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View More NewsIn brief Autonomous AI agents have made over 138 million crypto payments through Coinbase’s x402 protocol on Base, per Chainalysis, as “agentic commerce” emerges as one of crypto’s fastest-growing use cases. The payments are tiny—87%+ fell between a hundredth of a cent and 10 cents—the kind of micro-transactions stablecoins handle but card rails can’t. The boom rides maturing infrastructure from Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase and Google, though earlier research suggests much agent activity may be scripts, not genuine agents. AI agents are beginning to spend real money, and increasingly they’re paying in crypto.That’s the picture from a new Chainalysis report, which…
If a treatment can improve your health, does that give the government the right to force it onto you? Should the state compel people with diabetes to take insulin, patients with hypertension to take their medications, or people with obesity to lose weight? Most Americans would recoil at such proposals. Yet when it comes to people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, many people seem willing to make an exception. A physician who administers treatment to a competent adult against the patient’s will violates one of medicine’s most fundamental ethical principles: informed consent. Why should that principle carry less weight when the…
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As has been well documented at Quillette, Canada recently experienced a widespread social panic following false claims that the “unmarked graves” of 215 Indigenous children had been discovered on the grounds of a former residential school that was operated by the Catholic Church between 1890 and 1969. The lurid narrative, which first emerged in 2021, suggested that sadistic priests and nuns had ruthlessly dispatched these children and buried them surreptitiously (in the dark of night, according to the most breathless media accounts), presumably as a means to hide their crimes. In the five years that have passed since this sensational…
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In brief Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, is buying Saldo Bank, an EU-licensed lender based in Lithuania, the Financial Times reported.…
[Update, 11:00 am UTC: Added a follow-up response from a Coins.ph spokesperson.]Coins.ph said it remains licensed by the country’s central bank following reports that…
A brief spike to $84,000 early Wednesday faded within the hour, leaving bitcoin down 0.5% at about $83,200. It’s still boxed between its 50-day…
In brief UK software engineer Lewis Barber is suing the operator of BitMEX, the crypto derivatives exchange that shut down in September, in London’s…
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week’s newsletter includes stories on: The Trump administration’s latest strategy for boosting manufactured housing…
Bitcoin treasury company Strive ASST$27.60·Market Closed on Tuesday evening announced a new perpetual preferred stock, SATS, with a 15% fixed dividend.The company is aiming…
The wallet maker requested that devices be removed from shelves while investigators work to establish where tampering occurred. Read the full article here
In brief Trezor told partners their reseller authorization ends January 1, 2027, and that it will ship them no new stock, saying there is…
Our peer-reviewed Journal of Free Speech Law, which is now five years old, has published over 150 articles, including by Jack Balkin (Yale), Mark Lemley…
Bitcoin (BTC) rebounded toward $84,000 on Tuesday as crypto markets skirted fresh losses for South Korean stock markets.Key points:Bitcoin diverged from plummeting Asian tech…
In brief Character.AI filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware on October 12 to sell itself under court supervision, and says the app…
The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping…