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Top Stories This Week

Memecoin hype drives Bitcoin transaction fees to multi-year highs

The ongoing trading frenzy of memecoins like Pepe has triggered an unwanted consequence for Bitcoin (BTC) — raising its transaction costs to their highest point in two years. On May 3, the total amount of fees paid on the Bitcoin blockchain reached $3.5 million, jumping about 400% from late April. Bitcoin’s BRC-20 token standard has become the latest trend in the crypto ecosystem amid the rise of memecoins. A total of 8,500 different tokens have been minted using the BRC-20 standard. Gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain have also recently been skyrocketing to new multi-month highs.

Bitcoin miners earned $50B from BTC block rewards, fees since 2010

Amid an ongoing debate over miner costs and susceptibility to Bitcoin price dips, new figures suggest that miners are firmly in the black in the long term. Calculations from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode suggest that since 2010, fees and block reward subsidies have netted miners billions. Miners’ total all-time income is almost 40% higher than their estimated costs, coming in at $50.2 billion versus $36.6 billion, respectively.

Artificial intelligence pioneer and former Google employee Dr. Geoffrey Hinton shared his concerns about the technology that he helped develop over the past several years. According to the neural networks expert, AI could pose a threat to humanity in the future as it learns unexpected behaviors from the massive amounts of data it analyzes. He is also concerned at the continuing AI arms race to develop lethal autonomous weapons systems, as well as an increased number of fake photos, videos and text flooding the internet.

A wild Bitcoin price wager between former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan and pseudonymous Twitter user James Medlock has been settled 45 days ahead of time for $1.5 million. Medlock offered to bet anyone $1 million that the United States would not experience hyperinflation on March 17. The ex-Coinbase executive accepted the bet, predicting the U.S. dollar would deflate due to inflation and, as a result, BTC would reach $1 million within 90 days. In the deal, Medlock netted $500,000, while another $1 million went to two organizations.

Microsoft axes Bing wait list, giving users free access to GPT-4

Microsoft recently announced a number of new AI-powered features for its Bing chatbot and Edge web browser, including full access to the GPT-4 model — the same underlying engine that powers the ChatGPT Plus subscription service. The new features won’t require any purchases or subscriptions, though users will need a free Microsoft account to take advantage of the Bing chatbot’s full suite of functions. By contrast, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus service costs $20 per month for access to the same GPT-4 model.