Cryptocurrency

Altekar disclosed he owned $50K-$100K worth of Bitcoin, $1K-$15K worth of Cardano, $1K-$15K worth of Ethereum, and $15-$50K worth of Solana.Altekar is running his campaign on four pillars: Eliminating unnecessary laws and regulation, Promoting consumer safety with information, Promoting competition in supply of goods and labor, and Eliminating profiteering at the expense of the public.According to the candidate, “Voodoo economics has taken root in D.C.”According to Altekar, President Biden asserts that every American business engages in price gouging and simply demands they cease such practices. Meanwhile, their party freely spends without restraint, yet vocally bemoans ‘shrinkflation’, erroneously conflating correlation with causation.Conversely, he said former President Trump, and likely 2024 Republican Presidential Candidate, advocated for imposing punitive tariffs on individuals they hold grudges against. Their forthcoming agenda includes implementing a blanket 10% tariff on all, irrespective of alliance. Representatives from their party contend that tariffs benefit Americans while disadvantaging China and other nations, a claim he said is diametrically opposed to reality.In addition to his crypto bets, Altekar owns dozens of stocks via various brokerage accounts.Altekar is President and owner of DeepCoolClear, LLC. More

In a move to greatly improve the user experience of DeFi users in the Ethereum ecosystem, DeFi Saver integrated native support for Safe smart accounts and multisigs.DeFi Saver, one of the leading apps for creating, tracking, and managing DeFi positions on Ethereum just announced they’ve integrated account abstraction leader Safe, to take the experience of DeFi users to the next level. This comes on the back of Safe’s recently announced milestone of more than $100 billion in digital assets secured on Safe smart accounts, with more than 40 million transactions conducted on Safe infrastructure.The update means that DeFi users of protocols such as Aave, Compound, Morpho Blue, Spark, CurveUSD and Liquity will be able to manage their positions more efficiently, through use of options that bundle or batch multiple actions into one single transaction using the power of the Safe smart accounts. This includes features such as leveraging up or unwinding in one transaction, doing collateral and debt swaps, moving whole active positions between different protocols, various automation features, but also even simpler things such as depositing collateral and borrowing funds in one, single transaction. All of this results in unnecessary steps being abstracted away from DeFi users and traders.Besides all the advanced features that are made possible through use of a smart account, this update also allows DeFi users to greatly increase their security through the use of Safe multisigs, which are the security standard for asset ownership. Starting today, all current and new users can enjoy native multisig support at DeFi Saver moving forward.Another important aspect for both teams is the composability and portability that users will enjoy. Since Safe is widely supported in DeFi apps and frontends, this means that all DeFi Saver users will be able to check and manage their positions through other apps. And, vice versa, all existing Safe users can now seamlessly connect to the DeFi Saver app and make use of the plethora of tools available.”We believe that composability and portability are some of the greatest, most important aspects of DeFi and yet this primitive is being ignored by many teams opting to build small, proprietary, walled garden systems. That’s why we chose Safe and intend to keep building on the open, permissionless building blocks.” said Nenad Palinkasevic, the co-founder of DeFi Saver.Lukas Schor, co-founder at Safe, commented, “Smart Accounts are critical infrastructure and we think that for DeFi mass adoption, we need the security of smart accounts, but also the UX benefits to already integrate within the top DeFi projects today. We welcome this move by DeFi Saver to accelerate the transition to smart accounts and Safe ecosystem.” Moving forward, the teams also highlighted that this change will allow great improvements to the user experience in DeFi through continued batching of multiple actions into single transactions, but also through features such as sign-only modes where all transactions would be handled for the users in the background, providing a quicker and smoother experience.About DeFi SaverDeFi Saver is a management application for decentralized finance protocols best known for their advanced leverage management features and automated liquidation protection options. Having initially started as a MakerDAO-focused dapp in the early days of DeFi, they quickly expanded support to more protocols, as well as multiple L2 networks. Today, DeFi Saver lets you utilize protocols such as Aave, Compound, Morpho Blue, Spark, CurveUSD and Liquity, across Ethereum mainnet, Arbitrum, Optimism and Base.Website, Twitter, Discord, Blog, GitHub, DocsAbout SafeSafe (previously Gnosis Safe) is an onchain asset custody protocol, securing ~$100+ Billion in assets today. It is establishing a universal ‘smart account’ standard for secure custody of digital assets, data, and