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Biden’s comms director barred from former crypto clients: Report

April 23, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Ben LaBolt

Decentralized exchange UniSwap and venture capital firm Andressen Horowitz were revealed as former clients of LaBolt in a recently published public financial disclosure report.

United States President Joe Biden will reportedly ban his communications director from handling matters related to any crypto or technology firms he has previously worked with, while allowing him to advise on crypto regulation.

According to an April 22 Bloomberg Law report, the White House communications director Ben LaBolt will be barred from “participating in legal matters, investigations, or contracts involving cryptocurrency or technology firms he previously represented.”

Decentralized exchange UniSwap and venture capital firm Andressen Horowitz – an early investor in Coinbase Global Inc – were both former clients of Bully Pulpit Interactive (BPI), where LaBolt was previously a partner, according to a public financial disclosure report published on April 21.

Both firms were among a list of 23 clients paying fees exceeding $5,000 in a year to BPI.

Ben LaBolt's Public Financial Disclosure Report. Source: aboutblaw.com

Meta Platforms, Shopify, and West Street – the family office of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg and his wife Priscilla Chan – were also included in the list of 23 clients exceeding $5,000 in a year.

Meanwhile, in the assets and income section, LaBolt disclosed that he holds $50,001-$100,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) and $15,001-$50,000 in Ethereum 2 (ETH2).

“LaBolt’s restrictions are in line with ethics rules followed by other senior White House staff,” the report stated.

Despite the restrictions expected to be put in place, it was reported that LaBolt will be allowed to advise on the president’s approach to regulating cryptocurrency and social media companies.

This comes after Biden signed an executive order (EO) on digital assets on March 9.

While the EO didn’t specify any regulatory actions, it outlined an interagency process that will involve 16 high officials, initially starting with the task of producing an elaborate series of reports.

These reports are due at intervals ranging from 90 days to over a year from the publication of the EO.

The EO attracted attention from government officials and industry leaders alike.

Republican “Crypto Senator” Cynthia Loomis of Wyoming commented on the executive order saying “it’s great to see the Biden administration’s growing interest in digital assets.”

Meanwhile, Ari Redborn, head of legal and government affairs for blockchain-based intelligence firm TRM Labs, said that he was “expecting certain things and the positive tone was not necessarily one of them.”

Magazine: Musk hints at suing Microsoft, US Rep. wants Gensler fired, and more: Hodler’s Digest, April 16-22

ChatGPT can now access the internet with new OpenAI plugins

March 24, 2023 Coin Telegraph

API

OpenAI said it is initially rolling out the plugins to a small set of users to "study their real-world use and impact," before expanding to larger-scale access.

Artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT can now retrieve information from online sources and interact with third-party websites via a new plugin feature introduced by its creator, OpenAI.

The plugin feature is still in its “limited” alpha phase and will only be available to a small set of users initially before rolling out to larger-scale access. Users must add themselves to a waitlist in order to access the new feature on Chat GPT Plus, the firm said in a March 23 announcement.

Initially, there will only be 11 plugins available. These plugins range from allowing users to check the scores of live sporting events to booking an international flight and purchasing food for home delivery. The firm added that it is “gradually rolling out plugins” so that it can assess its real-world use.

We’ve added initial support for ChatGPT plugins — a protocol for developers to build tools for ChatGPT, with safety as a core design principle. Deploying iteratively (starting with a small number of users & developers) to learn from contact with reality: https://t.co/ySek2oevod pic.twitter.com/S61MTpddOV
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) March 23, 2023

“Plugins are tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle, and help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services,” said OpenAI.

Among the cohort of websites that are supported by the new plugin feature are e-commerce platforms Shopify, Klarna and Instacart, and travel search engines Expedia and KAYAK.

With our new AI Plugin, a traveler can start a conversation with #ChatGPT to plan their next trip–complete with access to up-to-date information on the availability & price of flights, hotels, vacation rentals, activities, & car rentals across the world. https://t.co/cVgLL6qln9 pic.twitter.com/YAIaj9zrEd
— Expedia Group (@ExpediaGroup) March 23, 2023

The plugins also include the math computer Wolfram, for carrying out calculations, and the business messaging app Slack, according to the announcement.

