Autor Jesse Coghlan

Coinbase's Base resumes block production after 2-hour outage

Coinbase's Base resumes block production after 2-hour outage

Uverejnil používateľ | jún 26, 2026 |

Base, the blockchain backed by crypto exchange Coinbase, has returned online after the network suffered nearly a two-hour outage due to a consensus issue that halted block production.Base posted to X on Thursday after the outage that the network’s blocks “are being produced normally, and we have verified widespread recovery in the ecosystem.”Base’s status page said it was investigating “unhealthy” block production at 4:03 pm UTC on Thursday. At 5:21 pm UTC the team said it “isolated a consensus problem that caused an invalid block to be sequenced. This prevented new blocks from being created.”Base said in an update just before 6 pm UTC that it had “recovered healthy blockbuilding” and that ecosystem-wide infrastructure was able to sync, adding it had identified the issue and would investigate the root cause and share a full post-mortem. The outage was a rare instance of downtime for a major blockchain like Base, the most used Ethereum layer-2 network, which last experienced a major outage in August 2025 when it went down for 33 minutes, according to its status page.Source: Base BuildBase creator Jesse Pollack posted to X that all funds on the network are safe, “but a halt is not okay and we’ll use this to continue to level up base as a platform for global, 24/7 finance.”Related: Coinbase lets users transfer stock portfolios as exchange expands beyond cryptoThe downtime appeared to occur separately and just hours ahead of an upgrade for Base, dubbed Beryl, that was scheduled for 6 pm UTC and was completed two hours later at 8 pm UTC.The update aimed to reduce delays on withdrawals and introduce a new token standard for real-world assets and stablecoins.Layer-1 blockchain Sui experienced two periods of downtime on back-to-back days in May, each causing a temporary halt in block production. Sui later said the downtime was caused by a network update that it knew had a low probability of causing a halt.Magazine: Bitcoin slides to $58K, XRP hits $1 but onchain data promising: Market MovesCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

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BitGo cuts 15% of staff to sharpen focus on AI, stablecoins

BitGo cuts 15% of staff to sharpen focus on AI, stablecoins

Uverejnil používateľ | jún 26, 2026 |

Crypto infrastructure company BitGo Holdings laid off about 15% of its staff on Thursday as its CEO pledged to focus the company on areas including trading, stablecoins and artificial intelligence.“Today I’m sharing a hard decision: we are reducing our workforce by nearly 15%,” BitGo co-founder and CEO Mike Belshe posted to X on Thursday. “The ecosystem has evolved, and the way we build financial services has changed dramatically.” “We need to be sharper, more focused, and concentrate our people and energy on the areas that matter most: security, trading, stablecoins, settlement, and AI-powered infrastructure,” he added.The layoffs add to the thousands of jobs lost in the crypto industry so far in 2026, with many companies citing efficiency gains from AI and a wide crypto market slump as the reason for the cuts.Source: Mike BelsheBitGo did not confirm the number of staff affected in the layoffs. Its 2025 annual report published in March disclosed it had 603 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, 2025, meaning the layoffs could have impacted about 90 staff.Belshe said the layoffs were “a one-time action” and BitGo does not “anticipate further reductions.” The company is still hiring for 51 roles across various regions, according to its job board.BitGo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Related: Blockworks acquires Messari in crypto data consolidation pushShares in BitGo (BTGO) closed Thursday down 4.67% at $4.80, extending a nearly 73% slide from its public debut at $18 on Jan. 22.Shares in BitGo on Thursday slid more than 4.5% after the company announced it cut 15% of its staff. Source: Google FinanceCrypto companies have so far cut more than 5,000 jobs this year, with Block Inc. undertaking the biggest round of layoffs by cutting 4,000 staff or about half its workforce in February. Robinhood cut 10% of its workforce on June 16, while in May, crypto exchange Kraken cut 150 staff, data company Dune cut 25% of its workforce and Coinbase cut 700 employees, or about 14% of its workforce.Earlier this year, Gemini laid off 200 employees and Crypto.com also laid off about 180 staff, with both citing the rising use of AI.So far this year, the wider US technology sector has seen over 121,500 layoffs from over 200 companies, according to Layoffs.fyi.Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs: Mid-2026