identity. With Safe{Wallet}, its flagship web and mobile wallet, and Safe{Core} account abstraction infrastructure, Safe is on a mission to unlock digital ownership for everyone in web3, including DAOs, enterprises, retail, and institutional users. Website, Twitter, Discord, Blog, GitHub, DocsContactFilip JosipovicDefi Saver [email protected] article was originally published on Chainwire More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A few years after graduating from college, Sam Bankman-Fried grew worried he was not taking enough risks. So the son of two Stanford Law School professors quit his Wall Street job and in 2017 started a cryptocurrency hedge fund, setting off a sequence of events that will culminate on Thursday with his sentencing over what federal prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history.Prosecutors are seeking 40 to 50 years behind bars for 32-year-old Bankman-Fried, while his defense lawyers have argued he should receive less than 5-1/4 years. Two years after launching a hedge fund, Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried founded FTX in 2019, an exchange that let users buy and sell digital assets such as bitcoin. Cryptocurrency valuations surged, propelling Bankman-Fried to a net worth of $26 billion by October 2021, according to Forbes magazine, before he turned 30 – the 25th richest person in America. He parlayed that wealth into political clout, becoming one of the biggest donors to Democratic candidates and causes ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. Based in an expensive Bahamas resort community, Bankman-Fried became known for his mop of unkempt curly hair and for wearing rumpled shorts, even when entertaining dignitaries including Bill Clinton.In a cryptocurrency sector plagued by hacks and money laundering, Bankman-Fried hired celebrities including NFL quarterback Tom Brady and comedian Larry David to feature in advertisements portraying FTX as safe. He publicly backed efforts to regulate crypto.But prosecutors say his laid-back demeanor and cultivation of a responsible image concealed his years-long embezzlement of customer funds. They contend the theft came to a head in 2022, when crypto prices swooned and he used FTX funds to plug losses at Alameda.A jury found him guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy on Nov. 2, following a monthlong trial in Manhattan federal court.Three former members of his inner circle, who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, testified against him and painted an unflattering portrait of his character, detailing instances in which he snapped angrily at colleagues and suggested his quirky persona was mostly an act.”He understood the rules, but decided they did not apply to him,” prosecutors wrote in their March 15 sentencing memorandum. “He knew what society deemed illegal and unethical, but disregarded that based on a pernicious megalomania guided by the defendant’s own values and sense of superiority.”Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty and has vowed to appeal his conviction and sentence. Testifying in his own defense at trial, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate acknowledged inadequate risk management, but denied stealing funds. He said he made mistakes, such as not implementing a risk management team, that harmed FTX customers and employees. But he said he never intended to defraud anyone or steal customers’ money. “We thought that we might be able to build the best product on the market,” Bankman-Fried testified on Oct. 27. “It turned out basically the opposite of that.”SOUGHT TO AVOID ‘COMFORTABLE’ PATHBankman-Fried had little crypto experience before founding Alameda, which initially made money by exploiting differences in prices in digital tokens between the United States and Asia. A physics major at MIT, he told an FTX podcast that he did not apply himself in classes and did not know what to do with his life for most of college.But he grew interested during those years in a movement known as effective altruism, which encourages talented young people looking to make a mark on the world to focus on earning money and giving it away to worthy causes. That led him to take a job as a quantitative trader at Jane Street, but he began to doubt whether he was earning all he could.”If I really think that I should be trying to maximize expected values, that probably implies substantially riskier strategies than what seems intuitively right,” he said in the June 4, 2020, podcast. “I should be careful not to fall prey to trying to choose a comfortable path.”He brought on Gary Wang, an old friend from math camp, and later Caroline Ellison, a fellow effective altruist from Jane Street and Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend. Both would join him in the Bahamas, where they shared a $30 million penthouse with other Alameda and FTX executives, including Nishad Singh.Wang, Ellison and Singh each pleaded guilty and testified against Bankman-Fried at trial. They have not yet been sentenced.Bankman-Fried was jailed in mid-August, after U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked his bail for likely trying to tamper with witnesses at least twice – including by sharing Ellison’s private writings with a New York Times reporter. In a letter to Kaplan, Bankman-Fried’s psychiatrist George Lerner wrote that his patient is on the autism spectrum. Bankman-Fried’s father, the law professor Joseph Bankman, wrote that his son long struggled with making eye contact and responding to social cues, but that the media did not care while FTX was thriving.”Once the company crashed and his wealth was gone, people became less forgiving, and have interpreted these same characteristics … as a sign of disrespect, evasion or lying,” Bankman wrote.  