Billionaire Mark Cuban is often the guy on "Shark Tank" who graciously declines to make an investment into one of the hopeful entrepreneurs pitching to him and a panel of investors. He's also backed some smash hits whose revenues have soared. While his latest investment may not be on "Shark Tank," Cuban has found a cause worthy of his name – artificial intelligence (AI) startup Hala Systems that...
U.S. President Donald Trump has warned of severe economic consequences if Turkey launches an attack on the Syrian Kurds. Trump Puts Turkey on Notice as US Stages Troop Withdrawal This comes at a time when United States troops are being pulled out of Syria. In the tweets sent on Sunday, Trump also urged the Kurds to avoid provoking Turkey. Starting the long overdue pullout from Syria while hitting...
A senior Russian lawmaker has suggested that Moscow should turn to cryptocurrency, backed by gold, for payments in Russian arms exports to evade financial sanctions from the west. Prominent lawmaker Vladimir Gutenev, first deputy head of the economic policy Committee at the State Duma (the Russian Parliament’s lower chamber), has urged the Kremlin to suspend treaties with the United States amid...
A 29-year-old man Bitcoin developer has said that he has been under police investigation for the last year after returning from Syria where he was fighting against the Islamic State. Iranian-British Amir Taaki is a self-taught software engineer who has been a prominent figure in the bitcoin space. According to a report from Wired, in 2014 Taaki created his own revision of bitcoin’s core code...
Blockchain technology may help refugees maintain legal identity and have access to relief services when they cross borders, according to Staci Warden, executive director of the Center for Financial Markets at the Milken Institute, writing in The Wall Street Journal. Refugees often have their IDs confiscated when they leave their country of origin. Without proof of citizenship, they find...
A hacker who claimed responsibility for the Hacking Team and Gamma Group breaches has sent €10,000 of stolen bitcoin to the autonomous region of Rojava in northern Syria, according to arstechnica.co.uk. Using the pseudonyms “Hack Back!” and “Phineas Phisher” and “@GammaGroupPR,” the hacker indicated an unwillingness to name the victims since there is hope of “a few orders of magnitude more on the...