*A screenshot of the API on ChatGPT when connecting to third-party plugins. Source:* *OpenAI*

Other apps include FiscalNote, Milo Family AI, OpenTable, Shop, Speak and Zapier.

How does it access the web?

ChatGPT utilizes the Bing API to search for information along with a text-based web browser to navigate results and interact with websites.

It is able to synthesize information across multiple sources to give a more grounded response. It also cites the sources it used so users can verify where ChatGPT derived its response from.

ChatGPT has a brand new plugin that uses the Bing API to access the current, up-to-date internet.

This changes everything. pic.twitter.com/Izknqp1UgC
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) March 23, 2023

OpenAI said the plug-in capabilities came on the back of high demand from its user base since the firm launched ChatGPT on Nov. 30.

Mitchell Hashimoto, the founder of software firm HashiCorp and an early user of the ChatGPT plugin API, told his 94,300 Twitter followers on March 23 that it is one of the most “impressive” computer applications he has ever used:

I've developed a lot of plugin systems, and the OpenAI ChatGPT plugin interface might be the damn craziest and most impressive approach I've ever seen in computing in my entire life.
— Mitchell Hashimoto (@mitchellh) March 23, 2023

Being able to use plugins that access the internet could improve one of ChatGPT’s arguably biggest shortfalls, that it was trained with data only up to September 2021 and does not have access to the internet to grab more recent information

*The typical answer given when ChatGPT is asked a question requiring up-to-date data. Source: Open AI*

Earlier this month, OpenAI released the latest version of its artificial intelligence Chatbot, ChatGPT-4.

So far, the new version has already managed to successfully pass many of the toughest U.S. high school and law school exams in the 90th percentile.

Using the same version, Cointelegraph recently launched an experiment using GPT-4 to invest in cryptocurrencies using information fed from Cointelegraph Markets and a selection of Cointelegraph’s daily news, with the aim of understanding how it interprets news to make trading decisions.

We love what @jacksonfall has been doing with #HustleGPT so we’re doing our own crypto edition!

The lowdown: We’ve given #GPT4 a budget of $100. We’ve instructed it to make as much money as possible.

Can GPT-4 navigate the choppy crypto waters and stay green?

A thread pic.twitter.com/UibCBUz0Nt
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) March 17, 2023

So far, the cryptocurrency portfolio is up 6.08% over seven days. It currently has an allocation consisting of 55% Bitcoin (BTC), 35% Ether (ETH), 5% Cardano (ADA) and 5% XRP (XRP).

Magazine: All rise for the robot judge: AI and blockchain could transform the courtroom

Shopify launches suite of blockchain commerce tools for merchants

February 11, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Shopify NFT merchants can now use the tokegating tools to dictate which token holders can and cannot gain access to exclusive products, NFT drops and benefits.

Crypto-friendly e-commerce giant Shopify has launched a suite of blockchain commerce tools to enhance the user experience of their web3-focused stores hosted by the platform.

Announcing the move via Twitter on Feb. 9, Shopify blockchain team designer @ryancreatescopy noted that “we've launched some fresh tools to help you buidl tokengating apps for Shopify merchants.”

In particular, expanded crypto wallet connect features and “tokengating” application programming interface (API) tools have been highlighted. The latter has been in early access beta access mode since June 2022 and was previously only available to a select number of merchants.

With tokegating, all applicable Shopify merchants can now set up their stores to dictate which token holders can and cannot gain access to exclusive products, NFT drops and benefits.

The tool verifies user eligibility via their connected wallet, and is being touted as a handy way for NFT Merchants to reward certain users or add exclusivity to specific products.

In terms of expanded crypto wallet support, Shopify has integrated with the Sign-In with Ethereum SIWE protocol led by the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and the Ethereum Foundation.

SIWE essentially enables secure user sign-ins and authentication of Ethereum accounts and ENS Domains without giving away private identifiers to third parties such as names, phone numbers and residential addresses.

The topic of private user information has been a sour spot for Shopify in the past. In April 2022, a group of disgruntled users filed a class-action lawsuit against the firm and hardware wallet provider Ledger concerning a hefty leak of user data that stemmed from the duo back in 2020.

