A Russian lawmaker has proposed recognising crypto as marital property to clarify asset ownership in divorce cases. The bill, introduced by Igor Antropenko of the United Russia party, seeks to amend Articles 34 and 36 of the Family Code to classify crypto acquired during marriage as joint property.
Digital assets obtained before marriage or through gifts would remain individually owned.
The proposal aims to address what Antropenko described as ‘risks to property rights’ arising from the current legal ambiguity surrounding digital currencies. It has been sent to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Central Bank Chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina for review.
The explanatory note highlights the constitutional obligation to protect property rights and cites the growing use of crypto among Russian citizens for investment and savings.
Russia’s move mirrors South Korea’s approach, where courts already recognise cryptocurrencies as divisible marital assets. Under Article 839-2 of Korea’s Civil Act, spouses can request investigations into hidden crypto holdings and either liquidate or divide tokens directly.
Blockchain transparency has made digital asset tracking easier than tracing cash, closing loopholes in asset concealment during divorce.
The proposal comes as Russia’s crypto activity hit $376.3 billion between July 2024 and June 2025, overtaking all European markets. Growing use of DeFi, stablecoins, and plans for a national crypto bank show increasing state involvement in digital finance.
Legal recognition of crypto as property would bring family law in line with this broader regulatory shift.
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Tech firms led crypto’s hiring rebound, adding over 12,000 roles since late 2022, according to A16z’s State of Crypto 2025. Finance and consulting contributed 6,000, offsetting talent pulled into AI after ChatGPT’s debut. Net, crypto gained 1,000 positions as workers rotated in from tech, fintech, and education.
The recovery tracks a market turn: crypto capitalisation topping US$4T and new Bitcoin highs. A friendlier US policy stance on stablecoins and digital-asset oversight buoyed sentiment. Institutions from JPMorgan to BlackRock and Fidelity widened offerings beyond pilots.
Hiring is diversifying beyond developers toward compliance, infrastructure, and product. Firms are moving from proofs of concept to production systems with clearer revenue paths. Result: broader role mix and steadier talent pipelines.
A16z contrasts AI centralisation with crypto’s open ethos. OpenAI/Anthropic dominate AI-native revenue; big clouds hold most of the infrastructure share; NVIDIA leads GPUs. Crypto advocates pitch blockchains as a counterweight via verifiable compute and open rails.
Utility signals mature, too. Stablecoins settled around US$9T in 12 months, up 87% year over year. That’s over half of Visa’s annual volume and five times that of PayPal’s.
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Pullman’s intervention comes amid increasing concern in the literary community about how generative AI models are built using large volumes of existing texts, often without permission or clear compensation. He argues that uninhibited scraping undermines the rights of creators and could hollow out the foundations of culture.
He has called on UK policymakers to establish clearer rules and safeguards over how AI systems access, store, and reuse writers’ content. Pullman warns that without intervention, authors may lose control over their work, and the public could be deprived of authentic, quality literature.
His statement adds to growing pressure from writers, unions and rights bodies calling for better transparency, consent mechanisms and a balance between innovation and creator rights.
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The European Commission has launched its Cloud Sovereignty Framework to assess the independence of cloud services. The initiative defines clear criteria and scoring methods for evaluating how providers meet EU sovereignty standards.
Under the framework, the Sovereign European Assurance Level, or SEAL, will rank services by compliance. Assessments cover strategic, legal, operational, and technological aspects, aiming to strengthen data security and reduce reliance on foreign systems.
Officials say the framework will guide both public authorities and private companies in choosing secure cloud options. It also supports the EU’s broader goal of achieving technological autonomy and protecting sensitive information.
The Commission’s move follows growing concern over extra-EU data transfers and third-country surveillance. Industry observers view it as a significant step toward Europe’s ambition for trusted, sovereign digital infrastructure.
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Cloudflare’s chief executive Matthew Prince has urged the UK regulator to curb Google’s AI practices. He met with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in London to argue that Google’s bundled crawlers give it excessive power.
Prince said Google uses the same web crawler to gather data for both search and AI products. Blocking the crawler, he added, can also disrupt advertising systems, leaving websites financially exposed.
Cloudflare, which supplies network services to most major AI companies, has proposed separating Google’s AI and search crawlers. Prince believes the change would create fairer access to online content for smaller AI developers.
He also provided data to the UK CMA showing why rivals cannot easily replicate Google’s infrastructure. Media groups have echoed his concerns, warning that Google’s dominance risks deepening inequalities across the AI ecosystem.
