The release date has not been confirmed, but the platform is already claimed to become an ‘all-new socially driven collectible experience that brings the magic of pin collecting to the digital age’.

Entertainment giant the Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) has joined forces with a leading blockchain-based video games developer Dapper Labs Inc. to launch an NFT collectibles platform. Dubbed “Disney Pinnacle”, the platform will allow collectors to buy and trade branded NFTs minted on the Flow (FLOW) blockchain.
Roham Gharegozlou, co-founder and CEO of Dapper Labs, commented:

“Disney Pinnacle is an all-new product designed from the ground up to incorporate everything we’ve learned over the past few years. Fans anywhere will be able to collect dynamic pins on their phone and trade

The CMC Labs program will last for one year only. Notably, it is highly selective, with a limited number of participants. Those who want to become a part of CMC Labs have to meet a number of certain criteria.

The world’s leading provider of data on crypto market capitalizations CoinMarketCap has announced the launch of CMC Labs – a special Web3 program dedicated to offering a comprehensive curriculum and access to industry-leading mentors and investors. In essence, CMC Labs has been designed for those who are interested in becoming Web3 entrepreneurs to simplify their entrance into extremely competitive Web3 space and help them overcome multiple challenges of the industry.

Introducing ‘CMC Labs’ 💥CoinMarketCap’s Web3 Startup Accelerator Programhttps://t.co/Em8EBdlrJa#CMCLabs is

More than 4,300 registered companies operating within the DIFC can now integrate XRP and TON tokens into their virtual asset services.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has added XRP (XRP) and Toncoin (TON) to the list of tokens that can be legally utilized within the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). Now the total list of approved coins is brought to five, with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC) authorized back in 2022.
Recognition by the Dubai International Financial Centre is a significant milestone for tokens that can expand their use. Notably, DIFC is the leading international financial hub in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, with more than 4,300 registered companies located in this special economic zone. All those companies operating

Over the last 2 years, there have been a few cuts within the company as part of its goal to “deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency”.

Tech giant Google LLC (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has cut at least 40 jobs in its Google News division. According to those familiar with the matter, the reason behind the layoff round is the uncertainty and sensitive time for online platforms and publishers. The exact number of those who lost their job at the Google News unit is not confirmed. As the spokesperson stated, there are still hundreds of employees working on the product.
Google representative commented:

“We’re deeply committed to a vibrant information ecosystem, and news is a part of that long-term investment. We’ve made some internal changes to streamline our organization. A

Out of the 1,258 job cuts, more than 750 positions are from different levels of Qualcomm’s engineering ranks. The rest of the reductions cover a broad range of roles such as internal technical staff and accounting. 

American largest chipmaker Qualcomm Inc (NASDAQ: QCOM) will lay off about 1258 employees in its California unit. According to a filing with the California Employment Development Department, as many as 1,064 of its San Diego employees and 194 of its Santa Clara employees will be subject to the reduction that will take effect from December 13.
When reached for a comment on the news, Qualcomm cited “uncertainty in the macroeconomic and demand environment” as a reason behind the need to restructure its headcount.

Qualcomm stated:
“While we are in the process of developing

Currently, there are nine residents of the park. All of them will get access to ten government initiatives introduced to “boost the development” of the digital yuan ecosystem. The initiatives include payment solutions, smart contracts, hard wallets, and digital yuan promotion.

The first industrial park has been opened in the Luohu district of Shenzhen, China, with a focus on developing China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) – digital yuan or e-CNY. The official launching ceremony of the park was held on October 11.
As was revealed by Shu Yumin, the Communist Party Secretary of the Shenzhen Financial Supervision Bureau, the aim of the industrial park is to “help promote the further improvement and expansion” of the e-CNY pilot work as well as bring Shenzhen closer to becoming a

The reason behind the decision to leave the Canadian market was not revealed by Bitstamp. Notably, the exchange follows Binance, OKX, and Bybit which announced their exit from Canada earlier.

