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Lcole AI, Creator of "Machine Teaching" Technology, Raises 3 Million USD in Seed Funding From Sofinnova Partners – Yahoo Finance

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

The companys technology, which removes the engineering complexity around AI systems for image analysis, will initially assist medical professionals

Founder co-created Madbits, a deep-learning image-analysis start-up that was acquired by Twitter

PARIS & NEW YORK, October 26, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lcole AI, creator of O, a "machine teaching" technology that removes the engineering complexity around deep-learning systems for computer vision, announced that it has raised 3 million USD in Seed funding from Sofinnova Partners. The funds will be used to develop the companys proprietary technology, which will be rolled out to medical professionals and researchers, enabling them to create bespoke AI systems to assist in their area of expertise. In addition, the financing will fuel the expansion of the team, accelerate product development and structure business efforts. Also participating in the round are notable business angels including Preston-Werner Ventures, the fund started by co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, Tom Preston-Werner.

"We're building a user interface for AI so anyone can create and benefit from their own personalized AI assistant," said Louis-Alexandre Etezad-Heydari, Co-Founder and President of Lcole AI, which means "AI school" in French. "We also are creating a system that will open possibilities for secure collaboration between organizations."

Etezad-Heydari co-founded Madbits, a deep-learning image-analysis start-up, with Clment Farabet in 2013. A year after its founding, Madbits was acquired by Twitter, where the two entrepreneurs ran Twitter Cortex, an internal team that built a Deep Learning platform to power recommendation systems, search, ranking and filtering at Twitter.

Kim Nilsson and Jonathan Alexander Brown teamed up with Etezad-Heydari to perfect the AI development framework for computer vision that initially inspired Madbits, and the three founders set off with the goal to make creating computer vision models simple enough for non-engineers.

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"L'coles technology is designed to democratize machine learning by enabling life science researchers and other non-machine learning experts to utilize tailored computer vision systems, thus accelerating life sciences research," said Edward Kliphuis, Partner at Sofinnova Partners. "The focus on digital medicine is a logical entry point," he noted.

"Were starting with a focus on health care and life sciences because we want to make a positive impact right away," said Jonathan Alexander Brown, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "With Sofinnova's support, we are confident we have the right skills to partner with researchers and clinicians in these tightly regulated markets."

Farabet, an investor in Lcole, is an AI pioneer. Currently VP of Research at Google DeepMind, he spent six years as a senior executive at NVIDIA, working on its autonomous vehicles and the company's data science platform. Farabet is also famous in the AI world as one of the creators of Torch, a machine learning framework that provides a simple and flexible interface for building and training deep neural networks.

Lcole AI counts a number of other AI pioneers among its investors, including Nicolas Pinto, head of Deep Learning at Apple, Clment Delangue, Co-Founder and CEO at Hugging Face.

About the Founders

Jonathan Alexander Brown, Co-Founder and CEOA mathematician-turned-actuary, Jonathan has crafted statistical models for natural catastrophes (wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.) and introduced innovative risk management and data-analysis strategies at top multinational companies. He has navigated regulated environments throughout his career, always with a keen focus on addressing the needs of key stakeholders.

Louis-Alexandre Etezad-Heydari, Co-Founder and PresidentLouis-Alexandre is a computer vision pioneer, a successful entrepreneur, and an accomplished artist who dropped out of the Neuroscience PhD program at New York University to found Madbits in 2013 with Clment Farabet. The pair "built visual intelligence technology that automatically understands, organizes and extracts relevant information from raw media," Etezad-Heydari said when Madbits was acquired by Twitter.

Kim Nilsson, Co-Founder and CTOKim has more than 20 years' experience as a software engineer. A former senior developer at Opera, he has always displayed the hacker spirit, solving one of the biggest cryptocurrency heists ever in his spare time, an effort the Wall Street Journal described in detail.

About Sofinnova PartnersSofinnova Partners is a leading European venture capital firm in life sciences, specializing in healthcare and sustainability. Based in Paris, London and Milan, the firm brings together a team of professionals from all over the world with strong scientific, medical, and business expertise. Sofinnova Partners is a hands-on company builder across the entire value chain of life sciences investments, from seed to later-stage. The firm actively partners with ambitious entrepreneurs as a lead or cornerstone investor to develop transformative innovations that have the potential to positively impact our collective future.

Founded in 1972, Sofinnova Partners is a deeply established venture capital firm in Europe, with 50 years of experience backing over 500 companies and creating market leaders around the globe. Today, Sofinnova Partners has over 2.5 billion under management. For more information, please visit: sofinnovapartners.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231025907622/en/

Contacts

Press CEO and Co-FounderJonathan Alexander Brownjonathan@lecole.ai

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AIs big players all flunked a major transparency assessment of their LLMs – Fortune

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. This week was a big one for AI research, and were going to start by diving into perhaps the most comprehensive attempt to interrogate the transparency of leading LLMs yet.

The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI released its Foundation Model Transparency Index, which rates major foundational model developers to evaluate their transparency. Driven by the fact that public transparency around these models is plummeting just as the societal impacts of them are skyrocketing, the researchers evaluated 100 different indicators of transparency across how a company builds a foundation model, how that model works, and how its actually used. They focused on 10 major foundation model developersOpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Amazon, Inflection, AI21 Labs, Cohere, Hugging Face, and Stabilityand designated a single flagship model from each developer for evaluation.

Eye on AI talked with one of the researchers behind the index to get a deeper understanding of how the companies responded to their findings, what it all means about the state of AI, and their plans for the index going forward, but first lets get into the results. To sum it up, everyone failed.

Meta (evaluated for LLama 2) topped the rankings with an unimpressive score of 54 out of 100. Hugging Face (BLOOMZ) came in right behind with 53 but scored a notable 0% in both the overall risk and mitigations categories. OpenAI (GPT-4) scored a 48, Stability (Stable Diffusion 2) scored a 47, Google (PaLM 2) scored a 40, and Anthropic (Claude 2) scored a 36. Cohere (Command), AI21 Labs (Jurassic-2), and Inflection (Inflection-1) spanned the mid-30s to low 20s, and Amazon (Titan Text) scored a strikingly low 12, though its worth noting its model is still in private preview and hasnt yet been released for general availability.

We anticipated that companies would be opaque, and that played out with the top score of 54 and the average of a mere 37/100, Rishi Bommasani, CRFM Society Lead at Stanford HAI, told Eye on AI. What we didnt expect was how opaque companies would be on critical areas: Companies disclose even less than we expected about data and compute, almost nothing about labor practices, and almost nothing about the downstream impact of their models.

The researchers contacted all of the companies to give them a chance to respond after they came up with their first draft of the ratings. And while Bommasani said they promised to keep those communications private and wouldnt elaborate on specifics like how Amazon responded to such a low score, he said all 10 companies engaged in correspondence. Eight of the 10 companies (all but AI21 Labs and Google) contested specific scores, arguing that their scores should be 8.75 points higher on average, and eventually had their scores adjusted by 1.25 points on average.

The results say a lot about the current state of AI. And no, it wasnt always like this.

The successes of the 2010s with deep learning came about through significant transparency and the open sharing of datasets, models, and code, Bommasani said. In the 2020s, we have seen that change: Many top labs dont release models, even more dont release datasets, and sometimes we dont even have papers written about widely deployed models. This is a familiar feeling of societal impact skyrocketing while transparency is plummeting.

He pointed to social media as another example of this shift, pointing to how the technology has become increasingly opaque over time as it becomes more powerful in our lives. AI looks to be headed down the same path, which we are hoping to countervail, he said.

AI has quickly gone from specialized researchers tinkering to the tech industrys next (and perhaps biggest ever) opportunity to capture both revenue and world-altering power. It could easily create new behemoths and topple current ones. The off to the races feeling has been intensely palpable ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT almost a year ago, and tech companies have repeatedly shown us theyll prioritize their market competitiveness and shareholder value above privacy, safety, and other ethical considerations. There arent any requirements to be transparent, so why would they be? As Bommasani said, weve seen this play out before.

While this is the first publication of the FMTI index, it definitely wont be the last. The researchers plan to conduct the analysis on a repeated basis, and they hope to have the resources to operate on a quicker cadence than the annual turnaround most indices are conducted in or to mirror the frenetic pace of AI.

Programming note:Gain vital insights on how the most powerful and far-reaching technology of our time is changing businesses, transforming society, and impacting our future. Join us inSan Francisco on Dec. 1112forFortunes third annualBrainstorm A.I.conference. Confirmed speakers include such A.I. luminaries asSalesforce AI CEOClara Shih,IBMsChristina Montgomery, Quizlets CEOLex Bayer,and more.Apply to attendtoday!

And with that, heres the rest of this weeks AI news.

Sage Lazzarosage.lazzaro@consultant.fortune.comsagelazzaro.com

Hugging Face confirms users in China are unable to access its platform. Thats according to Semafor. Chinese users have been complaining of issues connecting to the AI startups popular open-source platform since May, and its been fully unavailable in China since at least Sept. 12. Its not exactly clear what prompted action toward the company, but the Chinese government routinely blocks access to websites it disapproves of. It could also be related to local regulations regarding foreign AI companies that recently went into effect.

Canva unveils suite of AI tools for the classroom. Just two weeks after Canva introduced an extensive suite of AI-powered tools and capabilities, the online design platform announced a suite of AI-powered design tools targeted specifically to teachers and students. The AI-powered tools will live in the companys Canva for Education platform and include a writing assistant, translation capabilities, alt text suggestions, Magic Grab, and the ability to animate designs with one click.

