by Cointelegraph by Aaron Wood | 17 Apr 2025 | Crypto Law |
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, is facing antitrust proceedings that could limit its ability to develop AI amid a field of competitors.First filed in 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges that Meta’s strategy of absorbing firms — rather than competing with them — violates antitrust laws. If the court rules against Meta, it could be forced to spin out its various messenger services and social media sites into independent companies.The loss of its stable of social media companies could harm Facebook’s competitiveness not only in the social media industry but also in its ability to train and develop its proprietary Llama AI models with data from those sites.The trial could take anywhere from a couple of months to a year, but the outcome will have lasting consequences on Meta’s standing in the AI race.Meta’s antitrust case and its effect on AIThe FTC first opened its complaint against Meta in 2020 when the firm was still operating as Facebook. The agency’s amended complaint a year later alleges that Meta (then Facebook) used an illegal “buy-or-bury” scheme on more creative competitors after its “failed attempts to develop innovative mobile features for its network.” This resulted in a monopoly of the “friends and family” social media market.Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had the chance to address these allegations on April 14, the first day of the official FTC v. Meta trial. He testified that only 20% of user content on Facebook and some 10% on Instagram was generated by users’ friends. The nature of social media has changed, Zuckerberg claimed.“People just kept on engaging with more and more stuff that wasn’t what their friends were doing,” he said — meaning that the nature of Meta’s social media holdings was sufficiently diverse.The FTC alleges that Meta identified potential threat competitors and bought them up. Source: FTCAt the time of the FTC’s initial complaint, Meta called the allegations “revisionist history,” a claim it repeated on April 13 when it stated the agency was “ignoring reality.” The company has argued that the purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp have benefited users and that competition has appeared in the form of YouTube and TikTok. If the District of Columbia Circuit Court rules against Meta, the global social media giant will be forced to unwind these services into independent firms. Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at eMarketer, told the Los Angeles Times that such a ruling could cost Meta its competitive edge in the social media market. “Instagram really is its biggest growth driver, in the sense that it has been picking up the slack for Facebook for a long time, especially on the user front when it comes to young people,” said Enberg. “Facebook hasn’t been where the cool college kids hang out for a long time.”Such a ruling would also affect the pool of data from which Meta can draw to train its AI models. In July 2024, Meta halted the rollout of AI models in the European Union, citing “regulatory uncertainty.” The pause came after privacy advocacy group None of Your Business filed complaints in 11 European countries against Meta’s use of public data from its platforms to train its AI models. The Irish Data Protection Commission subsequently ordered a pause on the practice until it could conduct a review. Related: Meta’s Llama 4 puts US back in lead to ‘win the AI race’ — David SacksOn April 14, Meta got the go-ahead to use public data — i.e., posts and comments from adult users across all of its platforms — to train the model. If these firms dissolved into separate companies, with their own organizational structures and data protection policies and practices, Meta would be cut off from an ocean of data and human communication with which its AI could be improved. Andrew Rossow, a cyberspace attorney with Minc Law and CEO of AR Media Consulting, told Cointelegraph that in such an event, “companies would most likely control their own user data, and Meta would be restricted from using it unless new data-sharing agreements were negotiated, which would be subject to regulatory scrutiny and user/consumer privacy laws.”However, Rossow noted that it wouldn’t be a total loss for Meta. Zuckerberg’s firm would retain the wealth of data from Facebook and Messenger. It could continue to use “opt-in” data from consumers who allow their posts to be used for AI training, and it could also employ synthetic data sets as well as third-party and open data.Meta, the AI race and data protectionsThe race to unseat OpenAI and its ChatGPT model from AI dominance has grown more competitive in the last year as DeepSeek joined the fray and Meta launched the fourth iteration of its open-source Llama model. In addition to training new models, major AI development firms are investing billions in new data centers to accommodate new iterations. In January 2025, Meta announced the construction of a 2-gigawatt data center with more than 1.3 million Nvidia AI graphics processing units. Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads, “This will be a defining year for AI. In 2025, I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people […] To power this, Meta is building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan.”Illustration of the data map coverage. Source: Mark ZuckerbergHis announcement followed the $500-billion Stargate project, which would see massive investment in AI development led by OpenAI and SoftBank, with Microsoft and Oracle as equity partners. Related: Trump announces $500B AI infrastructure venture ‘Stargate’Amid this competition, AI firms are looking for broader and more varied sources of data to train their AI models — and have turned to dubious practices in order to get the data they need. In order to stay competitive with OpenAI when developing its Llama 3 model, Meta harvested thousands of pirated books from the site LibGen. According to court documents in a case pending against Meta, Llama developers harvested data from pirated books because licensing them from sources like Scribd seemed “unreasonably expensive.” Time was another perceived motivator for using pirated works. “They take like 4+ weeks to deliver data,” one engineer wrote about services through which they could purchase book licenses.The practice is not limited to Meta. OpenAI has also been accused of mining data from pirated work hosted on LibGen. Rossow suggested that, “to ensure lasting impact — beyond short-term profit,” Meta would do well to “prioritize investment in advanced data collection, rigorous auditing and the implementation of privacy-preserving and encryption-based technologies.”By focusing on transparency and responsible practices, “Meta can continue to genuinely advance AI capabilities, rebuild and nurture long-term user trust, and adapt to evolving legal and ethical standards, regardless of changes to its platform portfolio.”What a ruling for the FTC would meanLitigation is now hitting tech firms from all sides as they face allegations of privacy violations, copyright law infringement and stifling competition. Major cases like those facing Google, Amazon and Meta that have yet to play out will decide how and whether these firms can proceed as they have, defining the guardrails for AI development as well. Rossow said that the current antitrust case against Meta could decide how courts interpret antitrust law for tech firms, spanning tech mergers, data usage and market competition. It would also signal that courts are “willing to break up tech conglomerates” when issues of smothering competition are involved, while at the same time, “taking current precedent a step further in harmonizing it with the laws of cyberspace.”Magazine: Memecoin degeneracy is funding groundbreaking anti-aging research
by Cointelegraph by Arijit Sarkar | 17 Apr 2025 | Crypto Law |
As Polygon lays the groundwork for mainstream Web3 adoption in India by bringing blockchain access to over 450 million Reliance Jio users, it remains focused on balancing speed, scalability and affordability, without compromising on decentralization.Polygon is working with Jio, a telecom giant owned by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, to find ways to infuse blockchain technology into its existing services. The duo is currently adding blockchain-based capabilities to the JioSphere web browser, which would have been expensive, cumbersome and time-consuming via traditional methods.“We’re building at an insane pace, onboarding massive partners, and pushing blockchain into the mainstream, but with that growth comes the responsibility to make sure we’re doing it the right way,” Polygon’s co-founder, Sandeep Nailwal, said while discussing Polygon’s India-focused initiatives with Cointelegraph. Preserving decentralization while ensuring system scalability“Scalability and decentralization don’t have to be either-or, and that’s exactly the balance we’re focused on at Polygon,” Nailwal said as he underscored the importance of keeping the core values of blockchain intact: security, transparency and decentralization.At the same time, Nailwal revealed that Polygon is investing heavily in zero-knowledge technology to make scaling more seamless across the ecosystem. “The goal is to give developers and users the best of both worlds: faster, cheaper transactions without compromising trust or decentralization,” he added.As a result of delivering the combination of low fees, fast transactions and decentralized security, Polygon is already powering some of the most active use cases in Web3, from stablecoin payments on Polygon PoS to real-world tokenization with major institutions: “The key challenge is making blockchain as seamless and accessible as Web2 without compromising what makes it special. That’s why we’re all-in on ZK technology and Agglayer, which let us scale while keeping the ecosystem trustless and interoperable.”Bringing blockchain tech to millions of usersAccording to Nailwal, a one-size-fits-all approach does not work when onboarding 450 million users from India’s diverse population. “We’ll be working closely with Jio to develop use cases that truly resonate with their users, and gradually onboard them onto the chain based on these real-world applications,” he added.Nailwal said that developers never have to compromise on the fundamentals, as Polygon’s infrastructure can scale without sacrificing what makes blockchain powerful in the first place:“What excites me most is that we’re moving beyond technical discussions about blockchain to solving real problems for real people. These are the use cases that will drive the next wave of adoption.”“At the end of the day, it’s about more than just technology. We’re here to create a decentralized future that billions of people can actually use. And while that’s a massive challenge, it’s also what excites me the most,” Nailwal said.Related: Indian town adopts Avalanche blockchain for tamper-proof land recordsReal-world problem solving will drive the next wave of adoptionRising threats driven by artificial intelligence tools, including deepfakes and other misinformation campaigns, are another use case blockchain technology can help solve. Nailwal said that the escalating threat of misinformation and growing consumer insistence on trusted sources will eventually result in an uptick of blockchain-based verification tools.Additionally, Nailwal highlighted the growing relevance of Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based prediction market, in mainstream finance and reporting. “Polymarket’s success is exactly what we’ve been working toward,” he said, adding:“Prediction markets are proving to be incredibly valuable tools for finance, risk assessment, journalism and even governance. They pull in insights from a wide range of sources, often making them more reliable than traditional polling.”Nailwal is placing his full bet on blockchain’s immutable nature to transform economic forecasting, policy-making and journalism, among others.Magazine: Your AI ‘digital twin’ can take meetings and comfort your loved ones
