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(Bloomberg) -- Hedge funds, pensions and banks continued to lavish capital into exchange-traded funds that invest directly in Bitcoin, as more traditional investors embrace the asset class that US regulators begrudgingly helped push into the mainstream at the beginning of the year.Most Read from BloombergManchester Is Giving London a Run for Its MoneyBoston’s Broke and Broken Transit System Hurts Downtown RecoveryA Warehouse Store Promises Housing for South LA, in BulkBiden Invests $100 Million

South Korea's National Pension Service (NPS) has revealed investments in cryptocurrency-related companies with a multi-million dollar purchase of MicroStrategy stock. According to a recent filing. South Korea’s national pension fund acquired shares in MicroStrategy (MSTR), a company known for its substantial Bitcoin holdings. The NPS purchased 24,500 shares of MicroStrategy in the second quarter of 2023, at an average price of $1,377.48 per share. This investment, totaling nearly $34 million, p...

Investment firm Bernstein has issued an outperform rating on Bitcoin (BTC) mining stocks Riot Platforms (RIOT), CleanSpark (CLSK), Iris Energy (IREN) and Core Scientific (CORZ), while rating Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) as market-perform. For Riot Platforms (RIOT), Bernstein highlighted its significant operational power capacity and expansion plans. "RIOT has a mega 1GW site at Corsicana, Texas being energised over 2024-25," the report states. Additionally, Riot recently acquired Block minin...

The city of San Francisco has filed a sweeping lawsuit against 18 websites and apps that generate unauthorized, deepfake nudes of unsuspecting victims on Thursday. The complaint—published with the plaintiffs’ service names redacted—targets the “proliferation of websites and apps that offer to ‘undress’ or ‘nudify’ women and girls.” It asserts that collectively, the sites have been visited over 200 million times in the first six months of 2024. “This investigation has taken us to the darkest corn...

Top asset manager Franklin Templeton has filed to offer a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) that, if approved, would give investors exposure to a basket of crypto funds. The Franklin Crypto Index ETF, under the ticker EZPZ, would give exposure to digital assets included in the CF Institutional Digital Asset Index—an index from CF Benchmarks, which provides data to firms on cryptocurrencies.  It would initially hold Bitcoin and Ethereum, a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (S...

Google is putting the icing on the cake for a busy week in the generative AI space with the launch of Imagen 3, its brand-new text-to-image model. This release builds upon the success of Imagen 2, introduced in December 2023, which already rivaled industry heavyweights like Dall-E 3 and MidJourney v5. Imagen 3, originally announced in May, boasts enhanced capabilities in understanding and executing complex prompts, generating images with improved details, and better prompt adherence compared to...

Web-based crypto arcade BSMNT (aka "Basement") debuted on Thursday alongside the launch of a new gaming network called B3.fun—and both are built on top of Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base as the chain starts to welcome more gaming activity. With crypto-fied riffs on massively popular Web2 games like brick-breaker Breakout and Crossy Road, as well as established Web3 games like Nifty Island and Mighty Action Heroes, BSMNT players are invited to connect their wallet before “minting” the ga...