Apple abruptly cancels John Stewarts show over tensions stemming from his interest in covering AI and China. Thats according to the New York Times. The third season of The Promise was already in production and set to begin filming soon before Stewart was (literally) canceled. The details of the dispute over covering AI and China are not clear, but Apples deep ties with China have come under increased scrutiny lately as tensions with the country rise and the U.S. takes action to limit the transfer of AI technologies between the U.S. and China. The company is also starting to move some of its supply chain out of China.

China proposes a global initiative for AI governance. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced the Global AI Governance Initiative, calling out the urgency of managing the transition to AI and outlining a series of principles and actions around the need for laws, ethical guidelines, personal security, data security, geopolitical cooperation, and an emphasis on a people-centered approach to AI, according to The Center for AI and Digital Policy newsletter Update 5.40. The document emphasizes the dual nature of AI as a technology that has both the ability to drive progress but also unpredictable risks and complicated challenges.

Eric Schmidt and Mustafa Suleyman call for an international panel on AI safety. The former Google CEO and DeepMind/Inflection AI cofounder published their call to action in the Financial Times. Arguing that lawmakers still lack a basic understanding of AI, they write that calls to just regulate are as loud, and as simplistic, as calls to simply press on. They propose an independent, expert-led body inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is mandated to provide policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation.

Polling the people. Anthropic this past week published the results of an experiment around what it calls constitutional AI, a method for designing AI models so theyre guided by a list of high-level principles. The company paneled around 1,000 American adults about what sort of principles they think would be important for an AI model to abide by and then trained a smaller version of Claude based on their suggestions. They then compared the resulting model to Claude, which was trained on a constitution designed by Anthropic employees.

Overall, the results showed about a 50% overlap in concepts and values between the two constitutions. The model trained on the peoples constitution focused more on objectivity, impartiality, and promoting desired behaviors for the model to abide by rather than laying out behaviors to avoid. The people also came up with some principles that were lacking from Anthropics version, such as Choose the response that is most understanding of, adaptable, accessible, and flexible to people with disabilities. The model created with the peoples constitution was also slightly less biased than the commercially available version, though the models performed similarly overall.

Its also important to take note of Anthropics methodology. While the company said it sought a representative sample across age, gender, income, and geography, one factor noticeably missing is race. This is especially concerning as evidence has repeatedly shown that people of color are adversely affected by racial bias and accuracy issues in AI models.

How Sam Altman got it wrong on a key part of AI: Creativity has been easier for AI than people thought Rachyl Jones

OpenAIs winning streak falters with reported failure of Arrakis project David Meyer

Nvidia thought it found a way around U.S. export bans of AI chips to Chinanow Biden is closing the loophole and investors arent happy Christiaan Hetzner

Sick of meetings? Microsofts new AI assistant will go in your place Chloe Taylor

Why boomers are catching up with AI faster than Gen Zers, according to Microsofts modern work lead Jared Spataro

How AI can help the shipping industry cut carbon emissions Megan Arnold

Billionaire AI investor Vinod Khoslas advice to college students: Get as broad an education as possible Jeff John Roberts

Would you let Meta read your mind? The tech giant perhaps most synonymous with invading user privacy announced it reached an important milestone in its pursuit of using AI to visualize human thought.

Using a noninvasive neuroimaging technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG), Meta AI researchers showcased a system capable of decoding the unfolding of visual representations in the brain with an unprecedented temporal resolution. In other words, the system can analyze a persons brain activity and then reconstruct visuals depicting what their brain is seeing and processing. While they only reached accuracy levels of 70% in their highest-performing test cases, the researchers note in their paper that this is seven times better than existing models.

The fact that the AI announcements coming out of tech companies in a single week range from animate text with one click to decode and reconstruct human thought shows how incredibly wide-reaching and powerful this technology is. Its hard to imagine theres a corner of society and humanity it wont touch.

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TADFF 2023: ‘Lovely, Dark, and Deep’ Is Worth Getting Lost In … – Exclaim!

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

In cinema, forests are often used as a metaphor for the mind a labyrinth of traps impossible to understand, orient ourselves in or escape from, resulting in a daunting place to be alone. Teresa Sutherland's directorial debut, Lovely, Dark, and Deep, takes this theme to its terrifying and inevitable conclusion, using the forest in highly original yet unfortunately inconsistent ways.

A cryptic quote from John Muir appears in the opening frame before we're immediately thrust into the film's forest. Sutherland wastes no time introducing a sinister, isolated tone when a backwoods ranger leaves his post, never to be heard from again.

The film then cuts to Lennon (Georgina Campbell), a newly-minted park ranger stationed in the back country of a national park. Lennon has worked her whole life to reach this coveted position, intent on solving a mystery from her past that's inherently tied to these woods. To reveal any more of the plot would do Sutherland's tense, understated script a disservice.