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Story Protocol rebrands to DATA Foundation in AI pivot

Story Protocol rebrands to DATA Foundation in AI pivot

Uverejnil používateľ | jún 25, 2026 |

Story Protocol, a layer-1 blockchain built around intellectual property licensing, is pivoting to artificial intelligence as it rebrands as the DATA Foundation.The company said Thursday that it will focus on building “essential infrastructure for training AI,” which it called “the most valuable and least solved category of IP.”“Frontier AI labs have hit a multi-billion-dollar data bottleneck, where the internet has been effectively exhausted for scraping,” the company said. “The remaining supply is either expensive and bespoke or legally undocumented, leaving labs without a way to source data at scale, prove its provenance, or guarantee its quality.”Story is the latest crypto project to turn to AI as funding and hype for the technology accelerate. Multiple crypto miners have also shifted to running the high-performance computers needed for AI, giving a major boost to their revenue in a crypto bear market.The company said it is also launching an on-chain registry for AI training data provenance and licensing, called Trace, and is integrating with Kled, a company that provides licensable data sets for AI training.Story president and product chief Andrea Muttoni will become CEO of the DATA Foundation, and Kled founder Avi Patel will join as chief data officer and adviser.Andrea Muttoni speaking at a conference in Italy in 2024. Source: YouTubeMuttoni said that a year ago, Story had “set out to build the IP layer for the internet,” but the companies behind the “most valuable music, games, and brands guard their most valuable IPs jealously, and the open nature of permissionless licensing clashed with the very control the companies want to keep.”He added that Story found an AI data-processing project it incubated, called Poseidon, had shown “immediate traction” with major AI firms and raised a $15 million seed round in July 2025.Muttoni said that as AI companies “effectively run out of internet to scrape,” those that can supply them with “clean, verified, licensed data at scale are going to become some of the most valuable businesses ever built.”He added that Poseidon will be “the processing layer of the protocol,” while Trace, the on-chain registry, will allow AI companies to verify entire data sets and allow contributors to enforce their terms. Muttoni said that Kled, which pays people for tasks such as taking videos of their surroundings or capturing ambient audio to train AI, will also become the “flagship app” on DATA.Related: Crypto Biz: Is AI the exit strategy for miners?“The most important IP of this era is the data you can’t scrape: how a surgeon’s hands move, how a robot grips, how people speak, drive, and work in the real world,” said Story founder Seung-yoon Lee, who will serve as an adviser to DATA. “DATA is where that conviction goes next: an end-to-end network that proves real-world data’s origin, licenses it, and pays the people who made it,” he added.Story’s pivot comes as other major crypto platforms are retooling for AI.Forbes reported Monday that Web3 gaming powerhouse Immutable is pivoting from gaming to launch an AI marketing platform aimed at game publishers.Crypto exchange Coinbase announced earlier this month that it is launching a tool that will allow consumer AI models to connect with a user’s exchange account and make trades or execute strategies as it seeks to expand beyond being a platform to buy and sell crypto.Magazine: AI is banking the unbanked in Africa… faster than crypto

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House Democrats seek SEC answers on AI investment advisors

