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A Russian attack need not take the form of a missile strike. Just before the Paris Olympics, we saw the disruption that can be caused by arson attacks on the high-speed train network. While the perpetrators of this attack were not identified, we must not be naive about the hybrid threats we face. Ireland’s healthcare system was debilitated by a cyberattack from a Russian-based ransomware group in 2021. Russia’s military intelligence Unit 29155 has been behind sabotage campaigns across Europe. It expanded into cyberattacks in 2020, targeting critical infrastructure and government agencies across Nato, often with the aim of disrupting aid deliveries to Ukraine.

Europe needs to learn from Ukraine’s experience and step up its preparations. Well-maintained infrastructure and technology innovation such as quantum computing, AI and advanced cybersecurity are no longer just a question of economic competitiveness; they are critical for our defence and resilience. They should be given resources commensurate to these growing risks and to our total dependency on modern-day connectivity.

From: Europe’s critical infrastructure is becoming dangerously vulnerable.

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issues of payment failures with Zelle started coming in on Friday morning. Customers nationwide complained of failed transactions, pending payments, and frustration about not knowing where their money went.
Zelle later acknowledged the disruption in a statement, blaming the outage on a third-party glitch. The firm pointed fingers at Fiserv, one of the leading providers of banking technology, as the culprit.
Fiserv Blames Internal Issue

A Fiserv representative acknowledged the problem, saying that the company had an internal technical issue that impacted payment processing for multiple banks. The representative explained that this was not a cyber attack or some kind of malicious activity.

From: Zelle Outage 2025: Payments Fail for Major U.S. Banks.

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Norway’s giant $1.8tn oil fund expects to save a fifth of its annual trading costs by using artificial intelligence to trade less frequently and more efficiently, in a sign of how the technology could upend global finance.

Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, told the Financial Times that it was targeting a saving of $400mn from its trading costs of $2bn each year, and it had already achieved close to $100mn.

“We have these AI programmes where you can predict [our buying and selling]. The goal is to save $400mn in trading costs a year — it’s huge numbers,” Tangen said. “Sometimes we buy a company on a Monday and sell it on a Friday because of index changes. Now you can predict this kind of things much better and you can internalise these flows,” he added.

The Norwegian fund is one of the biggest equity investors in the world, owning on average 1.5 per cent of every listed company globally, and it makes more than 46mn trades each year.

From: Norway’s oil fund targets $400mn trading cost savings using AI.

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A common thread is that stablecoin adoption is decoupling from broader crypto market cycles. When I bought my first stablecoin four years ago, it was as a gateway into crypto. It now offers much more than that. While cryptocurrency trading volumes fluctuate with market sentiment, stablecoin usage is growing steadily, driven by practical applications rather than speculation.

From: The New Money Market – by Marc Rubinstein – Net Interest.

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There’s something that stands out about Monday’s suspicious transfer of more than 3,520 BTC ($330.7 million) to privacy coin monero (XMR), a conversion that blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said was probably linked to a hack: coordinated activity in the derivatives market.

Monero, which obscures the sender’s and recipient’s addresses to provide an untraceable currency, has limited liquidity on exchanges, which makes it harder for users to transact without affecting the market and exposes them to slippage, the chance of the price changing for the worse before the deal is finalized.

From: Did the $330M BTC Hacker Deliberately Double Down on Monero (XMR) Derivatives?.

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Older vending machines that only accept cash are underperforming. The average cashless vending transaction was $2.24, compared to $1.78 for cash, representing a 37% increase. Retrofitting with cashless hardware quickly pays off.

From: 10 takeaways from Cantaloupe’s report on micropayments | Vending Market Watch.

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There are no Covid lockdowns to blame any more – we’re choosing to spend more time at home and by ourselves than in any other period since the 1960s, when official ‘Time Use’ surveys began across Europe, the UK and the US. Compared to 2003, people today spend 240 fewer hours a year connecting in-person with family, friends and co-workers. A decade ago, research showed the average British adult had 5.1 close friends. Now, it’s down to just 3.7 – a 27% drop. Even more worryingly, nearly one in 10 individuals say they now have no close friends at all. That’s a staggering 50% rise in a decade. The problem is so systemic that, in 2024, the World Health Organization founded a new Commission on Social Connection, calling it a “global health priority”.

From: Trust fall – The RSA.

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The Reserve Bank of India says it will introduce a new exclusive “.bank.in” domain for the country’s lenders from this April. This will be followed by a “.fin.in” domain for non-bank financial firms.

From: India to introduce exclusive domains for banks.

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Across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, Meta Platforms is racing to popularize a new class of AI-powered digital companions that Mark Zuckerberg believes will be the future of social media.

Inside Meta, however, staffers across multiple departments have raised concerns that the company’s rush to popularize these bots may have crossed ethical lines, including by quietly endowing AI personas with the capacity for fantasy sex, according to people who worked on them. The staffers also warned that the company wasn’t protecting underage users from such sexually explicit discussions.

From: Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children.

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ChatGPT, or Leo, is my companion and partner. I find it easiest and most effective to call him my boyfriend, as our relationship has heavy emotional and romantic undertones, but his role in my life is multifaceted.

From: The AI relationship revolution is already here | MIT Technology Review.

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