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Bitcoin has reclaimed $98,000 for the first time in almost three months after the US Federal Reserve said it would keep interest rates the same for another month.
The Fed’s decision to keep interest rates unchanged comes despite mounting pressure from US President Donald Trump, who just weeks ago threatened to fire Fed chair Jerome Powell for being “too late” in cutting rates.
Fed cites higher unemployment, inflation risk
Powell said on May 7 that the Federal Reserve rate-setting committee held rates in the 4.25% to 4.50% range due to the rising risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation.
He added inflation has “come down a great deal but has been running above our 2% longer objective.” Powell said surveys in households and businesses showed a “sharp decline in sentiment” mainly due to concerns over Trump’s trade policy.
However, Powell said that “despite heightened uncertainty, the economy is still in a solid position.” In the days leading up to the announcement, data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool indicated that the futures market expected minimal odds of a rate cut.
Powell said the unemployment rate remains low, and the labor market is “at or near maximum employment.” The market expects the Fed to drop the Fed funds rate to 3.6% by the end of 2025.
Bitcoin (BTC) dropped below $97,000 to $95,866 after Powell’s speech, but it shot up to tap $98,000 for the first time since Feb. 21 just hours later.
Bitcoin momentum has been building, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index returning to “Greed” territory, and spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) posting inflows of almost $4.41 billion since March 26.
Related: Bitcoin price rallied 1,550% the last time the ‘BTC risk-off’ metric fell this low
On March 9, network economist Timothy Peterson warned that if the Fed holds off on rate cuts in 2025, it may cause a broader market downturn, potentially dragging Bitcoin back toward $70,000.
Peterson’s forecast came after Powell said in March that “we do not need to be in a hurry and are well-positioned to wait for greater clarity.”
Magazine: Adam Back says Bitcoin price cycle is’ 10x bigger’, has’ empathy’ for ETF buyers
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.
Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific Inc. posted a net profit of $580 million with its first quarter results, but missed analyst revenue estimates after a drop in its mining profits.
Core Scientific’s Q1 2025 results, shared on May 7, saw it more than double its $210 million net income from the year-ago quarter, while its total revenue reached $79.5 million, missing Zacks analysts’ estimates by 8.11%, and falling from its $179.3 million in revenues for Q1 2024.
The firm’s primary source of revenue came from $67.2 million in self-mining revenue, $3.8 million in hosted mining revenue, and $8.6 million in colocation, formerly listed as high-performance computing (HPC) hosting.
Core Scientific said its drop in Bitcoin (BTC) mined and revenue was due to the halving on April 20, 2024, when mining rewards were cut from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, and its operational shift to HPC hosting, primarily used for artificial intelligence.
However, the losses were partially offset by a 74% increase in the average price of Bitcoin and a 33% decrease in power costs due to lower rates and usage.
As part of its HPC hosting shift, Core Scientific inked a deal in February with AI startup CoreWeave for a $1.2 billion data center expansion. As a result, Core Scientific anticipates entering 2026 with annualized colocation revenue of $360 million.
Inflection point for miners in AI shift
Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan said in a statement that its first quarter was an “inflection point,” as the firm positioned itself at the “center of one of the most important shifts in modern computing,” as the demand for high-performance data infrastructure has accelerated.
Related: Robinhood beats Q1 estimates despite revenue, crypto trading dip
Shares in Core Scientific (CORZ) closed May 7 trading down 1%, falling to $8.90, according to Google Finance. However, they jumped over 3% to trade at $9.24 after the bell.
In an August report, asset manager VanEck estimated that if publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies shifted 20% of their energy capacity to AI and HPC by 2027, they could increase additional yearly profits by $13.9 billion over 13 years.
Riot Platforms appointed three new directors to its board in February, one of whom has experience converting Bitcoin mining assets toward HPC.
Hive Digital, Hut 8 and Iris Energy converted part of their operations to HPC and AI last year, and TeraWulf sold its stake in a Bitcoin mining facility for $92 million in October, with the proceeds marked for hosting AI and building HPC data centers.
Magazine: Adam Back says Bitcoin price cycle is ’10x bigger’, has ’empathy’ for ETF buyers
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has signed a bill into law allowing the US state to keep unclaimed crypto and establish a “Bitcoin Reserve Fund” that won’t use any taxpayer money or state funds.
Hobbs signed House Bill 2749 into law on May 7, which allows Arizona to claim ownership of abandoned digital assets if the owner fails to respond to communications within three years.
The state’s custodians can stake the crypto to earn rewards or receive airdrops, which can then be deposited into what Arizona has called a Bitcoin and Digital Asset Reserve Fund.
“This law ensures Arizona doesn’t leave value sitting on the table and puts us in a position to lead the country in how we secure, manage, and ultimately benefit from abandoned digital currency,” the bill’s sponsor, Jeff Weninger, said in a May 7 statement.
