Kategorie: Crypto News

• The bill aims at ensuring DeFi protocol operating in the US imposes strict controls on their users.
• The controls proposed in the bill resemble those that apply to traditional banks.
• The bill also places identity verification requirements on crypto kiosks.

The US Senate is prepared to attempt to regulate the cryptocurrency industry once more with a new bill that aims at imposing strict anti-money laundering (AML) requirements on decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols.

According to the description of the bill, the Crypto-Asset National Security Enhancement Act of 2023 would mandate DeFi protocols to impose bank-like controls on their user base. According to the briefing document, the bill aims “to combat the rise in crypto-facilitated crime and close off avenues for the evasion of money laundering and sanctions measures that are critical to our national security.”

Vetting and collecting information on customers,

Anyone with a cryptocurrency wallet can use DeFi protocols, which are financial applications that allow borrowing, lending, and trading digital currency using smart contracts.  They use of permissionless blockchains making them more difficult to regulate than centralised crypto businesses like Coinbase.

The proposed legislation aims to deal with the problem of regulating DeFi protocols by imposing obligations on “anyone who ‘controls’ a DeFi protocol or makes available an application to use a DeFi protocol.” This is most likely refers to organisations like Unswap Labs that create complex smart contracts for streamlined frontends for protocols like the Uniswap decentralized exchange.  

According to the bill’s briefing document, “if nobody controls a DeFi protocol, then—as a backstop—anyone who invests more than $25 million in developing the protocol will be responsible for these obligations.”

These controlling entities would have to screen and compile data on their clients, keep anti-money laundering programmes up to date, alert the authorities to any suspicious activity, and prevent those who have been sanctioned from using their protocol.

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• Nasdaq had announced it will launch the crypto custody services before the end of Q2, 2023.
• The global securities marketplace has however suspended launching the services.
• Nasdaq has cited the shifting business and regulatory environment in the United States.

The launch of Nasdaq’s own cryptocurrency custody, which it had previously planned to roll out by the end of the second quarter of 2023, has been put on hold.

According to CEO Adena Friedman, during the Q2 results call, Nasdaq has postponed the launch of its digital asset custody business due to regulatory risks in the United States.

Confirming the suspension of the launch, the CEO said:

“This quarter, considering the shifting business and regulatory environment in the United States, we have made the decision to halt our launch of the U.S. digital assets custodian business and our related efforts to pursue relevant license.”

Nasdaq still committed to cryptocurrencies

While the global securities marketplace has suspended the launch of its own crypto custody services, it has emphasized that it remains committed to digital asset business development.

While affirming to customers that Nasdaq will closely monitor the market for potential regulatory events in the coming months, Adena Friedman said:

“We continue to build and deliver technology capabilities that position Nasdaq as a leading digital assets software solutions provider to the broader global industry. This includes advancing our custody solution as a technology platform to serve the broader, global digital assets marketplace.”

The news comes as major crypto-affiliated companies resubmit their spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) applications with the SEC.   Almost all of the firms planning to issue BTC ETFs are working on listing them on the Nasdaq exchange. The SEC is expected to go through the resubmitted applications and determine whether to approve or reject them. The most recent Bitcoin ETF application to be accepted by the SEC is the Valkyrie Spot Bitcoin ETF application.

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• OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT while Google created Bard chatbots.
• Both ChatGPT and Bard chatbots are premium AI tools.
• Meta Platforms has released a free-of-charge version of its artificial intelligence model.

As the artificial intelligence (AI) race gathers momentum, Meta Platforms, the company behind Facebook and newly launched Threads, on Tuesday unveiled a new and free-of-charge version of its AI model.

The new AI entrant will compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard and possibly set the pace for upcoming AI tools including AltSignals’ blockchain-powered ActualizeAI AI ecosystem. AltSignals is currently conducting the presale of ASI token, the cryptocurrency that will power ActualizeAI.

The AltSignals presale is currently in its third stage (Stage 2) after successful BETA and Stage 1. The ASI token price increases with each stage and it is currently costing $0.01875.

Meta’s open-source AI

Contrary to OpenAI and Google, Meta has refrained from releasing generative AI products and instead released Llama, a language model created especially for researchers so they could refine it.

Unlike the attention-grabbing AIs created by OpenAI and Google, Llama is open-source, making its inner workings accessible to everyone to tinker with and modify. The industry-leading GPT-4 from OpenAI and most of the other generative AI tools are closed and proprietary, and their users cannot access their source code or in-depth explanations of how their data is handled.

CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook that “open source drives innovation because it enables many more developers to build with new technology.” He went ahead to state that because more people can examine open-source software to find and address potential problems, “it also improves safety and security.”

The emphasis on safety also highlights a departure from OpenAI’s models, which have alarmed users by producing false information or deviating from expected behaviour during chatbot interactions.

Llama 2, the newly released upgraded version of Meta’s Llama, will be accessible to any company via download or via a special arrangement with Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.

Microsoft increases AI charges

Microsoft has partnered with both OpenAI and Meta for their respective AI tools.

However, in a hint at the financial windfall it anticipates from the AI technology, Microsoft on Tuesday announced it will be charging at least 53% more to access new artificial intelligence features in its widely used office software.

The company has also promised that a more secure version of the Bing search engine will be made immediately available to businesses in an effort to allay their data protection worries, spur interest in AI, and increase competition with Google.

With the revised charges, customers will now be required to pay $30 per user, per month for Microsoft 365’s AI copilot, which promises to draught emails in Outlook, write documents in Word, and make nearly all of an employee’s data accessible via the prompt of a chatbot, the company said at its virtual Inspire conference.

Microsoft is pointing businesses to Bing Chat Enterprise, a bot in its search engine that can create internet content.

Unlike the public Bing that millions of web surfers have accessed in recent months, the enterprise version will not allow any viewing or saving of user data to train underlying technology. An employee would have to log in with work credentials to gain the protections.

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