Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the Andreessen-Horowitz venture capital (VC) firm, said that the current race to establish dominance in the artificial intelligence sector is analogous to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in the second half of the 20th Century.

In an interview with Jack Altman on the Uncapped Podcast, the VC said different jurisdictions and cultures will likely demand AI models trained on material aligned with their notions of acceptable social organization. Andreessen told Altman:

“There is a two-horse race. This is shaping up to be the equivalent of what the Cold War was against the Soviet Union in the last century. It is shaping up to be like that. China does have ambitions to basically imprint the world on their ideas of how society should be organized.”

The VC said that AI will be the “future control layer for everything,” acting as the interface human beings use to access critical infrastructure and services across the healthcare, education, transportation, and legal domains.

“If you had a choice between AI with American values versus the Chinese Communist Party values. It is just crystal clear where you would want to go,” Andreessen added.

Artificial intelligence continues to be a technological sector with geopolitical implications, as world leaders, including United States President Donald Trump, have vowed to make their countries global leaders in AI over the next several decades.

Related: AI-powered OSINT tool profiles YouTube users, raising privacy concerns

Consumer fears about AI and the future of civilization persist

A recent paper from tech giant Apple asserted that contemporary AI models are still a long way from achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).

However, this has not stopped analysts, consumers, and even software developers from sounding the alarm on the dangers of artificial intelligence and its potential effects on human civilization.

These scenarios span a wide range of potentially destructive consequences borne of AI development, including displacing human workers, automatically activating military weapons platforms, cyberattacks launched by rogue machines, and even subverting the democratic process by spreading misinformation.

Magazine: AI is good for employment says PWC — Ignore the AI doomers: AI Eye

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ai-race-between-us-and-china-resembles-cold-war-marc-andreessen/feed/ 0 42233 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/asia-morning-briefing-all-eyes-on-ton-as-elon-musk-pours-cold-water-on-xai-deal-talks/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/asia-morning-briefing-all-eyes-on-ton-as-elon-musk-pours-cold-water-on-xai-deal-talks/#respond Thu, 29 May 2025 06:30:42 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/asia-morning-briefing-all-eyes-on-ton-as-elon-musk-pours-cold-water-on-xai-deal-talks/ Good Morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:

Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.

Telegram’s blockbuster deal with xAI, which would see Elon Musk’s AI company integrate into Telegram and the two firms share revenue, is still a work in progress despite an announcement from Pavel Durov earlier Wednesday, U.S. time, that the deal was inked.

TON, a token affiliated with Telegram’s ecosystem, is trading at $3.30, rallying there from $3 after the initial – now refuted – announcement of the partnership was made. The token is down from an earlier high of $3.68, after Elon Musk posted on X that no deal had been signed between the two companies. TON is still up 11% on the day, according to CoinDesk market data.

While Durov has now confirmed that no deal has been signed, the Telegram founder said there is an “agreement in principle” which might be why TON still has significant support at the $3.30.

All eyes will be on Telegram and xAI as the Asia business day begins to see if more clarification comes from either side.

Decentralized BlueSky isn’t a Web3 Company, Says CEO

VANCOUVER—Jay Graber, the CEO of fast-growing decentralized social media platform Bluesky, got her start in Web3 as a developer for privacy coin zCash, but she wants to keep her X competitor firmly in Web2.

Speaking at Web Summit in Vancouver on Wednesday, Graber argued blockchain technology’s permanence and resource-intensive design make it unsuitable for consumer-oriented social networks, where content is fleeting and personal.

“Why do you need your picture of what you post for lunch being maintained forever in this digital archive?” she asked on stage, highlighting the inherent scalability and cost limitations that drove her decision to avoid blockchain at Bluesky.

Graber, to be sure, isn’t against crypto. She says there’s still genuine value in the technology for things like payments and digital identity, even if sometimes Web3 often presents solutions in search of a problem, and has a trend of gravitating towards centralization.

“There’s a period where everyone was creating blockchain like this hammer, and we were just going to try blockchain for everything,” Graber said. “Every system that’s trying to do it ends up with concentrations because it’s easy, and convenience ultimately wins at the end of the day.”

For her, Bluesky’s future lies in combining the ideals of decentralization, such as user autonomy and portability, with practical, Web2 infrastructure to create a platform that prioritizes users’ needs.

“Blockchain will probably find its place somewhere in the world of technology, but Bluesky is not on a blockchain because we’re just making the best choices for our users,” she concluded.

