You seemed to like the Crypto 101 series we did last week, so we’re back with another quick edition like that today

(Btw, if you’re new here, we’ve already covered different types of trading, CEXs vs. DEXs, hot vs. cold wallets, and how to notice a coin’s red flags. You can still catch up if you missed them.)

One thing we didn’t talk about, though – and some of you asked for – is dApps.

So, let’s do it right now

First off, what are dApps?

dApps, or decentralized applications if we’re talkin’ full government names, are apps that run on a blockchain.

With regular apps, a single company owns the servers, the code, and your data. They can change the rules or shut it down anytime. Instagram, Spotify, Netflix – all work this way.

In dApps, on the other hand, the rules live in smart contracts – bits of code stored on the blockchain.

They run automatically when certain conditions are met, and they’re kept online by thousands of independent computers (nodes) instead of a single company.

There’s no Mark Zuckerberg controlling the whole thing. You connect with a crypto wallet like Zengo, and you keep control of your assets and data.

And… what can you do with them?

Anything you can do with a regular app + a lot more that only works in crypto:

• Trading (like dYdX);

• Borrowing/lending (like Aave);

• Gaming (like Axie Infinity);

• NFTs (like OpenSea);

• Social (like Farcaster);

• Etc, etc, etc.

Basically, if there’s a Web2 version of something, someone’s probably building a decentralized Web3 version of it.

And that’s important because it’s where crypto actually does stuff – you can use tools, swap tokens, earn yield, collect NFTs, and join communities.

But before you get too hyped, let’s be honest – dApps obviously aren’t perfect:

A lot of them still feel like using early internet – clunky interfaces and confusing terms, which makes them not so beginner-friendly;

You also have to deal with blockchain quirks like gas fees and waiting for transactions to confirm;

Since everything’s decentralized, there’s no customer support to rant to if you mess something up;

Some slow down badly when too many people use them at once;

Smart contract bugs can let hackers drain funds – and there’s no undo button;

Fake or scam dApps can trick you into connecting your wallet and steal your assets;

Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that the legal rules are still unclear: no central authority also means regulators aren’t sure what to do with them, and that uncertainty could become a problem down the line.

Still, if you can get past the bumps, dApps are where crypto starts to feel real.

Just go in with curiosity, caution, and maybe triple-check the URL before you click connect.

The following article is a guest post and opinion of Maksym Sakharov, Co-founder and CEO of WeFi.

Last month, Japan’s Financial Services Agency proposed a wholesale reclassification of cryptocurrencies that would introduce a flat 20% tax on digital asset income and help introduce crypto exchange-traded funds.

For a long time, the country’s progressive tax system has imposed levies on crypto gains at rates of up to 55%, a factor many feel makes investing in crypto quite unattractive.

Institutionalized Inertia

However, this is not the only obstacle in the path of a potential Bitcoin ETF approval in Japan; it’s not even the most pressing. Late last year, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba seemingly dismissed the idea of crypto ETFs, questioning whether the government should promote digital assets like it does traditional investments.

His ruling coalition lost its majority in the upper house following a bruising contest that saw them fall three seats shy of the 50 needed to maintain their advantage. Yet, even as political control hangs in the balance—and Ishiba vows to stay regardless of the election outcome—one thing has remained consistent: Japan’s deep-rooted caution.

Ishiba’s noncommittal stance on ETF approvals is merely a symptom of a deeper malaise. The country’s regulatory reflex isn’t about consumer safety alone—it’s about an entrenched culture of compliance that resists risk at all costs. This mindset, not the much-maligned 55% crypto tax, is what’s truly stifling innovation.

The irony is that Japan was once ahead of neighbors like South Korea and Hong Kong. It recognized crypto as a means of payment back in 2017 and built some of the world’s earliest regulatory infrastructure. Furthermore, in the second quarter of 2024, Metaplanet kick-started a wave of Bitcoin buying by Japanese listed companies, amassing a treasury worth almost $2 billion in BTC at last count. And that’s not all. Progress has also been made in the development of stablecoins and crypto payments infrastructure, with Sumitomo Mitsui signing an MoU with Ava Labs and Fireblocks in preparation to issue fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies.

