A French project is building “The Internet of Trust” — and says decentralized identifiers will be a crucial part of Web 3.0. XSL Labs is developing a Secure Digital Identifier (otherwise known as SDI for short) that’s designed to ensure users have full control over their private information. In time, it’s hoped this approach will diminish the power of tech giants such as Facebook and Google. SDI aims to limit the amount of data that is shared about ourselves online, without impeding access to goods and services. The project intends to ensure zero-knowledge proofs are utilized wherever possible, which add …

The original “I Can Has Cheezburger?” meme has become the latest symbol of popular culture to be immortalized as an NFT. The meme’s creator, Eric Nakagawa, announced his foray into a series of lolcat NFTs on Feb. 23. “Happy Cat” — the crown jewel of Nakgawa’s NFT release — is being auctioned on NFT marketplace OpenSea, with the highest bid currently sitting at 0.25 ETH. Cool to see all the most important internet history becoming NFTs https://t.co/EclycEXupY — Micah Baldwin (@micah) February 22, 2021 The 10 piece series, titled “No Fries Today,” comprises early lolcat memes and meme-inspired artwork. Some …

The Diem Association is progressing toward launch with a new technical upgrade that reportedly allows more financial institutions to connect with the payment network. Crypto security specialist Fireblocks and First Digital Asset Group, a Diem payment provider, announced Tuesday that they’ve developed a secure wallet and infrastructure that allows financial institutions to facilitate transactions on the Diem network. Founded in 2017, First Digital Asset Group enables merchants and other institutions to accept and process both Diem and stablecoin payments. The Diem network appears ready to begin onboarding new clients, provided they qualify as a Virtual Asset Service Provider, or VASP. …

Electric car manufacturer Tesla has seen more than $55 billion wiped from its market cap since announcing the purchase of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin four days ago — but Twitter and MasterCard have headed in the other direction. Since Tesla’s announcement on Monday, the electric car giant’s stock price has dropped 7% from $869.52 ($834.6 billion market cap). It is currently trading at $811.66 ($779 billion market cap). While there may be other factors behind the share price drop, some investors, such as Baker Avenue Wealth Management chief strategist King Lip, are concerned that holding 8% of the company's cash …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor's note As they say, the sun never sets on the Google empire. That said, the role of antitrust law in tech has been on the rise in recent years. Every indication is that the situation is only going to get worse for mega tech firms. So Jeff Bezos’ departure from the top spot at Amazon may well have been a beautifully timed case of quitting while you’re ahead. As I’ve mentioned before — “harped on about” might actually be more …

The Senate sees new legislation aiming to update antitrust laws for new technologies. Senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Amy Klobuchar is introducing the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act today, Cointelegraph has learned. Sen. Klobuchar, who heads the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, is looking to put new burdens on companies seeking to acquire competitors. An announcement of the bill noted that it aims to "Shift the burden to the merging parties to prove their merger will not violate the law." The bill would also provide broad new legal authority and resources to the Justice Department's Antitrust …

Trading app Robinhood may have put its plans for an initial public offering on hold after public opinion turned against the company in the wake of its response to the short squeeze on GameStop (GME). According to Fox Business Network’s Charles Gasparino, sources inside Robinhood say the company’s only focus is surviving the fallout from the drama it currently finds itself engulfed in, and will pause its plans for an IPO launch for now. SCOOP: Ppl inside @RobinhoodApp tell @FoxBusiness plans for an IPO are on hold to focus on surviving the current drama over trading of stocks and settlement …

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has suggested a blockchain-powered ID solution could help tackle cyber abuse and trolling while allowing users to maintain a level of anonymity. Speaking to New South Whales media outlet The Sydney Morning Herald, Grant said that while anonymity was beneficial for general online use, people hiding behind anonymity online to harm others remained a big problem in society. She said blockchain-powered digital IDs could help strike a balance by hiding user’s details unless requested by law enforcement. Inman Grant stated that: “There’s more that they can do in terms of their intellectual capability, their …

Ripple Labs spent $690,000 on lobbying in the United States in 2020, which still didn't save the firm from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Per legally mandated disclosures for 2020, Ripple's lobbying program dwarfed those of other firms in the crypto industry. Coinbase, which looks to become the first American crypto exchange to issue public shares, spent $230,000 over the same year, while other exchanges like Binance.US, Gemini and Kraken did not report any spending on lobbying. Ripple's spending on lobbying is, however, relatively paltry compared with the giants of Big Tech. Facebook, for example, spent well over $5 million …

The long-awaited video game Cyberpunk 2077 came out as an unfinished product with a bunch of technical flaws, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most important cultural phenomenons of recent years. And while some gamers are asking for refunds and the developers are hurriedly working on patches, I suggest we look at the enormously rich video game setting. The picture is not very nice — this world is a real centralized hell. In the fictional world of Cyberpunk 2077, blockchain technology either never existed or was never massively implemented. This is a world where full-scale decentralization …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note Armed National Guardsmen are building up concentric perimeters of black barricades around the U.S. Capitol and its whole neighborhood of federal buildings in preparation for the Biden inauguration and protests against it on Wednesday. Which inspires some déjà vu, whether to last week or last summer. As much as history is said to repeat itself, the present day seems to be stuck on its own loop. Remember how last week’s Law Decoded was mostly about the handover of presidential …

A change to WhatsApp’s terms of service has triggered a mass exodus from the messaging platform to more private and independent rivals like Telegram and Signal, which have registered millions of new users over the last week. Rather than agreeing to new terms specifying the app’s right to share user data with Facebook, millions of WhatsApp users simply gave up using the platform, abandoning it for less-intrusive competitors. Telegram alone has been downloaded 25 million times in the last 72 hours. Telegram surpassed 500 million active users. 25 million new users joined in the last 72 hours: 38% came from …