Musk hints at suing Microsoft, US Rep. wants Gensler fired, and more: Hodler’s Digest, April 16-22

Top Stories This Week

Elon Musk threatens Microsoft with lawsuit, claims AI trained on Twitter data

Microsoft has been threatened with a lawsuit from Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who claimed the Big Tech firm “illegally” trained its artificial intelligence on Twitter data. The entrepreneur suggested that Microsoft mined user tweets to train its AI-powered applications. Musk tweeted that it was “lawsuit time” after reports that Microsoft would cease supporting Twitter across its online social advertising tools. Musk and Microsoft are believed to be at odds over artificial intelligence. The tech billionaire is developing a ChatGPT rival known as “TruthGPT”. Microsoft owns a 49% stake in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Rep. Davidson to introduce legislation to fire SEC boss Gensler for crypto overreach

U.S. Representative Warren Davidson announced plans to introduce legislation to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler. According to the lawmaker, the upcoming bill is meant to “correct a long series of abuses.” Davidson disclosed the plan after the SEC’s latest attempt to revisit the definition of “exchange.” The week wasn’t the best for Gensler. During an oversight hearing, Gensler was heavily criticized for his approach on crypto assets.

Australia installs more Bitcoin ATMs than whole of Asia

Australia surpassed the continent of Asia in terms of the total number of crypto ATMs installed. Since the beginning of 2023, the country has been on a crypto ATM installation spree, climbing from fifth to third position in the rank in January alone. Data from Coin ATM Radar confirms that Australia has kept up the effort to install avenues for fiat-to-crypto conversions, reaching 364 crypto ATMs across the country, behind the United States and Canada.

Societe Generale subsidiary launches euro-pegged stablecoin on Ethereum

Societe Generale-Forge, a regulated subsidiary of French banking firm Societe Generale, has launched a euro-pegged stablecoin for qualified institutional clients. Dubbed EUR CoinVertible, the stablecoin was designed in response to the growing demand for a new settlement asset for on-chain transactions, said Societe Generale-Forge. The stablecoin will offer new solutions for corporate treasury; cash management and cash pooling; on-chain liquidity funding and refinancing solutions.

Intel will stop manufacturing chips for Bitcoin miners

Intel has reportedly announced plans to discontinue its line of Blockscale Bitcoin mining chips in an effort to reduce costs. The decision comes nearly one year after the company announced the hardware line. The chip-manufacturing company will stop taking orders for the Blockscale 1000 Series ASICs by October and is estimated to end shipping in April 2024. Mining firms Argo Blockchain, Block, Hive Blockchain Technologies and Griid Infrastructure were among the first companies to integrate the technology into their operations.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $27,331, Ether (ETH) at $1,845 and XRP at $0.44. The total market cap is at $1.15 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Casper (CSPR) at 3.51%, OKB (OKB) at 3.33% and UNUS SED LEO (LEO) at 2.06%.   

Most Memorable Quotations

“Crypto is not a new financial product, but an evolution or fundamental change in the way individuals and organizations exchange value.”

Gabby Kusz, CEO of the Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association

“When I am asked to consult or advise for [stablecoin] projects […], my first advice has now become to avoid US operations and a US domicile. The jobs are going elsewhere.”

Austin Campbell, adjunct professor at the Columbia Business School

“I think we’re at the end of the era where it’s going to be these, like, giant, giant models. We’ll make them better in other ways.”

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

“I’m going to start something which I call TruthGPT, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”

Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur

“I think we’re going to have to actually end up going to court [against the SEC] to get the clarity we need and create the case law.”

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase

“To correct a long series of abuses, I am introducing legislation that removes the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and replaces the role with an Executive Director that reports to the Board (where authority resides).”

Warren Davidson, United States representative

Prediction of the Week 

Bitcoin pulls back from recent highs and loses support

Bitcoin and a number of altcoins have fallen below their respective support levels, in a worrying sign that the bulls could be losing their grip. On April 21, Bitcoin and most major cryptocurrencies pulled back from their recent local highs, signaling profit-booking by traders.

FUD of the Week 

MetaMask denies claims of wallet exploit in ‘massive’ $10M hack

MetaMask has denied claims that an exploit of its wallet is the cause of a “massive wallet draining operation” that claimed over $10.5 million in NFTs and coins since December 2022, including 5,000 Ether. According to MetaMask, the digital assets were stolen “from various addresses across 11 blockchains.” How the attack occurred is unclear. Experts speculate that there had been “some sort of private key or seed phrase leak.”

Tornado Cash dev Alex Pertsev set to be released from prison under surveillance

After nearly nine months in prison, Tornado Cash developer Alex Pertsev will be released from jail. Dutch authorities arrested Pertsev in August last year on suspicion of money laundering through the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash. Pertsev should be back home by April 26, which also happens to be his birthday. His suspended release under surveillance means the developer can await trial from home.

SafeMoon hacker agrees to return 80% of stolen funds, says development team

The attacker who drained $8.9 million of Binance Coin from SafeMoon has agreed to return 80% of the funds. As per the agreement between the DeFi protocol and the hacker, the remaining 20% will be kept as a bounty. SafeMoon has further agreed not to file any legal actions against them, claiming the decision is in the best interest of SafeMoon and its community. Boosting bug bounties and paying them more diligently could motivate hackers to report bugs instead of exploit them, according to some Web3 developers.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Crypto regulation: Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the final say?

The chairman of the SEC recently said that almost all cryptocurrencies will be regulated as securities. Questions remain whether that’s an accurate statement and if the agency is regulating tokens by enforcement.

Here’s how Ethereum’s ZK-rollups can become interoperable

A single ZK-rollup can’t scale Ethereum. But by working together in an interoperable ecosystem, ZK-rollups and ETH can take on the world.

From SNL and The Tonight Show to Sotheby’s: NFT Creator Bryan Brinkman

Bryan Brinkman took a journey from working on SNL and The Tonight Show to becoming a full-time NFT animation artist.