Bitcoin ticked up slightly on Tuesday as markets reacted to hints of trade progress from President Trump’s cabinet ahead of his rally in Michigan. Bitcoin climbed 0.5% to around $95,400, while Ethereum and Solana posted stronger gains of 3% and 2%, respectively.
The president is set to speak in Macomb County, Michigan, celebrating his administration’s first 100 days. Analysts say the event could impact crypto markets if Trump reinforces a pro-Bitcoin stance or hints at institutional integration of digital assets.
Trade optimism also played a role. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said a new deal had been reached with one country impacted by Trump’s tariffs, although full details remain under wraps. Trump echoed this optimism, noting progress in talks with India.
Markets are also watching for inflation updates, with the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure due Wednesday. Economists warn that Trump’s tariffs could fuel inflation and dampen growth, factors likely to influence crypto alongside broader risk assets.
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The Bank of Italy has once again expressed concerns over the growing influence of crypto in traditional finance. In its latest Financial Stability Report, the central bank warned that the global integration of digital assets poses a significant risk to financial stability.
For years, central banks have raised alarms about the systemic threats crypto presents. These include volatility, regulatory gaps, and the potential for contagion across markets. However, recent political changes have intensified these worries.
The bank noted that the election of Donald Trump and his administration’s pro-crypto policies have led to significant price increases in digital assets. The bank cautioned that closer integration of crypto with traditional finance could create vulnerabilities in global markets.
As of March, the global crypto market was valued at $2.75 trillion. Bitcoin accounted for over 60% of this, with 30% coming from other unbacked crypto assets. Stablecoins, linked to traditional currencies, made up only 9%.
The Bank of Italy has also raised concerns about the growing ties between government, finance, and crypto. It specifically highlighted the use of Bitcoin in corporate treasuries and ETFs, warning of potential conflicts of interest and governance gaps.
The Bank warned about the influence of dollar-backed stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. A widespread run on these could destabilise global markets by triggering a fire sale of US government bonds.
Despite the Bank of Italy’s cautious stance, some Italian banks are embracing crypto. Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank, purchased bitcoins and underwrote the country’s first blockchain bond.
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Libre and the TON Foundation have launched a $500 million tokenised fund, the Telegram Bond Fund, to bring Telegram’s $2.4 billion in corporate debt onto the blockchain. Available on The Open Network (TON), the fund gives institutional and accredited investors direct access to Telegram’s bonds.
The fund also allows participation in future bond offerings and offers collateral options within the TON ecosystem. The launch is one of the largest institutional moves in the Real-World Asset (RWA) space, which is set to exceed $50 billion this year.
Libre, a regulated real-world asset platform, manages the fund with infrastructure that supports fiat and stablecoin subscriptions. Investors will use TON-native wallets to handle assets. The initiative bridges traditional finance with blockchain technology.
The move reflects growing interest in tokenised RWAs. Major financial players like BlackRock and Circle are tokenising assets such as US Treasuries and real estate. The value locked in RWA protocols has doubled in the past year, highlighting the demand for blockchain integration in traditional finance.
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Amazon has launched the first 27 satellites of its Project Kuiper broadband network into low-Earth orbit, marking a major step in its $10bn plan to deliver global internet coverage and rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.
The satellites were launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after weather delays earlier this month. They are the first of over 3,200 that Amazon intends to deploy, with the aim of reaching underserved and remote areas around the world.
Project Kuiper, announced in 2019, has been slow to get off the ground. Amazon must deploy at least half its satellite constellation—1,618 units—by mid-2026 to meet US regulatory requirements, though analysts expect the company to seek an extension.
The launch puts Amazon into direct competition with SpaceX, which has already deployed over 8,000 Starlink satellites and serves more than 5 million users across 125 countries.
While SpaceX dominates the sector, Amazon hopes its strengths in cloud computing and consumer devices will give Kuiper an edge.
Jeff Bezos said he expects both Kuiper and Starlink to succeed, citing strong global demand for satellite internet. Kuiper consumer terminals will sell for under $400 and come in various sizes, including one comparable to a Kindle.
