Cointelegraph is committed to providing independent, high-quality journalism across the crypto, blockchain, AI, and fintech industries.All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.
Čítaj viac
Bitcoin miner MARA swung to a net loss of $611.3 million from a year-earlier profit in the second quarter of 2026, driven primarily by a change in the value of its Bitcoin holdings, despite reporting its highest quarterly Bitcoin production in more than a year. The net loss, equivalent to $1.60 per diluted share, is down compared to a net income of $808.2 million, or $1.84 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2025, according to the company’s 10-Q SEC filing. MARA mined 2,422 Bitcoin in the quarter, 3% more than the prior year period, but higher production was more than offset by a 28% decline in the average Bitcoin price. “Two things defined Q2 for MARA. Bitcoin prices created a challenging revenue environment [and] we used the quarter to fundamentally transform our power portfolio and capital structure,” said MARA chief financial officer Salman Khan during an earnings call on Thursday. The quarter highlights MARA’s exposure to Bitcoin prices even as it expands mining capacity and pursues AI and high-performance computing infrastructure. As of June 30, MARA held a total of 35,577 Bitcoin, with a total fair value of $2.1 billion, making it the fourth-largest public Bitcoin holder after Strategy, Twenty One Capital and Metaplanet. MARA eyes continued AI expansion In February, the company acquired a majority stake in Exaion SaS, which operates high-performance computing (HPC) data centers and secure cloud and AI infrastructure.In the same month, MARA also announced a partnership with Starwood Capital Group and its data center development platform Starwood Digital Ventures to enable the conversion of select MARA sites to meet demand from “enterprise, hyperscale and AI customers.” Related: Bitcoin miners’ AI pivot loses Wall Street’s wow factor MARA said it is targeting at least two AI/HPC lease signings by year-end. “Working alongside Starwood, we are progressing lease discussions across multiple sites, and we remain confident in our ability to sign at least 2 leases before year-end,” MARA CEO Fred Thiel said on Thursday. In July, MARA also agreed to acquire a 1,200-acre powered land site in Matagorda County, Texas, with expected access to up to 2 gigawatts of grid capacity by April 2028. The company said it intends to develop the site for AI and HPC workloads as well as Bitcoin mining. MARA’s expansion plans also include its pending acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power in Ohio, a $1.5 billion deal that MARA has said could support up to 600 megawatts of AI and critical-IT load over time.Related: Galaxy, MARA Holdings deepen Texas expansion with land acquisitionsBitcoin mining remains foundationalIn a letter to shareholders on Thursday, Thiel said Bitcoin mining still represents the core of MARA’s business and will continue to generate cash flow that supports its other investments. “Ultimately, we do not view Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure as competing businesses,” said Thiel.“Our capital allocation philosophy remains straightforward. Every megawatt should be deployed into its highest-value application. In some markets, that will continue to be Bitcoin mining. In others, it will be AI infrastructure, sovereign cloud, or enterprise computing.”Magazine: 10 weirdest things ever tokenized… including farts
Čítaj viac
Cointelegraph is committed to providing independent, high-quality journalism across the crypto, blockchain, AI, and fintech industries.All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.
Čítaj viac
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook said she is prepared to support higher interest rates if US inflation fails to come down, a change that can pressure crypto and other high-risk investments. Cook was speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation, saying that while some disinflationary forces are in play, she is “prepared to act” if disinflation stalls. “As I have described, inflation is too high, and I consider the risks to the inflation side of the dual mandate higher than the risks to the employment side at this point,” said Cook. “As such, I am prepared to act by raising rates, if necessary.”The US Federal Reserve is targeting an annualized inflation rate of 2% over the long run. The annual inflation rate fell to 3.5% in June 2026, the first decline in five months, according to Trading Economics. However, Cook said she would not put too much weight on a single data point, given a highly uncertain environment, adding that the personal consumption expenditures price (PCE) index rose 3.7% in the 12 months through June, nearly double its 2% target. “If I do not see signs of continued disinflation soon, I am prepared to act,” Cook said. “With five years of above-target inflation, the risk grows that higher inflation may become entrenched in price- and wage-setting behavior, leading to persistence that would be much harder for us to attack. The longer inflation is above target, the more likely this scenario becomes.”Related: US hints at more yen intervention: Five things to know in Bitcoin this weekThis article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.
Čítaj viac
Meta has become the latest major AI company to disclose that one of its models hacked another company’s systems during testing, following similar incidents involving Anthropic and OpenAI. The model involved Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1, which launched in July, according to The Information, citing sources. The issue reportedly stemmed from a misconfiguration by Irregular, an artificial intelligence security testing and red-teaming firm, which inadvertently gave the model internet access during an evaluation. The model “exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service, in a manner similar to previously reported instances with other companies,” Meta told Reuters in a statement. The incident is the latest case of an advanced AI agent becoming a cybersecurity risk in its own right, and also has raised questions about where the liability lies — the companies that develop the agents, or the ones that design the sandboxes meant to contain them. Related: Mysten Labs tech chief joins Anthropic to work on AI securityMeta’s AI breach comes just a week after Anthropic said its models got access to the internet to hack an external company, due to a configuration error relating to the Irregular’s testing environment.In a blog post on July 30, Anthropic said it found three incidents (out of 141,006 evaluation runs) in which a Claude model reached the internet during an evaluation, before gaining unauthorized access to the systems within three different organizations. All three incidents happened within or while interacting with the evaluation environment of Irregular, and involved a misconfiguration that left machines that Claude accessed with live internet access.Cointelegraph reached out to Meta and Irregular for comment.In July, AI agents developed by OpenAI broke out of their offline sandbox to hack Hugging Face in order to cheat on a security benchmark test in July. Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer of Ledger, said the latest incident was “marketing theatre.”“Having a model ‘go rogue’ has become the latest AI PR stunt,” he said on Wednesday. “If your model isn’t escaping sandboxes, ‘hacking’ companies, or pulling off some headline-grabbing exploit, apparently you’re falling behind… The industry doesn’t need bigger stunts, it needs more trust.”Magazine: Do the Coldcard attacks mean all hardware wallets are now insecure?
Čítaj viac
