Langley’s song, which first topped the Hot 100 chart in February, ties Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” for the most weeks at No. 1, apart from holiday singles by female performers with no male-billed acts. That caveat is of course for Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which has totaled some 22 weeks across seven years.
Along the way, Langley — pictured above winning the Academy of Country Music’s award for female artist of the year in May — has passed Brandy & Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine” with 13 weeks, Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women Part I” and Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart,” both with 11.
“Choosin’ Texas” racked up 24 million official streams (down 4% week over week) and 51 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 1%), with 7,000 copies sold in the U.S. for the week of July 10-16.
Elsewhere on the chart, fast-rising country star Stella Lefty scored her first Hot 100 top 10, with “Boston” climbing to No. 6, and Olivia Dean topped the Radio Songs chart with “So Easy (To Fall in Love),” climbing from No. 12 to 9 on the Hot 100. It passes Dean’s other smash, “Man I Need,” which slips from No. 5 to 10. It continues a remarkable run for the British singer, as both songs have peaked at No. 5 on the Hot 100 and have been on the charts for 41 and 46 weeks, respectively.
There are sex-positive films, and then there is My Friend the Porn Star, a movie that’s about as pro-copulation as possible without being an actual work of pornography. German director-star Rosa Friedrich keeps things just on the exhibitable side of NC-17 in terms of explicitness for this goofy but quite winning documentary about how she tried to make one kind of film and ended up making another.
The original idea was to record her friend Timo as he attempts to fulfill his own exhibitionistic desire by getting Rosa to film him having sex with assorted women. But the two have different artistic visions. When he suddenly ghosts her in the middle of production and just goes AWOL, like many a frustrated woman before her she finishes the project to her own satisfaction. She partly achieves this by using very obvious deep-fake technology to graft an actor’s head onto Timo’s body for the footage she’s already shot, so that we can see the real Timo from the neck down but with a pixelated box where the head should be of the actor she chose. (It’s not clear whose voice we’re ultimately hearing, the actor’s or Timo’s.)
My Friend the Porn Star
The Bottom Line
Talk about the female gaze.
Venue: Karlovy Vary Film Festival With: Rosa Friedrich, Timo, Hanna Teglasy, Alex, Jane Kosto, Alice Eric BigClit, Janina Vivianne, Carmen Schrenk, Sofie Federspiel, Emma Striche, Sam Hailey, Adrineh Simonian, Aaron Karl Director/screenwriter: Rosa Friedrich
1 hour 35 minutes
Plus, she gets a very diverse group of women — including a dominatrix, a non-binary food-porn maker, three trans women in a polycule, and several others — to make little shorts about what they find erotic. All in all this makes for a sweet, funny and, yes, horny little package that should be very bookable for future festivals after its Karlovy Vary debut.
Although the film skips around Germanophone countries Germany and Austria while toggling between different time frames, Friedrich manages to get across how it all went wrong and then so very right for the end product we’re watching. I may be wrong, but almost in passing near the beginning it’s mentioned that Rosa and Timo were a heterosexual couple at one point, but now they are mainly just friends who are at ease with watching each other have sex with other people. Ish. At least Timo likes watching porn and sex in general while Rosa’s not that interested in it herself. Timo, however, is excited by the idea of people watching him, and feels like this is one way to get in touch with his feminine side, although his intellectual justifications change constantly, just as he can’t commit to what he wants to do with the film.
In the end, Friedrich makes this equivocation and self-questioning — not just Timo’s but that of other people too — a theme about how much we choose to reveal or conceal ourselves. In the end, she’s probably succeeded in making a more interesting film than what Timo seems to want to have made, the latter sounding for all intents and purposes like an exercise in narcissistic self-indulgence.
At any rate, before Timo ankled the project, he shot some scenes with several of the women he and Friedrich recruited at events like the Venus Expo in Berlin, a fair for “erotic and lifestyle.” Timo and Friedrich talk with Adrineh Simonian, a former opera singer who now produces porn and who’s full of sensible advice. The duo travel to Hungary to meet Donna, a well-known porn actor, but she decides not to take part in the shoot, for reasons not explained on camera but seemingly to do with the production’s lack of script and general professionalism.
Regularly inserted into the Timo sections are clips from the seven short films Friedrich ended up shooting with some of the people she met in the process, which explore what turns them on personally. Some of the footage is endearingly vanilla, some a bit more fruity — quite literally in the case of non-binary participant Alice Eric BigClit, who gets into a bathtub naked and has slices of fruit and whipped cream arranged artfully over their body.