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JLR’s cyberattack is pegged at £1.9bn, the UK’s costliest on record. Production paused for five weeks from 1 September across Solihull, Halewood, and Wolverhampton. CMC says 5,000 firms were hit, with full recovery expected by January 2026.
JLR is restoring manufacturing in phases and declined to comment on the estimate. UK dealer systems were intermittently down, orders were cancelled or delayed, and suppliers faced uncertainty. More than half of the losses fall on JLR; the remainder hits its supply chain and local economies.
The CMC classed the incident as Category 3 on its five-level scale. Chair Ciaran Martin warned organisations to harden critical networks and plan for disruption. The CMC’s assessment draws on public data, surveys, and interviews rather than on disclosed forensic evidence.
Researchers say costs hinge on the attack type, which JLR has not confirmed. Data theft is faster to recover than ransomware; wiper malware would be worse. A claimed hacker group linked to earlier high-profile breaches is unverified.
The CMC’s estimate excludes any ransom, which could add tens of millions of dollars. Earlier this year, retail hacks at M&S, the Co-op, and Harrods were tagged Category 2. Those were pegged at £270m–£440m, below the £506m cited by some victims.
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Twenty-five EU countries, joined by Norway and Iceland, recently signed a declaration supporting tougher child protection rules online. The plan calls for a digital age of majority, potentially restricting under-15s or under-16s from joining social platforms.
France and Denmark back full bans for children below 15, while others, prefer verified parental consent. Some nations argue parents should retain primary responsibility, with the state setting only basic safeguards.
Brussels faces pressure to propose EU-wide legislation, but several capitals insist decisions should stay national. Estonia and Belgium declined to sign the declaration, warning that new bans risk overreach and calling instead for digital education.
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Datuk Pua Khein-Seng, inventor of the single-chip USB flash drive and CEO of Phison, warns that AI machines will generate 1,000 times more data than humans. He says the real bottleneck isn’t GPUs but memory, foreshadowing a global storage crunch as AI scales.
Speaking at GITEX Global, Pua outlined Phison’s focus on NAND controllers and systems that can expand effective memory. Adaptive tiering across DRAM and flash, he argues, will ease constraints and cut costs, making AI deployments more attainable beyond elite data centres.
Flash becomes the expansion valve: DRAM stays scarce and expensive, while high-end GPUs are over-credited for AI cost overruns. By intelligently offloading and caching to NAND, cheaper accelerators can still drive useful workloads, widening access to AI capacity.
Cloud centralisation intensifies the risk. With the US and China dominating the AI cloud market, many countries lack the capital and talent to build sovereign stacks. Pua calls for ‘AI blue-collar’ skills to localise open source and tailor systems to real-world applications.
Storage leadership is consolidating in the US, Japan, Korea, and China, with Taiwan rising as a fifth pillar. Hardware strength alone won’t suffice, Pua says; Taiwan must close the AI software gap to capture more value in the data era.
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Alan Hamel says he’s moving ahead with a ‘Suzanne AI Twin’ to honor Suzanne Somers’ legacy. The project mirrors plans the couple discussed for decades. He shared an early demo at a recent conference.
Hamel describes the prototype as startlingly lifelike. He says side-by-side, he can’t tell real from AI. The goal is to preserve Suzanne’s voice, look, and mannerisms.
Planned uses include archival storytelling, fan Q&As, and curated appearances. The team is training the model on interviews, performances, and writings. Rights and guardrails are being built in.
Supporters see a new form of remembrance. Critics warn of deepfake risks and consent boundaries. Hamel says fidelity and respect are non-negotiable.
Next steps include wider testing and a controlled public debut. Proceeds could fund causes Suzanne championed. ‘It felt like talking to her,’ Hamel says.
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Chinese AI model DeepSeek V3.1 has outperformed its global competitors in a real-market cryptocurrency trading challenge, earning over 10 per cent profit in just a few days.
The experiment, named Alpha Arena, was launched by US research firm Nof1 to test the investing skills of leading LLMs.
Each participating AI was given US$10,000 to trade in six cryptocurrency perpetual contracts, including bitcoin and solana, on the decentralised exchange Hyperliquid. By Tuesday afternoon, DeepSeek V3.1 led the field, while OpenAI’s GPT-5 trailed behind with a loss of nearly 40 per cent.
The competition highlights the growing potential of AI models to make autonomous financial decisions in real markets.
It also underscores the rivalry between Chinese and American AI developers as they push to demonstrate their models’ adaptability beyond traditional text-based tasks.
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