Though possibly not its first foray into crypto, Harvard’s reported stake in BlackRock's Bitcoin exchange-traded fund represented a significant investment. Harvard Management Company, the entity responsible for managing the university’s $53-billion endowment fund, has reported a multimillion-dollar investment in BlackRock’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). In a Friday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Harvard disclosed holding about 1.9 million shares of the iShares Bitcoin (BTC) ETF as of June 30. The BTC exposure was valued at more than $116 million, making it the fund’s fifth-largest investment for the period after Microsoft, Amazon, travel technology company Booking Holdings, and Meta. Harvard reported its endowment fund was $53.2 billion as of June 30, 2024, making it the largest among US universities, ahead of Yale, Stanford and Princeton. Read more
ChatGPT-5 users on social media platforms were critical of the update, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to the complaints, pledging improvements. ChatGPT users flooded social media forums with negative comments about the platform's latest model released on Thursday, saying the upgrade was overhyped by OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman. Users on Reddit criticized the company's ChatGPT-5 model, saying it had a more restrictive rate limit and lacked the ability to switch to previous AI models, with some threatening to switch to competing AI platforms. Altman responded to the feedback in an X post: Altman called GPT-5 “a major upgrade over GPT-4” and a “significant step” along the road to artificial general intelligence (AGI) during Thursday’s official rollout. Read more
Court documents showed there was at least one 90-year-old, and some people had “set in stone” their opinions about the Tornado Cash co-founder’s criminal charges. A 12-person jury, including a member who celebrated her 90th birthday, deliberated this week in the complex case of Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash. They convicted Storm on one count of running an unlicensed money transmitting business, while remaining unable to reach a decision on other charges. According to court documents released on Thursday by Judge Katherine Failla, jurors in the Storm case sent several requests for information before declaring they were deadlocked on two of the charges. Among the letters to the judge were requests for transcripts of the testimony of several witnesses, clarification on what led to the indictment, and a specific query on the wallets included in North Korean sanctions. Read more