Nvidia’s Earnings Beat Boosts Stock, Offers Modest Lift to AI Tokens

Shares of Nvidia rose roughly 4% in after-hours trading Wednesday after reporting stronger-than-expected first-quarter earnings, highlighted by a 69% revenue increase from last year and a 73% jump in its data center business driven by robust demand for AI chips. Net income rose 26% to $18.8 billion, boosting Nvidia’s year-to-date performance modestly higher, CoinDesk previously reported.

The earnings report provided a slight lift to AI-related crypto tokens like Bittensor (TAO), NEAR Protocol, and Internet Computer (ICP), though gains were modest.

However, Nvidia tempered future expectations, cautioning that second-quarter revenue might fall short of market estimates due to tariff-related trade tensions between the U.S. and China.

Market Movements:

• BTC: Bitcoin dipped 1.2% to $107,800, though NYDIG sees more room for gains. At the same time, crypto markets shrugged off a U.S. court blocking Trump’s broad tariffs as unconstitutional, with BTC trading remaining muted.
• ETH: Ether is trading above $2700 as Asia begins its business day. Earlier, CoinDesk analyst Omkar Godbole wrote ETH is eying a breakout above $3,000, forming a bullish “ascending triangle” pattern with rising support and resistance at $2,735, as higher lows signal growing buying pressure and accumulation ahead of a potential price surge.
• Gold: Gold has slipped 1% to $3,267.47 amid cooling safe-haven demand, though tariff and geopolitical uncertainty linger.
• Nikkei 225: The Nikkei 225 is opening in the green, up 1%, as investors in export-reliant Japan are looking at a recent announcement that the Supreme Court has blocked Trump’s tariffs with cautious optimism, even as crypto shrugged it off.
• S&P 500: While the S&P 500 closed in the red, futures are up 1% as traders await more clarity regarding the court’s move to block Trump’s tariffs.

A doomsday-themed Solana NFT project is looking to sell 100,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to buy a Cold War-era nuclear bunker in Rutland, England.

Dead Bruv, the creators of the narrative-driven NFT project Meatbags, plan to mint 100,000 NFTs, with Meatbags holders being airdropped 10,000. The the rest will be sold off starting April 21, starting at $14 a pop, according to a post on the Meatbags X account. 

Holders will gain entry into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), called the Billionaire Bunker Club, a “fully decentralized, community-governed real-world asset onchain,” which will vote on what happens with the bunker if the effort to buy it is successful. 

A few ideas floated by the NFT project include a “members-only survival resort with Doomsday DJ,” a location to hold end-of-the-world festivals, or “an Airbnb with caviar tastings and canned bean room service.” 

UK online auctioneer SDL Property Auctions has the bunker Dead Bruv is hoping to buy listed for a guide price of 650,000 British pounds ($862,257), and an auction date scheduled for April 24. 

The real estate listing says the bunker is located on 1.4 acres near a former reservoir and has permission to convert into a house. 

The bunker was built in 1960 to act as a monitoring post during the Cold War and was decommissioned in 1968. It was one of 1,500 tasked with reporting any nuclear bursts and monitoring any radioactive fallout, according to SDL Property Auctions.

Cointelegraph contacted SDL Property Auctions for comment. 

Nuclear bunker buy began as a joke

Robert, the pseudonymous co-founder of Dead Bruv, said in an April 18 statement to X that the initiative was about trying to “make NFTs fun again” and was sparked by a joke that turned into a “lightbulb moment.” 

“There’s not much to compare this to, but these are the kinds of things that made me fall in love with NFTs in the first place. Taking risks. Getting creative. Pushing the boundaries of what this tech can do to create something completely new, absurd, and incredible,” he said. 

“When something comes from a place of, this is completely insane, we gotta do it, that’s when I know we’re onto something,” Robert added. 

This isn’t the first time a DOA has turned to crowdfunding to buy an expensive item. ConstitutionDAO managed to raise about $47 million in Ether (ETH) in 2021 to purchase an original copy of the United States Constitution, which was going under the hammer at auctioneer Sotheby’s. 

Related: NFT sales plunge 63% in Q1, but Pudgy Penguins, Doodles buck trend

Ultimately, they were unsuccessful. The winning bid was $43.2 million, and the DAO was limited to a bid of $43 million by Sotheby’s to factor in taxes and the costs required to protect, insure and move the Constitution. 

Meanwhile, LinksDAO secured the winning bid to purchase Scotland-based Spey Bay Golf Club in May 2023. The DAO claims it added the US-based Hillcrest Country Club to its holdings in February. 