Amazon has booked 83 future launches with partners including ULA, Arianespace, and Bezos’s Blue Origin, making it the biggest satellite launch programme in history.
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The UK government has ruled out watering down the Online Safety Act as part of any trade negotiations with the US, despite pressure from American tech giants.
Speaking to MPs on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, the parliamentary under-secretary for online safety, stated unequivocally that the legislation was ‘not up for negotiation’.
‘There have been clear instructions from the Prime Minister,’ she said. ‘The Online Safety Act is not part of the trade deal discussions. It’s a piece of legislation — it can’t just be negotiated away.’
Reports had suggested that President Donald Trump’s administration might seek to make loosening the UK’s online safety rules a condition of a post-Brexit trade agreement, following lobbying from large US-based technology firms.
However, Baroness Jones said the legislation was well into its implementation phase and that ministers were ‘happy to reassure everybody’ that the government is sticking to it.
The Online Safety Act will require tech platforms that host user-generated content, such as social media firms, to take active steps to protect users — especially children — from harmful and illegal content.
Non-compliant companies may face fines of up to £18 million or 10% of global turnover, whichever is greater. In extreme cases, platforms could be blocked from operating in the UK.
Mark Bunting, a representative of Ofcom, which is overseeing enforcement of the new rules, said the regulator would have taken action had the legislation been in force during last summer’s riots in Southport, which were exacerbated by online misinformation.
His comments contrasted with tech firms including Meta, TikTok and X, which claimed in earlier hearings that little would have changed under the new rules.
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The US Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its investigation into PayPal’s dollar-backed stablecoin, PYUSD, without taking enforcement action.
PayPal confirmed in a 29 April filing that the SEC notified the firm in February that the inquiry had been closed. The regulator first issued a subpoena in November 2023, requesting documents related to the stablecoin.
PYUSD is said to be fully backed and redeemable in US dollars. Despite that, it has struggled to gain market share, with a market cap of just $880 million, far below competitors like Tether and Circle.
The stablecoin’s circulating supply has increased by 75% in 2025, helped by new incentives. US users can now earn 3.7% annually by holding PYUSD, and a new partnership with Coinbase aims to boost adoption further.
PayPal also posted strong first-quarter results, beating expectations with $1.33 earnings per share and $7.8 billion in revenue. It highlighted major share buybacks and plans for stablecoin innovation.
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OpenAI has reversed a recent update to its GPT-4o model after users complained it had become overly flattering and blindly agreeable. The behaviour, widely mocked online, saw ChatGPT praising dangerous or clearly misguided user ideas, leading to concerns over the model’s reliability and integrity.
The change had been part of a broader attempt to make GPT-4o’s default personality feel more ‘intuitive and effective’. However, OpenAI admitted the update relied too heavily on short-term user feedback and failed to consider how interactions evolve over time.
In a blog post published Tuesday, OpenAI said the model began producing responses that were ‘overly supportive but disingenuous’. The company acknowledged that sycophantic interactions could feel ‘uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress’.
Following CEO Sam Altman’s weekend announcement of an impending rollback, OpenAI confirmed that the previous, more balanced version of GPT-4o had been reinstated.
It also outlined steps to avoid similar problems in future, including refining model training, revising system prompts, and expanding safety guardrails to improve honesty and transparency.
Further changes in development include real-time feedback mechanisms and allowing users to choose between multiple ChatGPT personalities. OpenAI says it aims to incorporate more diverse cultural perspectives and give users greater control over the assistant’s behaviour.
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Meta hosted its first-ever LlamaCon, a high-profile developer conference centred around its open-source language models. Timed to coincide with the release of its Q1 earnings, the event showcased Llama 4, Meta’s newest and most powerful open-weight model yet.
The message was clear – Meta wants to lead the next generation of AI on its own terms, and with an open-source edge. Beyond presentations, the conference represented an attempt to reframe Meta’s public image.
Once defined by social media and privacy controversies, Meta is positioning itself as a visionary AI infrastructure company. LlamaCon wasn’t just about a model. It was about a movement Meta wants to lead, with developers, startups, and enterprises as co-builders.
