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Meta today announced that Dana White, John Elkann, and Charlie Songhurst have been elected to the company’s board of directors. Meta Platforms (META), the company behind Facebook, added three new members to help with the leadership of the company’s newest ventures. In a statement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “Dana, John, and Charlie will add a depth of expertise and perspective that will help us tackle the massive opportunities ahead with AI, wearables, and the future of human connection.” Dana White currently serves as the president and CEO of the UFC. White and Zuckerberg worked closely together as Zuckerberg trained for a rumored fight with Tesla founder Elon Musk. White says that he never had much interest in companies outside of professional fighting until Meta came along. “I’ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta’s board. I am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future,” White said. “I am very excite...

The hype around Telegram clicker game Hamster Kombat quickly turned to gripes after the HMSTR token imploded on launch and players slammed the project’s airdrop. The HMSTR token slumped as much as 50% after listing on major crypto exchanges yesterday as frustration over the project erupted on social media platforms. “You gave me dust after 4 months,” said one X user while venting his frustration towards the airdrop . ” I am killing hamsters, rats, rabbits or anything that looks like a hamster.” HMSTR is trading at $0.006655 as of 10:07 a.m. EST, down 26% from its launch price. It has a market capitalization of $428 million, making it the 423rd biggest crypto, according to CoinMarketCap. Hamster Kombat Players Criticize The Team For HMSTR’s Unfair Distribution Hamster Kombat distributed 60 billion HMSTR tokens, which is 60% of the crypto’s supply, through multiple tier-...

On August 29, 2024, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein dismissed a significant lawsuit against Elon Musk and his company, Tesla , which alleged market manipulation of Dogecoin (DOGE) . The lawsuit, initiated by a group of disgruntled investors in June 2022, claimed that Musk and Tesla artificially inflated the cryptocurrency’s price, resulting in a staggering $258 billion in damages. The court ruling dismissed these claims, stating they were based on non-factual statements. Court’s Decision Judge Hellerstein’s ruling characterised Musk’s statements about Dogecoin as “aspirational and puffery” rather than actionable claims. In his decision, Hellerstein emphasised that “no reasonable investor could rely upon” Musk’s social media posts or public declarations as a basis for making investment decisions. The judge specifically cited Musk’s assertions about becoming the “official CEO of Dogecoin” and placing a “literal Dogecoin” on a SpaceX rocket as examples...

Blockstream’s marketing and communications director Fernando Nikolić has created a new website to track some of Bitcoin’s most popular memes and lore. At launch, Know Your Bitcoin Meme displays a gallery of a few thousand viral images and attributes them to X (formerly Twitter) users.  “Culture drives change, and memes change culture,” said Nikolić in a statement to Protos. “ Bitcoin ’s history is written in memes and will continue to do so. So I felt compelled to create this ‘Great Library of Alexandria’ on the web as a nod to the culture and give everyone access to contribute to it.” Unfortunately, attributions are not vetted by human researchers, so they don’t indicate ownership or creation. Nikolić programmatically relies on image searches to attribute memes to creators. He admitted that he has only spent a few hours on the website as a hobby and hasn’t hired an editor to manually search variants or investigate the true origins of each meme. Kn...

With memecoins regularly outperforming more established crypto projects, there’s plenty of evidence to back up the assertion that the cryptosphere often rewards attention over innovation. From crypto influencers dumping on their followers to SocialFi projects such as FriendTech, social media following can act as a proxy for value, especially for projects without their own token. Even crypto security auditors, supposedly behind-the-scenes players, are keen to try their hand at the social media game. Sometimes, at the expense of their credibility. Peckshield’s classic “you may want to take a look” has caused many a heart to sink over the years, typically accompanied by a transaction hash in which hackers have extracted millions of dollars of crypto-assets. Hi @MIM_Spell, you may want to take a look (w/ $6.49M Loss) pic.twitter.com/uHs0JweuoM — PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) January 30, 2024 Read more: Magic Internet Money loses its sparkle as DeFi platform hacked for $6...

Ben Armstrong, formerly BitBoy, has once again proven that a little manufactured drama goes a long way after a video in which he simultaneously claims that he’s leaving crypto YouTube — while also confirming that he’ll continue to upload videos — racked up nearly 80,000 views in a single day. In the recently uploaded clip, titled ‘I’m Retiring From Crypto YouTube ,’ Armstrong claims that he’s probably not going to be doing a crypto livestream anymore. The statement, of course, comes with several caveats. For starters, given his use of the word ‘probably,’ there’s a chance that he’ll return to do livestreams sometime in the future. But even if he doesn’t, the title of the video is more than a little misleading given that he also clarifies that he’d still be uploading to his YouTube channel. Indeed, toward the end he specifies that he’ll “still have three videos a day, more videos coming.” During the video, Armstrong appears ...

U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler confirms there have been no additional breach es after an unauthorized party accessed the SEC’s X account. In a Jan. 12 statement, Gensler assured that there is no current evidence suggesting further breaches following the unauthorized access to the SEC’s X account on Jan. 9. The incident, which involved an unauthorized party gaining control over the SEC’s X handle, has raised significant concerns about the security of the agency’s digital infrastructure. However, Gensler, in his statement, emphasized that the breach was contained and that no other systems, data, devices, or social media accounts appear to have been compromised. The SEC is actively evaluating the impact of this security breach , particularly its implications for other governmental agencies, as well as cryptocurrency investors and marketplaces. The incident has also sparked discussions about the safety protocols surrounding the agency’s social m...

A ChatGPT-powered botnet that is luring users on X (formerly Twitter), into visiting fake crypto news sites is just the “tip of the iceberg” with regards to AI-driven disinformation, researchers have warned. The botnet — dubbed ‘Fox8’ due to its links to similarly-named crypto websites — was discovered in May by researchers at Indiana University Bloomington. It comprises at least 1,140 accounts designed to share a mix of original tweets, retweeted posts, and images taken from sites outside of X. It also posts crypto, blockchain, and NFT-related content, engages with influencers, and promotes the suspicious websites. The botnet forms a sense cluster by following each other. They also frequently engage with each other through retweeting/replying. 4/11 pic.twitter.com/0vQDQpP7Gr — Kevin Yang (@yang3kc) August 2, 2023 However, according to researchers, this sprawling network of click-harvesting bots may be just the beginning . Micah Musser, who has stud...

The integration is built on DSNP, a protocol created by Project Liberty. Social network MeWe will integrate with the Frequency Blockchain network , a parachain of Polkadot, according to an April 26 announcement at Consensus 2023. The announcement added that the company will begin moving its users ’ accounts over to the network during this quarter. Just in from #Consensus 2023 - Polkadot parachain @one_frequency has announced a major partnership with social networking app @mewe to connect its 20 million users to Polkadot and the Social Web, giving each of them a social identity and full control over their own data. pic.twitter.com/O39RNtEhDy — Polkadot @ Consensus 2023 (@Polkadot) April 26, 2023 MeWe was launched in 2012 and has been touted as a “Facebook alternative” with allegedly better privacy protections. An Axios report in September stated that the network had over 20 million users. Frequency launched as a Polkadot parachain in November. At a Consensus 2023 panel calle...