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21 Apr 2026, 12:31

Trump's Fed nominee juggles interference defense and independence position in Senate hearing

Kevin Warsh stood in front of the Senate on Monday to say the Federal Reserve should stay free from politics, but also that Donald Trump and other elected officials can just go ahead and keep talking about interest rates. Kevin said the central bank must be mostly independent, but he did not treat public pressure from politicians as a serious threat to monetary policy. Kevin also made clear what he wants the Fed to care about. He put inflation front and center and barely touched jobs, with only one mention of the labor market in the remarks. He said, “Simply stated, Fed independence is largely up to the Fed.” He also repeated a complaint he has made for years, saying the central bank has wandered into issues where it does not belong, including climate change and social inequality. Kevin said, “The Fed must stay in its lane. Fed independence is placed at greatest risk when it strays into fiscal and social policies where it has neither authority nor expertise.” Mind you, if the Senate confirms him, Kevin would be the richest Fed chair ever, the most plugged into tech, and the closest person from that crowd to hold the job. How interesting is that? Kevin separates rate decisions from the Fed’s handling of public money Donald Trump announced in late January that Kevin was his choice to replace current Chair Jerome Powell. Since then, Cryptopolitan has wondered: if confirmed, would Kevin stand up to repeated calls from Donald and White House officials to cut interest rates? His Senate hearing tried to answer that, but not really in a clean or simple way. You see, while Kevin spoke about independence, he also added limits to that idea. “I do not believe the operational independence of monetary policy is particularly threatened when elected officials, presidents, senators, or members of the House, state their views on interest rates,” he said. Kevin also said the Fed does not have the same freedom in all parts of its work. He drew a line between setting monetary policy and handling other responsibilities. He pointed in particular to “their stewardship of public monies,” a comment that lands in the middle of an investigation into the Fed’s multibillion-dollar headquarters renovation. So Kevin defended policy independence, but he also said other parts of the institution deserve a closer look. The White House backed him quickly. Spokesman Kush Desai said the administration was focused on working with the Senate to confirm Kevin fast. Kush said Kevin’s schooling, private sector record, and earlier service on the Fed Board of Governors made him fit to restore confidence and competence in Fed decisions. Kevin brings Silicon Valley friends, money, and a tech-heavy view into the Fed race Away from Washington, Kevin wears suits, ties, and sweater vests, not the messy uniform many Silicon Valley founders prefer. Still, that world sees him as one of its own. On a podcast a few years back, Palantir chief Alex Karp told him, “You wouldn’t be hanging out with us if you were as normal as you claim to be.” Kevin’s links to Alex, Peter Thiel, Jerry Yang, and Marc Andreessen go back decades to Stanford, and stretch into deals and investments he made after leaving the Fed in 2011. Those friendships and investments have clearly influenced how Kevin sees the economy. He believes new technology can change growth and inflation faster than central bankers usually admit. That view could change how the Fed handles policy and rates. Past handovers, from Alan Greenspan to Ben Bernanke to Janet Yellen to Jerome Powell, mostly kept the same basic line. Kevin may not. He has long attacked the Fed’s balance sheet, its public messaging, and the data it uses. In a 2025 interview, he said, “Everything technology touches gets cheaper.” If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter .

21 Apr 2026, 08:00

Crypto Community Slams LayerZero: More Verifiers Won’t Stop The Next $290M Hack

LayerZero is facing heavy criticism for its response to the recent $290 million KelpDAO exploit after the omnichain interoperability protocol blamed Kelp’s 1-of-1 verifier configuration for the incident. Related Reading: Bitcoin’s Decentralization Narrative Under Fire After Epstein Files Claims LayerZero Blames KelpDAO For $290M Exploit Over the weekend, liquid restaking protocol KelpDAO was the victim of an attack that drained over $290 million in rsETH from the project after malicious actors exploited a weakness in the protocol’s LayerZero-powered bridge. Two days later, LayerZero addressed the incident, which became the largest DeFi hack of 2026, just weeks after Drift Protocol’s $285 million exploit shocked the industry. LayerZero attributed the “highly sophisticated attack” to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, claiming that it was a crypto infrastructure attack rather than a protocol exploit, and affirming that “there is zero contagion to any other cross-chain assets or applications.” They explained that the protocol is built on a “foundation of modular, application-configurable security,” using Decentralized Verifier Networks (DVNs), independent entities responsible for verifying the integrity of cross-chain messages. The malicious actors allegedly poisoned downstream RPC infrastructure by “compromising a quorum of the RPCs the LayerZero Labs DVN relied upon to verify transactions.” Per the post, the attackers swapped binaries for a custom payload to forge messages and used DDoS attacks to force failover to the poisoned nodes, triggering the DVN into confirming fake transactions. Based on this, LayerZero placed responsibility on KelpDAO for using a 1-of-1 verifier configuration instead of the multi-DVN recommendations: “This incident was isolated entirely to KelpDAO’s rsETH configuration as a direct consequence of their single-DVN setup.” Crypto Community Criticizes ‘Lack Of Accountability’ The crypto community reacted to the post-mortem, sharing its concerns about LayerZero’s response and criticizing the protocol for placing all responsibility only on Kelp’s security setup. “Imagine building a bridge and vehicles pays to cross, the bridge collapsed and you said it’s their fault for crossing the bridge. A classic clownery act from Bunch of clowns with zero accountability,” X user Saint wrote. Others questioned why LayerZero included a “1-of-1” configuration if the purpose of a DVN is customizable/modular security. “If the system allows this option, it’s not the fault of the customer who chose it—it’s a fundamental design flaw by the system that permitted it,” user Ditto wrote. “At the end of the day, the fact remains that the DVN RPC was compromised. DVN is a LayerZero product, and they are the ones who sold it to these teams,” he continued. Similarly, Chainlink community manager Zach Rynes accused the protocol of deflecting responsibility for the compromise of their own DVN node. He also criticized them for “throwing KelpDAO under the bus” for trusting LayerZero Labs’ setup that they “willingly support and only blocked after getting hacked, all while claiming everything worked as designed.” Meanwhile, Yearn Finance core team developer Artem K noted on X that the attack was described as a compromise of an RPC node and RPC poisoning, but that their own infrastructure is what was compromised. “Given it doesn’t say how the breach has occurred, I wouldn’t rush re-enabling the bridges,” he added. Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Fix? Analyst The Smart Ape also claims that LayerZero made the wrong diagnosis and offered the wrong solution. Notably, the protocol’s post-mortem suggested migrating all applications with 1-of-1 DVN configurations to multi-DVN setups to prevent similar attacks. However, the analyst pointed out that multi-verifiers won’t stop the next multi-million-dollar attack, asserting that they could fail as all DVNs read chain states from the same handful of RPC providers, which are mostly clustered on AWS or GCP. If five “independent” DVNs read from the same three RPC providers, an attacker who poisons those three RPCs will poison all five verifiers simultaneously. “If all your verifiers get fooled in the same way at the same time, the math collapses back to 1-of-1. Five clones are not five witnesses,” he added. Related Reading: Remember Arbitrum? This Analyst Just Predicted That A 7,400% Rally Is Coming To solve this, the analyst suggested that every verifier runs its own full node on different client software, hosted on different cloud providers, maintained by different ops teams, peered with different subsets of the Ethereum network. “The fix isn’t multi-anything. The fix is that verifiers should attest to their own substrate, not just to chain state. until you can audit a DVN’s upstream topology, which RPC providers, which client software, which clouds, which regions, ‘M-of-N secured’ is marketing copy for a property that hasn’t actually been built. Lazarus didn’t break cryptography on April 18. They broke three servers,” he concluded. Featured Image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com