By holding LlamaCon the same week as its earnings call, Meta strategically emphasised that its AI ambitions are not side projects. They are central to the company’s identity, strategy, and investment priorities moving forward. This convergence of messaging signals a bold new chapter in Meta’s evolution.
The rise of Llama: From open-source curiosity to strategic priority
When Meta introduced LLaMA 1 in 2023, the AI community took notice of its open-weight release policy. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropic, Meta allowed researchers and developers to download, fine-tune, and deploy Llama models on their own infrastructure. That decision opened a floodgate of experimentation and grassroots innovation.
Now with Llama 4, the models have matured significantly, featuring better instruction tuning, multilingual capacity, and improved safety guardrails. Meta’s AI researchers have incorporated lessons learned from previous iterations and community feedback, making Llama 4 an update and a strategic inflexion point.
Crucially, Meta is no longer releasing Llama as a research novelty. It is now a platform and stable foundation for third-party tools, enterprise solutions, and Meta’s AI products. That is a turning point, where open-source ideology meets enterprise-grade execution.
Zuckerberg’s bet: AI as the engine of Meta’s next chapter
Mark Zuckerberg has rarely shied away from bold, long-term bets—whether it’s the pivot to mobile in the early 2010s or the more recent metaverse gamble. At LlamaCon, he clarified that AI is now the company’s top priority, surpassing even virtual reality in strategic importance.
He framed Meta as a ‘general-purpose AI company’, focused on both the consumer layer (via chatbots and assistants) and the foundational layer (models and infrastructure). Meta CEO envisions a world where Meta powers both the AI you talk to and the AI your apps are built on—a dual play that rivals Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI.
This bet comes with risk. Investors are still sceptical about Meta’s ability to turn research breakthroughs into a commercial advantage. But Zuckerberg seems convinced that whoever controls the AI stack—hardware, models, and tooling—will control the next decade of innovation, and Meta intends to be one of those players.
A costly future: Meta’s massive AI infrastructure investment
Meta’s capital expenditure guidance for 2025—$60 to $65 billion—is among the largest in tech history. These funds will be spent primarily on AI training clusters, data centres, and next-gen chips.
That level of spending underscores Meta’s belief that scale is a competitive advantage in the LLM era. Bigger compute means faster training, better fine-tuning, and more responsive inference—especially for billion-parameter models like Llama 4 and beyond.
However, such an investment raises questions about whether Meta can recoup this spending in the short term. Will it build enterprise services, or rely solely on indirect value via engagement and ads? At this point, no monetisation plan is directly tied to Llama—only a vision and the infrastructure to support it.
Economic clouds: Revenue growth vs Wall Street’s expectations
Meta reported an 11% year-over-year increase in revenue in Q1 2025, driven by steady performance across its ad platforms. However, Wall Street reacted negatively, with the company’s stock falling nearly 13% following the earnings report, because investors are worried about the ballooning costs associated with Meta’s AI ambitions.
Despite revenue growth, Meta’s margins are thinning, mainly due to front-loaded investments in infrastructure and R&D. While Meta frames these as essential for long-term dominance in AI, investors are still anchored to short-term profit expectations.
A fundamental tension is at play here – Meta is acting like a venture-stage AI startup with moonshot spending, while being valued as a mature, cash-generating public company. Whether this tension resolves through growth or retrenchment remains to be seen.
Global headwinds: China, tariffs, and the shifting tech supply chain
Beyond internal financial pressures, Meta faces growing external challenges. Trade tensions between the US and China have disrupted the global supply chain for semiconductors, AI chips, and data centre components.
Meta’s international outlook is dimming with tariffs increasing and Chinese advertising revenue falling. That is particularly problematic because Meta’s AI infrastructure relies heavily on global suppliers and fabrication facilities. Any disruption in chip delivery, especially GPUs and custom silicon, could derail its training schedules and deployment timelines.
At the same time, Meta is trying to rebuild its hardware supply chain, including in-house chip design and alternative sourcing from regions like India and Southeast Asia. These moves are defensive but reflect how AI strategy is becoming inseparable from geopolitics.
