Another Friday, another mixtape of this week’s crypto rabbit hole. Welcome to HODL FM, the go-to spot for Web3 folks.

Previous Digest: Harris’s Crypto Position, ETH ETF Boom, Altcoin Prospects, and Tesla’s Q2 Achievements

What happened?

  • Donald Trump: The speech that made Bitcoin greater, again.
  • OpenAI: “Seriously, we’re all about safety, we swear!”
  • Rich hodlers: Turns out, money can’t buy security anymore.
  • NVIDIA Stocks: Bitcoin & Ether can no longer match the volatility of NVIDIA

The speech that made Bitcoin greater, again

Donald Trump delivered the first pro-Bitcoin speech by a former U.S president, and with it, the price of Bitcoin almost broke through the ceiling at $69,800, just a few points from $70,000.

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Source: BitcoinMagazine

For those that need a quick recap, Trump promised to:

  • Transform the U.S into the world’s cryptocurrency capital
  • Form an advisory council for spearheading transparent crypto regulations. 
  • Fire Gary Gensler for blocking the future, instead of building it.
  • Produce so much electricity for mining Bitcoin that you’ll be begging him, “please,we don’t want any more electricity M.r president, we have enough”
  • Order the government treasury to cease and desist selling government Bitcoin. A true government HODLs, you know.
  • And many more…

But all this will happen if Trump wins the upcoming elections. And while this address put the U.S on the spotlight in blockchain innovation, there could be more benefits hanging on the sides for a pro-Bitcoin United States. Let’s look at what the numbers are saying:

In 2023, cryptocurrency startups raised $8.2 billion.

7 months into 2024, and these startups have almost hit last year’s figures with $5.5 billion. According to PitchBook, these investments could reach $12 billion by the end of the year.

Should Trump win in the upcoming elections, these numbers could accelerate further, says Joshua De Vos, a director of research at CCData.

The argument by Joshua and many others is that a Win for Trump is a Win for crypto, which will also eventuall catalyze investments into the industry.

History through the lens of a Meme: 

What were you doing on that exact day when Bitcoin reached $1?

Seriously, we’re all about safety, we swear!

Two days ago, OpenAI announced they were endorsing three senate bills that are crucial for safety and accessible use of Artificial Intelligence. 

The Future of AI Innovation Act, one of the bills, aims to solidify support from the U.S Congress for a body committed to building best practices for safe development of next-generation AI systems, the United States AI Safety Institute.

The other two bills CREATE AI, will formalize the formation of key initiatives for democratizing accessibility of AI research resources.

While the third one, the NSF AI Education Act plans to strengthen the workforce in the Artificial Intelligence sector by widening and enhancing learning opportunities in AI related tools.

On July 22, Democrat lawmakers wrote a 12-point letter to OpenAI seeking clarification on various issues to do with safety, compliance and accessibility.

In the letter, the democrat senate members wanted to know whether OpenAI would avail its next foundation model to government agencies in the United states for pre-deployment testing and assessment.

It occurred that only whistleblower reports had prompted the lawmakers that OpenAI had lax safety standards for its latest GPT-4 Omni, and as such, the product’s market release had to be delayed.

The reports also claimed any efforts of addressing the concerns were met with retaliation within OpenAI’s board of management, where the latter failed to comply claiming its innovation operations were bound to non-disclosure agreements, thereby prompting the whistlerblowers to file accusations against the AI firm with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. This was in June 2024.

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Source: Tenor

Aside from that, Tech giant Microsoft which invested $13 billion into OpenAI’s operations a year ago refused to take a seat in the board in July, 2024. 

Shortly after, Apple also renounced its membership from the artificial intelligence firm’s board. Both of them cited increased regulatory scrutiny as major reasons for rescinding a seat in the board.

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Source: Tenor

In context, it seems that OpenAI’s recent support for legislation comes at the height of increased regulatory scrutiny and follows the letter addressed to CEO Sam Altman by the democrat lawmakers. 

Among the things the lawmakers want to know is whether OpenAI will commit 20% of its computing resources to empowering AI safety research and security protocols for preventing foreign advisories and malicious players from tampering with AI tools.

Turns Out Thiefs and Robbers are Targeting Rich Hodlers

You can take everything from a man but spare him life! Yet a 29-year old foreign national in Ukraine lost both his life and his stash of $170,000 worth of Bitcoin to a gang of kidnappers, robbers and murderers who did these three heinous acts  before disposing of his body in a forest in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Police say the attacks were launched at midnight near a residential building where several men beat up and forced someone into a car, sped off to an abandoned building, made him transfer 2.55 BTC and strangled him to death. 

The police have already arrested four suspects associated with the crime who they allege changed the car’s number plates and appearance to conceal the incident.

Prosecutors in Kyiv are planning to press charges against the suspects where all four could be up for a life imprisonment on counts robbery, concealment of crime, and illegal deprivation of liberty.

This isn’t the first time that such an incident has occured, in 2022, the dismembered body of a cryptocurrency millionaire was found in Argentina, and another was beaten to death in Bulgaria and their body parts flushed into a sewer.

Bitcoin cypherpunk Jameson Lopp claims such crimes start by first identifying potential victims during public conversations, social media posts, events and conferences. He says some also happen when cryptocurrency hoders try conducting physical peer-to-peer trades with people they aren’t familiar with.

Meme of the Week

This is not funny Guys!

As Volatile as NVIDIA, Not Bitcoin

NVIDIA stocks, NVDA has its 30-day implied volatility surge from an annualized figure of 48% to a staggering 71%.

Surprisingly, the metric that tracks down the price swings of investment assets over a 4-week period, the 30-day implied volatility has declined from 68% to 49% for Bitcoin, and 70% to 55% for Ethereum.

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Source: Memedroids

This suggests that the degree of expected price turbulence is higher for NVIDIA compared to the two largest cryptocurrencies, which have historically been known for being highly volatile and unpredictable.

It seems the Nasdaq-listed NVDA stock which has been praised for being the world’s best stock of the year has potential to see significant price swings by the end of 2024 compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

More: 

Final Wrap

That’s a wrap for this week, we hope you enter the weekend like that guy in the movie who walks away from an explosion without looking back—cool, calm, and totally unfazed. Have an epic one, see you again.

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