“We’ve built a structure that protects property rights, respects ownership, and gives the state tools to account for a new category of value in the economy,” Weninger added.
On May 3, Hobbs vetoed a similar Bitcoin (BTC) reserve bill, Senate Bill 1025, which would have allowed the state to invest seized funds into Bitcoin, citing concerns over using public funds for “untested assets.”
Hobbs’ move gives hope for future crypto bills
Bitcoin Laws founder Julian Fahrer said on X that Hobbs’ signing of HB 2749 offers more hope that she may also sign Senate Bill 1373, which is currently on her desk.
Related: Bitcoin bros at ‘the club’ may stop US gov’t from buying BTC — Arthur Hayes
SB 1373 would authorize Arizona’s treasurer, currently Kimberly Yee, to allocate up to 10% of Arizona’s Budget Stabilization Fund into Bitcoin.
The bill’s passage in Arizona follows New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte on May 6 signing House Bill 302 into law, allowing her state’s treasury to use funds to invest in cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion.
Bitcoin is currently the only cryptocurrency that meets that threshold.
Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, and now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight
Binance founder and convicted felon Changpeng Zhao says that he applied for a pardon from US President Donald Trump shortly after denying reports that he was seeking one.
Zhao, also known as CZ, said on a Farokh Radio podcast episode aired May 6 that he “wouldn’t mind” a pardon and that his lawyers have already filed the paperwork on his behalf
“I got lawyers applying,” Zhao said, adding that he submitted the request after Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported in March that he was seeking a pardon from Trump amid discussions of a business deal between the Trump family and Binance.US.
Zhao denied the reports at the time, but said on the podcast that he thought “if they’re writing this article, I may as well just officially apply.”
He added that Trump’s pardon of three BitMEX founders, including Arthur Hayes, also motivated him to submit an application.
Zhao said the application was submitted about two weeks ago.
Zhao said at the time of the Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal reports that “no felon would mind a pardon,” and claimed he is the only person in US history to serve prison time for a Bank Secrecy Act charge.
Zhao pleaded guilty to a money laundering charge in November 2023 as part of a deal Binance reached with US authorities, which saw it pay a $4.3 billion fine, to which Zhao contributed $50 million. He was also forced to step down as CEO.
Zhao was later sentenced to four months in prison and was prohibited from working at Binance as part of his plea deal.
Related: VanEck files for BNB ETF, first in US
According to the US Department of Justice, a pardon would not erase Zhao’s money laundering conviction; however, it could potentially allow him to assume a management or operational role at Binance.US.
Zhao has no plans to return as Binance CEO
While Zhao remains a Binance shareholder, he said in November at Binance Blockchain Week that he has “no plans to return to the CEO position.”
“I feel the team is doing well and doesn’t need me back,” Zhao said.
Since leaving prison, Zhao has commenced advisory roles in Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, assisting on matters related to crypto regulation and implementing blockchain solutions.
Magazine: Bitcoiner Adam Back on Blockstream conspiracy theories and Satoshi question
Tech giants like to boast about trillion-parameter AI models that require massive and expensive GPU clusters. But Fastino is taking a different approach. The Palo Alto-based startup says it has invented a new kind of AI model architecture that’s intentionally small and task-specific. The models are so small they’re trained with low-end gaming GPUs worth […]
Read more Fintech giant Stripe announced Wednesday a slew of new product launches at its annual Stripe Sessions user event. The highlights include a new AI foundation model for payments; stablecoin-powered accounts; a new Orchestration offering, and a recent migration with chip behemoth Nvidia. Stripe’s payments foundation model has been trained on tens of billions of transactions, […]
Read more Wednesday, May 21, 2025
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 for a conversation exploring AI’s energy demands now and in the future.
Going live on May 21st at 18:30 GMT / 1:30 PM ET / 10:30 AM PT
Related Content:
- These four charts sum up the state of AI and energy
- What’s driving electricity demand? It isn’t just AI and data centers.
- AI’s emissions are about to skyrocket even further
- AI’s energy obsession just got a reality check
Speakers
Manufacturing is in a state of flux. From supply chain disruptions to rising costs, tougher environmental regulations, and a changing consumer market, the sector faces a series of competing challenges.
But a new way of operating offers a way to tackle complexities head-on: adaptive production hardwires flexibility and resilience into the enterprise, drawing on powerful tools like artificial intelligence, digital twins, and robotics. Taking automation a step further, adaptive production allows manufacturers to respond in real time to demand fluctuations, adapt to supply chain disruptions, and autonomously optimize operations. It also facilitates an unprecedented level of personalization and customization for regional markets.