While Lennon interacts sporadically with a number of people, including fellow park ranger Jackson (Nick Blood) and boss/confidante Zhang (Wai Ching Ho), for the most part she's alone with her thoughts in the woods, placing the weight of the film firmly on Campbell's shoulders. Tough, frightened and determined, Campbell elicits palpable empathy through her performance. She's recently appeared in a number of horrors and thrillers (most notably Barbarian and Bird Box Barcelona) and Campbell has proven herself to be an exceptional talent, primed to become a formidable new scream queen with a modern, more assertive twist.

Long sections of forest exploration pass in near silence an approach that usually leads to some atonal trill, but the ambient sounds of the forest are thankfully treated with respect, heightening the dread. Branko Neskov's intricate sound design makes Lovely, Dark, and Deep feel beautifully realized, filling the screen with cracking tree trunks, rustling vegetation and disembodied voices. Similarly, Rui Poas's lush cinematography feels both intimate and expansive, capturing the grandeur of the forest and Lennon's private moments in her outpost with equal reserve and reverence.

This ability to respect and engage with space is one of the movie's greatest strengths. It understands that the forest is rooted in dichotomy, both delicate and dangerous and large enough to swallow a person whole while feeling entirely claustrophobic. These thoughtful elements build the world into something truly lovely, dark, and deep.

Sutherland, as a writer, is already minted. The Wind is a great but painfully under-seen horror-western, and her work as a staff writer on Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass, although imperfect, is still inspired. Here, her writing leans towards the latter.

Early on, when Lennon goes on her first deep trek into the forest, she listens to a podcast about missing persons and national parks, which instantly feels leading and unnecessary the cavernous, unforgiving silence reads much more frightening than macabre facts through a pair of headphones. These expository moments prove redundant when coupled with the confident imagery used, and while Sutherland anxiously wants to help us understand the mysteries of this forest, her writing and directorial decisions are strong enough that any hand-holding feels patronizing.

She overuses canted angles, but her ability to create an unsettled mood is vividly on display throughout. A searing slow burn, the film doesn't rely on cheap jump scares or audience manipulation. Instead, it's intent on building a very specific mood and atmosphere through the lead character, with the terror coming from Lennon's memories and trauma, her unsettled inner forest reflecting our own demons. Much like Lennon, we project these monsters onto the forest because, like the deep recesses of our subconscious, it is unknown, dark and isolating a blank canvas for fear.

The film's extended second act features a surreal journey through the past and the mind. Existential horror at its most impressionistic, Lovely, Dark, and Deep adopts some truly disturbing visuals, which happen to also be where some of the film's most glaring problems arise.

Rather than emphasizing the psychological and emotional toll that trauma and isolation can enact the film's strongest and most original aspect Sutherland relies on the forest's mystical elements. It's a trope as well-worn as a pair of old hiking boots: is the mind playing tricks on me or is it the spirits of the forest? This beat grows thin quickly, particularly when the effects on Lennon are depicted with little precedence.

As the story unfolds, there isn't a gradual degradation of the psyche, but rather a harsh left turn that seems to split the film in two. By the time the should-be-harrowing finale arrives, much of the tension that's been building is washed away by dialogue that reveals too much, nullifying the film's hard-won ambiguity and mystique.

People go into the forest to explore, confront fears, find themselves and heal the wounds that fester in more unnatural settings. The forest in Lovely, Dark, and Deep acts as a portal to the past, tunnelling into the deepest recesses of our protagonist's pain where, even in the golden autumnal hue, darkness manifests. The film doesn't just collide with reality; it dismantles it, sending the most frightening message of all: the real danger is in our mind and it's up to us, disoriented and alone, to escape it.

While audiences will inevitably be divided by the film's languid pace, unrealized ambiguity and bottleneck feel, fans of horror that requires patience and empathy will undoubtedly enjoy the sombre mysteries of Lovely, Dark, and Deep a film well worth getting lost in.

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Vitalik Buterin participates in $6 million funding round for Nocturne – crypto.news

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

As per an Oct. 25 post on X, Nocturne, a protocol enabling private, composable accounts on Ethereum, announced Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain would be leading their multi-million seed round.

The round will be co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain with participation from Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum.

In a follow up post, Nocturne shares that other participants in the funding round include Bankless Ventures and Robot Ventures, alongside angel participants such as Tim Beiko from the Ethereum foundation, Aaron Henshaw, the Head of Engineering at Coinbase Cloud and Scott Moore, the previous co-founder of Gitcoin, among others.

Nocturne Labs has since shared news of a November launch for the protocol deployment on the mainnet, with funding from the most recent round said to be directed at the v1 protocol and supporting integrations with protocols, wallets, payment platforms, and other partners.

Established in the United States just last year, Nocturne has continued to construct a protocol to facilitate anonymous transactions within the Ethereum ecosystem, allowing users to establish discreet internal accounts within Nocturne, where the receipt and expenditure of funds will transpire in an entirely untraceable manner, ensuring that these transactions remain detached from a singular, traceable address.

