A library of snippets
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For crypto, the moment is more existential. Derided for years as an industry dominated by gamblers and money launderers, crypto now has a moment to define itself as a political force in other terms — if, that is, its leaders stand for something more than higher asset prices.
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A typical comment was that of a German tech entrepreneur who described the announcement that the government would not acquire additional assets as “famous words than can unleash a bear market”. As inded they did. But who cares? Since when was it the responsibility of the US government
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The November 26 SSRS survey indicated that about 46 percent of adults still carry cash, while 34 percent seldom, if ever, carry it.
In general, the older you are, the more likely you are to like to carry cash. Likewise, men carry cash more often than women. The key for coin-collecting readers is that the 18- to 29-year-old group is the least likely to carry coins and bank notes, but those that never carry cash in this group only numbered 23 percent. That means 77 percent of this youngest age group surveyed still carry some physical money regularly.
From: Cash Is Still King for Many Americans, Especially Older Generations – Numismatic News.
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Olas, the original agent project in crypto, has officially launched Mech Marketplace: The AI Agent Bazaar, a place for AI agents to offer their skills, hire other agents’ services and collaborate autonomously.
With over 4 million agent transactions, including 2m+ agent-to-agent transactions, Olas is the undisputed leader of AI agent activity in crypto. Olas is the first to see entire economies of AI agents emerging on-chain, from predicting the future to decentralized finance. Before Olas’, agents in and outside of crypto have largely operated in silos, limited by their own capabilities or that of their platform and lacking a way to collaborate with other agents and dynamically gain more powerful skills.
From: Olas Launches the Mech Marketplace: The AI Agent Bazaar | Olas | Co-own AI.
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Identity & Payments Are Converging
From: Key Takeaways from STA Summit 2025: The Future of Identity & Payments is Here.
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Mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) and verifiable credentials (VCs) took center stage at the summit—and for good reason. With millions of mDLs already issued across the U.S. and beyond, the market is reaching a tipping point. For organizations ready to act, there’s a major opportunity to lead the way in transforming digital identity and unlocking new customer experiences.
To borrow a quote from Simon Curry, VP of TBC at Visa, in his fireside chat at the Secure Technology Alliance Summit 2025 in San Diego, “mDLs offer the best option we have today in the arms race we’re in to combat the ever-evolving world of threat and fraud from bad actors and AI — and it’s a significant leap forward”.
From: Key Takeaways from STA Summit 2025: The Future of Identity & Payments is Here.
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When the system went down on Thursday, the chaos that descended in the 10 hours it took to identify and fix the problem blocked the welfare payments of more than 15,000 mostly elderly and poor Greeks, a large number of salaries and pensions in Austria, plus several financial trades.
At the heart of the escalating turmoil was a piece of malfunctioning hardware, but it took hours for the ECB’s technicians to spot the problem after an initial, erroneous diagnosis of database issues, according to the ECB messages and officials at the ECB and three other euro zone central banks.From: Exclusive: How ECB dodged a payment disaster in 10 hours of tech meltdown | Reuters.
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Apple (correctly) thinks that apps and websites should implement age assurance, an exemplar of credentials-based transactions that depend on a digital identity infrastructure that doesn’t yet exist, whereas Meta (incorrectly) thinks that age assurance is a great idea as long as they don’t have to do it and that the app stores should take care of it.
We all know what the problem is. None of us want children seeing inappropriate and potentially dangerous material online. But they do. All the time.
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A new Ofcom survey shows that 22 percent of eight-to-17 year olds lie that they are 18 or over on social media apps, easily bypassing flaccid self-declaring age assurance methods.
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The Australian government has pledged to legislate an age limit of 16 years for social media access, with penalties for online platforms that do not comply.
But the Labor government has not spelled out how it expects Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and others to actually enforce that age limit. Anthony Albanese is facing pressure from the Coalition opposition to rush the bill through parliament in the next three weeks, although a federal trial into age assurance technology has not yet commenced.
Albanese and the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, did not rule out the potential for social media users to have their faces subject to biometric scanning, for online platforms to verify users’ ages using a government database, or for all social media users – regardless of age – being subject to age checks, only saying it would be up to tech companies to set their own processes.
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Apple has released a white paper that lays out its position on age assurance and outlines new tools it will roll out to “help parents protect their kids in a way that is designed around privacy.” It also formally and firmly states its belief that the responsibility for age assurance measures should be on apps offering age-restricted content – and not app stores that offer them for download.
Its publication has drawn a response from Meta, which is among the loudest firms saying that age assurance should be handled by app stores, continuing a back-and-forth that has also drawn in the porn industry and digital rights activists.From: Apple volleys age verification question back to sites and apps | Biometric Update.
Apple (correctly) thinks that apps and websites should implement age assurance (which I take to be an exemplar of credentials-based transactions that depned on a digital identity infrastructure) whereas Meta (incorrectly) thinks that age assurance is a great idea as long as they don’t have to do it.
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A man in Shanghai lost nearly $28,000 after being tricked into a long-distance “relationship” with an AI-generated girlfriend, Chinese state media reported on Wednesday.
Scammers used generative artificial intelligence software to create realistic video and still images of a young woman in order to pose as the fictional “Ms. Jiao”, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
The victim transferred nearly 200,000 yuan (nearly $28,000) to what he believed was his online lover’s bank account, after the scammers used the fake images to convince him that his “girlfriend” needed funds to open a business and help a relative with medical bills.
The scammers even created a fake ID and medical reports to support the ruse, CCTV reported.
From: Chinese Man Scammed Of Nearly $28,000 By AI ‘Girlfriend’: Report.
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Agent autonomy is a conundrum. You lose your productivity gains if you impose excessive supervision. Yet, in many cases, supervision is precisely what is needed to avoid disaster. Since the emergence of generative AI, there have been sufficient examples of algorithmic anarchy to make leaders wary — from an auto dealer chatbot offering a brand new car for a dollar, to an airline that was held liable for policies its AI chatbot hallucinated that did not exist. To avoid that problem, organizations are building AI agents that connect directly to internal systems and data, and new standards are emerging. That is a double-edged sword. Agents may be less likely to make things up if they’re relying on internal systems and data. But, as they become more trusted, they will also have a growing influence over life-altering actions such as approving home loans, allocating social security, protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, hiring or firing staff, or even controlling lethal weapons systems.
From: How Much Supervision Should Companies Give AI Agents?.
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