21 Apr 2026, 08:00

Germany’s central bank warns Mythos may reveal vulnerabilities in bank software

Speaking in Rome on Tuesday, Germany’s Bundesbank president Joachim Nagel warned Europe about Anthropic’s Mythos model and said it should not remain in the hands of a small group of large US companies. Joachim said European companies and institutions that could be hit by the technology should be allowed to test it too, and fast. That way, they can judge both the upside and the danger on equal terms, according to him. Joachim is also a member of the European Central Bank Governing Council, and he said for Germany, the issue is about whether banks in Europe are being asked to defend systems they are not even fully allowed to inspect against. Germany tells European banks and regulators to get access before Mythos exposes more flaws Joachim said, “The use of AI in the financial sector opens the door to new and sophisticated cyber risks, since autonomous AI agents could exhibit harmful behaviour. Early identification and mitigation of such risks are crucial for financial stability.” The central banker described Mythos as a model that appears able to quickly find and use security holes in software used by financial institutions. He also said the model cuts both ways. It can help tighten digital defenses, but it can also be used to attack those same weak points. Joachim said, “We must prevent the misuse of this technology.” He also said, “At the same time, all relevant institutions should have access to such technology to avoid competitive distortions.” He said Europe is coming into the AI age with some strong points, but it is still behind the United States and, in a number of areas, China. Joachim pointed out that US institutions built 40 “advanced” AI models in 2024, while China made 15, and Europe made literally just 3. He also said private AI investment in the US reached $109.1 billion, while China was at $9.3 billion and Europe was at $19.4 billion, and added that China’s lower private spending is balanced out by heavy government support, with state AI investment estimated at $62 billion. In comparison, government AI investment was about $3.3 billion in the United States and about $1.2 billion in the European Union. Anthropic signs a $100 billion Amazon deal as company remains unstoppable Meanwhile, just yesterday, Anthropic released a statement that said it signed a new agreement that will deepen the existing tie-up and secure up to 5 gigawatts of capacity for training and deploying Claude. It said the new Trainium2 capacity will come online in the first half of this year, and nearly 1 gigawatt of total Trainium2 and Trainium3 capacity should be online by the end of 2026. Anthropic (which is still going through a boycott by the Trump admin right now) said it has worked closely with Amazon (a close personal ally of Trump) since 2023, and that more than 100,000 customers now run Claude on Amazon Bedrock. The company said: “Together we launched Project Rainier, one of the largest compute clusters in the world, and we currently use over one million Trainium2 chips to train and serve Claude.” Under the new deal, the company said it will commit more than $100 billion over the next ten years to AWS technologies. That covers Graviton and chips from Trainium2 through Trainium4, with the option to buy later generations of Amazon’s custom silicon when they become available. Anthropic said major Trainium2 capacity is coming in Q2, scaled Trainium3 capacity is expected later this year, and the deal also expands inference in Asia and Europe to serve Claude’s growing customer base. The company added that it will keep choosing AWS as its main training and cloud provider for mission-critical workloads. Andy Jassy said, “Our custom AI silicon offers high performance at significantly lower cost for customers, which is why it’s in such hot demand.” Andy also said, “Anthropic’s commitment to run its large language models on AWS Trainium for the next decade reflects the progress we’ve made together on custom silicon, as we continue delivering the technology and infrastructure our customers need to build with generative AI.” The crypto card with no spending limits. Get 3% cashback and instant mobile payments. Claim your Ether.fi card.