More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried is set to be sentenced on Thursday over his conviction on fraud charges stemming from the dramatic collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded.Below is a timeline of events leading up to the 32-year-old former billionaire’s sentencing hearing: 2017Bankman-Fried, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, quits his job as a quantitative trader at Jane Street Capital and launches Alameda Research, a trading firm focused on cryptocurrency.MAY 2019Bankman-Fried and former Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) employee Gary Wang found FTX as a new platform to trade crypto tokens and derivatives.OCTOBER 2021FTX raises $420 million in venture funding, valuing the company at $25 billion. Bankman-Fried debuts on the Forbes billionaires list, which estimates his net worth at $22.5 billion. The magazine’s assessment of his wealth would rise to $26 billion by the end of the year.FEBRUARY 2022The NFL Super Bowl’s broadcast is heavy on cryptocurrency advertisements, signifying the height of the craze for the booming asset class. FTX’s “Don’t Miss Out” spot features actor Larry David, whose skepticism about the platform is portrayed as akin to an early human doubting the importance of the wheel.JUNE-JULY 2022Bankman-Fried emerges as the cryptocurrency sector’s so-called “white knight” amid a collapse in the prices of Bitcoin and other digital assets. Alameda gives crypto lender Voyager Digital a $200 million credit facility, and FTX gives lender BlockFi a $250 million loan.NOV. 2, 2022Crypto news website CoinDesk publishes a leaked Alameda Research balance sheet showing that much of its $14.6 billion in assets is held in FTX’s own token, called FTT. The token subsequently sheds around $400 million of its market cap, and rival exchange Binance says it will sell its FTT holdings.NOV. 11, 2022FTX files for U.S. bankruptcy protection after a wave of customer withdrawals, and Bankman-Fried resigns as its chief executive officer.DEC. 12, 2022Bankman-Fried is arrested in the Bahamas, where he lives and where FTX is based. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan later confirms that a federal grand jury has indicted him for fraud and conspiracy charges.DEC. 21, 2022Bankman-Fried leaves the Bahamas after agreeing to be extradited to the United States. While he is in the air, prosecutors reveal that Wang and Alameda chief executive Caroline Ellison have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.DEC. 22, 2022Bankman-Fried makes an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court and is released to home detention at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California, on $250 million bond.JAN. 3-12, 2023Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty and U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan schedules his trial for October. In a post-arrest blog post, Bankman-Fried denies stealing funds and blames FTX’s collapse on a broader downturn in crypto markets.AUG. 11, 2023Kaplan revokes Bankman-Fried’s bail after finding probable cause to believe he tampered with witnesses at least twice, including by sharing Ellison’s private writings with a New York Times reporter. Bankman-Fried is remanded to Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center pending trial.OCT. 3, 2023Trial begins in Manhattan federal court.OCT. 28, 2023Bankman-Fried testifies in his own defense, saying a “lot of people got hurt” when FTX collapsed but insisting he did not defraud anyone or steal billions of dollars from customers.NOV. 2, 2023Bankman-Fried is convicted of all seven charges he faced. MARCH 28, 2024Bankman-Fried is set to be sentenced for his fraud conviction. More

GoMining, a world-leading firm widely recognized for its groundbreaking concept of seamlessly mining Bitcoin via the ownership of NFTs backed by computing power, is pleased to announce the introduction of an updated community-driven in-platform voting system.From now on, every community member will have the opportunity to influence platform development by submitting ideas and participating in a decentralized voting process to determine the most desired features to be added to the GoMining roadmap.The voting process will occur bi-weekly, allowing every veGOMINING token holder to contribute to the platform’s development by selecting the most significant option from their perspective and casting their vote. Following the conclusion of the voting period, the most popular feature will be prioritized for immediate technical implementation.The inaugural voting round will remain active until April 3rd, after which a new list of potential features will be introduced for the