The full spectrum of sexuality is discussed, if not quite shown, from BDSM to play with assorted gadgets to water sports and the like, but with much attention to why it all turns the subjects on, a focus on psychology more than anatomy. In the end, they show the package of shorts at an erotic film festival and Friedrich just holds on the faces of her cast as they watch the films, delighting in seeing themselves being seen. It’s that joyousness that really makes this such a relatable, kooky-kinky delight, along with Friedrich and editor Melanie Schmidt’s natural comic timing.
A new 4k restoration will be released by Resurgence Media Group, Saga Arts and Fathom Entertainment. The film will hit theaters on Aug. 16 and 19.
Surfer Matt Archbold will present an exclusive introduction ahead of the film. Also serving as a surf double for Swayze, Archbold helped teach the two leading actors and other cast members how to surf and will share behind-the-scenes stories from production.
Originally released in 1991 the film follows “a gang of bank robbers call themselves the Ex-Presidents and commit their crimes while wearing masks of Reagan, Carter, Nixon and Johnson. The FBI believes that the members of the gang could be surfers and sends young agent Johnny Utah (Reeves) undercover at the beach to mix with the surfers and gather information. As he is drawn deeper into the world of charismatic surfer Bodhi (Swayze) and his thrill-seeking crew, Utah must decide where his loyalties lie.”
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the film also stars Gary Busey, Lori Petty, John C. McGinley, James LeGros and Anthony Kiedis.
“Few films have built a following as loyal as ‘Point Break’s,’ said Shannah Miller, the vice president of marketing at Fathom Entertainment. “Thirty-five years after it first hit theaters, this newly restored 4K version gives that devoted following exactly what they’ve been asking for: Bodhi, Johnny Utah and those legendary surfing and skydiving sequences, back where they belong on the big screen.”
‘Hudson & Maria’: Wiliam Mosely and Poppy Drayton Set to Join Cast
William Mosely (“Chronicles of Narnia”) is set to join the cast of “Hudson & Maria.”
Half Crown Media in association with Burns & Co. Entertainment also announced that Mosely will play Hudson Taylor, with Poppy Drayton (“Charmed”) playing his wife, Maria, and Ludi Lin (“Power Rangers”) as Hudson’s friend, Wang Laijun.
Also starring in the film are Jeremy Swift (“Ted Lasso”), Tan Kheng Hua (“Crazy Rich Asians”), Rupert Graves (“Sherlock”), Darren Lim (“The Little Nyonya”), Jemma Donovan (“Jimmy”), Catriona Munro (“NCIS: Sydney”), Ben Van Lier (“M3GAN 2.0”), Wang Wei (“Unexpected Falling”), Matt William Knowles (“Son of the South”), Kate Sullivan (“The Season”), Vanessa Yao (“Kung Fu”) and Cedric Gegel (“Capture”).
Production is set to start filming in Malaysia this August.
Set during the Opium Wars of 19th-century China, “Hudson & Maria” follows the true story of Hudson Taylor, an English missionary who rejects colonial norms and adopts Chinese language, customs and dress as he seeks to share God’s love in inland China. The story follows him through his missionary work, traveling with his wife Maria and good friend, Wang Laijun. They endure hardship and persecution to tell a powerful story that has become legend.
Matt Mikalatos will serve as director and screenwriter with Aaron Burns, Jack McClintock and David Cook producing. James Hudson Taylor IV, Ken Haron and Angela Galgani Sullivan will executive produce.
Cardano activated the Van Rossem hard fork on July 18, reaching protocol version 11 with zero downtime.
It’s the network’s first major upgrade ratified entirely through on-chain community governance, without any centralized company directing the process.
The fork lowers Plutus smart contract execution costs and bundles five technical improvements, including new cryptographic tools and a security fix requiring every stake pool to use a unique cryptographic key.
Cardano has hard forked, implementing the Van Rossem upgrade over the weekend and transitioning the network to protocol version 11.
It’s not the first time Cardano has executed a hard fork—but it is the first time it’s done so without the intervention of the blockchain’s founding development company, Input Output. That makes how it happened at least as important as what the upgrade does.
A hard fork—a permanent, mandatory update to a blockchain’s core rules, applied simultaneously across every computer running the network—is a pretty serious deal. Throughout Cardano’s history, it’s been Input Output that’s decided on these kinds of network changes.