Luxembourg-based crypto exchange Bitstamp is planning to stop providing services in the Canadian market in January 2024. The deadline for withdrawing customers’ funds is January 8. Afterward, Bitstamp will deactivate Canadian users’ accounts.
The announcement was shared by Bobby Zagotta, Bitstamp’s US CEO and Global Chief Commercial Officer:

“After initially informing our valued customers in March, Bitstamp will officially discontinue its services to customers in Canada starting Jan. 8, 2024. As a result, all Canada accounts will be closed and customers will no longer have access to their

Following the earnings report, the shares of PepsiCo saw a price increase. Yesterday, PepsiCo stock closed the trading session at $161.36 per share. In the pre-market trade today, PepsiCo shares are 0.84% up, or at $162.71 per share.

PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP) has released its earnings report for the third quarter of 2023. One of the world’s largest food and beverage companies has managed to beat Wall Street’s estimates, delivering better-than-expected results. Due to great performance in Q3, PepsiCo has a positive 2023 full-year forecast.
PepsiCo Q3 2023 Earnings: Highlights
For the quarter that ended on September 30, PepsiCo generated $3.09 billion, up from $2.70 billion reported in the same quarter last year. The earnings per share totaled $2.24, up from $1.95 in last year’s third

In 2024, the prices are expected to further go up. According to a Wall Street analyst Brandt Montour, the rise in ticket prices for 2024 sailings will be set 20% to 30% higher than 2019 levels.

The 2023 cruise industry is booming, it has significantly surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 levels and broken sales records in a rapid comeback. Revenue in the cruise market is expected to reach as much as $25.14 billion this year. Amid a strong and increasing travel demand, cruise operators are raising ticket prices.
The top cruise operators, Carnival Corporation & PLC and Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd (NYSE: RCL), are already setting some ticket prices at a higher level. In particular, the average price of a five-night cruise in the Royal Caribbean for December 2023 is $736, which is about 37% higher

Along with the Contributor Program, Reddit has announced an update to Reddit Gold – a paid feature that allows users to personalize their profiles.

American social news website and forum Reddit has announced a new program where qualifying users can be rewarded with money for their contributions. Within the Contributor Program, qualifying Redditors, including mods, can receive fiat money for the content they share on Reddit. The content will be estimated based on the karma and gold they’ve been given.
To take part in the program, contributors must be over 18 and reside in the US, their accounts must be more than 30 days old. If eligible, contributors have to go through a verification process, and once verified, they can enroll in the program. Redditors give gold to posts, comments, or

Within the newly announced collaboration, Amazon will invest as much as $4 billion into Anthropic, with AWS becoming Anthropic’s primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads.

American e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) has announced a strategic partnership with San Fransisco-based AI safety and research startup Anthropic. Within the deal, Amazon and Anthropic will work on developing advanced generative AI models that are safer, better-performing, and more reliable.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Trainium and Inferentia chips will be employed by Anthropic to train and deploy its AI models. In addition, AWS will serve as a primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads, including safety research and future foundation model development.

Meanwhile, for Amazon

The amount to be charged has not been revealed. Currently, the X platform has 550 million monthly users who generate 100 to 200 million posts every day.

On Monday, tech billionaire Elon Musk had a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The discussion was mostly about the theoretical risks of artificial intelligence technology and AI regulation. During the talks, Elon Musk also shared his plans for the upcoming future and revealed that the X platform (formerly Twitter) is “moving to a small monthly payment” for the use of its services. As Elon Musk has explained, the move to take a fee will allow X to reduce the number of bots.
Musk stated:

“The single most important reason we’re moving to have a small monthly payment for use of the X system is It’s the only way

Within the funding round, Animoca Brands issued Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFEs) priced at A$4.50 each and offered a free-attaching utility token warrant on a 1:1 dollar basis to the participants. 