subsequent period. Authors of propositions that garner community support will be rewarded with an access key for a utility-backed digital avatar from the esteemed GoMiners collection.The veGOMINING votes required for participation in the voting process are distributed in exchange for GOMINING tokens staked on the platform. The flexible lock period ranges from 1 week to 4 years, enabling stakeholders to earn rewards in GOMINING tokens while also utilizing veGOMINING votes for governance purposes.When reached for a comment, GoMining CEO Mark Zalan emphasized the importance of further community engagement in product development processes, stating: “The GoMining platform was initially built with a great focus on our users and their needs, so the launch of advanced voting mechanics is just the next step towards building an even more community-driven ecosystem for us. The newly introduced functionality will not only drive user engagement to a whole new level but also provide our development team with valuable first-hand insights from our platform users.”About GoMining GoMining is a global bitcoin mining company with nine data centers worldwide. Leveraging over 6 years of expertise in the crypto industry, GoMining facilitates seamless access to daily BTC mining rewards through the ownership of GoMining NFTs, backed by real computing power.GOMINING, the native token of the GoMining ecosystem, is accessible on both the Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) networks. The GOMINING token is currently available on several major DEXs and CEXs, including PancakeSwap, Uniswap, MEXC, Bitfinex, and Gate.io.Trusted by more than 18,000 GoMining NFT holders, the platform is available to both desktop users and via a seamless application on iOS and Android devices. For more information about the company and NFT miners, please refer to the official GoMining website and check out the GoMining reviews on Trustpilot and mobile app stores.ContactSeva [email protected] article was originally published on Chainwire More

Funds from the Pre-Series A round led by Dragonfly will further develop MyShell’s open-source models and agent platform for empowering AI creatorsMyShell, a decentralized AI consumer layer, announced today that it has raised US$11 million in a Pre-Series A round, with participation from a cohort of high-profile investors, including Dragonfly, Delphi Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Maven11 Capital, Nascent, Nomad Capital, OKX Ventures, etc. Prominent angel investors, such as former Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) CTO Balaji Srinivasan, NEAR Protocol Co-Founder Illia Polosukhin, former Paradigm Investment Partner Casey K. Caruso, and ex-Parafi partner Santiago R. Santos also joined the round, which brought MyShell’s total amount raised to date to $16.6 million.”MyShell is poised to revolutionize the AI creator ecosystem,” MyShell CEO Ethan Sun said. “With this new funding, we’re not just scaling our operations, we’re catalyzing a movement towards a more open, collaborative, and democratic AI landscape.”MyShell, an AI consumer layer that empowers users to build, share, and own AI agents, is home to over 1 million registered users and 50,000 creators. The company plans to use the new funding to add resources to develop its open-source foundational model; empower AI creators; AI assets trading platform; and further support the open-source community.In contrast to most dominant AI companies such as OpenAI, MyShell is committed to decentralization and open-source development. This focus has already facilitated the growth of several successful projects on the platform, including OpenVoice, which has earned over 15,000 stars on Github; MeloTTS, a pioneering open-source text-to-speech solution that closely mimics the human voice and supports a wide range of languages and accents; and Allice, the open-source agent framework for complicated AI development workflow.“The demand for personalized AI experiences has grown explosively in the last year, but right now, most of those experiences are centralized with gatekeepers,” said Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi. “MyShell uses crypto and decentralization to put the power over the AI ecosystem back into the hands of users and allows open-source creators and communities to work together to create magical experiences and capture the fruits of their labor. There’s a lot of unfounded hype right now at the intersection of crypto and AI, but Ethan and the MyShell team have the technical chops with research backgrounds that allow them to execute their vision.”The funding reflects MyShell’s position as a pioneer in the AI consumer layer with its open-value network that deploys a revenue-share economic model. MyShell also provides unique toolkit features such as the “Workshop” where users build AI agents through prompts, and “Makerspace,” a no-code AI workflow builder for creators.The investment enables MyShell to deepen its commitment to lower the barrier for AI creation, fostering a community where openness and collaboration are paramount. By championing decentralization and supporting the creator economy, MyShell is not just building tools; it is nurturing an ecosystem where every voice has the power to shape the AI landscape.About MyShellMyShell is the AI consumer layer that empowers users to build, share, and own AI agents. It’s Features include an interactive AI app store that stands on multiple open-source foundation models, and integrates other models into a robust model hub, offering a dynamic and engaging user experience.ContactCo-founderEthan [email protected] article was originally published on Chainwire More

