MIT says that due to concerns about the “integrity” of a high-profile paper about the effects of artificial intelligence on research and innovation, the paper should be “withdrawn from public discourse.” The paper in question, “Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation,” was written by a doctoral student in the university’s economics program. It claimed […]
Read more The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility increased the yield of the experiment in recent attempts.
Read more Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got tons of news for you this week, including a hack at Coinbase; YC thinks Google is a ‘monopolist’; layoffs at Microsoft; and much more. Have a great weekend! Uh-oh: Coinbase says that customers’ personal information, including government-issued IDs, was stolen in a data breach. The hackers demanded […]
Read more Epic Games is escalating its efforts to pressure Apple to allow its game Fortnite into its App Store, with a new court filing asking Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to require that Apple “accept any compliant version of Fortnite onto the U.S. storefront of the App Store.” Epic and Apple have been engaged in a years-long […]
Read more 
Paraguayan law enforcement has deported three individuals and arrested another for attempting to steal crypto miners at a facility near the country’s Itaipu hydroelectric dam.
According to a May 15 statement from Paraguayan prosecutor Irene Rolón, the men were caught by police soon after breaking into a locked section of Teratech SA’s facility in Coronel Bogado, leading to their arrest.
Prosecutors believe the men may have had ties to Teratech as independent contractors, but are still waiting on official confirmation from the company’s CEO.
The three deported were Chinese nationals Jinping Duan, Tian Jianyun and Zheng Guanglong, who did not have official entry records into the country. Paraguayan authorities and Interpol believe the men illegally entered through Brazil or Bolivia.
The other person arrested, Nahun María Velázquez Garcete, is a legal resident in Paraguay but is believed to be part of a criminal organization.
He has been charged with aggravated theft and is currently in pretrial detention.
The arrested individual was hospitalized in critical condition soon after the arrest, but the injuries sustained weren’t disclosed.
Paraguayan officials believe other individuals were involved in the attempted theft and are working to identify those people. As such, the case is still under investigation.
Deportees may have been working illegally for months
Rolón believes the undocumented immigrants had been in Paraguay for several months and had come to work as programmers. However, it isn’t clear whether that work was performed for the company.
Paraguayan officials are waiting on a report from Teratech’s CEO to determine the exact nature of his relationship with the three men.
Related: Bitcoin miner Hive taps Paraguay for low-cost energy partnership
Paraguay is considered well-suited for crypto mining operations due to its abundant renewable energy resources, much of which is underutilized.
The Itaipu dam has become a popular site for miners to set up, as it supplies all of Paraguay’s local electricity needs and leaves a large amount of excess electricity to tap into.
Magazine: Korea to lift corporate crypto ban, beware crypto mining HDs: Asia Express
Key takeaways:
-
Traders expect a Bitcoin price pullback to $90,000, but a bull flag could break out to new highs if profit taking near the range highs reduces.
-
On-chain data suggests the current profit taking is too weak to extinguish Bitcoin’s current price momentum.
Bitcoin (BTC) price has spent the bulk of the week pinned below $104,000 to $105,000, which many analysts have labelled as a resistance zone, but an alternative view suggests that BTC is simply consolidating within a bull flag.
A bull flag is a continuation pattern that is characterized by a period of sideways price action following a sharp uptrend, and when the structure confirms or breaks from the trendline resistance, the uptrend continues.
While the range-bound trading portion of the flag is said to represent indecision from buyers and sellers, in this scenario, the absence of buy volume is the primary culprit. As shown in the TRDR.io chart below, Bitcoin’s explosive move to $105,900 from $74,400 was accompanied by large liquidations in the margin markets and robust spot volumes, which aligned with several days of billion-dollar spot BTC ETF inflows.
During this three-week period, several US-based and international companies also announced plans to purchase Bitcoin and establish BTC treasuries. The spot and futures cumulative volume delta, along with the open interest metric on the chart show traders selling near the range highs and the absence of new long leverage and significantly sized spot positions being opened in this area, whereas drops to range low (bull flag support) sees bids filled on the spot side, but there is still limited use of margin for fresh longs.
Bitcoin’s recent cool-down phase is a normal outcome after the near 40% recovery that started on April 8, and the loss of upward momentum resulting from profit-taking in futures markets near the current range high is also to be expected.
Bitcoin short-term holder supply profit and loss data from Glassnode supports this view, as shown in the chart below. The onchain data company highlighted profit taking for short-term traders but explained that it does not exceed the statistical norm, leaving room for further price upside.
“Recently, the magnitude of STH Realized Profit has surged to almost +3 standard deviations above its 90-day average, reflecting a notable uptick in profit realization. In past cycles, particularly during rallies towards the ATH, this metric has historically climbed to over +5 standard deviations of more. This signals that much stronger profit-taking pressure is often required to overwhelm the inflow demand.”
Related: Bitfinex Bitcoin longs total $6.8B while shorts stand at $25M — Time for BTC to rally?
Bitcoin should test underlying support before moving higher
With the bulk of Bitcoin’s apparent sell-side liquidity absorbed during the move to $105,000, some analysts warn that a brief flush down to test $100,000 to $90,000 as support could be the next move for BTC price.
Bitcoin market liquidity resource Material Indicators said, barring “a serious catalyst,“ […] BTC has a legit support test at $100K, and FireCharts show that the order book is priming for that with asks stacking and bids moving lower.”
Sharing his view with X followers, analyst Daan Crypto Trades said that the bulk of bullish and bearish narratives with the potential to impact Bitcoin’s price action have “cleared up” and he noted that BTC price has stalled near its all-time high while stocks have continued to rally after President Trump’s US-China trade deal was confirmed.
The analyst said that “$90K remains my long-term line in the sand for spot exposure,” adding that he is “cautiously bullish” with price above $90,000 but that is dependent upon how US equity markets perform in the short term.
“I would not be surprised to see a short-term flush if stocks were to roll over and make a higher low somewhere. Considering most stocks moved 30% to 50% in a single month, this wouldn’t be that crazy either.”
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
Crypto entrepreneurs and their families in France will receive enhanced security measures amid a recent rise in crypto-related kidnappings in the country, Politico reported.
According to the May 16 report, the measures include priority access to police emergency lines, home security assessments, and safety briefings from French law enforcement to ensure best practices are being followed.
France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau introduced the security measures as part of a broader effort to counter the recent wave of attacks.
“These repeated kidnappings of professionals in the crypto sector will be fought with specific tools, both immediate and short-term, to prevent, dissuade and hinder in order to protect the industry.”
Law enforcement officers will also undergo “anti-crypto asset laundering training,” Retailleau noted.
Retailleau met with several local leaders from the crypto industry to discuss the measures following three crypto-related kidnapping incidents in recent months.
Two kidnappings and a failed attempt in France this year
The latest incident occurred on May 13, when assailants attempted to abduct the daughter and grandson of Pierre Noizat, CEO of the French crypto platform Paymium. Fortunately, they managed to fend off the attack, which occurred in broad daylight.
The assailants tried to force the pair into a waiting van, but Noizat’s daughter managed to take one of the guns off an assailant and throw it away, local police said.
En plein Paris, un homme a été violenté par des individus cagoulés, habillés tout en noir. Ils tentaient de l’enlever. Un homme a surgi, extincteur à la main, pour les faire fuir. →https://t.co/P0qV6PR40v pic.twitter.com/9f4r2Gi7ho
— Le Figaro (@Le_Figaro) May 13, 2025
On May 3, Paris police freed the father of a crypto entrepreneur who was held for several days in connection with a 7 million euros ($7.8 million) kidnapping plot.
Related: SEC hacker sentenced to 14 months in prison
In January, the co-founder of crypto hardware wallet provider Ledger, David Balland, was abducted from his home in central France during the early hours of Jan. 21. He was held captive until a police operation on the night of Jan. 22 secured his release.