Yet, beneath these seeming success stories lies a bureaucratic labyrinth killing businesses. Under the current framework, small startups with dreams of offering virtual asset services have found it hard to meet the stringent requirements that include extensive documentation, a local bank account, a Japan-based compliance team, and at least 10 million yen in capital, among others.

Some may argue that the rules are there to protect users, and that’s valid. But couldn’t there be a happy balance between consumer protection and leeway for innovation? It almost feels like the FSA is isolating regulators from builders, with pencil pushers designing rules without stress-testing them against real-world tech constraints.

If taxes were the real barrier for Web3 innovation, the FSA’s proposed reforms would ignite a boom.

Reform Roadmap

To pivot from compliance to competitiveness, Japan needs to rewire some of its long-held approaches. For starters, the government must sunset the pre-approval model and adopt a quicker system that lets exchanges release tokens with post-launch audits. Here, tokens just need to meet baseline disclosure and security attestation requirements to be listed. Full regulatory and technical audits can then be conducted within 30 days of the launch. This way, investor protections are still preserved through enforceable audit sanctions and delisting authority, while at the same time dramatically reducing listing lead times.

The country’s regulators also have to launch dynamic sandboxes that could use zero-knowledge proofs for privacy-safe verification. There’s also a need for state capital injection. Japan could create a $500 million FSA-matched fund directly backing Web3 startups that meet security benchmarks, effectively giving it some skin in the game.

Finally, to foster cooperation and shake off its bureaucratic isolation, the financial regulator could seat tech founders on its advisory boards. This would give it a firsthand look at industry pain points, allowing it to shape policies with the end user in mind rather than to be defensive, status quo-preserving tenets.

These are not radical demands. They’re already standard in the jurisdictions that are now leading global crypto adoption.

Builders are watching. With populist parties like Sanseito gaining traction on “Japan First” rhetoric, the political winds are shifting. If Ishiba’s coalition falls, a new administration could usher in a more innovation-friendly era. But only if Japan’s regulators pivot away from their risk-averse DNA. Without that shift, tax reform will be cosmetic, ETFs will remain in limbo, and Japan’s early advantage in crypto will fade into history.

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OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, overpromised on GPT-5, and real-life results are underwhelming, but it looks like a new update is rolling out that might address some of the concerns.

GPT-5 is a state-of-the-art model. In our tests, BleepingComputer found that GPT-5 does really well in coding. It was significantly faster than the other OpenAI models, including o3.

However, GPT-5 struggles to be ‘creative’ in writing, and it also often fails to switch to its new reasoning capabilities when users expect.

On top of it, we’ve observed that GPT-5 often produces short content when it’s explicitly asked to give more details.

Some believe that GPT-5 is throttling token output to minimize the cost, but OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, argues that a bug caused unexpected problems with GPT-5.

“Yesterday, the autoswitcher broke and was out of commission for a chunk of the day, and the result was GPT-5 seemed way dumber,” Sam Altman wrote in a post on X.

He also added that OpenAI will double GPT-5 rate limits for GPT Plus users, but it’ll take a few days.

“We will let Plus users choose to continue to use 4o. We will watch usage as we think about how long to offer legacy models for,” Sam added.

GPT-5 will also be smarter starting later today, and OpenAI is testing a new toggle that will force GPT-5 to use reasoning capabilities.

“We will make it more transparent about which model is answering a given query. We will change the UI to make it easier to manually trigger thinking.”

GPT-5 is still rolling out for paid and free users, and it may be a while before everyone gets it.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is planning to restore the older models, including 4o for Plus customers.

Right now, you can only use these legacy models when you’re paying $200 for the Pro subscription.

​​Microsoft has released an out-of-band Office update to fix a known issue that caused Word, Excel, and Outlook to crash after installing the KB5002700 security update for Office 2016.

The company acknowledged these problems following user reports on social media that Office apps no longer open after applying the April 2025 security updates.

