Barclays Bank has announced it will block all cryptocurrency transactions made using its bank cards, including Barclaycard credit cards, starting 27 June 2025.
The decision reflects growing concerns about digital currencies’ risks to consumers, particularly the high volatility that can lead to debt. The bank’s statement cited the lack of consumer protections as a key factor.
Cryptocurrencies aren’t covered by the Financial Ombudsman or Compensation Scheme, leaving customers few options if transactions fail. Barclays warned that price falls could prevent some customers from repaying debts incurred from crypto purchases.
The cautious stance mirrors broader trends among UK banks and regulators. The Financial Conduct Authority has repeatedly highlighted the dangers of unregulated crypto markets. Barclays encouraged customers to educate themselves via the FCA’s resources.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England plans to introduce stricter rules limiting banks’ crypto exposure by 2026, aiming to safeguard financial stability.
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Pradeep Bhandari, spokesperson for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has called for a pilot Bitcoin reserve as part of a strategic move to boost economic resilience. He cites the US’s Bitcoin reserves and Bhutan’s state mining as signs of global finance shifting to crypto.
India’s approach to crypto remains uncertain, with a 30% tax on virtual digital assets but no formal regulatory framework. Under current law, crypto profits are taxed flatly, and a 1% tax is deducted at source on transactions exceeding approximately $115.
Despite this, the lack of regulation has created ambiguity around crypto’s legal status.
Highlighting global developments, Bhandari notes that the US is actively expanding Bitcoin reserves, and three US states have authorised Bitcoin as a reserve asset. He says India’s renewable energy could support a clear Bitcoin strategy that boosts innovation and protects investors.
The BJP spokesperson says a Bitcoin reserve pilot could help India adopt digital assets legitimately and boost its global economic standing with clearer regulations.
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AI is rapidly gaining ground in the blockchain world, with user activity and funding hitting new highs in 2025. According to a report by DappRadar, AI-related on-chain activity has surged 86% since January, with 4.5 million daily users engaging with AI-powered decentralised apps.
AI DApps have grown their market share to 19%, just behind blockchain gaming’s 20%. DappRadar analyst Sara Gherghelas said the rise of AI agents reflects more than hype, calling it a structural shift in how users interact with Web3 platforms.
From DeFi copilots to gaming bots, AI agents are emerging as a new layer for on-chain interaction.
Investor interest is growing as well. AI agent projects have already raised $1.39 billion this year—9.4% more than in 2024. Gherghelas noted that funding for AI agents now rivals or exceeds other Web3 verticals, including blockchain gaming.
User growth is global, with most AI DApp interactions coming from Europe (26%), followed by Asia (22%) and North America (15.8%). A significant 33% of activity comes from anonymous or unspecified sources. Analysts believe AI agents are becoming essential to the decentralised ecosystem worldwide.
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TON holders will soon be able to stake their tokens with minimal effort, thanks to a new service offering 4.7% annual rewards. Developed by P2P.org and Ton Whales, the solution lets users stake with just 10 TON while offering institutional-grade security.
The service is aimed at custodians and exchanges and will be available through a widget compatible with all TON Connect-supported wallets. Funds will be automatically allocated across network validators, removing the need for complex manual setup by intermediaries.
Backed by Telegram’s expanding crypto ecosystem, TON has become the only blockchain officially integrated into the messaging platform’s apps. Over 156 million wallets are active, with over $2 billion worth of TON currently staked.
Users earn TON via in-app games and services and can spend it on Telegram.
Ton Whales plans to launch a staking-linked bank card this year, while tools are also in development to let early investors earn rewards on locked tokens. Despite growing adoption, many TON-powered apps have struggled to maintain user interest beyond initial financial incentives.
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The Dutch government has pledged €70 million to build a new AI facility in Groningen to establish a European hub for AI research and development.
A consortium of Dutch organisations will manage the plant and focus on healthcare, agriculture, defence and energy applications.
The government is also seeking an additional €70 million in EU co-financing and has welcomed a separate €60 million contribution from the Groningen regional administration.
The plant is expected to be commissioned in 2026 and reach operation by early 2027 if funding is secured.
Minister of Economic Affairs Vincent Karremans emphasised the need to develop domestic AI capacity, warning that dependence on foreign technologies could threaten national competitiveness and digital independence.
‘Those who do not develop the technology themselves depend on others, ’ Karremans said on the government’s website.
European countries have grown increasingly concerned over their reliance on AI technologies developed by US companies.
The Groningen initiative marks a broader effort by the EU to build its own AI infrastructure instead of leaving strategic control in foreign hands.
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More than 40% of agentic AI projects will likely be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, limited business value, and poor risk control, according to research firm Gartner.
These cancellations are expected as many early-stage initiatives remain trapped in hype, often misapplied and far from ready for real-world deployment.
Gartner analyst Anushree Verma warned that most agentic AI efforts are still at the proof-of-concept stage. Instead of focusing on scalable production, many companies have been distracted by experimental use cases, underestimating the cost and complexity of full-scale implementation.
A recent poll by Gartner found that only 19% of organisations had made significant investments in agentic AI, while 31% were undecided or waiting.
Much of the current hype is fuelled by vendors engaging in ‘agent washing’ — marketing existing tools like chatbots or RPA under a new agentic label without offering true agentic capabilities.
Out of thousands of vendors, Gartner believes only around 130 offer legitimate agentic solutions. Verma noted that most agentic models today lack the intelligence to deliver strong returns or follow complex instructions independently.