Retailleau said earlier this week that he believes the incidents were likely connected.
There have been over 150 crypto-related robbery or kidnapping incidents since 2014, with 23 of those incidents occurring in 2025 alone, according to a GitHub database maintained by Bitcoin cypherpunk Jameson Lopp.
Lopp noted many of these criminals typically identify future victims through social media posts, public conversations, meetups, and conferences.
He strongly advises against peer-to-peer trades — particularly with people you don’t trust — flaunting wealth on social media and wearing crypto-branded clothing.
Magazine: Binance Wallet ‘killing’ MetaMask and airdrops, Chinese RWA tokens
Tokenization could open new opportunities for retail investors to access traditionally restricted asset classes, according to Johann Kerbrat, senior vice president and general manager of Robinhood Crypto, who called it “very important for financial inclusion.”
Speaking at the Consensus 2025 event in Toronto, Kerbrat said that some real-world assets, such as real estate and private equity, are available only to up to 10% of the US population. “You need to be an accredited investor to invest in private equity right now,” he said.
“How many people can afford a house or an apartment in New York?” he elaborated. “But you can get a piece of it with fractionalization, through tokenization. And so we think it makes it a lot easier to be exchanged, a lot more accessible for everybody.”
Robinhood has been one of a handful of investment firms or brokerages that have explored RWA tokenization in recent months. Others include BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Apollo, and VanEck.
RWA tokenization is often touted as a means to enhance financial accessibility, with most tokenized funds currently concentrated on the private credit and US treasury markets. According to RWA.xyz on May 16, the total market capitalization of onchain RWA is $22.5 billion across just 101,457 asset holders. On average, each holder owns $221,867 in onchain assets.
Related: MultiBank, MAG, Mavryk ink world’s largest $3B RWA tokenization deal
Stablecoin evolution will create more ‘specialized’ tokens
Kerbrat also touched on stablecoins, which have emerged as a key crypto use case this cycle. “You will see 100 stablecoins,” he predicted.
Kerbrat expects a rise in stablecoins that are “more specialized in a specific market.” According to DefiLlama, dollar-pegged stablecoins dominate the stablecoin sector. The two largest, Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC), account for $211.8 billion or 87.1% of the $243.3 billion stablecoin market cap.
“If you’re trying to move funds from the US to Singapore, maybe you will use a specific stablecoin,” he said. “The shift is going to go from just stablecoin to platforms that are managing all these stablecoins.”
Fireblocks policy chief Dea Markova recently told Cointelegraph that there is a growing demand for non-dollar-pegged stablecoins. In April, the Italian finance minister warned that dollar-pegged stablecoins represent a greater risk than US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Magazine: Ethereum is destroying the competition in the $16.1T TradFi tokenization race
OpenAI is poised to help develop a staggering 5-gigawatt data center campus in Abu Dhabi, positioning the company as a primary anchor tenant in what could become one of the world’s largest AI infrastructure projects, according to a new Bloomberg report. The facility would reportedly span an astonishing 10 square miles and consume power equivalent […]
Read more This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
This baby boy was treated with the first personalized gene-editing drug
Doctors say they constructed a bespoke gene-editing treatment in less than seven months and used it to treat a baby with a deadly metabolic condition. The rapid-fire attempt to rewrite the child’s DNA marks the first time gene editing has been tailored to treat a single individual.
The baby who was treated, Kyle “KJ” Muldoon Jr., suffers from a rare metabolic condition caused by a particularly unusual gene misspelling. Researchers say their attempt to correct the error demonstrates the high level of precision new types of gene editors offer.
The project also highlights what some experts are calling a growing crisis in gene-editing technology. That’s because even though the technology could cure thousands of genetic conditions, most are so rare that companies could never recoup the costs of developing a treatment for them. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
Access to experimental medical treatments is expanding across the US
—Jessica Hamzelou
A couple of weeks ago I was in Washington, DC, for a gathering of scientists, policymakers, and longevity enthusiasts. They had come together to discuss ways to speed along the development of drugs and other treatments that might extend the human lifespan.