Van Rossem, which sets the stage for improved scalability and lower costs on the network, is the first major Cardano upgrade ratified entirely through on-chain governance, meaning elected community members, server operators, and an oversight committee voted it live.
The fork carries the name of Max van Rossem, a Dutch Cardano contributor who passed away in October 2025. A developer, elected representative, node operator, and constitutional delegate, Van Rossem helped design the very governance system that just activated this upgrade.
Three separate bodies signed off. Delegated representatives known as “DReps”—community members elected to vote on behalf of Cardano holders, similar to elected delegates in a parliament—approved it at 77.63%, clearing the 60% threshold. Stake pool operators—the companies and individuals running the servers that keep Cardano running—backed it at 52.7%, just above the required 51%.
The Constitutional Committee, a seven-member board that verifies upgrades comply with Cardano’s founding document, also approved the proposal. Cardano has been building toward this governance model since the Chang hard fork in 2024, which first introduced on-chain voting, followed by the Plomin hard fork in early 2025, which gave token holders real decision-making power.
What the upgrade actually does
Van Rossem is an intra-era upgrade—a targeted improvement that doesn’t rebuild Cardano’s core structure. Its main goal is lowering Plutus execution costs. Plutus is Cardano’s smart contract programming language—the code engine behind every DeFi app, NFT marketplace, and on-chain payment tool built on the network.
Cheaper execution means developers can run more complex apps for less.
The upgrade bundles different technical proposals, including new cryptographic tools for verifying digital signatures faster and a security fix requiring every stake pool to use a unique cryptographic key—closing a known attack path.
Now that van Rossem is live, what changes for builders?
Protocol Version 11 adds constant-time array indexing, native Value handling, faster list traversal, and new cryptographic primitives.
Built-ins now work across Plutus V1, V2, and V3. Transaction shape stays the same. https://t.co/lpUO158oJA
Last week, Input Output (the firm that built Cardano’s core codebase) announced it would hand off development to outside specialist teams starting in August. Van Rossem is the first upgrade executed under that transition.
The next target is Ouroboros Leios—Cardano’s planned overhaul of how it processes transactions, targeting 30 to 65 times current throughput with a stated goal of exceeding 1,000 transactions per second. Van Rossem is a technical prerequisite.
Cardano (ADA) price: Flat but not falling
As exciting as this news may be for Cardano fans, the markets don’t seem to think the hard fork provides enough hopium to move the needle just yet.
Cardano, which trades as ADA ,has been essentially flat for three days, hovering around the $0.1662 mark at a $6 billion market capitalization. Bulls are pushing, but the overall weight is still bearish—the hard fork announcement appears to have steadied prices and prevented a retest of deeper support.
The 50-day exponential moving average (a trend-tracking line weighted toward recent price action) sits below the 200-day, a classic bearish configuration. RSI—a momentum score from 0 to 100, where above 70 signals overbought and below 30 means oversold—reads 48.8, which is considered neutral. ADX, which measures trend strength, sits at 16.1, weak, though its directional component has shifted from bearish to bullish—an early signal traders watch for potential turning points.
Whales holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA tokens pushed their balances to the highest level since 2023, per Santiment data. Smaller holders reduced exposure.
Charlies Hoskinson, Cardano’s founder, expects Leios to reach mainnet before the end of 2026, and the public testnet (dubbed Musashi Dojo) launched June 23.
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Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo has joined the OKX cryptocurrency exchange as a member of its board of directors. Cuomo became a board member after advising the company on US regulatory and institutional matters for three years, since 2023.
Strengthening OKX’s Governance
According to the crypto exchange’s announcement, Cuomo’s appointment strengthens its governance as it expands its presence in the US and builds infrastructure linking traditional finance with digital assets.
Cuomo had served as New York’s attorney general and as the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development before becoming the state’s 56th governor. According to OKX CEO Star Xu, the former New York governor has influenced OKX’s approach to the US market. He emphasized that it will provide additional expertise on regulatory and institutional engagement as a board member.
It is worth noting that Cuomo’s appointment as a board member at OKX highlights a growing trend among major crypto exchanges. Most of them are shifting from the historical association with innovators, particularly members of the tech ecosystem who focus on disrupting the traditional sectors. They are currently aligning with political and regulatory insiders, suggesting that influence could be crucial in the crypto industry’s next phase of development.