21 Apr 2026, 01:30

Ripple-Linked SBI Remit Adds 26th Bank In Japan With Tottori Launch

SBI Remit and Tottori Bank are launching international money transfer services on April 20, extending what XRP-focused observers describe as Ripple’s bank-linked remittance footprint in Japan. The partnership marks the 26th collaboration between SBI Remit and a financial institution, with Ripple’s distributed ledger technology again referenced as part of the service stack. The Ripple angle was pushed into focus by XRP community commentator Eri, who wrote on X: “XRP Scoop: Tottori Bank & SBI Remit start international money transfer services, April 20. This marks the 26th Bank|FI SBI Remit partner, which actively uses Ripple’s DLT for low-cost, 24/7 remittances. Where XRP liquidity is ample, XRP can serve as an optional bridge .” XRP Scoop Tottori Bank & @SBIRemit start international money transfer services, April 20. This marks the 26th Bank|FI SBI Remit partner, which actively uses @Ripple ’s DLT for low-cost, 24/7 remittances. Where $XRP liquidity is ample, XRP can serve as an optional bridge.… pic.twitter.com/Qp7I77nHo6 — Eri ~ Carpe Diem (@sentosumosaba) April 19, 2026 Ripple Remittance Network In Japan Expands To 26 Banks That framing goes somewhat further than SBI Remit’s own press release , which highlights Ripple’s technology directly but does not explicitly say XRP will be used in this rollout. Still, the company did state that, since its founding in 2010, it has “actively incorporates the latest financial technologies, such as Ripple’s distributed ledger technology” as part of its effort to offer secure, low-cost and fast international remittances. In practical terms, the new partnership is aimed at a growing foreign workforce in Tottori Prefecture and the financial institutions serving it. SBI Remit said both the number of foreign workers and the number of businesses employing them have risen to record highs in the prefecture, making access to reliable cross-border payments more important for workers sending money home and for local employers trying to support them. The company described a market that increasingly demands speed, convenience and always-on access. “Foreign customers now require services that are fast, low-cost, available 24/7, and can be initiated via apps, as well as services that support diversified receiving methods, such as the expansion of e-wallets in the recipient country,” SBI Remit said. “Meanwhile, with the increase in foreign workers, regional financial institutions are facing increased requests from companies to open salary deposit accounts. Furthermore, after providing accounts, they are required to handle new customer management tasks, including residence permit expiration dates and return information.” That helps explain why Ripple-linked infrastructure keeps appearing through SBI-affiliated channels in Japan: the pitch is less about crypto branding than about solving remittance and compliance bottlenecks for banks and end users. SBI Remit said it now offers an integrated service combining “remittances to hometown” and “salary deposit accounts” for foreign residents, backed by multilingual support in 12 languages. Eri also suggested the Tottori deal fits a broader regional-bank strategy inside Japan. Replying to another X user, she wrote in full: “No doubt. Japan has 200+ banks, which include foreign banks, trusts, and various tiers of regional banks. The 3 mega banks and Japan Post dominate. Mr. Kitao has been focused on bringing the regional banks into the fold. I also think you’ll see expansion into S. Korea with the same technology via SBI initiatives.” At press time, XRP traded at $1.42.

21 Apr 2026, 00:09

Playdate stands apart as Nintendo and rivals lean into AI tools

Playdate is pursuing a different trajectory as the gaming industry leans into AI. As dominant platforms continue to greenlight AI-generated content, Panic, the company behind the Playdate handheld, has added rules that separate AI used for productivity from AI used to create art, music, or writing. It makes Playdate one of the first gaming storefronts to proactively curate “human-made” creative work while still allowing developers to use AI coding tools. This wide-open divide in nature has the platform in stark contrast with other major competitors that have not generally followed strict AI policies. Why is Playdate prohibiting AI-created art in favor of AI coding? Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser said the company will stop enabling third-party Playdate Catalog submissions that contain AI-generated art, music, or written content. However, developers can still use AI for coding, as long as they disclose it. The disclosure will be on the storefront so players can decide whether to purchase games using AI tools. Sasser said this new policy expands an existing rule requiring developers to disclose any AI use. The new change goes one step further by banning generative creative content altogether while still maintaining transparency regarding AI-assisted programming. Panic argues that the objective is to preserve quality and trust in its community. The company also described the decision as a one-off. Most digital stores, from Steam to the Nintendo eShop to the PlayStation Store to Itch, continue to allow AI-generated art and writing in game listings. In contrast, Playdate is seeking to maintain a catalog built around hand-crafted creative work while recognizing that AI coding tools can expedite development without supplanting artistic expression. That makes an effective distinction between AI as a replacement for human creativity and AI as an assistance behind the scenes in development. Panic is convinced that players care more about who made the art and writing than they do about whether developers relied on help to write code. A real incident pushed Playdate to tighten AI rules Stricter rules were followed when a game called Wheelsprung, part of Playdate’s curated Season 2 roster, was discovered to have been assisted in its programming and writing by ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. Panic subsequently realized it had not anticipated that developers in its curated program would rely on large language models. Sasser called that assumption “naive” and accepts responsibility for the oversight. Panic’s AI process and its expectations for further submissions had moved to the forefront of their attention after the findings. The company has announced that it will increase standards for similar tasks in the future. For the upcoming Season 3 collection, Panic made it clear that AI can’t be used at all , not for art, music, writing, or code in the new collection. This goes beyond the general Catalog rules: curated releases will follow a fully human-made approach. The incident also highlighted the rapid adoption of AI tools in creative workflows. Even tiny indie projects increasingly rely on coding assistants, making disclosure policies more important than ever for transparency. A small console making a big statement Playdate launched in 2022 as a boutique handheld with a black-and-white screen, a fold-out crank, and a focus on indie games. Rather than competing with powerful devices from Nintendo or Sony, Panic leaned into originality and curated experiences. The new AI policy fits that philosophy by emphasizing craftsmanship and community values. The Playdate Catalog storefront is the main way developers distribute games for the device. By controlling what appears there, Panic effectively shapes the platform’s identity. The company will revisit its AI rules over time, suggesting the policy could evolve as technology changes. This approach contrasts with the broader industry, where many companies have stayed quiet on AI-generated content. Instead of banning or fully embracing AI, Panic is trying to separate acceptable uses from those that replace creative labor. That middle ground allows developers to work faster while ensuring the artistic parts of games remain human-made. The decision also reflects growing debates across creative industries. Artists and writers have raised concerns that generative AI tools can copy styles or reduce opportunities for human creators. By restricting AI-generated creative content, Playdate is aligning itself with those concerns while still acknowledging the practical benefits of AI-assisted development. In doing so, Panic is turning its small handheld into a testing ground for how gaming platforms might handle AI in the future. Whether other companies follow remains unclear, but Playdate’s policy shows one possible path: treat AI as a tool, not a creator, and give players the information they need to make informed choices. There’s a middle ground between leaving money in the bank and rolling the dice in crypto. Start with this free video on decentralized finance .

