The UK is reportedly considering a ban on political crypto donations as Reform UK tops the polls, raising questions about funding transparency and potential foreign influence. The United Kingdom is considering a ban on crypto donations to political parties, a move that would directly affect Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage, who have leaned into digital assets as part of a pitch for a crypto revolution in Britain, according to Politico. The option is being discussed as part of an Elections Bill intended to bolster trust in politics, even though a ban was not included in an earlier policy paper, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The report claimed that a government spokesperson did not deny that the plan is under review, saying further details will be set out in the bill. Read more
Commercial AI models were able to autonomously generate real-world smart contract exploits worth millions; the costs of such attacks are falling rapidly. Recent research by major artificial intelligence company Antropic and AI security organization Machine Learning Alignment & Theory Scholars (MATS) showed that AI agents collectively developed smart contract exploits worth $4.6 million. Research released by Anthropic’s red team (a team dedicated to acting like a bad actor to discover potential for abuse) on Monday said that currently available commercial AI models are capable of exploiting smart contracts. Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5 collectively developed exploits worth $4.6 million when tested on contracts, exploiting them after their most recent training data was gathered. Read more