What you need to know

• Meta is experimenting with a wristband that reads your muscle signals, so you can type or control stuff just by thinking about moving your fingers.
• The tech pairs with Meta’s Orion AR glasses, which look like regular specs but overlay digital stuff in your real-world view.
• It’s still a prototype (and pricey), but Meta says a more practical version is in the works.

Imagine scrolling through your social media feed, sending a message, or skipping a song without tapping a button or resorting to voice commands, just a subtle twitch of your hand. That’s the wild promise of Meta’s latest research, and it’s not some distant sci-fi dream.

Thanks to a new study published in Nature, we’re getting a sneak peek at how augmented reality (AR) glasses could soon read your intentions before you even fully act on them.

Meta’s Reality Labs has been quietly working on a tech called surface electromyography (sEMG), which sounds complicated but boils down to one simple idea: detecting the tiny electrical signals your muscles send when you even think about moving.

How it works: wristwear that reads intention

Instead of waving your arms around or using a bulky controller, you slip on a lightweight armband. Trained on data from thousands of people, the system deciphers minute electrical patterns that the brain sends to your fingers.

One test user typed at over 20 words per minute just thinking the stroke motions. The team smashed the key hurdles: generalization across users (so it doesn’t need per‑person calibration), consistent gesture recognition, and handwriting decoding, all embedded in a wristband-style interface.

The big deal here is speed and subtlety. Current AR controls rely on voice, hand tracking (needs big gestures), or clunky remotes. In its Nature paper, Meta showed off Orion, a prototype wristband that predicted gestures with scary accuracy, even when people barely moved. It worked while typing on a keyboard or holding a coffee without needing to pause your life to interact with tech.

Meta sees this fusion of AI, sEMG wristband, and AR glasses as the natural next step beyond smartphones.

Why this matters

The tech is a big step forward for interacting with devices, especially for people with limited mobility since it doesn’t require any physical movement to trigger input. It also makes using tech feel more natural and less effortful.

That said, it’s still early days. Orion glasses reportedly cost around $10,000 per unit and aren’t available to the public yet. The wristband, while extremely promising, is still in prototype phase with no clear timeline for a commercial launch.

But Meta says it’s working toward more affordable, consumer-ready versions of both, and the progress so far suggests it’s serious.

Something to look forward to: Weeks after updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with real-time translation and other AI-powered features, Meta has unveiled a new pair in collaboration with Oakley, offering enhanced camera functionality and additional upgrades. Pre-orders begin on July 11, with the standard model starting at $399 and the limited-edition version available for $499.

The new Oakley Meta HSTN (pronounced HOW-stuhn) smart glasses combine Meta’s AI and smart glass technology with Oakley’s HSTN-style frames. Compared to Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories model, the HSTN glasses support video recording at 3K resolution, offer up to eight hours of battery life, and introduce IPX4 water resistance.

Oakley claims the glasses can last up to eight hours with typical use, and up to 19 hours on standby. The included charging case provides up to 48 hours of battery life and can recharge the glasses to 50% capacity in just 20 minutes.

However, Meta and Oakley primarily advertise the HSTN glasses by showcasing features it shares with the $299 Ray-Ban model. These include a 12MP camera that captures photos and video with a button press, as well as built-in speakers for playing music from various streaming services.

The headline feature is Meta AI integration, which was introduced with the Ray-Ban glasses last month. Like those, the Oakley glasses support real-time translation, music playback controls, and an AI assistant equipped with visual processing capabilities.

Visual processing enables Meta AI to respond to natural language commands based on what users see. It’s designed for tasks such as translating signage or offering cooking advice. A recent clip from Oakley shows golfer J.R. Smith receiving instant wind speed and direction information from the digital assistant. Meta also announced support for sending text, audio, video, and photos to contacts via Instagram.

Real-time translation is currently available in English, French, Italian, and Spanish. Language packs can be downloaded to enable offline use.

Oakley will showcase the glasses at Fanatics Fest from June 20 to 22, UFC International Fight Week from June 25 to 27, and other sporting events later this year.

Availability is expected to begin later this summer in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. The Meta HSTN glasses will also launch in Mexico, India, and the United Arab Emirates in 2025.

Available styles will include:

• Warm Grey with PRIZM Ruby Lenses
• Black with PRIZM Polar Black Lenses
• Brown Smoke with PRIZM Polar Deep Water Lenses
• Black with Transitions Amethyst Lenses
• Clear with Transitions Grey Lenses
• Black with clear Lenses

Sixteen years after the launch of Bitcoin, stablecoins have emerged as one of the most compelling applications of blockchain technology. Banks are reportedly “panicking” over stablecoins encroaching on their territory, while Fortune 500 companies are beginning to grasp their transformative potential.