One approach that came up was to simply make experimental drugs more easily accessible. Now, the state of Montana has passed a new bill that sets out exactly how clinics can sell experimental, unproven treatments in the state to anyone who wants them.
The passing of the bill could make Montana something of a US hub for experimental treatments. But it represents a wider trend: the creep of Right to Try across the US. And a potentially dangerous departure from evidence-based medicine. Read the full story.
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
Take a new look at AI’s energy use
Big Tech’s appetite for energy is growing rapidly as adoption of AI accelerates. But just how much energy does even a single AI query use? And what does it mean for the climate?
Join editor in chief Mat Honan, senior climate reporter Casey Crownhart, and AI reporter James O’Donnell at 1.30pm ET on Wednesday May 21 for a subscriber-only Roundtables conversation exploring AI’s energy demands now and in the future. Register here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 xAI has blamed Grok’s white genocide fixation on an ‘unauthorized modification’
Made by an unnamed employee at 3.15am. (TechCrunch)
+ The topic is one the far-right comes back to again and again. (The Atlantic $)
+ Memphis residents are struggling to live alongside xAI’s supercomputer. (CNBC)
2 Meta has delayed the launch of its next flagship AI model
Its engineers are struggling to improve its Behemoth LLM enough. (WSJ $)
3 Elon Musk is tapping up friends and allies for federal jobs
It’s creating an unprecedented web of potential conflicts of interests. (WSJ $)
+ Musk is posting on X less than he used to. (Semafor)
4 The US is slashing funding for scientific research
Such projects produced GPS, LASIK eye surgery, and CAPTCHAs. (NYT $)
+ US tech visa applicants are under seriously heavy scrutiny. (Wired $)
+ The foundations of America’s prosperity are being dismantled. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Big Tech wants its AI agents to remember everything about you 
They’re focusing on improving chatbots’ memory—but critics are worried. (FT $)
+ AI agents can spontaneously develop human-like behavior. (The Guardian)
+ Generative AI can turn your most precious memories into photos that never existed. (MIT Technology Review)
6 People keep making anti-DEI modifications for The Sims 4
And the gamemaker EA’s attempts to stamp them out aren’t working. (Wired $)
7 This chatbot promises to help you get over your ex
Closure creates an AI version of ex-partners for users to vent their frustrations at. (404 Media)
+ The AI relationship revolution is already here. (MIT Technology Review)
8 How this AI song became a viral megahit in Japan
YAJU&U is completely inescapable, and totally nonsensical. (Pitchfork)
+ AI is coming for music, too. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Your future overseas trip could be by zeppelin
If these startups get their way. (WP $)
+ Welcome to the big blimp boom. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Are you a ‘dry texter’? 
It’s a conflict-averse teen’s worst nightmare. (Vox)
Quote of the day
“It’s OK to be Chinese overseas.”
—Chris Pereira, the CEO of iMpact, a communications firm advising Chinese companies expanding abroad, tells Rest of World that DeepSeek has given Chinese startups the confidence not to hide their origins.
We’ve never understood how hunger works. That might be about to change.
When you’re starving, hunger is like a demon. It awakens the most ancient and primitive parts of the brain, then commandeers other neural machinery to do its bidding until it gets what it wants.
Although scientists have had some success in stimulating hunger in mice, we still don’t really understand how the impulse to eat works. Now, some experts are following known parts of the neural hunger circuits into uncharted parts of the brain to try and find out.
Their work could shed new light on the factors that have caused the number of overweight adults worldwide to skyrocket in recent years. And it could also help solve the mysteries around how and why a new class of weight-loss drugs seems to work so well. Read the full story.
—Adam Piore
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)+ Who knew—Harvard Law School’s Magna Carta may be the real deal after all.
+ Early relatives of reptiles might have walked the Earth much earlier than we realised.
+ New York University’s MFA Students are a talented bunch.
+ The Raines sandwich sounds unspeakably awful 