Author: NBTC

On Tuesday, Google will launch a chess tournament pitting leading AI models against each other, in a direct test of machine reasoning. It follows claims by Elon Musk on Monday that his chatbot, Grok, exhibits “outstanding reasoning” abilities. The event kicks off as part of the new Kaggle Gaming Arena, a platform for testing general-purpose AI agents in live, competitive environments.  The first tournament will feature daily chess matches between versions of six leading language models: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Deepseek, and Kimi. Unlike standard benchmark tests, the format puts AI strategy on public display by evaluating how models…

Binance announced that it will remove some margin trading pairs from the platform at 9:00 AM on August 8, 2025. Binance Margin to Remove Some Margin Trading Pairs on August 8th Pairs to be removed: Cross Margin Pairs: DOGS/FDUSD, MOVE/FDUSD, MANTA/FDUSD, PEOPLE/FDUSD Isolated Margin Pairs: DOGS/FDUSD, PEOPLE/FDUSD According to the decision, users will no longer be able to transfer assets belonging to these currency pairs to isolated margin accounts via manual transfer or Automatic Transfer Mode. Only users with outstanding debt in these tokens will be able to manually transfer assets up to the amount of the debt, minus their…

CACEIS, the asset servicing arm of Credit Agricole, has acquired a minority stake in French fintech Kriptown to support the launch of Lise, a blockchain-based exchange aimed at SMEs and mid-cap companies. Lise, short for Lightning Stock Exchange, is set to be Europe’s first tokenized exchange focused on streamlining equity financing and public listings for smaller firms, CACEIS said in a press release on Monday. Lise is currently awaiting regulatory approval as a DLT Trading and Settlement System (DLT TSS) under the European pilot regime. If approved, it would allow companies to issue, trade, and settle financial instruments directly on…

Perplexity’s crawlers kept accessing content from tens of thousands of websites even after those sites explicitly blocked them, according to internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare. The company said Monday it had delisted Perplexity from its verified bot program and implemented blocks against what it characterized as deceptive scraping practices. San Francisco-based Perplexity was founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas (CEO, former OpenAI researcher), Denis Yarats (former Facebook AI), Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski (co‑founders of Databricks). The company has received funding from investors including Elad Gil, Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), and Nvidia, among others, and was valued at $18 billion…

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Monday that it is opening access to bitcoin “options writing” for all users. The move is a direct response to a significant increase in retail demand for more strategic and sophisticated trading tools.Options are derivative contracts that allow the purchaser the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at a pre-determined price on or before a specific date. A call option gives the right to buy and represents a bullish bet on the market while a put option offers downside protection. Writing options refers to selling call or put, which is…

Binance has revealed the 30th project in its HODLer Airdrops program: Towns (TOWNS). This open protocol focuses on onchain membership systems that power exclusive group chats, offering users enhanced privacy and community experiences. The upcoming token distribution targets users who hold BNB in Simple Earn (Flexible or Locked) or On-Chain Yields products between July 14, 2025, 00:00 (UTC) and July 17, 2025, 23:59 (UTC). TOWNS Token Distribution & Listing Schedule Airdrop Distribution: Will be reflected in eligible user accounts within 24 hours. Spot Wallet Distribution: Will occur at least one hour before trading goes live. Listing Date: August 5, 2025,…

Decentralized exchange Hyperliquid has reimbursed nearly $2 million to users affected by a brief outage last week, a move that may strengthen confidence in decentralized trading platforms. The Hyperliquid platform’s application programming interface (API) suffered an outage last Tuesday, which saw traders sidelined from order execution for approximately 37 minutes before resuming operations, its website shows. On Monday, Hyperliquid issued refunds totaling $1.99 million in USDC (USDC) to affected users, onchain data from Hypurrscan shows. Source: Hypurrscan Hyperliquid’s rapid response and $2 million repayment following the half-hour outage were praised by users. “Over $1.5m has already been sent out to…

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. Phantom has acquired the Solana trading and analytics platform Solsniper, Blockworks has learned exclusively. Phantom declined to disclose the deal terms. Solsniper is one of a raft of platforms that provide advanced features and tracking tools for memecoin traders. Solsniper’s web app will continue to operate as a standalone platform, and Solsniper’s team, led by co-founder and CEO Max Zhuang, will join Phantom. While Phantom cut its teeth as a crypto wallet, the acquisition perhaps signals the well-funded platform’s plans to deepen its trading capabilities, especially after…

The NFT market had an exciting day on 4th August 2025, with Courtyard being the most traded collection and Blur, the largest NFT marketplace. There was continued activity on legacy projects, as well as on emerging projects, with some high-value transactions, and a shift in collector interest. #NFT MARKET OVERVIEW TOP COLLECTION #Courtyard – 24H Volume $2.25M… pic.twitter.com/ZwDjsNEQkO — PHOENIX – Crypto News & Analytics (@pnxgrp) August 4, 2025 Courtyard and Pudgy Penguins Lead Collection Rankings Courtyard had the largest number of trading activity among NFT collections, reaching a peak of $2.25 million in sales over an incredible 27,450 sales.…

A group of French lawmakers is preparing a draft law that would enable the use of surplus electricity from nuclear power plants to mine bitcoin , according to recent public statements.The proposal would install mining hardware at facilities owned by state utility Électricité de France (EDF), according to news outlet Le Monde. The process would take advantage of surplus energy generated by these nuclear power plants. France is the largest producer of nuclear power in the European Union, according to 2023 data from Eurostat. It accounted for 338,202 gigawatt hours, or more than half the 27-nation bloc’s total output. The…