“We’re experiencing an issue on Windows 10 with Office 2016 where Word and Excel no longer open,” one impacted Office user said.

“Same behavior here: after starting Word it crashes and also Outlook crashes in calendar view. Uninstalling KB5002700 resolved both issues,” another added.

Microsoft has now addressed these crash problems in the KB5002623 Office 2016 update released on Thursday, two days after KB5002700 was pushed during this month’s Patch Tuesday to fix multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities.

Office users affected by this issue can download KB5002623 from Microsoft’s Download Center, but it’s important to note that it only applies to the Microsoft Installer (.msi)-based edition of Office 2016.

“This update fixes the known issue in KB5002700 that causes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Outlook to stop responding,” Microsoft said today.

“To restore the full Office 2016 suite to a working state, you must have both updates KB5002700 and KB5002623 installed.”

Today, Redmond also fixed the standalone “Download” link for localized classic Outlook versions, which were automatically set to English.

Additionally, it confirmed that it’s working on mitigating a licensing issue that is blocking access to Microsoft 365 services for some customers with Family subscriptions.

Last month, the company addressed another issue causing the new Outlook email client to crash when users clicked a button that should have helped them switch back to classic Outlook.

The following is a guest post and opinion of Shibtoshi, Founder of SquidGrow.

Memecoins have created unprecedented chaos within the crypto industry. Most analysts see the chaos as a binary — some criticize memecoins as mere speculative assets, while others defend them for challenging low-float-high FDV VC-backed tokens.

But we need a new perspective. One that breaks the binary, accepting memecoins as speculative assets and a statement against VC tokens, leading to chaotic market scenarios. Acknowledging memecoins’ potential to breed chaos, it identifies chaos as the birthstone of a new utility-driven token economy.

Memecoin chaos is good for the industry

Memecoins led investor mindshare in 2024 and emerged as the most popular market narrative. Driven by relatable humor, collective mimetic desire, and virality, the memecoin market rose to $137 billion in December 2024.

Unlike high-value token launches of VC-backed coins denying fair entry to retail investors, memecoins offer an equitable playing field. No wonder more than 42% of investors were first-time buyers when US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump launched their memecoins.

At Consensys 2024, Riva Tez of LayerZero Labs explained that memecoins help crypto win the ‘narrative war’ due to their resonance with common people. Indeed, for memecoins, speculation is a vital use-case and essential feature of its functionality. 

But empty speculation can also be a bug. That’s what happened with memecoins, as its market cap dropped by 60% to around $53 billion in March 2025. Although external factors like geopolitical tensions and global trade wars negatively affected market activity, some intrinsic issues also contributed to memecoins’ collapse.

Malicious actors duped gullible retailers and extracted capital through scams like rug pulls, fake presales, pump-and-dump schemes, and phishing attacks. The collapse of the Libra token, endorsed by Argentine President Javier Milei, was the final nail in the coffin. It wiped out $4 billion of retail money and eroded investor confidence.

Everything was good with memecoins until it wasn’t. The market descended into complete chaos. But the memecoin chaos initiated a much-needed churning within the industry. Stakeholders realized memecoins wouldn’t succeed in the long term with their speculative potential and as an alternative to VC tokens.

The memecoin chaos serves as a wake-up call, albeit a delayed one. Chaotic markets led investors and token developers to realize the necessity of a utility-driven token economy for sustainable value generation. Without altering memecoins’ core thesis, stakeholders must use the chaos as an opportunity to plug utilities into the memecoin market.

Harnessing the potential of chaos

During the Memecoin Supercycle keynote speech at Token2049 Singapore, Murad said the token is the product. In a chaotic memecoin market, the token itself is not enough to drive value for investors. Instead, token developers must leverage the product and find new avenues to monetize them.

Memecoins are still isolated in a closed circular economy, with investors rotating between different tokens on trading apps to book profits. To stabilize the memecoin chaos, they must diversify into yield farming, staking, and liquid staking options to generate fresh market liquidity.