Shifting from blockchain to AI, Meta Platforms is quietly assembling a “superintelligence” unit, led by Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang. This move follows reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s company acquired Scale in a nearly $15 billion all-cash deal.

In this week’s Crypto Biz, we explore the evolving landscape of stablecoins and the latest high-stakes moves in the crypto and AI sectors.

Fortune 500 companies are paying attention to stablecoins: Coinbase

Interest in stablecoins among Fortune 500 companies has grown sharply over the past year, highlighting the technology’s increasing real-world utility, according to a new survey by Coinbase.

The crypto exchange polled 100 executives from Fortune 500 companies and found that nearly 29% are either using or exploring the use of stablecoins, up from just 8% in 2024. This represents a more than threefold increase in a year.

Executives cited faster financial transactions and lower payment fees as the primary drivers of interest. About 7% of respondents said their companies are already using stablecoins.

Not every company is embracing stablecoins. As Cointelegraph reported, the US banking lobby is particularly concerned about yield-bearing stablecoins disrupting their business. 

Zuckerberg scrambles to keep Meta from falling behind in AI race

Meta Platforms’ struggles in AI prompted CEO Mark Zuckerberg to make a bold move by acquiring a 49% stake in Scale AI, a data-labeling company that supports several AI applications, according to reports from The Information and Bloomberg.

The $14.8 billion deal also brings Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang into Meta. Wang is set to join Meta’s “superintelligence” team, a group of about 50 people focused on pursuing artificial general intelligence.

As Bloomberg reported, Zuckerberg has grown frustrated with Meta’s slow progress in AI, despite plans to nearly double capital expenditures this year, much of which is earmarked for AI infrastructure development.

Nasdaq fintech acquires crypto native protocol Mixie

Nasdaq-listed fintech firm Netcapital has acquired Web3 gaming platform Mixie for an undisclosed sum, potentially marking the first time a publicly traded company has acquired a crypto-native protocol.

The deal was executed through Zelgor, a Netcapital portfolio company, and is expected to enhance Netcapital’s tokenization infrastructure.

Netcapital operates a fully digital capital markets platform that connects private companies seeking to raise capital with investors. A company spokesperson said the acquisition enhances “synergies between Mixie’s tokenization capabilities and Netcapital’s browser-based security offering.”

Netcapital is a nano-cap stock with a total market capitalization of less than $10 million. 

Guggenheim partners with Ripple to expand digital debt offering

Less than a year after launching its commercial paper offering on Ethereum, US investment giant Guggenheim is expanding the product through a new partnership with Ripple.

Through this collaboration, Guggenheim Treasury Services — a subsidiary of Guggenheim — will offer its Treasury-backed fixed-income product on the XRP Ledger. Fully backed by US Treasurys, the product could eventually be available for purchase using RLUSD, Ripple’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin.

As part of the agreement, Ripple has invested $10 million into the asset.

Crypto Biz is your weekly pulse on the business behind blockchain and crypto, delivered directly to your inbox every Thursday.

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/crypto-biz-metas-ai-bet-fortune-500s-stablecoin-push/feed/ 0 41845 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/senators-slam-metas-stablecoin-push-cite-privacy-risks-and-regulatory-loopholes/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/senators-slam-metas-stablecoin-push-cite-privacy-risks-and-regulatory-loopholes/#respond Fri, 13 Jun 2025 04:42:34 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/senators-slam-metas-stablecoin-push-cite-privacy-risks-and-regulatory-loopholes/

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The question of when a Fortune 500 technology giant will move Bitcoin onto its balance sheet took center stage at Bitcoin 2025 after Strive Asset Management chief executive Matt Cole, standing before thousands in Las Vegas, dialed Meta Platforms chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and—when the call went unanswered—left a voice message urging him to convert a slice of Meta’s $61 billion cash hoard into Bitcoin.

Strive CEO Calls Zuckerberg Over Bitcoin

Speaking to thousands of attendees in Las Vegas, Cole argued that the social-media and AI powerhouse is exposing shareholders to avoidable monetary debasement by keeping tens of billions of dollars parked in cash and short-term US Treasuries. “The case for putting Bitcoin on your corporate balance sheet has never been stronger,” he said, noting that Bitcoin’s market capitalization has surpassed two trillion dollars.

