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Canva has announced its acquisition of Australian generative AI startup Leonardo.AI for an undisclosed amount. This move will help strengthen Canva’s generative AI offerings as it looks to take on brands like Adobe, Microsoft, and Google in the visual content creation space. Canva's CEO Cameron Adams emphasized the significance of the acquisition, “This field is constantly evolving, and Leonardo.AI’s technical leadership and community impact can’t be overstated,” he wrote. “Bringing our worlds t...

Remember Tamagotchis, the pocket-sized virtual pets that had millennials glued to tiny screens in the 90s? Well, they're back—sort of. A California-based startup called My TabAl, Inc. purchased the domain friend.com for $1.8 million to launch its entry in the rapidly burgeoning, virtual best-friend market: a $99 AI-powered necklace dubbed ‘friend’ (yes, lowercase). The device is expected to ship early next year. Judging by the information and videos available that started hitting the net this we...

Polymarket, the decentralized prediction platform that allows anyone to create a market about essentially any question, has rapidly gained recognition in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Now, users are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into bets on the outcomes of a variety of political contests and questions. One of Polymarket's draws is its simplicity: users bet on the outcome of a specified “event” by buying shares, which are priced between $0.01 and $1.00 and correla...

Famous political speaker Tucker Carlson has a lot of respect for Bitcoin, and is apparently very confident about the identity of its creator. During a private event on Friday held at Bitcoin 2024, the former Fox News host spoke at length about why crypto is the world’s best tool for enabling financial sovereignty—even though it was invented by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). “Obviously it was the CIA, we all know that,” said Carlson with a laugh. “It’s like Signal, they got there first. I...

Bitcoin didn’t budge after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced that it would leave interest rates unchanged—a widely expected move from investors.  Answering questions from reporters, central bank chief Jerome Powell did not reveal much about a future cut, saying that although “inflation has eased substantially,” if by September “inflation were to prove sticky” a cut would be less likely.  “‘Certainty’ is not a word we have in our business,” he said.  But investors are expecting the central bank...

Tether Holdings Limited, the company behind the world's largest stablecoin USDT, has reported a profit of $5.2 billion for the first half of 2024, according to its latest quarterly attestation report.  That’s record profit for Tether, according to the company, which claims to hold reserves for its tokens totaling $118.4 billion, with liabilities at $113.1 billion. And despite what appears to be a discrepancy in its reported Bitcoin holdings, the results of its attestation—provided by global acco...

The Bahamas has passed a new crypto law which aims to adapt to how the industry has changed since 2020, following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and the failure of Do Kwon’s Terraform Labs. The Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Act 2024 (known as DARE 2024) most notably introduces new rules for businesses providing custody of digital assets. These regulations appear to address mistakes made with FTX, which was headquartered in the island country. This includes requirements to main...