by Cointelegraph by Helen Partz | 17 Apr 2025 | Crypto Law |
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is involved in discussions on establishing strategic digital asset reserves with several countries, its CEO, Richard Teng, reportedly said.Binance has been advising multiple governments on establishing strategic Bitcoin (BTC) reserves and formulating crypto asset regulations, Teng said in an interview with the Financial Times on April 17.“We have actually received quite a number of approaches by a few governments and sovereign wealth funds on the establishment of their own crypto reserves,” Teng told the FT.Teng did not identify any countries but said that the United States is “way ahead on that front.”US fuels global crypto reserve spreeAccording to Teng, the main reason for governments approaching Binance for help in handling potential strategic reserves is the new crypto-friendly agenda in the US.Teng referred to key US crypto policy developments, such as discussions around creating a national Bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile. Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve seeded with BTC forfeited in federal criminal and civil cases.Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (on the left) next to Pakistan’s deputy prime minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar and Pakistan Crypto Council CEO Bilal bin Saqib. Source: Pakistan governmentWhile governments of Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan have announced collaboration with Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao on crypto regulations in the past few weeks, none of the jurisdictions mentioned crypto reserve plans on their agenda.Binance shifts stance on headquartersAs Binance deepens its involvement in efforts to help countries set up crypto reserves and regulations, it appears to have shifted away from its no-formal-headquarters approach under Zhao.According to Teng, Binance is “working very hard” on plans for a global headquarters for the exchange.Related: Crypto Biz: Ripple’s ‘defining moment,’ Binance’s ongoing purge“It requires serious deliberation and the board and the senior management are spending a lot of time doing the evaluation,” Teng reportedly said, adding: “Hopefully we are able to announce our intentions on that front.”Source: Changpeng “CZ” ZhaoIn 2019, Zhao said that offices and headquarters are “old concepts like SMS and MMS.”The shift comes as more jurisdictions adopt clearer frameworks for regulating crypto businesses. Binance was subject to heavy scrutiny and investigations by multiple governments in 2020.Cointelegraph approached Binance for comment regarding its crypto policy collaboration with governments worldwide, but had not received a response by the time of publication.Magazine: How crypto laws are changing across the world in 2025
by Cointelegraph by Martin Young | 17 Apr 2025 | Crypto Law |
A US federal judge has agreed to pause a lawsuit filed by 18 state attorneys general and the crypto lobby group DeFi Education Fund against the Securities and Exchange Commission after all parties said new SEC leadership could make the action moot.Kentucky District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove ordered a 60-day stay on the case on April 16, noting a mid-March filing from the SEC that “this case could potentially be resolved” due to a leadership transition at the regulator.He added that the parties must file a joint status report within 30 days.Paul Atkins, a Wall Street adviser who has held board positions with crypto advocacy groups, was sworn in as the new SEC chair earlier this month, replacing acting chair Mark Uyeda and taking over from Gary Gensler.The 18 attorneys general, all hailing from Republican states, filed the lawsuit with the DeFi Education Fund against the securities regulator in November, alleging that the SEC exceeded its authority when targeting crypto exchanges with lawsuits, accusing the regulator and then-chair Gensler of “gross government overreach.” The plaintiffs included attorneys general from Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming, Kentucky, West Virginia, Iowa, Texas, Mississippi, Ohio, Montana, Indiana, Oklahoma and Florida, among others.“Without Congressional authorization, the SEC has sought to unilaterally wrest regulatory authority away from the States through an ongoing series of enforcement actions,” the lawsuit stated. Screenshot from filing ordering pause of proceedings. Source: CourtListenerDeFi groups drop case against IRS over killed broker ruleMeanwhile, the DeFi Education Fund, Blockchain Association, and Texas Blockchain Council dropped their lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service on April 16. “The parties hereby stipulate to voluntary dismissal of this action without prejudice because the case has become moot,” stated the filing. The lawsuit, filed in December, argued that the so-called IRS DeFi broker rule went beyond the agency’s authority and was unconstitutional.Related: NY attorney general urges Congress to keep pensions crypto-free — ‘No intrinsic value’On April 11, President Donald Trump signed a bill to revoke the rule that would have required DeFi protocols to report transactions to the IRS.It comes as the SEC has paused or dropped several high-profile lawsuits against crypto companies this year under its new leadership.Magazine: Illegal arcade disguised as … a fake Bitcoin mine? Soldier scams in China: Asia Express