A Trend Among Crypto Industry Giants
Notably, digital asset platforms adopted an anti-establishment posture over the past decade. They posed as alternatives to traditional finance, triggering regulatory friction between the crypto industry and existing laws. However, a recent trend has seen industry giants, such as Binance, elevating Richard Teng, a veteran regulator from Singapore’s MAS and Abu Dhabi’s ADGM, to steer its global operations.
Similarly, Coinbase, the United States foremost crypto exchange, built a formidable advisory board featuring former U.S. Senators, Department of Justice officials, and executive branch veterans to spearhead its legislative push. Meanwhile, Kraken, another top crypto exchange, has steadily institutionalized its leadership team, shifting away from its historically vocal libertarian roots toward traditional corporate governance.
According to Xu, Cuomo’s move to OKX’s board formalizes a relationship that has already shaped how the firm approaches the US market. He noted that it would enhance OKX’s efforts to build the infrastructure layer for both traditional and digital finance. Xu believes Cuomo is one of those who understand how governments, institutions, and markets actually think.
Related: OKX Raise Doubts on Binance’s Regulatory Arbitrage Games Citing Similar Incident in 2022
Variety’s Interview Studio will return to San Diego on July 24-25 in partnership with Google TV featuring a lineup of in-depth interviews and conversations with leading talent and creators.
“This event has become a defining fixture of the entertainment industry, uniting the creative community, talent, and fans in a celebration of storytelling and culture,” said Dea Lawrence, co-president and publisher, Variety. “We’re delighted to once again partner with Google TV and Nintendo to create an unforgettable experience that brings super-fans together.”
This year’s conversations will include the following:
Jack Quaid, Alice Lee, Ishmel Sahid, Kiana Madeira, Jake Wyatt, Brendan Clogher, Karen Graci (“My Adventures With Superman”)
Jacob Anderson, Eric Bogosian, Assad Zaman, Sheila Atim, Rolin Jones, Hannah Moscovitch, Mark Johnson (“Vampire Lestat”)
Walker Scobell, Aryan Simhadri, Charlie Bushnell, Tamara Smart, Levi Chrisopulos, Olive Abercrombie (“Percy Jackson and the Olympians”)
Eric Nam, Román Zaragoza, Jessica Matten, Dionne Quan, Bryan Konietzko, Michael Dante DiMartino, Lauren Montgomery (“Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender”)
Utkarsh Ambudkar, Asher Grodman, Sheila Carrasco, Román Zaragoza (“Ghosts”); Ed Weeks, Allegra Edwards, Jaren Lewison, Helen J. Shen, Parker Young (“Eternally Yours”)
Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool, Mike Dirnt, Mason Thames, Lee Kirk (“Nimrods”)
Mike Flanagan, Summer H. Howell, Samantha Sloyan, Siena Agudong, Alison Thornton, Amber Midthunder, Matthew Lillard (“Carrie”)
David Giuntoli, Elizabeth Tulloch, Russell Hornsby, Silas Weir Mitchell, Bree Turner, Reggie Lee, Sasha Roiz, Alexis Denisof, David Greenwalt (“Grimm”)
Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Paul Wesley, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Christina Chong, Akiva Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers (“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”)
Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lauren Cohan, Seth Hoffman (“The Walking Dead: Dead City”)
Benjamin Walker, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniel Weyman, Jamie Campbell Bower, Ismmael Cruz Córdova, Owain Arthur, Charlie Vickers, Patrick McKay, J.D Payne (“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”)
“At Google TV, we are passionate about celebrating creative excellence,” said Shalini Govil-Pai, VP & GM of TV Platforms at Google. “We are proud to continue our partnership with Variety, shining a spotlight on the brilliant directors, actors, and talent who push the boundaries of storytelling.”
The Interview Studio Lounge will host an exclusive Nintendo gaming activation where talent and cast members can face off in friendly matches of “Nintendo Switch Sports Resort” on the Nintendo Switch 2 system. This first-look experience will give guests access to the game ahead of its official release, creating organic opportunities for social content, cast interaction, and lighthearted competition with The Rizzler. The “Splatoon Raiders” game will also be available to play.
Conversations from the studio will be published across Variety.com and Variety’s socials.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, discussed AI and humans on Farcaster, saying we don’t yet know whether current AI (LLMs plus agents and robotics) is merely another technological wave or the final wave that will eventually replace pretty much everything humans can do.
