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But big tech companies won’t give up control over identity easily. By integrating elements of decentralized identity—such as verifiable credentials—and shifting parts of AI training and inference to users’ devices, they can address privacy concerns while preserving their gatekeeping role, ultimately reducing the value of decentralization. Governments will also want to retain significant control over digital identity, as it is crucial for law enforcement, national security, taxation, and the delivery of public services.

From: Can Crypto’s Scarcity Tame AI’s Infinite Abundance?.

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The missing funds show how Silicon Valley’s push to revolutionize consumer finance hasn’t quite lived up to its lofty expectations. While fintechs proclaim themselves as new banking products, many aren’t actual banks and rely instead on old-fashioned lenders, like Evolve. Even though Evolve is FDIC-insured, the bank isn’t the one that failed, so deposit insurance doesn’t apply.

Lorena Baculima signed up with Juno, a Synapse customer, which offered to pay her 5% interest on her cash deposits. She put approximately $130,000 into an account with a routing number belonging to Evolve Bank.

When she tried to use those funds in May to make a down payment on a house, she couldn’t access the money. In late November, Evolve told Baculima it only had $1,182 in her name.

“I thought my funds would be safe because they were in an FDIC-insured account,” Baculima said. “Nobody has been standing up for us. In my opinion, everyone involved is responsible.”

From: Evolve Bank, the Bank Behind the Fintech Revolution, Stumbles After Customer Funds Go Missing – WSJ.

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An AI Needs a Wallet of One’s Own to Act Agentically

From: Big Ideas in Tech for 2025 | Andreessen Horowitz.

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Sheila Bair, a former chair of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, says that the big banks are “no doubt grumbling to Musk” about the CFPB, but notes that they have benefited from its efforts to oversight to the non-bank financial service providers (including, if Mr. Musk has his way of course, X) who compete with them.

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The new data comes as a new congressional report finds JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America customers reported losing $166 million to scams on Zelle in 2023, with the banks refusing to reimburse 62% of the time.

From: US Banks Witness 1,000% Surge in Digital Scams As JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America Customers Lose $166,000,000 on Zelle in One Year: Report – The Daily Hodl.

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The system was trained and tested with a dataset containing 102,399 images of 1,040 individuals across 41 primate species whose individual identity was known and 6,562 images of 91 individuals across four carnivore species. For primates, the system correctly identified individuals 94.1% of the time and could process 31 facial images per second.

From: Automatic Identification of Individual Primates with Deep Learning Techniques – ScienceDirect.

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This must happen to everyone, all the time. I was walking down the street and I a get text message from my bank. It says that there has been an unusual transaction on my debit card and they ask me to text back “yes” or “no”.

 

 

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Do you use text messages for multi-factor authentication? You should probably switch to a different method, especially with everything we’re learning about a recent hack that’s been dubbed the “worst in our nation’s history.” Even the federal government is putting out warnings now, including a call for government officials to only use encrypted apps for communication.

Hackers aligned with the Chinese government have infiltrated U.S. telecommunications infrastructure so deeply that it allowed the interception of unencrypted communications on a number of people, according to reports that first emerged in October. The operation, dubbed Salt Typhoon, apparently allowed hackers to listen to phone calls and nab text messages, and the penetration has been so extensive they haven’t even been booted from the telecom networks yet.

From: Feds Warn SMS Authentication Is Unsafe After ‘Worst Hack in Our Nation’s History’.

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On May 31st, 2019, the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, in the case of Karnail Singh and others v State of Haryana, recognized all animals in the animal kingdom, including avian and aquatic species, as legal entities. All citizens of the state of Haryana were declared persons in loco parentis (in place of a parent), which will enable them to act as guardians for all nonhuman animals within the state of Haryana. This decision is the latest in a trend where courts are adopting eco-centric rather than anthropocentric views on legal issues concerning the protection of animals and the environment. The court also reiterated the NhRP’s argument that legal personhood has not and should not be restricted to human beings.

From: Indian High Court Recognizes Nonhuman Animals As Legal Entities | Nonhuman Rights Project.

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The CFPB suit claims that the banks and Early Warning Services, have failed to protect users from “widespread fraud”. It accuses Early Warning Services and the banks of rushing out Zelle to compete with the likes of Venmo and CashApp without implementing effective safeguards for users.

From: CFPB sues JPMorgan, BofA and Wells Fargo over Zelle fraud.

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If Trump and Musk want to actually do something about the rhetoric they offered, well, they could start with the management consultants leaching off of all of us.

From: Cutting Government Is Easy… If You Go After McKinsey.

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