“Right now we have a global fiat debt crisis. M2 is rising almost every single day, and as M2 rises the purchasing power of dollars, or dollars that are put in short-term US Treasuries, continues to decrease.” Cole insisted that inflation gauges understate the erosion of real returns because “you also have to look at the rise of asset prices, like stocks and homes. The reality is that a corporate balance sheet in cash and short-term reserves is losing its ability to generate value for shareholders almost every single day.”

Cole linked the monetary argument to accelerating advances in artificial intelligence, warning that the technology threatens to reshuffle the S&P 500 as thoroughly as the internet did two decades ago. “Over a period of 30 years there was a 50 percent turnover in the S&P 500,” he reminded the audience.

“Our belief is that there will be a similar turnover because of AI disruption in the next 10 years. While I do not believe Meta will fall out of the S&P 500, my belief is that Meta has the opportunity to actually be the largest, or maybe the second-largest, corporation in America, if you get this right. Lean into AI innovation, but also look at the balance-sheet side of the equation.”

He closed the call by referencing Zuckerberg’s much-publicized pet goat: “You’ve already taken step one. You’ve named your goat Bitcoin. My ask is that you take step two and adopt a bold corporate Bitcoin treasury approach and vote yes on proposal number 13.”

Zuck took the first step by naming his goat Bitcoin. It’s time for Meta to put the G.O.A.T. asset, Bitcoin, on its balance sheet and maximize long run shareholder value. https://t.co/58huypeOOL

— Matt Cole (@ColeMacro) May 28, 2025

Will Meta Break The Ice?

Cole’s public appeal drew instant commentary from market-structure analysts and entrepreneurs. Bloomberg ETF specialist Eric Balchunas observed on X that “it feels like it’s inevitable that a Big Boy US company adds btc to balance sheet. Could def see Meta being the one to break the ice.”

In a follow-up post he argued that a Meta or Microsoft allocation would carry far greater symbolic weight than earlier moves by smaller firms: “If a Meta or Microsoft adds btc to balance sheet it will arguably have bigger impact than all the smaller cos doing it, kinda like when Tom Hanks got COVID, everyone was like ‘oh sht Tom Hanks got it.’”

When a user replied that Tesla “already broke the ice, 4 years ago,” Balchunas conceded the point but added, “yes but kinda doesn’t count as of now, hard to explain but you know what I’m saying.”

Skeptics pushed back just as quickly. Larry Tabb, head of market-structure research at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote: “What? Why? They don’t pay folks in BTC, they don’t buy stuff w/BTC, it doesn’t earn a return, they can’t use it to do anything. Only reason for a corporate to buy BTC would be for investment.” Tabb compared the idea to purchasing an S&P 500 ETF with no dividend capture, concluding that management should either pursue a formal investment mandate or return idle capital to shareholders.

Balchunas countered that the motive would indeed be “shareholder value,” leaving the market to judge whether the trade-off is worthwhile: “Time will tell.”

Zuckerberg ‘Appreciates’ Bitcoin

Outside the analyst community, founders in the Bitcoin ecosystem speculated about Zuckerberg’s personal inclinations. Lyle Pratt, chief executive of decentralized communications platform Vida Global, called Meta “the dark horse of the corporate Bitcoin acquisition game,” citing Zuckerberg’s dual-class voting control, his failed attempt to launch the Libra (later Diem) stablecoin, and his goat named “Bitcoin.”

Pratt jokingly added that Zuckerberg “doesn’t want Cameron and Tyler to have more Bitcoin,” a jab at Meta’s long-standing rivalry with the Winklevoss twins. Former Meta executive and current Lightspark chief executive David Marcus, who once led the Libra initiative, has previously said that Zuckerberg “appreciates Bitcoin,” lending anecdotal support to Balchunas’ and Pratt’s thesis.

Strive’s shareholder proposal will come to a vote at Meta’s upcoming annual meeting. Cole’s gambit was designed to raise the political cost of inaction for Meta’s board. Notably, Meta’s board has recommended against it and has not commented publicly on Cole’s Las Vegas broadside.

At press time, BTC traded at $107,948.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

Meta’s launch of two artificial intelligence (AI) Llama 4 models has positioned the U.S. as a leader in the AI race, David Sacks, the U.S. AI and crypto czar, said in an X post on Saturday. He wrote:

“For the U.S. to win the AI race, we have to win in open source too, and Llama 4 puts us back in the lead.”

On April 6, Meta announced the launch of its fourth-generation open-source Llama 4 models — Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick.

