Senators slam bank execs for blaming collapses on crypto, pocketing millions

A former Signature Bank executive has been slammed for seemingly trying to place the blame for his bank’s collapse on crypto while purportedly being able to pocket millions in bonuses and stock options.  During a Senate Banking Committee hearing on May 16, United States Senator Cynthia Lummis lashed out at Scott Shay, the former chairman of the now-defunct bank, in relation to his prepared statement on what led to his bank’s collapse. In his testimony, Shay noted the bank began accepting deposits from businesses in the digital asset sector in…

‘Is that legal?’ — Elon Musk chides OpenAI’s for-profit pivot after $50M investment

Billionaire Elon Musk has queried whether it’s legal for OpenAI — the firm behind ChatGPT — to become a for-profit business after he invested approximately $50 million into it. On May 16, Musk spoke with CNBC during Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting and claimed he “came up with the name” OpenAI, intending for the company to be an open-source alternative to DeepMind after Google purchased the company in 2014. Musk likened OpenAI’s non-profit to for-profit transition to a “save the Amazon” organization becoming a “lumber company” which logged and sold trees…

Korean Crypto Exchanges Upbit, Bithumb Raided Over Lawmaker’s Crypto Dealings – Exchanges Bitcoin News

South Korean prosecutors have raided two of the country’s largest coin trading platforms within an investigation into the crypto investments of a politician. They seized materials from Upbit and Bithumb amid suspicions of wrongdoing related to the lawmaker’s cryptocurrency holdings. South Korean Law Enforcement Authorities Check Records From 3 Crypto Platforms Investigators from the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office raided two leading domestic digital asset exchanges on Monday as part of an investigation launched in response to a growing scandal with the suspicious crypto dealings of an opposition lawmaker. Kim…

The Evolution of Crypto Mining – Sponsored Bitcoin News

sponsored On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the Genesis Block on a small server in Helsinki, Finland, and received a reward of 50 bitcoins, which marks the beginning of crypto mining. From CPU to ASIC In Satoshi Nakamoto’s initial vision, BTC mining could be performed using CPUs installed on PCs. During its infancy, Bitcoin remained obscure and offered no value. It wasn’t until 2010 when Bitcoin enthusiast Laszlo Hanyecz argued that GPUs could perform more computations per second than CPUs and tried to use GPUs for mining, and he…

Anchorage Digital opens up DeFi voting for custody clients

Institutional clients of crypto custody firm Anchorage Digital can now voice their concerns on proposals for tokens they hold without paying hefty gas fees. According to a May 16 statement, Anchorage will integrate off-chain, gasless multi-governance client Snapshot to allow its “token-holding community users” to vote on governance proposals with their tokens, without incurring any gas fees. Anchorage Digital is pleased to announce that clients can now participate in Snapshot voting using their Anchorage Digital address. Our WalletConnect integration enables: + Voting from within qualified custody with no movement of…

Distributed ledger tech could save TradFi $100B a year: Lobby group

Around $100 billion a year or more could be saved if distributed ledger technology (DLT) was used in traditional markets, claims a new report from the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA). In a May 16 report, the traditional finance sector lobby group, along with international consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and others, asked both regulators and traditional financial institutions to take a more serious look at the upsides of the technology. A distributed ledger is an umbrella term for a system that records transactions and digital information. A blockchain…

Celsius adds over 428K stETH to Lido’s lengthening withdrawal queue

Bankrupt crypto lending firm Celsius is anxious to get its staked Ether (ETH) stash back from liquid staking platform Lido, which enabled withdrawals this week. Celsius initiated the process of withdrawing its Lido Staked ETH (stETH) from the protocol. According to transaction data, it has requested the withdrawal of 428,084 stETH in batches of 1,000. The stash is valued at approximately $784.7 million at current prices. The move follows a transaction of a similar amount of stETH on May 15 in preparation for withdrawal. Once the withdrawal process is complete, Celsius…