Magazine: Altcoin season to hit in Q2? Mantra’s plan to win trust: Hodler’s Digest, April 13 – 19

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/nft-project-plans-crowdfund-purchase-of-cold-war-nuclear-bunker/feed/ 0 31961 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/dogecoin-goes-cold-whale-transactions-active-addresses-plummet/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/dogecoin-goes-cold-whale-transactions-active-addresses-plummet/#respond Tue, 25 Feb 2025 01:02:47 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/dogecoin-goes-cold-whale-transactions-active-addresses-plummet/

On-chain data shows the activity on the Dogecoin network has witnessed a notable drop recently. Here’s what this could mean for DOGE’s price.

Dogecoin Activity-Related Metrics Have Plunged Recently

As pointed out by analyst Ali Martinez in a new post on X, some Dogecoin indicators related to network activity have returned to the lowest level in a few months.

There are three metrics of relevance here: Whale Transaction Count, Transaction Volume, and Daily Active Addresses. The first of these, the Whale Transaction Count, keeps track of the total number of DOGE transfers carrying a value of more than $1 million.

Transactions of this size generally belong to the whale entities, so the indicator can be assumed to represent the activity that the humongous traders of the market are participating in.

The Transaction Volume, the second indicator, also mostly tells us about the activity of these investors, as it measures the total amount of Dogecoin that’s becoming involved in transfers on the network. The transfers of the small investors are naturally also included in this value, but since the whale transactions tend to be quite large, they drown them out from the data of the metric.

The final indicator, the Daily Active Addresses, is the one to watch for to know the activity level of the regular investors. This metric measures the number of addresses taking part in at least one transaction on the network every day, whether as a sender or receiver.

While whales are large in size, their numbers tend to be much lower than the retail investors, so the Daily Active Addresses, which favors address count, brings out the behavior of the small entities.

Now, here is the chart shared by the analyst, that shows the trend in these Dogecoin on-chain indicators over the last few months:

Looks like all three of these metrics have witnessed a decline in recent weeks | Source: @ali_charts on X

As displayed in the above graph, all three of these indicators have dropped to relatively low levels recently, which means activity across the board has declined for Dogecoin.

At present, the whales are making just 66 daily transactions and less than 60,000 unique addresses are becoming active on the blockchain. Martinez has noted that such a low level of activity hasn’t been seen since October of last year.

Usually, Dogecoin requires high user participation, especially from the whales, in order to mount up any significant move. With the activity-related indicators sitting at lows, it’s possible that the meme coin’s price will continue to struggle in the coming days.

The metrics may be to keep an eye on, however, as it often only takes a bit of news to get investors to rush back to the meme coin.

DOGE Price

Dogecoin has plunged alongside the rest of the altcoin market during the past day, as its price has slipped under $0.23 after a decline of 5.7%.

The price of the coin seems to have been going down recently | Source: DOGEUSDT on TradingView

Featured image from Dall-E, Santiment.net, chart from TradingView.com

The crypto exchange ByBit has been hacked, and roughly $1.5 billion in Ethereum (ETH) has been stolen — making this one of the biggest hacks in history.

On Feb. 21, the crypto trading platform stated on social media platform X that it detected unauthorized activity involving one of its Ethereum cold wallets.

According to the firm:

“The incident occurred when our ETH multisig cold wallet executed a transfer to our warm wallet. Unfortunately, this transaction was manipulated through a sophisticated attack that masked the signing interface, displaying the correct address while altering the underlying smart contract logic.

As a result, the attacker was able to gain control of the affected ETH cold wallet and transfer its holdings to an unidentified address.”

While the exchange did not reveal the total amount stolen, on-chain data shows that the attacker siphoned 401,346.76 ETH (worth approximately $1 billion).

Meanwhile, blockchain analysis firm Lookonchain stated that the stolen assets involved around $1.5 billion in different assets, including staked Ethereum.

The platform added that the suspicious address has already begun swapping the stolen funds for ETH.

ByBit still operating

ByBit stated that all of its operations are still “normal” and that it was investigating the incident.

The exchange said:

“Our security team, alongside leading blockchain forensic experts and partners, is actively investigating the incident. Any teams with expertise in blockchain analytics and fund recovery who can assist in tracing these assets are welcome to collaborate with us.”

Meanwhile, Ben Zhou, ByBit’s CEO, corroborated the situation while emphasizing that:

“Bybit Hot wallet, Warm wallet and all other cold wallets are fine. The only cold wallet that was hacked was ETH cold wallet. ALL withdraws are NORMAL.”

Mentioned in this article