In other words, memecoins must break free from a gambler’s epiphany of creating generational wealth to become DeFi’s key product. Investors must also stop perceiving memecoins as chips in a casino and instead deploy them in financial markets.

The memecoin chaos demonstrates the need to expand from a product to a fully operational crypto ecosystem. The product must be a foundational stone to build utility-focused dapps for solving real-world problems.

For example, a memecoin project can launch a a decentralized application or SaaS tool to cater to the broader DeFi audience. The exchange can redirect the profits into the memecoin as buybacks, maintaining a steady capital flow to prevent price crashes.

Most of the memecoin chaos has resulted from rug pulls and pump-and-dump schemes, eroding investor trust in the asset class. Memecoin projects can restore confidence by building tools that solves pain points in the market such as liquidity lockers.

On a different note, the memecoin community holds the key to chaos. Highly paid project ambassadors, celebrity content creators, and influencers often care little about the project beyond their paychecks. They’ll bulk-purchase tokens and dump them at the slightest hint of a price crash or insider tip-offs.

Thus, memecoin chaos is an important reminder to focus on building an organic and well-knit community. This community will provide unwavering support to the memecoin ecosystem, bolster its utilities, and safeguard the token from abrupt price activity.

After the chaos subsides, meme tokens shouldn’t abandon their fun quotient to imitate serious financial instruments. Instead, the chaos is a clarion call to merge utility with humor to develop an inclusive and sustainable financial ecosystem.

In the Pulitzer-nominated book, ‘Chaos: Making a New Science,’ James Gleick wrote, “Chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being.” The memecoin chaos is also undergoing a scientific process of becoming a utility-driven meme economy from being a purely speculative asset with no intrinsic value.

For the crypto industry, the memecoin chaos is a moment of reckoning. From here on, meme tokens will usher in a new era of on-chain finance.

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Microsoft has begun testing a new Windows 11 tool called Quick Machine Recovery, which is designed to remotely deploy fixes for buggy drivers and configurations that prevent the operating system from starting.

The tool is part of Microsoft’s Windows Resiliency Initiative, an effort to enhance system stability and reduce downtime by introducing automated tools and features to detect, diagnose, and fix critical failures in Windows 11.

“With system failures, devices can sometimes get stuck in the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE), severely impacting productivity and often requiring IT teams to spend significant time troubleshooting and restoring affected machines,” explains Microsoft.

“With quick machine recovery, when a widespread outage affects devices from starting properly, Microsoft can broadly deploy targeted remediations to affected devices via Windows RE—automating fixes and quickly getting users to a productive state without requiring complex manual intervention.”

On Friday, Microsoft released the Quick Machine Recovery to Windows Insider Preview Beta Channel, so Insiders can start testing the tool.

When enabled and a new driver or configuration change prevents Windows 11 from properly starting, the operating system will boot into the Windows Recovery Environment and automatically launch the Quick Machine Recovery Tool.

This tool will connect to the Internet through ethernet or Wi-Fi and send crash data to Microsoft’s servers. Based on the analysis of this data, Microsoft can remotely apply fixes such as removing problematic drivers or updates and changing configuration settings.

This new tool comes in response to the faulty CrowdStrike update that caused millions of Windows devices worldwide to suddenly crash with a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and enter reboot loops in July 2024.

To remove the bad update, Windows admins were forced to boot into the Windows Recovery Environment or Safe Mode and manually delete the driver so their Windows devices could boot normally.

With a tool like Quick Machine Recovery, Microsoft could have pushed out a fix that removed the driver and brought machines back online far more easily and quickly.

Microsoft says this feature will eventually be enabled by default in Windows 11 Home. The enterprise will be able to customize how the tool works in Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise through RemoteRemedation CSP or directly on the device via reagentc.exe.

The tool can also be preconfigured with network credentials to make it easier to deploy fixes and configure how often problematic PCs reach out to Microsoft’s servers for a fix.

Microsoft will release a test remediation package in a few days, allowing Insiders to test the feature live.

This article originally appeared on our sister publication Macwelt and was translated and localized from German.