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SEC moves to dismiss lawsuit against Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen

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Strategy's Michael Saylor hints at buying the Bitcoin dip

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Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor signaled an impending Bitcoin (BTC) purchase by the company amid the recent dip from the all-time high of $112,000 reached on May 22.

“I only buy Bitcoin with money I can’t afford to lose,” Saylor wrote to his 4.3 million followers in an X post.

The company’s most recent purchase of 7,390 BTC on May 19, valued at nearly $765 million, brought Strategy’s total holdings to 576,230 BTC.

If Strategy completes the acquisition on May 26, it will mark the company’s seventh consecutive week of Bitcoin purchases.

Strategy’s Bitcoin purchases over time and major metrics. Source: SaylorTracker

Strategy has become synonymous with Bitcoin, as the company continues stacking large amounts of BTC for its corporate treasury and inspiring other companies to pivot to a Bitcoin treasury plan, creating a sustained demand for the digital asset from institutional players and helping bolster the price of BTC.

Related: Jim Chanos takes opposing bets on Bitcoin and Strategy

BTC to propel Strategy into a $10 trillion enterprise, leaving other companies in the dust?

Market analyst Jeff Walton recently said that Strategy may become a $10 trillion company and potentially command the title of the most valuable publicly traded corporation in the world due to its growing Bitcoin stockpile.

“Strategy holds more of the best assets, and the most pristine collateral, on the entire planet than any other company, by multiples,” Walton told the Financial Times in a documentary about the company.

The analyst added that most companies typically face challenges raising hundreds of millions of dollars in capital, but Strategy has been able to raise billions of dollars in under two months.

Whereas most companies would spend this capital to overhaul the production process or on operational costs, Strategy uses the depreciating fiat money raised from creditors and equity holders to purchase a rapidly appreciating asset for its balance sheet.

Michael Saylor previously forecasted that the price of Bitcoin would reach millions of dollars per coin in the coming decades, arguing that the supply-capped asset features an asymmetric upside against all fiat currencies that have no supply cap.

However, Bitcoin has struggled to reach the $150,000 level in the short term. Saylor blamed the sluggish price action on investors taking profits prematurely and rotating out of BTC due to a lack of long-term conviction.

Magazine: Metric signals $250K Bitcoin is ‘best case,’ SOL, HYPE tipped for gains: Trade Secrets

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Crypto leaders are wrong about tokenized property

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Opinion by: Darren Carvalho, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of MetaWealth

During Paris Blockchain Week, Securitize Chief Operating Officer Michael Sonnenshein made headlines by dismissing real estate as a sub-optimal asset class for tokenization. This isn’t the first time crypto leaders have underestimated the merits of bringing real estate onchain, and it is likely not the last. While I respect Sonnenshein’s contributions to digital asset adoption, his assessment misses fundamental points about real estate tokenization’s transformative potential.

Real estate represents the world’s largest asset class and is projected to reach a value of $654.39 trillion this year, according to Statista. When industry leaders claim that this massive market isn’t suitable for tokenization, they overlook today’s transformative infrastructure and the core value proposition that extends far beyond liquidity, transforming access to the asset class.

Replacing traditional foundations

Sonnenshein argues that “good systems” already exist for traditional assets. He implies that tokenization offers marginal improvements at best, but this assessment overlooks fundamental inefficiencies in today’s real estate market that tokenization addresses.

The current real estate transaction process involves weeks of paperwork. Within the UK, there are a number of purchasing fees which can easily add 10% to the total bill. Settlement periods can extend to months and complexity multiplies exponentially for cross-border transactions.

These aren’t minor flaws. They’re systemic failures that tokenization technology is uniquely positioned to solve. Take smart contracts’ ability to automate compliance, for instance, enabling verification and payment distribution while reducing fraud through immutable record-keeping.

Redefining demand beyond liquidity

When Sonnenshein says “the onchain economy is demanding more liquid assets,” he misinterprets what everyday investors truly demand. For the 99% excluded from institutional-grade real estate investments, the primary task is not Bitcoin-like liquidity; it’s meaningful access to an asset class that has built more wealth than any other over the past century.

Traditional real estate investment vehicles require significant sums as minimum investments, accredited investor status and multi-year capital lockup periods. These barriers effectively exclude teachers, nurses and middle-class families from participating in prime real estate properties that have historically delivered consistent returns for investors.