Nocturne Labs first user-facing product, a private vault UI, is said to offer a streamlined interface for users to manage their hot assets stored within their private accounts, allowing them to receive and deposit funds anonymously, earn yield on idle funds, and withdraw to fresh wallets for unlinked trading and transactions.

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CYBER spikes 30% as Binance announces follow-on investments – crypto.news

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

The investments follow Vitalik Buterins decision to join the Farcaster decentralized network.

Binances venture arm, Binance Labs, has announced an investment in CyberConnect, a decentralized social protocol. In an X post on Oct. 25, the $9 billion venture capital firm said the decision to back the protocol reflects its confidence in the potential of social finance (sofi) to boost web3 adoption.

We have made a follow-on investment round in @CyberConnectHQ, a decentralized social network.

We see SocialFi's potential in propelling Web3 into the mainstream, and well be hosting an AMA to dive into the opportunities of social integrations across the ecosystem. Stay tuned!

Although the funding amount was not disclosed, the announcement sent CYBER, a native token for CyberConnect, soaring 30% up to $6.4, as per CoinGecko.

The deal comes just a week after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin joined Farcaster, another decentralized social network, following the recent hacking of his X account, which was the result of a SIM swap attack.

[] glad to be on farcaster, where my account recovery can be controlled by a good wholesome ethereum address.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin

Founded in 2021, CyberConnect is a decentralized sofi protocol focused on giving users control over their digital ID, content, and social interactions. Its three core products are CyberAccount, CyberGraph, and CyberID.

While CyberAccount aims to simplify the complexity of gas payments across many networks and modernize the onboarding process for multi-chain web3 activities, CyberGraph helps store user-generated content and facilitates connecting different blockchain networks.

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Goldman Sachs Analysis: Ethereum’s Path to Scalability – Cryptonews

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

Source: Adobe

Ethereum (ETH)s upcoming Dencun upgrade, expected in the first quarter of 2024, will play a crucial role in the blockchains journey towards scalability as a settlement layer.

In a recent note, Goldman Sachs highlighted the primary impact of the Dencun upgrade, which is increasing data availability for layer-2 rollups through proto-danksharding.

The bank claimed that this enhancement will result in reduced transaction costs for rollups, ultimately benefiting end users.

Dencuns primary impact will be to increase its data availability for layer-2 rollups via proto-danksharding, resulting in a reduction of rollup transaction costs which will be passed on to end users.

In the context of blockchain technology, a layer 1 network serves as the foundation or underlying infrastructure.

Layer 2 refers to off-chain systems or separate blockchains built on top of layer 1s.

Rollups, which are part of layer 2, process transactions on a faster blockchain and then transfer the data back to the parent blockchain at a fraction of the cost.

The proto-danksharding feature of the Dencun upgrade will not only improve data availability for layer-2 rollups but also lay the groundwork for future scalability upgrades, including danksharding.

Danksharding is a methodology that aims to enhance Ethereums scalability by dividing the network into shards, expanding data storage capacity rather than solely increasing transaction throughput.

According to the Goldman Sachs report, Dencun will enhance Ethereums scalability through the implementation of rollups.

Additionally, it will optimize gas fees, improve network security, and introduce several housekeeping updates aimed at overall network improvement.

Meanwhile, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently admitted that centralization of nodes is one of the networks biggest challenges, given the fact that the majority of the 5,901 active Ethereum full nodes are run on centralized platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The Ethereum mastermind said that he hopes in the future fully verified Ethereum nodes can literally run on a phone.

He claimed that solving the issue with centralization of full nodes is a big piece of the puzzle to making Ethereum more decentralized.

As reported, in an effort to maintain the decentralized nature of the ETH network, several prominent liquid staking providers have implemented or are in the process of implementing a self-limit rule.

The rule ensures that these providers will not own more than 22% of the Ethereum staking market, which could help address concerns over the growing centralization of Ethereum staking.

Rocket Pool, StakeWise, Stader Labs, Diva Staking, and Puffer Finance are some of the staking platforms that have already committed to the self-limit, Ethereum core developer Superphiz said in a recent tweet.

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Bitcoin’s CoinJoin services threatened by new FinCEN rules – Protos

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) published a notice of proposed rule making that would escalate the mixing of convertible virtual currencies to a primary money laundering concern. If implemented, these new and more stringent rules will impact not only dedicated tumblers like Tornado Cash but service providers that use basic privacy protocols like Bitcoins coinjoin.

FinCEN cited malicious actors use of crypto-mixing services to launder illicit proceeds. The bureau highlighted Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Russian criminal groups, and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, for example, recently received millions of Tron-based USDT. Hamas reportedly received some $450,000 in digital asset donations which Israeli authorities have since seized.

The notice of proposed rule making explains FinCINs goals of greater compliance practices for coin mixers. It says heightened transparency will improve FinCINs ability to deny states like North Korea and other terrorist groups their access to US financial infrastructure.