House Democrats seek SEC answers on AI investment advisors

Uverejnil používateľ | jún 25, 2026 |

A group of Democratic US House lawmakers is questioning the US securities regulator over how it is overseeing investment advice and trading powered by artificial intelligence.In a letter to SEC Chair Paul Atkins dated Tuesday, the lawmakers said that platforms offering AI trading agents to retail traders “raises serious questions for investor protection, broker-dealer responsibilities, market integrity, and the accountability of AI developers.”“While such trading may initially be limited in scope, there are indications that agentic trading could expand to a broad range of additional products, including options, cryptocurrency, event contracts, and futures,” the lawmakers wrote.AI agents have grown in popularity among crypto users as traders look to gain an edge in the always-on market, an idea that has spread to retail traders of traditional equities as they seek help with strategies.Crypto exchange Coinbase is one of the latest major platforms to introduce such a tool, releasing an AI agent earlier this month integrated into its app, which it said is a Securities and Exchange Commission- and Commodity Futures Trading Commission-registered financial adviser that can give guidance on trades.The letter, led by Bill Foster, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Financial Institutions Subcommittee, and Brad Sherman, the top Democrat on the Capital Markets Subcommittee, said the agents have “operated largely outside the securities regulatory framework,” even as they are making “consequential investment decisions on behalf of retail investors.”Representative Bill Foster speaking at a hearing in early June. Source: YouTubeThe lawmakers said the disclosures accompanying AI agents say that brokerage platforms can’t guarantee the accuracy or suitability of any AI output or control, monitor or audit the agents.Related: Bitcoin’s deeply discounted versus AI-stocks, but hawkish Fed risk lingers: BitwiseSuch disclaimers “raise urgent questions about the regulatory treatment of agentic trading tools and create uncertainty regarding legal responsibility among brokers, AI developers and retail investors.”The letter asked the SEC to provide written responses to a list of questions by July 31, including what guardrails or analysis the agency has on agents, when an AI agent would need to register and the extent of its consultations with platforms over AI.It also asked if the SEC has the authority it needs to address the risks of AI agents, or if it needs congressional action to address them.Representatives Stephen Lynch, Jim Himes, Sean Casten, Rashida Tlaib, Brittany Pettersen and Sylvia Garcia also signed the letter.Magazine: The end of anonymity? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities

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US nears ban on CBDCs until 2030 as housing bill goes to Trump

US nears ban on CBDCs until 2030 as housing bill goes to Trump

Uverejnil používateľ | jún 24, 2026 |

The US House has passed a major housing bill that includes a ban on central bank digital currencies until 2030, in what is set to be a major win for Republicans who have long pushed for such a measure.The House voted 358-32 on Tuesday to pass the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a day after the Senate voted 85-5 to pass the bill, which largely aims to tackle housing affordability. The bill now heads to US President Donald Trump, who has signaled support for the measure and is expected to sign it into law on Wednesday. “Today, Congress delivered a major win for families working toward the American Dream,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott. “I look forward to President Trump signing it into law.”CBDCs are a representation of fiat currency issued by a central bank on a ledger. The signing of the bill will be a win for Republicans who have tried to pass a CBDC ban for years, and for crypto advocates who see CBDCs as an attempt to repurpose technology made for decentralized assets into a centrally controlled asset. The housing bill includes language that the Federal Reserve may not, directly or indirectly, “issue or create a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is substantially similar to a central bank digital currency,” a clause that expires on Dec. 31, 2030.Source: US Senate Banking Committee GOPThe bill’s quick passage comes after House and Senate leaders reached a deal to move forward with the housing bill last week, after previously disagreeing over multiple aspects of the legislation.The bill has included the CBDC ban since the Senate passed a version of it in March. It also features a carve-out for crypto stablecoins, allowing “dollar-denominated currency that is open, permissionless and private.”The CBDC ban revived language from Republican Representative Tom Emmer’s Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act. That bill was introduced in June 2025 and passed the House a month later, but it never saw movement in the Senate.Related: Crypto lobby urges Congress to pass staking and mining tax bill as isWith the bill off lawmakers’ agenda, Congress can now focus on passing other legislation before the August recess and the November midterm elections.One bill that has garnered particular interest is the Senate’s crypto market structure bill, dubbed the CLARITY Act, which many lawmakers have been pushing to advance.Despite months of talks between lawmakers and crypto and banking lobbyists, the CLARITY Act is still seeing pushback, and the odds of it being passed this year have slipped.Earlier this month, Galaxy Digital lowered its estimate of the Senate passing the bill before the end of the year, giving it a 60% chance as the congressional calendar tightens.Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026

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