Recent: Dubai Land Department begins real estate tokenization project

Tokenization fundamentally changes this equation. Fractionalizing ownership through tokenization, investors can now participate with as little as $100, receive proportional income distributions and eventually trade their positions on specialized secondary markets. The demand for this democratized access is enormous, even if secondary market liquidity initially lags behind liquid markets.

Translation problems? Not quite

Sonnenshein also suggests that tokenization does not “translate well” to representing ownership in real estate. This assessment overlooks the blockchain’s revolutionary capability to enable fractional investments in properties that were previously accessible only to institutional investors.

Tokenization technology excels precisely at creating transparent, secure fractional investment opportunities with minimal overhead. A $50 million residential development project can be divided into 500,000 tokens, each getting an equal share of the rental income and potential appreciation. This dramatically lowers barriers to entry while maintaining the core benefits of real estate as an asset class.

This fractionalization fundamentally transforms how people can build wealth through real estate. Previously, REITs offered the only realistic path to diversified property exposure, often with high fees, no control and limited transparency. Tokenization allows investors to build personalized portfolios across multiple property types, all managed through a single digital wallet.

What does not “translate well” isn’t the technology. Outdated regulatory frameworks and incumbent business models resist this necessary evolution. The UAE government recognizes this reality, supported by its recent initiative to tokenize $1 billion in real estate assets.

Building tomorrow’s infrastructure

The conservative stance on RWA growth projections misses the accelerating infrastructure development underway. BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund BUIDL is quickly approaching $3 billion in assets, demonstrating a significant institutional appetite for tokenized investment vehicles. This isn’t an isolated case.

UBS Asset Management, Hamilton Lane, Franklin Templeton and many more have launched tokenized investment vehicles, signaling a fundamental shift in how traditional finance views tokenization technology.

What critics consistently underestimate is the network effect of financial infrastructure. Each institutional entrant doesn’t just add linearly to the ecosystem. It exponentially increases connectivity and liquidity pools. We’re witnessing the early stages of a self-reinforcing cycle where each new participant reduces friction for subsequent entrants.

The narrative shouldn’t center on current limitations. Instead, there should be a spotlight on what’s being built. Secondary marketplaces optimized for real-world assets are emerging, regulatory clarity is increasing in key jurisdictions, and each development strengthens the foundation for mass adoption at a pace that will likely surprise today’s skeptics.

Democratized wealth creation

Institutional investors have enjoyed privileged access to the most profitable real estate investments for decades, while retail investors were limited to residential properties or high-fee REITs. Tokenization breaks this paradigm by allowing anyone to build a diversified property portfolio spanning commercial, residential and industrial assets across multiple geographies.

When crypto leaders dismiss real estate tokenization based solely on liquidity metrics, they apply the wrong measurement standard. The transformative potential lies in democratizing access to an asset class that has created more millionaires than any other investment vehicle in history.

The endgame of real estate tokenization is making institutional-grade property investments accessible to everyone. The adoption of tokenized real estate and other real-world assets will continue to grow despite skepticism from executives who miss the forest for the trees.

Opinion by: Darren Carvalho, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of MetaWealth.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

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Is World’s biometric ID model a threat to self-sovereignty?

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The crypto industry is no stranger to controversy, yet few projects have drawn more scrutiny than Sam Altman’s World, formerly known as Worldcoin.

Promising to verify human uniqueness through iris scans and distribute its WLD token globally, World positions itself as a tool for financial inclusion. However, critics argue the project’s biometric methods are invasive, overly centralized, and at odds with the ethos of decentralization and digital privacy.

At the heart of the critique is the claim that biometric identity systems cannot be truly decentralized when they rely on proprietary hardware, closed authentication methods, and centralized control over data pipelines.

“Decentralization isn’t just a technical architecture,” Shady El Damaty, co-founder of Holonym Foundation, told Cointelegraph. “It’s a philosophy that prioritizes user control, privacy, and self-sovereignty. World’s biometric model is inherently at odds with this ethos.”

El Damaty argued that despite using tools like multiparty computation (MPC) and zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, World’s reliance on custom hardware — the Orb — and centralized code deployment undermines the decentralization it claims to champion.

“This is by design to achieve their goals of uniquely identifying individual humans. This concentration of power risks creating a single point of failure and control, undermining the very promise of decentralization,” he said.

When reached out for comment, a spokesperson for World pushed back against these claims. “World does not use centralized biometric infrastructure,” they said, adding that the World App is non-custodial, meaning users remain in control of their digital assets and World IDs.