Hong Kong-based game software company Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd has raised as much as $20 million (approximately A$31.3 million) in a funding round led by CMCC Global, one of Asia’s first venture capital investors focused solely on blockchain technology. Animoca Brands is planning to use the funds raised to expand its Mocaverse project which aims to bring together the company’s portfolio projects, subsidiaries, joint ventures, and partners through a unique collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Other participants included Kingsway Capital, Liberty City Ventures, and GameFi

According to those familiar with the matter, the new AI system developed by Meta will allow companies to develop services that produce sophisticated text, analysis, and other output.

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META) is reportedly developing a new open-source AI system that is expected to be more powerful and advanced than the GPT-4 model offered by OpenAI. Besides, its capacity will be twice as high as Llama 2 – the latest AI model released by Meta and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) in July.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the training of the new system is expected to start as early as 2024. Recently, Meta increased its investment in AI chips made by Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA), which means it is going to train the new model using Nvidia’s H100s chips. The latest

With Samsung winning the position of a competitor against SK Hynix, Nvidia will have more options when it comes to chip supply and stop relying on SK Hynix as a sole provider. 

South Korean multinational electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co has reportedly won the right to supply advanced memory HBM3 chips to the world’s leader in artificial intelligence computing Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA). Following the reports, Samsung saw its shares soar by 6%.
Citigroup analysts Peter Lee and Josh Yang were among the first to reveal that Samsung will start the supply of HBM3, new-generation memory chips optimized for artificial intelligence applications, for Nvidia starting from the fourth quarter of this year.

Once Samsung and Nvidia complete their work on technical verification for

Ernie’s release follows the new regulation in the AI industry introduced by the Chinese government. Notably, Baidu became the first company to get an approval from the authorities. 

On March 16, Chinese internet search services giant Baidu Inc (HKG: 9888) revealed its Chinese-language ChatGPT alternative – Ernie chatbot. At that time, the chatbot was not fully ready, therefore, it was available to a limited number of users, mostly business partners and those who were the first on the waitlist. Today, Baidu has announced that Ernie bot is fully open to the general public. Within a few hours after the public launch, the Ernie AI chatbot ranked as the top application on Apple’s app store in China.
Baidu stated:

“We are thrilled to share that ERNIE Bot is now fully open to the general

AI21 Labs is planning to use the money raised for developing AI products that will compete with ChatGPT developer OpenAI and AI safety and research company Anthropic.

AI21 Labs, a Tel Aviv-based AI lab and product startup, has raised $155 million in a Series C funding round that was led by such companies as Walden Catalyst Management LLC, Pitango VC, SCB10X Co Ltd, b2venture, Samsung Next, as well as Google LLC and NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA). The funding round has brought the company’s total capital to $283 million and valued the AI startup at $1.4 billion.
Yoav Shoham, AI21 Labs’ co-founder, commented:

“AI21 Labs came out of stealth in October 2020 with our first launch of [AI writing tool] Wordtune. Since then, we’ve only managed to grow, more than doubling our workforce with

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerSingapore’s Biggest Bank DBS Launches Metaverse ‘BetterWorld’ Concept to Reduce Food Waste
The ‘BetterWorld’ gamified experience will be accessible to the public once the Sandbox’s Alpha Season 4 is launched before the end of 2023.
Singapore’s Biggest Bank DBS Launches Metaverse ‘BetterWorld’ Concept to Reduce Food Waste

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerChina’s Evergrande Group Files for Bankruptcy Protection in the US
Evergrande’s affiliate Tianji Holdings and the company’s subsidiary Scenery Journey have also filed for Chapter 15 protection in the US court.
China’s Evergrande Group Files for Bankruptcy Protection in the US

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerUS Supreme Court Rules in Favor of 30% Developer Tax on Apple App Store
Apple is now legally allowed to keep its taxation policy. As Justice Elena Kagan has ruled, the latest petition filed by Epic Games against Apple is declined. 
US Supreme Court Rules in Favor of 30% Developer Tax on Apple App Store