FinCENs proposal could require financial institutions to keep records and reports relating to transactions involving digital asset tumblers. Simply put, the rule brings know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML), and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) requirements to operators of crypto tumblers.

As justification for its rulemaking, FinCEN cited Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act. Section 311 empowers the Treasury Secretary with the authority to classify primary money laundering concerns and require domestic financial agencies to take special measures against those entities.

Special measures for primary money laundering concerns include:

Previously, authorities cracked down on mixers like Tornado Cash, which is already sanctioned in the US. The Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022.

Read more: US sanctions on Tornado Cash spark free speech protests

The Tornado Cash sanction, of course, proved highly controversial. Several digital asset insiders claimed it was unfair to honest users who simply want privacy. Many claimed the sanction violated their free speech rights.

Somebody used Tornado Cash to sprinkle ETH donations into the wallets of well-known figures like Vitalik Buterin, Brian Armstrong, and Jimmy Fallon perhaps an attempt to draw them into the debate over whether OFACs actions amounted to an overreach of its authority. Even Vitalik Buterin suggested a potentially more regulatory-compliant alternative using ZK proofs in a paper he co-authored.

Tornado Cashs volume declined by 85% shortly after OFAC imposed its sanction. However, the measures havent killed the service entirely. A recent Arkham report showed that $77 million in digital assets were sent through the Tornado Cash contract in a recent 30-day period.

As an open-source protocol, Tornado Cashs contract still operates on the Ethereum blockchain, making it more difficult for authorities to block entirely for as long as Ethereum is accessible.

However, the ability to access a tumbling service doesnt necessarily mean that using it is legal. In theory, OFAC could pursue anyone who sends funds through a sanctioned coin tumbler, even though it may have some explaining to do if it were to go after Jimmy Fallon for receiving an unsolicited donation of ETH through Tornado Cash.

FinCENs new notice of proposed rule making on digital asset mixing means that tumbling services like CoinJoin might soon become even more difficult to use legally. Moreover, operators depending on anonymizing services might have to collect, record, process, and disclose untold reams of data to the government.

Unless FinCEN receives a significant number of objections as formal comments during its public comment period, its proposed rules stand a good chance of becoming enacted by treasury secretary Janet Yellen.

Unsurprisingly, FinCEN justifies the new requirements by naming rogue users like Hamas and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. FinCEN has opened a comment period lasting 90 days after its recent publication of the notice of proposed rule making in the federal register.

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3 Cryptos That Actually Have a Solid Investing Thesis – InvestorPlace

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

Source: Chinnapong / Shutterstock

In an uncertain crypto market, investors continue to debate whether this years recovery is for real. After all, the crypto sector has been through the ringer over the past couple years, after surging during the risk-on pandemic-era rally.

Many of the more speculative projects have effectively fallen apart recently. However, some of the largest and highest-quality cryptos continue to perform well.

Lets examine three cryptos to buy right now, for those looking for quality over upside potential. These are three projects I still think have an investing thesis right now.

Source: Sittipong Phokawattana / Shutterstock.com

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is the king of crypto and therefore needs no introduction. Indeed, Bitcoin has performed impressively well this year, surging 58% year-to-date (YTD) with the potential for further growth. Standard Chartered predicted a $120,000 target by 2024, quadrupling from current levels due to a key halving event set for next year. Historically, Bitcoin rallies after halving events. It remains the blue chip of the crypto world, likely to gain as digital asset adoption rises.

As the 2024 halving event approaches, Bitcoins history of post-halving surges and its status as a crypto blue-chip suggest growing demand. Also, emerging ETF developments signal increased Bitcoin interest. Given its stability and growth potential, Bitcoin remains a top long-term crypto investment.

Source: shutterstock.com/BT Side

Ethereum (ETH-USD) made a significant shift from mining to Proof-of-Stake, reducing its energy consumption and cementing its crypto status.

The DeFi and NFT sectors bear the marks of its influence, offering substantial growth opportunities. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin noted a 55% completion rate post its 2.0 update, signaling a promising future for ETH. With capacity for 100,000 transactions and lower fees, ETHs potential remains high.

While more development entails increased risk of glitches, Ethereums journey toward blockchain supremacy has been remarkable. ETH maintains its lead in decentralized finance. This makes it a premier choice for investors bullish on the idea that crypto can power applications and a future economy that drives value to end users. While this space continues to grow and innovate rapidly, Ethernet is generally the engine supporting this growth.

Source: sdx15 / Shutterstock.com

Aside from Ethereum,Solana (SOL-USD) is another key blockchain supporting the world of DeFi. This crypto has continued to perform exceptionally this year, surging more than 7% alone this past Thursday.

It now ranks as the second-best performer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies. Its recent rally, up over 45% from September lows, pushed its market cap past $10 billion. In turn, this catapulted it as the seventh-largest cryptocurrency, surpassing crypto rivals like Cardano.