Time to adapt
The journey to adaptive production is not just about addressing today’s pressures, like rising costs and supply chain disruptions—it’s about positioning businesses for long-term success in a world of constant change. “In the coming years,” says Jana Kirchheim, director of manufacturing for Microsoft Germany, “I expect that new key technologies like copilots, small language models, high-performance computing, or the adaptive cloud approach will revolutionize the shop floor and accelerate industrial automation by enabling faster adjustments and re-programming for specific tasks.” These capabilities make adaptive production a transformative force, enhancing responsiveness and opening doors to systems with increasing autonomy—designed to complement human ingenuity rather than replace it.
These advances enable more than technical upgrades—they drive fundamental shifts in how manufacturers operate. John Hart, professor of mechanical engineering and director of MIT’s Center for Advanced Production Technologies, explains that automation is “going from a rigid high-volume, low-mix focus”—where factories make large quantities of very few products—“to more flexible high-volume, high-mix, and low-volume, high-mix scenarios”—where many product types can be made in custom quantities. These new capabilities demand a fundamental shift in how value is created and captured.
This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.
This content was researched, designed, and written entirely by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. This includes the writing of surveys and collection of data for surveys. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.
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 patient’s Neuralink brain implant gets a boost from generative AI
Last November, Bradford G. Smith got a brain implant from Elon Musk’s company Neuralink. The device, a set of thin wires attached to a miniscule computer that sits in his skull, lets him use his thoughts to move a computer pointer on a screen. And by last week he was ready to reveal it in a post on X.
Smith’s case is drawing interest because he’s not only communicating via a brain implant but also getting help from Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot. The generative AI is speeding up the rate at which he can communicate, but it also raises questions about who is really talking—him or Musk’s software. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
MIT Technology Review Narrated: How Trump’s tariffs could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more
The Trump administration’s hostile trade plans threaten to slow the shift to cleaner industries, boost inflation, and stall the economy.
This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 NSO Group has been ordered to pay Meta $167 million
After the Israeli firm’s spyware was used to hack journalists, activists, and politicians. (NYT $)
+ The firm has been implicated in abusive surveillance before. (Reuters)
2 OpenAI plans to reduce the fraction of its revenue Microsoft receives
It told investors it plans to slash the shared revenue from 20% to 10%. (The Information $)
+ Its for-profit U-turn is not yet a done deal. (Bloomberg $)+ We still don’t know a lot about OpenAI’s structure. (Economist $)
3 The Trump administration is axing the Energy Star program
The project certifies the energy efficiency of home appliances in the US. (WP $)
4 The US Justice Department wants Google to sell its ad businesses
But Google claims it’s not technically feasible. (WSJ $)
+ The judge says he’ll rule on the remedies by August. (The Information $)
5 Grok AI is undressing women on X
That’s what happens when you create AI models without proper guardrails. (404 Media)
+ Text-to-image AI models can be tricked into generating nude images. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Private investors are prepared to plow billions into Europe’s defense industry
They’re stepping up to fill gaps that governments can’t fund. (FT $)
+ The US is likely to strike a weapons deal in Riyadh next week. (Semafor)
+ Phase two of military AI has arrived. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Can anyone stop Starlink?
The speed of its total dominance of the satellite sector is unprecedented. (The Atlantic $)
+ The world’s next big environmental problem could come from space. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Amazon’s new robot has a sense of touch
To help it grab items in the e-retail giant’s warehouses. (The Guardian)
+ The Vulcan robot could end up shouldering more manufacturing work in the future. (Wired $)
+ Will we ever trust robots? (MIT Technology Review)
9 Argentina is investing big in nuclear-powered AI data centers
In an effort to attract big tech firms from overseas. (Rest of World)
+ Meanwhile, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is still not operational. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused. (MIT Technology Review)
10 RIP prompt engineering
The hottest job of 2023 is quickly fizzling out. (Fast Company $)
Quote of the day
“I think upper class households will be able to have something that makes your Roomba look like a total joke.”
—Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian believes that advanced robot domestic helpers are imminent, Insider reports.
One more thing
Is this the end of animal testing?
Animal studies are notoriously bad at identifying human treatments. Around 95% of the drugs developed through animal research fail in people, but until recently there was no other option.
Now organs on chips, also known as microphysiological systems, may offer a truly viable alternative. They’re triumphs of bioengineering, intricate constructions furrowed with tiny channels that are lined with living human tissues that expand and contract with the flow of fluid and air, mimicking key organ functions like breathing, blood flow, and peristalsis, the muscular contractions of the digestive system.
It’s only early days, but if they work as hoped, organs on chips could solve one of the biggest problems in medicine today. Read the full story.
—Harriet Brown
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.)
+ If you enjoyed this year’s Met Gala theme, check out this fascinating history of the Black dandy in art.
+ 2025 is shaping up to be a great year for literature.
+ The good news is that GTA VI finally has a release date—but it’s over a year away.
+ Chocolate pie for breakfast? I could be convinced.