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerPolygon Zero Accuses Matter Labs’ Developers of Copying Source Code
While Polygon Zero is claiming the code was used without the original copyrights or clear attribution to the original authors, Matter Labs stated that the code was "prominently attributed" in a line atop one of the files in question.
Polygon Zero Accuses Matter Labs’ Developers of Copying Source Code

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerBlockchain Will Be Used for Verifying Cultural Artifacts
Collections submitted for verification by Salsal end up with a proven factual history of the owners and receive an immutable, permanent record of ownership transfer.
Blockchain Will Be Used for Verifying Cultural Artifacts

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerUK Crypto Companies Recruiting despite Sharp Decline in Job Market
As per the UK Office for National Statistics, the UK unemployment rate was estimated at 4.0% for the second quarter of this year, which is 0.2% higher than the previous quarter.
UK Crypto Companies Recruiting despite Sharp Decline in Job Market

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerOpenAI Shuts Down Its AI Detection Tool Due to Low Accuracy
The link leading to the tool is no longer functioning. However, OpenAI has promised to come up with other detection tools that users can trust. 
OpenAI Shuts Down Its AI Detection Tool Due to Low Accuracy

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerRussian President Vladimir Putin Signs Law on Digital Ruble
The Bank of Russia has promised there will be no obligatory transfer of salaries and pensions to digital rubles when they are finally in use. Similar to cash and non-cash rubles, the digital ruble will also have no expiry date.
Russian President Vladimir Putin Signs Law on Digital Ruble

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerFSB Finalizes Global Regulatory Framework for Crypto
The aim of FSB was to provide a regulatory framework that would comply with the principle of "same activity, same risk, same regulation" and cover all possible risks related to crypto activity.
FSB Finalizes Global Regulatory Framework for Crypto

[unable to retrieve full-text content]CoinspeakerGoogle Facing Lawsuit Over Misusing Personal Data to Train Its AI Models
As per the lawsuit, the damages brought by Google are equal to over $5 billion.
Google Facing Lawsuit Over Misusing Personal Data to Train Its AI Models

The company cited the challenging environment as a reason behind its headcount cut.

Amid crypto winter and uncertain market conditions, companies continue to employ cost-cutting measures that often include layoffs. Digital asset management firm Arca is one the latest on the list of those currently in the middle of staff downsizing. Arca has reduced its headcount by as much as 30% (currently, it has only 66 employees in total), explaining the decision to lay off a third of its staff in a challenging environment.
Arca representative stated:

“Growth has been hard to predict in this extended bear market and uncertain regulatory environment. Our headcount adjustment will allow us to preserve capital and resources giving us a greater chance of success until this sector experiences a shift

Previously, one of the simplest ways to access OpenAI’s software on a mobile device was to use Microsoft’s Bing app which offers access to ChatGPT. Now, with the app, using the chatbot will be easier and faster.

OpenAI Inc, a research laboratory that focuses on artificial intelligence (AI), has announced the launch of an iOS version of the ChatGPT app. According to the company, later, the app will also be available on Android. It will first be rolled out for users in the US, with more countries added in the coming weeks.
As OpenAI has stated, the ChatGPT app is free to use. Its features include synchronizing a user’s history across devices as well as integration of Whisper – an open-source speech-recognition system that enables voice input. The app is also free from ads. In addition,

The reason behind the exchange’s decision is not clear. According to those familiar with the matter, closing the service is not linked to the scrutiny from SEC which has alleged that Coinbase was offering and trading unregistered securities, thereby violating federal securities laws. 

Crypto exchange Coinbase Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) has announced its decision to stop issuing loans through its Coinbase Borrow service where Bitcoin (BTC) has been serving as collateral. Starting from May 10, customers will no longer be able to access the feature. However, the existing outstanding loans will not be affected.
Coinbase spokesperson commented:

“We regularly evaluate our products to ensure we’re prioritizing the offerings that our customers care about most. Effective May 10, we will stop