The project said once the Orb generates an iris code, the “iris photo will be sent as an end-to-end encrypted data bundle to your phone and will be immediately deleted from the Orb.” The iris code, they claimed, is processed with anonymizing multiparty computation so “no personal data is stored.”

World’s disclosure regarding personal custody. Source: World

Evin McMullen, co–founder of Privado ID and Billions.Network, said that World’s biometric model is not “inherently incompatible” with decentralization but faces some challenges in implementation around data centralization, trust assumptions, and governance.

Related: Sam Altman’s World raises $135M from Andreessen, Bain, to expand network

A pattern of tech overreach?

El Damaty also drew a parallel between OpenAI’s large-scale scraping of “unconsented user data” and World’s collection of biometric information.

He argued that both reflect a pattern of aggressive data acquisition framed as innovation, warning that such practices risk eroding privacy and normalizing surveillance under the banner of progress.

“The irony here is hard to miss,” El Damaty claimed. “OpenAI built its foundation by scraping vast amounts of unconsented user data to train its models, and now Worldcoin is taking that same aggressive data acquisition approach into the realm of biometric identity.”

In 2023, a class-action lawsuit filed in California accused OpenAI and Microsoft of scraping 300 billion words from the internet without consent, including personal data from millions of users, such as children.

In 2024, a coalition of Canadian media outlets, including The Canadian Press and CBC, sued OpenAI for allegedly using their content without authorization to train ChatGPT, claiming copyright infringement.

ChatGPT storing personal information against its claims. Source: Sandi Fatic

World, however, rejects this comparison, emphasizing that it is a separate entity from OpenAI. The company said that it neither sells nor stores personal data, citing its use of privacy-preserving technologies such as multiparty computation and zero-knowledge proofs.

The scrutiny also extends to World’s user onboarding. The project says it ensures informed consent through translated guides, an in-app Learn module, brochures, and a Help Center.

However, critics remain skeptical. “People in developing nations, who World… has mainly been targeting up until this point, are easier to bribe and often don’t understand the risks involved with ‘selling’ this personal data,” El Damaty warned.

Several global regulators have pushed back on World’s operations since its launch in July 2023, with governments like Germany, Kenya and Brazil expressing concerns over potential risks to the security of users’ biometric data.

In the most recent setback, the company faced challenges in Indonesia after local regulators temporarily suspended its registration certificates on May 5.

Related: ‘Humans can tell when it’s a human’ — Community mocks Worldcoin’s Orb Mini

The risk of digital exclusion

As biometric systems like World’s gain traction, questions are emerging about its long-term implications. While the company promotes its model as inclusive, critics say the reliance on iris scans to unlock services could deepen global inequality.

“When biometric data becomes a prerequisite for accessing basic services, it effectively creates a two-tiered society,” said El Damaty. “Those willing (or coerced) into giving up their most sensitive information gain access… while those who refuse… are excluded.”

World maintained that its protocol does not require biometric enrollment for basic participation. “You can still use an unverified World ID for some purposes even if you do not visit an Orb,” it said, adding that the system uses ZKPs to prevent linking actions back to any specific ID or biometric data.

There are also concerns that World could become a surveillance tool — especially in authoritarian regimes — by centralizing biometric data in a way that may attract misuse by powerful actors.

World dismisses these claims, asserting that its ID protocol is “open source, permissionless,” and designed so even government applications cannot tie back a user’s activity to their biometric data.

The debate also extends to governance. While World says its protocol is moving toward greater decentralization — highlighting open-source contributions and the governance section of its white paper — critics argues that meaningful user ownership is still lacking.

“We need to build systems that allow individuals to prove their humanity without creating centralized repositories of biometric or personal data,” said El Damaty. “This means embracing zero-knowledge proofs, decentralized governance, and open standards that empower individuals, not corporations.”

Related: Sam Altman’s eye-scanning crypto project World launches in US

The need for secure identity systems

The urgency behind developing secure identity systems isn’t without merit. As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, the lines between human and non-human actors online are blurring.

“Risks at the nexus of AI and identity are not limited to any one kind of government system or region,” Privado ID’s McMullen said. She claimed that without reliable verification for both humans and AI agents, digital ecosystems face growing threats—from misinformation and fraud to national security vulnerabilities.

“This is a national security nightmare, where unaccountable, unverifiable non-human actors may now be able to engage with global systems and networks, and legacy systems are not built for these types of verification and contextual logic,” McMullen added.

Magazine: Bitcoin bears eye $69K, CZ denies WLF ‘fixer’ rumors: Hodler’s Digest, May 18 – 24

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