The AI race intensified with the launch of Deepseek

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup founded in 2023, launched its first model in December 2024. In January 2025, it launched a chatbot that claimed to rival the capabilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Downloads of DeepSeek’s generative AI, DeepSeek R1, topped the charts of app stores. It shook the world’s primary assumption: Hefty investments and expensive chips are the only way to get ahead in the AI game.

As a result, the stock prices of U.S. tech companies like Nvidia suffered losses following DeepSeek R1’s launch.

This is because Deepseek claimed to have spent approximately $6 million to train its AI model. On the other hand, OpenAI reportedly spent around $100 million to train ChatGPT-4.

While venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called DeepSeek’s R1 launch “AI’s Sputnik moment,” U.S. President Donald J Trump called it a “wake-up call” for American firms.

Since then, U.S. firms have been trying to leapfrog in the AI race, and according to Sacks, who has been a vocal proponent of AI, Llama 4 has been the key.

Meta claims Llama 4 models are “best in their class”

Meta claims that the Llama 4 models are their “most advanced models yet” and also “best in their class for multimodality.” Both models are currently available for download and use on Meta applications like WhatsApp and Instagram.

Multimodal AI systems are capable of processing various types of data — text, image, audio, and video — simultaneously. This enables the AI to comprehend complex scenarios and generate comprehensive responses.

Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick are the first open-source Meta AI models built using a mixture of experts (MoE) architecture. In an MoE, multiple smaller models or specialized experts collaborate to make the larger AI model work. This means that experts focus on solving the parts of the problem they are designed to handle.

Llama 4 Scout has 17 billion active parameters and 16 experts. Llama 4 Maverick has the same number of parameters but is designed with 128 experts. While the former can fit in a single NVIDIA H100 GPU, the latter requires an H100 host.

Meta claims that Llama 4 Scout outperforms Gemma 3, Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite, and Mistral 3.1 across a broad range of widely reported benchmarks.

Llama 4 Maverick, on the other hand, provides results comparable to DeepSeek v3 on reasoning and coding despite having less than half the active parameters. Meta also asserts that Llama 4 Maverick beats GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash across a number of benchmarks.

Furthermore, according to Meta’s testing, Llama 4 “responds with strong political lean at a rate comparable to Grok.”

Meta also unveiled Llama 4 Behemoth, which is still in training, as one of the “world’s smartest” large language models (LLMs).

Meta launched its first Llama model in February 2023.

Mentioned in this article

As a moderator myself, nothing could sound more disturbing than the idea of a revised social media moderation policy presented with the caveat that more bad stuff will get through.

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta, the company that heralded and then fumbled the metaverse, will be dialing back their moderation on their various platforms. He has explicitly claimed that, “…we’re going to catch less bad stuff…”

You can watch his presentation here.

This is especially menacing because Zuckerberg identifies bad stuff as including drugs, terrorism, and child exploitation. He also specifically says Meta is going to get rid of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender. They’re going to dial back filters to reduce censorship. Oh, and he says they’re ending fact-checking.

This is a mess.

Moderation is challenging. That challenge varies in relationship to the zeitgeist, the societal character of the times, which is quite complex these days. It also varies by platform. The scope of the challenge of moderation on Facebook is greater than at Hypergrid Business, yet the core issues are the same. Good moderation preserves online well-being for contributors and readers, while respecting genuine alternative perspectives.

At Hypergrid Business we have discussion guidelines that direct our moderation. Primarily, we apply moderation principles on content that is likely to cause personal harm, such as malicious derision and hate-speech towards specific groups or individuals.

At Hypergrid Business, malicious derision, a kind of bad stuff, was driving away contributors. However, letting in more malicious derision would not have improved the discussions. We know this because once discussion guidelines were instituted that removed malicious derision, more contributors posted more comments. So when Zuckerberg says Meta intends to get rid of moderation restrictions on topics like gender and immigration, we know from experience that the bad stuff will be malicious derision and hate-speech towards vulnerable and controversial groups, and this will not improve discussions.

The unfortunate ploy in Meta’s new moderation policies is the use of the expression, “innocent contributors” in the introductory video presentation. He says that the moderation policies on Meta platforms have blocked “innocent contributors”. Although the word ‘innocent’ typically conveys a neutral purity of positive disposition, intent and action, Zuckerberg, uses ‘innocent’ in reference to contributors whether they are the victims or the perpetrators of malicious commentary. This confounding use of the word “innocent” is a strategic verbal misdirection. Zuckerberg attempts to appear concerned while pandering to any and all sensibilities.