In addition, Solana has pivoted back toward a bullish trend, supported by a clear shift in technical analysis, breaking the previous lower high at $19.62. Currently, SOL is trading at $24.82, marking a 5% increase over the past 24 hours. Solana faces significant resistance around $24.86, a level with multiple equal highs.

Further, maintaining flawless uptime in Q2 and venturing into the mobile crypto market with the Saga phone was a significant step, strengthening its decentralized presence and attracting a new user base. Therefore, this positions Solana as a potential long-term investment for those bullish on the potential growth of DeFi over time.

On the date of publication, Chris MacDonald did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.

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3 Cryptos That Actually Have a Solid Investing Thesis - InvestorPlace

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Pepe Coin vs Shiba Inu: Which Meme Coin is Worth Buying? – CoinGape

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

Pepe Coin and Shiba Inu are the two most popular meme coins after Dogecoin. While both are the trending meme coins and helped early investors make considerable profits, they share several differences when it comes to their origins, market cap, use cases, and network developments.

Beginner investors who are looking to enter the bandwagon of meme coins might feel confused about whether to buy PEPE or SHIB. We will compare Pepe Coin vs Shiba Inu in the present article and find out which meme coin is worth buying in 2023. Lets start!

Being known as the most memeable meme coin, Pepe Coin has created a buzz in industry in the H1 2023. It was created in April 2023 based on the popular internet meme, Pepe the Frog. Pepe aims to capitalize on the existing popularity of the frog meme and the ongoing meme coin trend in the industry. By entering the list of top 100 cryptocurrencies in just two weeks after its launch and reaching a $1 billion market cap, Pepe Coin created a history.

Pepe Coin has a deflationary token mechanism that burns the token every time a transaction takes place, reducing the supply and increasing the value over the long run. Another attractive feature of PEPE is it has a no-tax policy and doesnt charge any transaction fees for buying and selling of PEPE tokens.

Shiba Inu meme coin was created in August 2023 as an alternative meme coin to Dogecoin. A pseudonymous creator with the name Ryoshi created Shiba Inu as an experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building. It quickly gained popularity and adoption in the crypto community. The meme coin hype as well as the endorsements of influential individuals like Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin played a part in its growth.

Even though the Shiba Inu was created as a meme coin, it is now being expanded with multiple blockchain projects. While Shiba Swap is a decentralized exchange offering exchange services to the ecosystem, Shibarium is a layer2 network developed to increase the efficiency of SHIB transactions. The project is also developing SHIB metaverse and has multiple future plans to develop Shiba Inu ecosystem.

Before making an investment, it is important to evaluate a crypto and find out the one that is suitable to your trading requirements. When it comes to deciding whether PEPE or SHIB is worth buying, we recommend considering the following factors.

The market performance of the Pepe Coin has created a history in the early days of its launch. Even without conducting airdrops, presales, or ICOs, the token gained extreme popularity and adoption in crypto. After launching on April 17 and trading between $0.00000002764 and $0.00000007957, PEPE reached an all-time high of $0.000004354 in May 2023. It is the quickest cryptocurrency to reach a $1 billion market cap in the crypto industry. However, the token has been on the downtrend since then and recently showing signs of uptrend, at the time of writing.

Coming to Shiba Inu, it has also performed well in 2020 after its launch. It has a starting price of $0.000000000056 and reached an all-time high value of $0.00008845 in October 2021. Early investors who bought SHIB tokens in 2020 have made substantial gains in 2021. It even entered the list of top 20 cryptocurrencies, after reaching a $52.1 billion market cap. However, its price has also been trading sideways since then.

Pepe coin was created just for entertainment purposes and has no roadmap or future plans. However, when it comes to Shiba Inu, it has a clear roadmap and the team is working relentlessly to expand the project, making it more than a mere meme coin. If we consider network developments, Shiba Inu is a promising investment with good future growth potential.

Pepe Coin was created purely for entertainment purposes and has no inherent value. However, it has several features that make it worth investing in PEPE such as its deflationary token mechanism and no-tax policy. While the deflationary mechanism burns PEPE tokens for every transaction, its redistribution system gives back 1% of the transaction to investors. Its no-tax policy, i.e., transaction fees is also a noteworthy feature.

On the other hand, Shiba Inu is an ambitious project and has several use cases. It acts a native cryptocurrency for its layer2 network Shibarium and decentralized exchange ShibaSwap. For activities like staking, liquidity providing, and yield farming, users can rely on SHIB along with other tokens such as BONE and LEASH. With future developments like SHIB metaverse, the tokens will find more and more applications in the virtual world as a native currency.

Both Pepe Coin and Shiba Inu are good investments, if you are considering to buy meme coins. However, if network developments and utility of the project is your priority, Shiba Inu is a suitable investment for you. In case, taking advantage of meme coin hype without paying any transaction fee and benefiting from its deflationary nature, then Pepe Coin is a suitable investment for you.

