Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin (BTC) may be up 16% in 2023, but one stock it outperformed last year is now getting its revenge.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that for all its newfound strength, Bitcoin is still playing catch-up.

Tesla up almost 25% from January low

Tesla was in the headlines throughout 2022 as its rapid rise to prominence — and stock price gains — steadily unwound.

Despite CEO Elon Musk making history with his personal wealth losses, Tesla (TSLA) has so far recovered by almost 25% since Jan. 6.

Amid an atmosphere of declining inflation in the United States and a surge in the price of safe-haven gold, the stage is arguably set for a broader risk asset rebound.

Input Output Global (IOG) — the team behind the Cardano ecosystem — will release a software toolkit in late Jan. 2023 that will enable developers to deploy custom-built sidechains on Cardano aimed at improving the ecosystem.

The news was announced by IOHK — a blockchain engineering company founded by Charles Hoskinson and now known as IOG — on Jan.12, which also attached the official technical documentation for the sidechain toolkit.

IOG developers have already used the toolkit to construct an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible sidechain public testnet as a “proof of concept,” and when the audit is complete, anyone will be able to deploy decentralized applications, create smart contracts and move tokens between different testing chains.

The toolkit will also enable the creators of the sidechains to choose their own consensus mechanism in addition to other application-specific features.

A sidechain is an independent blockchain that works adjacent to the parent blockchain, often referred to as the mainnet. Sidechains often attempt to add scalability to the mainnet which often prioritizes decentralization and security.

Crypto investors have been urged to keep their eyes peeled for "deepfake" crypto scams to come, with the digital-doppelganger technology continuing to advance, making it harder for viewers to separate fact from fiction. 

David Schwed, the COO of blockchain security firm Halborn told Cointelegraph that the crypto industry is more “susceptible” to deepfakes than ever because “time is of the essence in making decisions” which results in less time to verify the veracity of a video.

Deepfakes use deep learning artificial intelligence (AI) to create highly realistic digital content by manipulating and altering original media, such as swapping faces in videos, photos, and audio, according to technical writer at OpenZeppelin Vlad Estoup.

Estoup noted that crypto scammers often use deepfake technology to creat fake videos of well-known personalities to execute scams.

An example of such a scam was a deepfake video of FTX former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried in November 2022, where scammers used old interview footage of Bankman-Fried and a voice emulator to direct users to a malicious website promising to “double your cryptocurrency.”