Zuckerberg’s emphasis, however, is not limited to moderation filters. Rather, he is laser focused on how Meta is going to end third party fact-checking entirely. Zuckerberg pins the rationale for his position on the assertion that fact-checking is too biased and makes too many mistakes. He offers no examples of what that alleged shortcoming looks like. Nonetheless, he puts a numerical estimation on his concerns and says that if Meta incorrectly censors just 1 percent of posts, that’s millions of people.

Zuckerberg further asserts that fact-checkers have destroyed more trust than they’ve created. Really? Again there are no real world examples presented. But just as a thought experiment, wouldn’t a 99 percent success rate actually be reassuring to readers and contributors? Of course he’s proposing an arbitrary percentage by writing the 1 percent statement as a misleading hypothetical, so in the end he’s simply being disingenuous about the issue.

Facts are essential for gathering and sharing information. If you haven’t got an assurance you’re getting facts, then you enter the fraught areas of lies, exaggerations, guesses, wishful thinking… there are many ways to distort reality.

It’s fair to say that fact-checking can fall short of expectations. Facts are not always lined up and ready to support an idea or a belief. It takes work to fact-check and that means there’s a cost to the fact-checker. A fact used in a misleading context leads to doubts over credibility. New facts may supplant previous facts. All fair enough, but understanding reality isn’t easy. If it were, civilization would be far more advanced by now.

Zuckerberg, however, has an obvious bias of his own in all of this. Meta doesn’t exist to ensure that we have the best information. Meta exists to monetize our participation in its products, such as Facebook. Compare this to Wikipedia, which depends on donations and provides sources for its information.

Zuckerberg argues against the idea of Meta as an arbiter of truth. Yet Meta products are designed to appeal to the entire planet and have contributors from the entire planet. The content of discussions on Meta platforms impacts the core beliefs and actions of millions of people at a time. To treat fact-checking as a disposable feature is absurd. Individuals cannot readily verify global information. Fact-checking is not only a transparent approach for large-scale verification of news and information, it’s an implicit responsibility for anyone, or any entity, that provides global sharing.

Facts are themselves not biased. So what Zuckerberg is really responding to is that fact-checking has appeared to favor some political positions over others. And this is exactly what we would expect in ethical discourse. All viewpoints are not equally valid in politics or in life. In fact, some viewpoints are simply wish lists of ideological will. If Zuckerberg wants to address bias, he needs to start with himself.

As noted, Zuckerberg clearly seems uncomfortable with Meta in a spotlight on the issue of fact-checking. Well, here’s a thought: Meta shouldn’t be deciding whether something is true or not, that’s what fact-checking services take care of. It places the burden of legitimacy on outside sources. The only thing Meta has to arbitrate are the contracts with fact-checking organizations for their fact-checking work. When Zuckerberg derides and discontinues third-party fact-checking he isn’t just insulating Meta from potential controversies. He uncouples the grounding and responsibilities of Meta contributors. As a consequence, stated in his own words, “…we’re going to catch less bad stuff…”

What Zuckerberg proposes instead of fact-checking is something that completely undermines the intrinsic strength of facts and relies instead on negotiation. Based on the Community Notes system on X, Meta only allows “approved” contributors to post challenges to posts. But the notes they post will only be published if other “approved” contributors vote on whether those notes are helpful… then an algorithm further processes the ideological spectrum of all those voting contributors to decide if the note finally gets published. Unsurprisingly, it has been widely reported that the majority of users never see notes correcting content, regardless of the validity of the contributor findings. Zuckerberg argues for free speech, yet Community Notes is effective censorship for suppressing challenges to misinformation.

Clearly, getting to the facts that support our understanding of the realities of our world is increasingly on us as individuals. But it takes effort and time. If our sources of information aren’t willing to verify the legitimacy of that information, our understanding of the world will absolutely become more, rather than less, biased. So the next time Zuckerberg disingenuously prattles on about his hands-off role supporting the First Amendment and unbiased sharing, what he’s really campaigning for is to allow the sea of misinformation to expand exponentially, at the expense of the inevitable targets of malicious derision. Remember, Zuckerberg’s bias is to encourage more discussions by all means, a goal which, for a platform with global reach, is greatly aided by having less moderation. Moderation that protects you at that scale is being undermined. Remember, Zuckerberg said it himself: “…we’re going to catch less bad stuff…”

Lawrence Pierce specializes in new media design and production. He began as a computer game programmer and has been a systems consultant to corporations such as DuPont and the J. Paul Getty Art Trust, art director on the first computer game for MTV and a featured artist in the Hollywood Reporter.

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