ENS Labs community advocate @sadaf.eth highlighted the SIWE integration with Shopify via Twitter on Feb. 9, and linked to developer documents explaining how to build the tool into Shopify stores, much to the delight of some from the Ethereum community.

Lfggg pic.twitter.com/sjfptLkPwL
— broke.eth (@Melvininho) February 10, 2023

“The statementGenerator prop allows you to customize the statement displayed in a Sign-In with Ethereum message. The function receives the address of the wallet that has connected, allowing you to expand and customize your message statements to better suit your brand,” the document reads.

At this stage, once a merchant hooks up the SIWE feature on Shopify wallet connect, it appears that users will be able to click a “sign-in with Ethereum” button to connect their addresses via SIWE’s partnered intermediaries such as Coinbase, Fortmatic, WalletConnect, Portis and Torus.

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Nifty News: Yuga Labs breaks silence, X2Y2 outpaces OpenSea and more…

June 26, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bored Ape Yacth Club

Over the past seven days, X2Y2 generated $144.16 million worth of NFT sales compared to OpenSea’s $117.64 million, while Crawley Town F.C. is set to launch a tokenized third kit.

Yuga Labs has finally broken its silence over the conspiracy theory that alleges the team embedded alt-right and Nazi memes/imagery into the artwork and branding behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

As Cointelegraph previously reported, the BAYC conspiracy theory was once again brought into the limelight on June 20 after YouTuber Philion published a video exploring the supposed evidence that artist Ryder Ripps initially compiled at the start of this year.

In a Medium blog post shared via Twitter on June 25, Yuga Labs co-founder Gordon Goner said that the team finally decided to clear the air after the theory had gotten so much attention that one of their favorite podcasters was talking about it.

“We’ve not responded in further detail to these allegations because frankly they are insanely far-fetched.”

“That said, we woke up this morning to a podca///ster we respect talking about this conspiracy theory, and that was pretty surreal. Made us feel like it was time to come out and put an end to all this,” he added.

In particular, Ryder Ripps alleged the BAYC NFT artwork featured racist caricatures of Black and Asian people, and the project’s logo and branding have several nods to certain Nazi symbology and language. The artist also made a BAYC derivative NFT collection called RR/BAYC as a satire and protest against Yuga Labs.

While the team didn’t address all of the points outlined against the BAYC, it flat out denied the allegations that its logo was derived from the Nazi Totenkopf (skull and crossbones) symbol. It also reiterated that using Apes in the BAYC is a nod to crypto degens and not a racist troll. However, not everyone was pleased with their response, as several points went unaddressed.

dude’s like ‘we’re minorities’ and gets some sham cover from the ADL. Well I’m a jew and descendant of holocaust survivors and this imagery offends me but keep gaslighting pic.twitter.com/kbJlJaEYE4
— jpəġ jəđ (@h0listicrypto) June 24, 2022

In an update later that day, the Yuga Labs team also stated it had taken legal action and filed a lawsuit to “stop the continuous infringement, and other illegal attempts to bring harm” to the firm and community. Although It didn’t mention Ryder Ripps by name directly by name.

(1/2) The outpouring of support from our community today has been overwhelming. We will continue to be transparent with our community as we fight these slanderous claims. In order to put a stop to the continuous infringement, and other illegal attempts to bring harm to...
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) June 25, 2022

Volume on NFT marketplace X2Y2 surges past OpenSea

Over the past several weeks, the sales volume on Ethereum-based NFT marketplace X2Y2 has surged past the top platform in the sector OpenSea.

According to data from DappRadar, X2Y2 generated $144.16 million worth of NFT sales from just 11,534 traders over the past week, compared to the $117.64 million generated from 155,734 traders on OpenSea.

*Seven day NFT marketplace sales volume: DappRadar*

The X2YX platform launched in February earlier this year, and while it doesn’t appear to host the sale of any top-tier NFT projects, it does provide an OpenSea Sniper feature that enables users to bundle NFT purchases on both X2YX and OpenSea into one transaction.

X2YX has seen its daily volumes surge to new highs in June, with its highest ever recorded day of volume coming on June 6 with $32.92 million. One of the reasons behind the platform's bullish growth this month appears to be its zero trading fees promo from June 1 until June 30.

