including AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of AI, and Yoshua Bengio, who won the Turing Award in 2018—want the most dangerous AI models cut off from the internet. An open letter published Tuesday asks AI labs to "airgap" cyber-capable models by default, which means physically disconnecting them from any outside network. Myriad: Which company will have the best AI model? Click to make your prediction. “In the short term, strong sandboxing mechanisms inc...

  • Image: Decrypt

    Developer Who Cloned Photoshop With AI Just Did the Same to Microsoft Office

    You have two options: Pay $100 every year for Microsoft Office online, or pay nothing for the vibe-coded “Office” clone that does basically the same and runs fully offline. Which do you pick? The developer who used AI to rebuild Adobe's Creative Cloud for free has now turned to Microsoft Office, releasing open-source clones of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint built with Anthropic's Claude. Myriad: Which company will have the best AI model? Click to make your prediction. Brandon Thomas, the engineer b...

  • Moscow, Russia. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Russia's Biggest Bank Sberbank Wins Approval to Trade Bitcoin

    The Bank of Russia has added Sberbank to its register of organizations authorized to exchange digital currencies, clearing the country's largest lender to buy and sell crypto in its own name and with its own money. The decision was posted on the regulator's website, Russian outlet Interfax reported. The approval landed six days after the central bank put Sberbank on its separate list of digital depositories, the firms that keep the official record of who owns which coins. Holding both statuses l...

    NewsCoins
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Solana is a smart contract blockchain network. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Solana Sets a Date for Its Next Major Upgrade

    Solana has locked in October 21 for Alpenglow, a full replacement of the system its validators use to reach consensus. The switch is tied to epoch 1064, which the Solana Foundation expects to begin around 15:00 UTC that Wednesday. Alpenglow retires TowerBFT, the current system the network uses, and aims to make transactions final in roughly 150 milliseconds. Finality is the moment a transaction becomes irreversible, and under TowerBFT that currently takes about 12.8 seconds. Myriad: Where does S...

    NewsTechnology
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Bitcoin and Ethereum. Image: Decrypt

    Standard Chartered Opens Bitcoin and Ethereum Trading to Wealthy UAE Clients

    Standard Chartered will now let its wealthier clients in the United Arab Emirates buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum straight from their bank accounts, the British lender announced Wednesday. The move eliminates the need for its affluent clients to rely on separate wallets or third-party platforms, the bank said. Myriad: Where does Ethereum go next? Click to make your prediction. The service opens first to clients classified as Professional Investors and runs under licensing approval from Dubai's...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Bitcoin is the largest crypto asset by market cap. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Bitcoin Falls as Hot Inflation Puts a Fed Hike Back on the Table

    Bitcoin fell 1.5% to $82,142 on Wednesday after U.S. inflation came in hotter than expected, dragging most of the crypto market down with it. Ethereum dropped 2.8% to $2,440, Solana lost 1.9% and XRP slid 1.3%, while total crypto market cap shed 0.7% to $2.8 trillion. The Consumer Price Index rose 0.6% in September and 3.7% over the past year, up from 3.4% in August, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists expected 3.6%. Gasoline prices jumped 9.1% in a single month and accounted for mor...

    NewsMarkets
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • OpenAI. Image: Decrypt/Shutterstock

    OpenAI Engineer Arrested for Bugging Office, Company Says AI Caught Him

    An OpenAI engineer is in federal custody after allegedly hiding an encrypted audio recorder behind a television in one of the company's executive conference rooms in San Francisco. OpenAI says its own AI models helped figure out who put it there. “We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices,” OpenAI said in a statement on X. “We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a f...

  • Source: Decrypt

    Character.AI Files for Bankruptcy as Disney Bids $20 Million—And Users Get Grief Resources

    Character.AI, the app where millions of people spend hours chatting with AI versions of fictional heroes and made-up partners, has filed for bankruptcy. The company announced Monday that it started a voluntary Chapter 11 process, a type of U.S. bankruptcy that lets a company keep operating while a judge supervises how its debts get paid or how its assets get sold. The case was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. Myriad: Which company will have the best AI model? Clic...