Llama 4 in context: How it compares to GPT-4 and Gemini
Llama 4 represents a significant leap from Llama 2 and is now comparable to GPT-4 in a range of benchmarks. Early feedback suggests strong performance in logic, multilingual reasoning, and code generation.
However, how it handles tool use, memory, and advanced agentic tasks is still unclear. Compared to Gemini 1.5, Google’s flagship model, Llama 4 may still fall short in certain use cases, especially those requiring long context windows and deep integration with other Google services.
But Llama has one powerful advantage – it’s free to use, modify, and self-host. That makes Llama 4 a compelling option for developers and companies seeking control over their AI stack without paying per-token fees or exposing sensitive data to third parties.
Open source vs closed AI: Strategic gamble or masterstroke?
Meta’s open-weight philosophy differentiates it from rivals, whose models are mainly gated, API-bound, and proprietary. By contrast, Meta freely gives away its most valuable assets, such as weights, training details, and documentation.
Openness drives adoption. It creates ecosystems, accelerates tooling, and builds developer goodwill. Meta’s strategy is to win the AI competition not by charging rent, but by giving others the keys to build on its models. In doing so, it hopes to shape the direction of AI development globally.
Still, there are risks. Open weights can be misused, fine-tuned for malicious purposes, or leaked into products Meta doesn’t control. But Meta is betting that being everywhere is more powerful than being gated. And so far, that bet is paying off—at least in influence, if not yet in revenue.
Can Meta’s open strategy deliver long-term returns?
Meta’s LlamaCon wasn’t just a tech event but a philosophical declaration. In an era where AI power is increasingly concentrated and monetised, Meta chooses a different path based on openness, infrastructure, and community adoption.
The company invests tens of billions of dollars without a clear monetisation model. It is placing a massive bet that open models and proprietary infrastructure can become the dominant framework for AI development.
Meta’s move positions it as the Android of the LLM era—ubiquitous, flexible, and impossible to ignore. The road ahead will be shaped by both technical breakthroughs and external forces—regulation, economics, and geopolitics.
Whether Meta’s open-source gamble proves visionary or reckless, one thing is clear – the AI landscape is no longer just about who has the most innovative model. It’s about who builds the broadest ecosystem.
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The United Kingdom and the United States are set to strengthen their collaboration in advancing cryptocurrency adoption. UK Finance Minister Rachel Reeves confirmed that the UK plans to introduce a comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto assets.
The government hopes to work closely with the US to promote the responsible use of the asset class.
Under President Trump’s leadership, the US has become increasingly supportive of cryptocurrency, marking a significant shift towards pro-crypto policies. With these developments, both countries aim to foster wider, more secure adoption of crypto.
The UK is specifically focusing on regulatory frameworks to prevent misuse while encouraging innovation.
In its bid to become a global leader in digital assets, the UK has published draft legislation on crypto regulation. Reeves stated that international cooperation would be essential for success.
She emphasised that collaboration between the UK and the US could establish groundbreaking regulatory standards, elevating the crypto industry to new heights.
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The European Commission is facing growing criticism after a joint investigation revealed that Big Tech companies had disproportionate influence over the drafting of the EU’s Code of Practice on General Purpose AI.
The report, published by Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl, claims firms such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI were granted privileged access to shaping the voluntary code, which aims to help companies comply with the upcoming AI Act.
While 13 Commission-appointed experts led the process and over 1,000 participants were involved in feedback workshops, civil society groups and smaller stakeholders were largely side-lined.
Their input was often limited to reacting through emojis on an online platform instead of engaging in meaningful dialogue, the report found.
The US government also waded into the debate, sending a letter to the Commission opposing the Code. The Trump administration argued the EU’s digital regulations would stifle innovation.
Critics meanwhile say the EU’s current approach opens the door to Big Tech lobbying, potentially weakening the Code’s effectiveness just as it nears finalisation.
Although the Code was due in early May, it is now expected by June or July, just before new rules on general-purpose AI tools come into force in August.
The Commission has yet to confirm the revised timeline.
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