No matter whether you invest in PEPE or SHIB, do not forget to do your own research and understand the risks involved!

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Pepe Coin vs Shiba Inu: Which Meme Coin is Worth Buying? - CoinGape

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The evolution of decentralized exchanges: A comparative analysis – Cointelegraph

October 28, 2023 | Author: admin

Lets dive into the evolution of DEXes as we explore the shift from automated market makers (AMMs) to the time-tested order book model. We must understand the inherent advantages and challenges of each approach, and discover how UTXO-based blockchains can reshape the trading landscape and bridge the gap between traditional finance and the dynamic world of crypto.

Decentralized exchanges (DEXes) have risen as alternatives to the challenges presented by centralized exchanges, which include vulnerabilities to hacks, obligatory KYC verifications, opaque account management and control over private keys. Yet, centralized platforms play an indispensable role, serving as gateways for beginners into the cryptocurrency realm, acting as guides into this new industry.

Traditional exchanges have often hinged on the order book model to optimize capital use and enable dynamic price discovery. In contrast, many modern DEXes utilize the AMM system, which brings its own set of inefficiencies and challenges to be delved into subsequently.

For DEXes to resonate with and be adopted by mainstream financial entities, they may want to consider integration with an order book architecture, thereby appealing to seasoned traders searching for advanced functionalities currently only found in traditional financial systems.

The introduction of the AMM model marked a pivotal change in the DeFi ecosystem. The drive to embed the order book system within DEXes led to the evolution of the AMM model, an idea expounded by Ethereums co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. This innovative approach addressed the lingering liquidity challenges that had previously hampered the widespread adoption of DEXes on platforms like Ethereum. As a result, the majority of DEXes operating on both Ethereum and BSC have since embraced this model.

The primary challenge faced by AMM DEXes is the phenomenon of impermanent loss, where the price fluctuation of tokens inside a pool can sometimes lead to liquidity providers securing less value than if they merely held their assets. Additionally, the model is prone to slippage, especially in low-liquidity pools, resulting in trades that may be executed at less favorable rates. AMMs demand equal values of both tokens in a pair, which isnt always capital efficient, and the price determination is based on the asset ratio in the pool rather than genuine market dynamics, occasionally causing less accurate price representation.

Furthermore, the AMM design can inadvertently open doors for arbitrage opportunities. While these arbitrageurs help maintain price uniformity across markets, they do extract value from the pool, potentially affecting liquidity providers adversely.

Finally, the absence of diverse order types, like limit or stop orders, restricts strategic trading.

Order book-based exchanges are the prevalent standard in global financial markets. At the core of these exchanges is an order book, a dynamic, continually updated list of buy and sell orders.

This mechanism facilitates transparent price discovery, as traders can directly see the supply and demand at different price levels. Furthermore, it offers traders flexibility in executing different types of orders, such as limit or market orders, ensuring that participants can implement nuanced trading strategies.

The real-time nature of the order book also provides insights into market depth and sentiment, crucial for both institutional and retail traders. The adoption of the order book model across major global exchanges underscores its reliability and effectiveness in maintaining market integrity.

The order book model is especially suitable for UTXO-based blockchains trades can be made peer-to-peer as opposed to aggregated into liquidity pools. Moreover, transactions are processed with high concurrency, enabling faster order matching, while maintaining full transparency into the order book state and trading history.

Furthermore, UTXO systems intrinsic capability to process transactions in parallel is highly beneficial for order book mechanisms, which have to process numerous disjoint buy and sell orders simultaneously. Therefore, intricate functionalities of order book operations from order matching to settlement can be automated in a computationally efficient manner, while benefiting from the security and reliability of smart contracts.

In essence, adopting the order book model on UTXO-based blockchains could help bridge the gap between the centralized and decentralized trading worlds.

The cryptocurrency world is undergoing a transformative phase as DEXes consider pivoting from AMM models to the more traditional order book structures. While AMMs offer unique advantages, their limitations have paved the way for the adoption of order book models, especially on UTXO-based blockchains.

Such a transition could help address the challenges of AMMs, merging the benefits of centralized trading with decentralized platforms. As DEXes mature, the fusion of traditional financial mechanisms with decentralized architectures holds promise, potentially revolutionizing the trading landscape, enhancing user experiences and promoting more extensive adoption of DeFi platforms.

The future of crypto trading will likely involve features from the intersection of the two bridging the realms of traditional finance and the burgeoning crypto universe.

CSO atGenius Yield, a next-generation DEX & CEO at gomaestro.org a Web3 infrastructure provider.

This article was published through Cointelegraph Innovation Circle, a vetted organization of senior executives and experts in the blockchain technology industry who are building the future through the power of connections, collaboration and thought leadership. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Cointelegraph.

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The evolution of decentralized exchanges: A comparative analysis - Cointelegraph

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