20 Apr 2026, 23:44

A robot by Honor broke the world record, finishing at 50 minutes and 26 seconds

A robot developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor just broke the world record for the fastest half-marathon finish time at the Beijing E-Town competition. The Beijing long-touted robots vs. humans half-marathon was held last Sunday, and there was a significant leap in the performance of the robots from the year before. “The robots’ speed far exceeds that of humans,” one spectator, Wang Wen, said. The winning robot by Honor completed the race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, breaking the world record set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo for the same distance, which was around 57 minutes. More impressively, the robot navigated the race track autonomously. Honor robot wins Beijing’s marathon Another robot by Honor, called Lightning, had finished even faster at 48 minutes and 19 seconds. However, it was remotely controlled, which meant the time posted would be multiplied by 1.2 based on the rules of the event, The Global Times reported . In the first event, 21 humanoid robots were pitted against 12,000 human runners, Cryptopolitan reported . The first robot to complete the race finished in 2 hours and 40 minutes, while a human won the event in 1 hour and 2 minutes. Only 6 robots from 20 teams were able to cross the finish line during the previous event. This time, however, 47 of 102 robot teams completed the race, and at much faster times. “I feel enormous changes this year. It’s the first time robots have surpassed humans, and that’s something I never imagined,” said another spectator, Sun Zhigang. But the event wasn’t without some failures. There were reports of robots running into barriers and others going off the track. A Unitree H1 robot had to be carried away by the team after it stumbled upon crossing the finish line. China’s robot technologies are advancing rapidly The performance of robots goes to show just how much Chinese robot technologies are improving. Although the quicker pace of the robots doesn’t mean much at the moment, Honor engineer Du Xiaodi said such improvement allows for technology transfer into “structural reliability and cooling, and eventually industrial applications.” Over the recent years, China has been pushing policies to advance its robotics sector, especially to augment its declining workforce. Cryptopolitan reported in March how Chinese lawmakers adopted the country’s “15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030),” which included robotics or embodied artificial intelligence among its key focuses. Some experts argue that China hasn’t nailed the AI software that would allow for the mass commercialization of humanoid robots in industrial settings, according to Reuters. Yet, the country remains the largest market for industrial robots. China has over 2 million operational stock of robots working in factories, which accounts for roughly half of all industrial robots in use around the world, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Still letting the bank keep the best part? Watch our free video on being your own bank .