Still, agentic AI holds long-term promise. Gartner expects 15% of daily workplace decisions to be handled autonomously by 2028, up from zero in 2024. Moreover, one-third of enterprise applications will include agentic capabilities by then.
However, to succeed, organisations must reimagine workflows from the ground up, focusing on enterprise-wide productivity instead of isolated task automation.
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On the final day of the Internet Governance Forum 2025 in Lillestrøm, Norway, stakeholders from governments, civil society, technical communities, and the private sector gathered to launch the new work cycle of the Policy Network on Internet Fragmentation (PNIF). Now entering its third year, the PNIF unveiled a structured framework to analyse internet fragmentation across three dimensions: user experience, internet governance coordination, and the technical infrastructure layer.
The session emphasised the urgent need for international cooperation to counter growing fragmentation threats, as enshrined in paragraph 29C of the Global Digital Compact. Speakers raised alarm over how political and economic forces are re-shaping the global internet.
With internet shutdowns and digital censorship increasingly normalised as tools of state control—highlighted by Iran’s recent 90-million-person shutdown—concerns about sovereignty overriding openness were prominent. Michel Lambert described this shift as a ‘political normalisation of network control.’
Marilia Maciel, Director of Digital Trade and Economic Security at Diplo, emphasised how trade and investment policies fuel economic fragmentation. Cuts to internet freedom funding were highlighted by both Lambert and Joyce Chen, who noted severe consequences for underserved regions like the Pacific.
Marilia Maciel, Director of Digital Trade and Economic Security at Diplo
From the technical community, Dhruv, representing the Internet Architecture Board, stressed the importance of safeguarding the internet’s interoperability by including technical experts in regulatory processes. Joyce Chen also pointed to successful coordination initiatives such as the Technical Community Coalition on Multi-Stakeholderism (TCCM).
Naim Gjokaj, State Secretary in Montenegro, offered a government perspective, advocating for stronger legal frameworks and regional coordination to avoid inadvertent fragmentation while supporting connectivity in rural areas.
The session concluded with a call to action: PNIF will focus its upcoming work on developing concrete, risk-based recommendations to implement the Global Digital Compact. Co-facilitators Sheetal Kumar and Bruna Santos encouraged broad community participation, aiming to deliver a final report by 1 November.
Despite the challenges, the atmosphere remained collaborative and forward-looking, reinforcing the importance of inclusive dialogue to ensure the internet remains a unified, accessible, and resilient resource for all.
Track all key moments from the Internet Governance Forum 2025 on our dedicated IGF page.
YouTube is launching a new AI-powered search feature that mirrors Google’s AI Overviews, aiming to improve how users discover content on the platform.
The update introduces an ‘AI-powered search results carousel’ when YouTube users search for shopping, travel, or local activities.
The carousel offers a collection of video thumbnails and an AI-generated summary highlighting the key topics related to the search. For example, someone searching for ‘best beaches in Hawaii’ might see curated clips of snorkelling locations, volcanic coastlines, and planning tips — all surfaced by the AI.
Currently, the feature is available only to YouTube Premium users in the US. However, the platform plans to expand its conversational AI tool — which provides deeper insights, suggestions, and video summaries — to non-Premium users in the US soon.
That tool was first launched in 2023 to help users better understand content while watching.
YouTube is doubling down on AI features to keep users engaged and make content discovery more intuitive, especially in categories involving planning and decision-making.
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The launch of DeepSeek’s next-generation AI model, R2, is expected to face delays due to a shortage of NVIDIA H20 chips in China.
These chips, designed specifically for the Chinese market following US export restrictions, are essential for running DeepSeek’s highly optimised models.
The ban on H20 shipments in April has triggered widespread concern among cloud providers about the scalability of R2, especially if it outperforms existing open-source models.
CEO Liang Wenfeng has reportedly held back the model’s release, expressing dissatisfaction with its current performance.
Engineers continue refining R2, but the lack of compatible hardware poses a deeper challenge. DeepSeek’s reliance on NVIDIA architecture makes switching to Chinese chips inefficient, as the models are tightly built for NVIDIA’s software and hardware ecosystem.
Some Chinese firms have begun using workarounds by flying engineers to Malaysia, where NVIDIA chips are still available in local data centres.
After training their models abroad, teams return to China with trained systems. Others rely on gaming GPUs like the RTX 5090, which are easier to access via grey markets despite restrictions.
While Chinese tech giants ordered 1.2 million H20 chips earlier in 2025 to meet demand sparked by R1’s success, inventory is still unlikely to support a full R2 rollout.
Companies outside China may launch R2 more easily without facing the same export hurdles.
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Meta has reportedly hired AI researcher Trapit Bansal, who previously worked closely with OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever on reinforcement learning and co-created the o1 reasoning model.
Bansal joins Meta’s ambitious superintelligence team, which is focused on further pushing AI reasoning capabilities.
Former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang leads the new team, brought in after Meta invested $14.3 billion in the AI data labelling company.
Alongside Bansal, several other notable figures have recently joined, including three OpenAI researchers from Zurich, a former Google DeepMind expert, Jack Rae, and a senior machine learning lead from Sesame AI.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is accelerating AI recruitment by negotiating with prominent names like former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Daniel Gross.
Despite these aggressive efforts, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that even $100 million joining bonuses have failed to lure key staff away from his firm.
Zuckerberg has also explored acquiring startups such as Sutskever’s Safe SuperIntelligence and Perplexity AI, further highlighting Meta’s urgency in catching up in the generative AI race.
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