by Cointelegraph by Vince Quill | 17 Apr 2025 | Crypto Law |
Panama’s capital city will accept cryptocurrency payments for taxes and municipal fees, including bus tickets and permits, Panama City mayor Mayer Mizrachi announced on April 15, joining a growing list of jurisdictions globally that have voted to accept such payments.Panama City will begin accepting Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Circle’s USDC (USDC), and Tether’s USDt (USDT) stablecoin for payment once the crypto-to-fiat payment rails are established, Mizrachi posted on the X platform. Mizrachi said previous administrations attempted to push through similar legislation but failed to overcome stipulations requiring the local government to accept funds denominated in US dollars.In a translated statement, the Panama City mayor said that the local government partnered with a bank that will immediately convert any digital assets received into US dollars, allowing the municipality to accept crypto without introducing new legislation.Panama City joins a growing list of global jurisdictions on the municipal and state level accepting cryptocurrency payments for taxes, exploring Bitcoin strategic reserves to protect public treasuries from inflation and passing pro-crypto policies to attract investment.Source: Mayer MizrachiRelated: New York bill proposes legalizing Bitcoin, crypto for state paymentsMunicipalities and states embrace digital assetsSeveral municipalities and territories around the globe already accept crypto for tax payments or are exploring various implementations of blockchain technology for government spending.The US state of Colorado started accepting crypto payments for taxes in September 2022. Much like Panama City said it will do, Colorado immediately converts the crypto to fiat.In December 2023, the city of Lugano, Switzerland, announced taxes and city fees could be paid in Bitcoin, which was one of the developments that earned it the reputation of being a globally recognized Bitcoin city.The city council of Vancouver, Canada, passed a motion to become “Bitcoin-friendly city” in December 2024. As part of that motion, the Vancouver local government will explore integrating BTC into the financial system, including tax payments.North Carolina lawmaker Neal Jackson introduced legislation titled “The North Carolina Digital Asset Freedom Act” on April 10. If passed, the bill will recognize cryptocurrencies as an official form of payment that can be used to pay taxes.Magazine: Crypto City: The ultimate guide to Miami
by Cointelegraph by Turner Wright | 16 Apr 2025 | Crypto Law |
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced industry insiders from Kraken, Exodus, Anchorage Digital, and others would be participating in its crypto task force’s roundtable discussion on custody.In an April 16 notice, the SEC said commissioners Hester Peirce and Caroline Crenshaw, acting chair Mark Uyeda and crypto task force Chief of Staff Richard Gabbert will sit down with Mark Greenberg, crypto exchange Kraken’s vice president of consumer business and product, Anchorage Digital Bank’s Chief Risk Officer Rachel Anderika and Exodus Chief Legal Officer Veronica McGregor. Other representatives will include those from WisdomTree, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, and Fireblocks.“It is important for the SEC to grapple with custody issues, which are some of the most challenging as we seek to integrate crypto assets into our regulatory structure,” said Peirce, who heads the SEC task force.Notably, Uyeda was listed as acting chair of the commission at the April 25 event, despite the US Senate confirming that Paul Atkins would head the regulatory body on April 9. It’s unclear when Atkins will be sworn in as SEC chair, but at the time of publication, the regulator had not listed him as a current commissioner.Related: US gov’t actions give clue about upcoming crypto regulationAmong the topics listed on the roundtable’s agenda are discussions on broker-dealers and custody at investment firms. Demand for digital asset custody in the US has grown in the last few years, especially following the approval of crypto exchange-traded funds in January 2024. The trend has also drawn in traditional financial institutions, including long-standing firms such as BNY Mellon.Since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump in January and the departure of former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, the agency has seemingly moved in a direction more favorable to the crypto industry by abandoning certain enforcement actions and dismissing efforts in court to expand or maintain its authority over digital assets.The first of the crypto task force’s roundtable events on March 21 dealt with the status of many tokens as securities. Another on April 11 included discussions on “tailoring regulation for crypto trading.”Is DOGE infiltrating the SEC?The roundtable discussions come as reports suggested the “government efficiency” team launched by Tesla CEO and presidential adviser Elon Musk had been given access to the SEC’s systems and data. Acting chair Uyeda has reportedly pushed back on requests by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE – which is not an official US government department — to access SEC data.DOGE faces criticism and some lawsuits over attempts to fire staff at US government agencies. It’s unclear whether Musk intends to “streamline” the SEC in the same way the group went after the US Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple and industry with no crypto legal precedent set
