The investment marks Empery’s latest push into AI infrastructure as the company shifts capital away from its Bitcoin treasury strategy. Empery Digital said it invested $20 million in Cardinal Data Power, acquiring an approximately 8% stake in the private developer of powered data center campuses. The investment was part of Cardinal Data Power’s approximately $70 million Series A financing and will support development of a 750-megawatt data center campus in West Texas. The project is expected to deliver its first power in 2027, expand to about 1 gigawatt by 2029 and eventually exceed 5 gigawatts. Cardinal develops powered data center campuses for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads. The company said it combines power generation, natural gas supply and electrical infrastructure to accelerate development of large-scale computing sites. Read more
Ether trades below its realized price while onchain indicators point to easing selling pressure and recovering demand, though a definitive cycle bottom has yet to emerge. Ether is becoming increasingly attractive from a valuation standpoint, particularly relative to Bitcoin, but onchain data suggests the market has yet to reach a definitive cycle bottom, according to CryptoQuant. In its latest weekly report, the analytics company said Ether (ETH) is trading roughly 17% below its realized price, or the average onchain acquisition cost of all ETH in circulation, of about $2,300. Historically, ETH trading below its realized price has coincided with periods of market undervaluation and long-term bottoms. Ether is also showing signs of improving relative to Bitcoin (BTC). CryptoQuant said that ETH’s market value-to-realized value (MVRV) ratio has retreated from extreme overvaluation, exchange inflows have declined, exchange-traded fund (ETF) holdings have begun to recover after months of weakness, and ETH/BTC spot...
Are the fears of an AI driven hacking epidemic totally overblown, or is this just the lull before the storm? A wave of high profile crypto hacks in April that many suspected had been orchestrated using sophisticated AI tools to identify smart contract exploits, led to fears that every DeFi protocol was suddenly at risk. In May, Manuel Aráoz, founder of the blockchain security platform OpenZeppelin, declared “all of DeFi unsafe” following $630 million in crypto losses from exploits in April. But even as the industry braced for the scenario of DeFi protocols falling like dominoes to agentic AI, the stream of attacks seemed to ebb. That led Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi to declare recently that fears of a DeFi “hackpocalypse” were a “false alarm.” He pointed out that even including April’s big hacks, the year to date has seen “a lower rate of hacked $ per month” and that the “median hack size by year is also declining.” So who’s right? Are the fears of an AI driven hacking epidemic totally overblown,...
The partnership expands Binance’s compliance efforts by providing intelligence and training to help detect cryptocurrency activity tied to human trafficking and child exploitation. [Update 16:00 UTC, July 23: Adds Chainalysis data in penultimate paragraph.] Binance has partnered with nonprofit STOP THE TRAFFIK to bolster its ability to identify and investigate cryptocurrency activity linked to human trafficking and child exploitation. The crypto exchange said Thursday that it will receive specialized intelligence, training and insights from the UK group’s Centre for Intelligence-Led Prevention to help identify emerging criminal typologies and strengthen investigations into illicit activity linked to human trafficking. Read more
A consortium led by Strategy and BlackRock has pledged $15 million to secure the Bitcoin network from the threat of a quantum computing breakthrough. Michael Saylor’s Strategy announced the launch of the Bitcoin Security Consortium, a group of financial institutions and Bitcoin companies supporting the long-term quantum security of the Bitcoin network. The consortium pledged an aggregate $15 million over the next three years to support developers securing the Bitcoin network against the threat of a quantum computing breakthrough, Strategy announced in a Thursday press release. Other founding members include Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets and Galaxy. The consortium’s day-to-day work will be coordinated by Mike Schmidt, who serves in a volunteer capacity and is the executive director of Brink, a non-profit that supports Bitcoin open-source developers. Read more