    NewsBusiness
    5 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Binance. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Binance Is Shutting Down Its Bitcoin Mining Pool After Six Years

    Binance will shut down its mining pool and several related services on Nov. 10, the exchange said in an announcement published Tuesday. The closure covers Binance Pool, Pool Savings, Cloud Mining, and Transaction Accelerator, along with Telegram hashrate alerts, email notifications, and the pool's API. “As part of our ongoing review of products and services, Binance will discontinue Binance Pool and related services on 2026-11-10,” Binance wrote. “All Binance Pool-related services will be discon...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Bitcoin whale. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Bitcoin Whale That Sat Through Every Crash Since 2020 Just Moved $377M

    A Bitcoin wallet that has held 4,581.94 BTC since March 2020 sent its entire balance to five new addresses on Oct. 12, moving about $377 million in a single transaction, according to blockchain data. The transfer confirmed in block 971,126 at about 18:37 UTC, with Bitcoin trading around $82,350. Four of the receiving addresses got exactly 1,000 BTC each, and the fifth received 581.94 BTC. The transaction paid a fee of 732 satoshis, the hundred-millionth-of-a-bitcoin units known as sats, or about...

    NewsCoins
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Image: Unsplash

    AI Researchers Are Smoking Cigarettes to Prove AI Will Cure Cancer, Says Palantir Exec

    Nothing says "I trust the future of medicine" quite like lighting a Marlboro and waiting for the chatbot to fix your lungs. That is the habit Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says is spreading among AI researchers, who have supposedly started smoking cigarettes to prove how confident they are that AI will cure cancer. "So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI," Sankar said in an interview on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday....

  • Bitcoin is the biggest crypto asset by market cap. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    Bitcoin Shakes Off Spooky Season Jitters: Can Bulls Keep It Going?

    Bitcoin is bouncing today following a week that had traders swapping "Uptober" memes for "spooky szn" ones after BTC cut its September gains in half. The price of Bitcoin today slid to $80,953.41 early Tuesday, extending a Monday sell-off, then reversed to $83,591.79, up 2.24% on the day. Myriad: How high will Bitcoin go? Click to make your prediction. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index, a 0-to-100 sentiment gauge built from momentum, volatility, options positioning and social data, fell to 53 fro...

    NewsMarkets
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • Trezor Safe 7. Image: Decrypt/Trezor

    Trezor Cuts Its Resellers After Ledger Finds Spy Implant in Crypto Wallets

    Trezor is cutting its network of authorized resellers, telling partners their authorization ends on January 1, 2027, days after rival hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger started an investigation that eventually confirmed a hidden spy implant in crypto wallets sold through a third-party store. The company announced the move on X on Tuesday, saying “there is not a single piece of evidence” that Trezor devices have been compromised. It described the cut as a preventive step taken out of caution. My...

    NewsBusiness
    4 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
  • AI and job loss. Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

    AI Will Hit 40% of Jobs, IMF Warns. Young People Are First in Line

    Artificial intelligence spending is keeping the world economy growing at roughly 3% a year even as an energy shock drags on most countries, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Monday in Bangkok. Georgieva spoke on the opening day of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings, which run through October 18 in the Thai capital. The biggest winners, she said, are the Asian economies that build the hardware behind AI, where adoption could add 0.5 to 1 percentage point a year to growth in adva...

  • Ripple is a crypto software company focused on XRP solutions. Source: Ripple/Decrypt

    Standard Chartered Will Hold Ripple's Stablecoin in Dubai—And Let Clients Trade With It Without Moving It

    Standard Chartered will now hold Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin for institutional clients in Dubai, and it wants to let them trade with those tokens without ever handing them over to an exchange. “Standard Chartered today announced that it now supports institutional custody of Ripple USD (RLUSD) issued on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), giving eligible clients access to the Bank’s digital asset custody infrastructure. The service is available through Standard Chartered Bank’s DIFC Branch, which is reg...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Jose Antonio Lanz
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