#will

Effective July 19, South Korea's new Virtual Asset User Protection Act will come into force, criminalizing market manipulation, illicit and insider trading within the cryptocurrency sector. Offenders face severe penalties, including a minimum fine of three times the amount of profit gained or imprisonment.

The Spanish Ministry of Finance is drafting a bill aimed at the confiscation of digital assets to cover outstanding tax liabilities. The new regulations will allow investigators to track users' cryptocurrencies and freeze them for subsequent confiscation at the earliest opportunity.

Justin Schmidt, the Chief Operating Officer at Ondo Finance, which specializes in tokenized securities, is confident that yield-bearing stablecoins will outpace their traditional counterparts in the future. He notes that current issuers of such tokens are channeling investments into U.S. Treasury bonds and deposits, thereby securing their own profits, while regular users remain deprived from yield-generation.

DZ Bank, the second-largest financial group in Germany, plans to unveil a retail cryptocurrency trading project by the end of 2024. This ambitious venture will see participation from dozens of corporate banks and will initially cater to private users who do not seek investment or trading consultations.

Samsung is set to enhance its new Galaxy S24 smartphone series for the Chinese market by integrating Ernie Bot, an AI chatbot developed by China's Baidu. This feature is designed to efficiently handle tasks like summarizing, reorganizing, and translating vast amounts of information. Moreover, the chatbot will include a visual search capability, enabling users to search the internet for items using photos or images.

Kelly Carlin, the daughter of the legendary standup comedian George Carlin, expressed criticism over a comedy show generated by artificial intelligence based on her father’s past performances. This show aimed to present current societal issues while trying to mirror George Carlin's distinctive comedic style.

Matrixport has shifted its view on the likelihood of a Bitcoin ETF approval, now asserting that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will reject all such applications in January 2024. The company attributes this change in stance to the SEC's current political dynamics and Chairman Gary Gensler's personal opinions.

OpenAI has rolled out an update for its artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, which includes a new memory feature. This allows the bot to remember and store certain information from conversations for future interactions. Initially, access to this update will be granted only to a select group of users before becoming available to everyone.

John Reed Stark, a lawyer and former SEC enforcement chief, has labeled the effort by the leadership of the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and its associated legal firms to relaunch the platform as blatant fraud. He predicts that by the end of 2024, each attorney involved in this case will afford to buy a luxury beach house, effectively financed by the funds of FTX users.

Celebrating 25 years as a solo artist, English singer Robbie Williams will hold a concert in the LightCycle Metaverse.

Telegram trading bot Unibot is set to introduce a new token, UNISOL, specifically for its project's iteration on Solana. This token will operate independently from Unibot's original Ethereum-based UNIBOT token. The initial announcement met with some dismay among the community, but the developers were quick to address concerns: revenues generated by Unibot on Solana will be equally shared between holders of both tokens.

Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of analytics company Palantir, views the expansion of artificial intelligence as a potential driving force for the cryptocurrency market. He foresees a future where many AI-focused companies will embrace cryptocurrencies for payments.

Public Goods Network (PGN), a second-layer blockchain initiative backed by Gitcoin, is set to cease operations. The project will progressively scale down over the next half-year, aiming for complete closure by June 2024. This decision comes in the wake of a thorough evaluation of the platform’s performance.

Ophelia Snyder, co-founder of the cryptocurrency ETP provider 21Shares, believes that it will take several months to fully understand the impact of American Bitcoin ETFs on the market. This delay is attributed to the extensive approval processes required for these products to be available for purchase by different financial institutions, often taking up to 90 days.

Starknet has initiated a vote to move its v.0.13.0 from testnet to mainnet. This voting process, which will conclude on January 8, currently shows an overwhelming 99% support for the move.