7 Digital Labs, the Swiss gaming studio that owns and produces BloodLoop, announced today that it has raised $4 million in seed funding. The company, which has been in the industry for over three years, is producing a free-to-play hero shooter integrated into the web3 gaming world.BloodLoop – the company’s first product – is poised to immediately establish itself at the forefront of the next-generation hero shooter market and has garnered immediate interest from the web3 gaming community, reaching more than 350,000 registered users in just two weeks who are eager to try out the game in the closed beta version that will be available in the coming months. Well-known funds and companies, including the Avalanche Foundation, Merit Circle, and Citizen Capital, led the investment round to raise the funds needed to complete the game’s development and launch.According to CEO & Co-founder Luca Menale, “The company aims to create gaming platforms that engage users in a fluid, next-generation gaming experience, allowing them to fully and seamlessly take advantage of all the benefits made available by blockchain technology”.BloodLoop, a 5v5 third-person shooter, offers players a vivid virtual world to immerse themselves in bloodthirsty battles with their favorite hero, juggling several unique maps and game modes. At the end of each game, players extract materials and fragments – NFTs over which they have full control – that form the cornerstone of the game’s economy: at the Forge, materials can be combined to create unique, limited edition skins and artifacts that can be used in-game or resold to other players. There is also a strong emphasis on competitive game modes, where players can compete against each other to climb weekly and monthly leaderboards and earn $BLS rewards.The entire infrastructure is powered by an Avalanche Subnet, a game-specific blockchain within the Avalanche network, designed to make exchanges between users instantaneous and secure, eliminate in-game transaction fees, and generally reduce friction for players who are not native to the blockchain world.Ed Chang, Head of Gaming at Ava Labs, said, “We have been watching and following the development of BloodLoop since the team behind the game took their first steps, and it is amazing to see the progress they have made over the past three years. We are very excited that the team has decided to entrust the game’s blockchain infrastructure to Avalanche’s network. Bloodloop is a game that has all the ingredients to become one of the best up-and-coming web3 hero shooters on the market. They have our full support, and we are thrilled to be among their investors”.BloodLoop Links:X (Formerly Twitter)TelegramDiscordWebsitePlay2Airdrop campaignContactCMOPasquale [email protected] article was originally published on Chainwire More

Zircuit, a fully EVM-compatible ZK rollup with parallelized circuits and AI-enabled security, today launched its Build to Earn program to incentivize builders, founders, and community members who contribute to the Zircuit ecosystem. Backed by Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and Maelstrom, Zircuit currently has over $800M staked.Zircuit is a playground for new applications and open experimentation, and projects that launch on Zircuit will benefit from higher security guarantees and protection from hacks through its groundbreaking AI-enabled security features. Zircuit launched its Build to Earn program that supercharges the developer experience for new builders onboarding onto the Zircuit Network. Developers and ecosystem contributors who participate in Zircuit’s Build to Earn program stand to receive rewards for approved contributions. Developers and ecosystem contributors can participate in Build to Earn in the following ways:The Build to Earn program follows the successful launch of Zircuit’s staking program. Zircuit Staking allows users to pre-commit assets to the network that will be migrated upon Zircuit mainnet launch. Users can deposit ETH, liquid staking tokens (LSTs), liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), USDe (Ethena USD) to earn Zircuit Points. Zircuit most recently partnered with Pendle to bring even more yield to Renzo Protocol’s ezETH.To participate in Build to Earn, users can visit: https://build.zircuit.com/ To participate in Zircuit Staking, users can visit: https://stake.zircuit.com/ About ZircuitZircuit is a fully EVM-compatible ZK rollup with parallelized circuits and AI-enabled security at the sequencer level. Built by a team of web3 security veterans and PhDs in computer science, algorithms, and cryptography, Zircuit is backed by Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and Maelstrom. To learn more visit zircuit.com or follow us on Twitter/X @ZircuitL2ContactJessica [email protected] article was originally published on Chainwire More