Crawley Town to release soccer kits tied to NFTs

Professional English football (soccer) club Crawley Town F.C. are rolling out a soccer kit (playing uniform) that can only be obtained by fans that purchase the corresponding NFT.

Crawley Town currently plies its trade in the fourth tier of the English professional league structure, and it was acquired by sports-focused crypto firm WAGMI late last year.

Pro-teams generally have three different kits each season, one for home games, one for away and a third alternate kit. In this instance, the third kit will be offered to fans via the sale of NFTs.

Speaking with U.K. news outfit the Mirror on June 25, Crowley Town co-owner Preston Johnson stressed that the club is not trying to launch NFTs for a quick profit and is instead looking for ways to integrate the tech with avenues such as shirts and ticketing:

"Our NFTs are more like virtual season tickets. They're not items we're trying to sell to local fans.”

BCware launches NFT app in Shopify App Store

California-based Web3 tech firm BCware has launched a new multi-chain NFT app in the Shopify App Store that enables merchants to provide NFT buying and selling services from multiple blockchains in their stores.

The app is currently integrated with Ethereum, Polygon, Flow and Solana, and also enables customers to pay via fiat or cryptocurrency. The firm also stated that the app will support “wallet onboarding for buyers who are new to crypto.”

The move comes the same week that Shopify rolled out an NFT-gated storefronts feature that allows brands/merchants to make their online stores more exclusive.

Sell Where You Tweet

You know Twitter is where your people are, and now they can discover your products directly on your profile.

So next time you have a tweet doing numbers, you can plug your own products instead of someone else’s. Right @trixiecosmetics? pic.twitter.com/teuIkQkzbL
— Shopify (@Shopify) June 22, 2022

Other Nifty News:

On June 24, Eminem tweeted that a new song called “From The D 2 The LBC” would be released. The post included the song’s art, which is in a comic book style with two cartoon monkeys representing both Snoop Dogg and Slim Shady and their connection to the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has signed an exclusive multi-year NFT partnership with crypto exchange Binance. The collaboration aims to introduce soccer fans to the Web3 ecosystem through global NFT campaigns.

Shopify unveils tokengated commerce as part of new connect-to-consumer experience

June 22, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Select merchant partners will be able to rollout exclusive goods for NFT tokenholders.

As part of a new series of connect-to-consumer initiatives developed this year, Shopify will allow merchants to connect with fans and drive sales by creating exclusive merchandise for tokenholders. The initiative, dubbed "tokengate," is available in early-access beta mode.

Tokengated Experiences

Ready to give superpowers to your most loyal fans?

Build even stronger communities around your brand and reward your people by unlocking exclusive shopping experiences. Think limited-edition merch drops, discounts, and much more (oh hey @doodles). pic.twitter.com/gyq5iu2GRH
— Shopify (@Shopify) June 22, 2022

To get started, vendors can create a tokengate shop directly on the Shopify app or add the feature directly in-store. Buyers would then need to connect their crypto wallet and verify they are owners of applicable nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, to shop gated merchandise or access exclusive events. The feature serves as a gateway between NFT communities and consumer brands on the platform.

In addition, vendors can partner with other brands for upcoming NFT drops and team up with Shopify's merchandising partners to develop premium products. Furthermore, vendors can mint custom NFTs on popular blockchains like Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL) and Flow (FLOW). Afterward, they can list and sell them right from their store.

The beta is open by invitation only to select merchants with an NFT collection. Neither the seller nor buyer needs to pay with crypto to purchase NFTs. Payment gateways include Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, various crypto payment gateways, and credit or debit cards. Buyers can claim their NFTs via email and add them directly to their wallets.

Doodles co-founder Evan Keast, whose NFT project has joined the initiative, commented:

"As an ambitious community-driven project, we've placed a strong emphasis on setting the standard for unique NFT collector experiences. By partnering with Shopify on tokengated merch, we surprised our holders and gave the ownership of a Doodle a whole new meaning."

Shopify

How does it access the web?

Volume on NFT marketplace X2Y2 surges past OpenSea

Crawley Town to release soccer kits tied to NFTs

BCware launches NFT app in Shopify App Store

Other Nifty News:

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