This is the big question Buterin keeps circling back to. He says people tend to judge humans and AI on just one thing (such as intelligence or productivity), but it’s not the right way to look at the current situation. Instead, he emphasizes that both sides have lots of different skills, where some match up, and others don’t. He believes the real question is how much they’ll eventually overlap.
Ethereum’s co-founder thinks that if AI eventually stalls before replacing every human capability, then society will change dramatically, with humans remaining in a central role.
People Who Leverage AI vs. Those Who Don’t
Buterin’s post offers an interesting perspective, which also points to the possibility that AI could become a productivity amplifier rather than simply taking over human jobs entirely.
At the moment, a large portion of advanced AI functions as a helper for experienced professionals. Someone who understands prompting, automation, AI agents, coding assistants, research workflows, and double-checking results can often accomplish several times more work than someone performing the same tasks manually.
This creates a growing gap between those who use AI and those who don’t.
Notably, Axios (a news website and media company) recently broke down a new kind of class divide forming around AI, putting people into three groups: those who have it, those who don’t, and those who don’t even know about it.
Axios’ take is that the top-tier users are already starting businesses, building companies, writing code, and automating all sorts of complex tasks, while most everyday users still think of AI as a smarter search engine or chatbot.
Adapting to the AI Shift
What’s interesting is that some researchers say AI won’t actually get rid of jobs, but will shift what people do. As opposed to creating things from scratch, humans will spend more time checking and confirming what AI produces.
MIT Sloan’s Christian Catalini recently pointed out that AI can churn out high-quality work for next to nothing, while humans take time and effort to verify things.
As it stands now, those who make the effort to learn how to work with AI today could end up with a real edge down the road. On the flip side, those who ignore the technology might get left behind, not because the machines will take their jobs, but because everyone else who uses AI will be able to get significantly more done in less time.
Related: Meta and Anthropic in Talks Over Up to $10 Billion AI Compute Deal
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A meteorite that lit up the skies above New York City before crash-landing through someone’s roof contains evidence of how life was originally brought to Earth from alien worlds.
The space rock produced a sonic boom when it passed just south of the Statue of Liberty on July 16, 2024, before fragments began falling to Earth.
One meteorite weighing more than a kilogram later struck a home in Hillsborough, New Jersey, according to researchers writing in the journal Science Advances.
‘A forensic study of the fragments revealed that they contained preserved bits from near the surface of a small primitive asteroid where it experienced concentrated salty fluids – a process not previously known from this type of proto planet world,’ said lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.
This meteorite produced a sonic boom before crash-landing through the roof of a home in New Jersey (Picture: SETI Institute/Cover Images)
Scientists say the object, which was about the size of a large airline suitcase, entered Earth’s atmosphere at around 32,000mph (14.4km/s).
Around 60 people across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing the meteor to the American Meteor Society, while 16 people in New York and New Jersey said they felt the resulting shockwave.
The space rock was about the size of a suitcase when it crashed into the house (Picture: SETI Institute/Cover Images)
‘Our cameras in Northford, Connecticut, and Douglassville, Pennsylvania, as well as a doorbell camera in Wayne, New Jersey, captured the meteor, and from that we measured its trajectory,’ said American Meteor Society operations manager Mike Hankey. ‘The path traced back to low in the asteroid belt.’
The rock broke apart rapidly as it descended and was no longer visible at an altitude of about 22 miles (35km).
After the meteor disappeared, Doppler weather radar at Newark Airport briefly detected a long cloud of falling fragments stretching from Staten Island into New Jersey. Hillsborough lay at the far end of that debris trail, where the largest pieces are believed to have landed.
Only one meteorite was recovered after it smashed through the roof of a house. The homeowner described discovering extensive damage inside the property.
“I was at home at the time, heard a loud crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom,” they said. “I smelled a strong sulfur-like odor and saw many black fragments along with debris and black dust that covered my bed, carpet and surrounding areas.”
The owner immediately documented the scene and carefully preserved the fragments using disposable gloves, aluminium foil and glass jars, helping to minimise contamination.
Laboratory analysis identified the meteorite as belonging to the rare CM group of carbonaceous chondrites, a class of primitive meteorites rich in carbon and water-bearing minerals.
Co-author Mike Zolensky, a meteoriticist at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center, said the Hillsborough sample showed greater alteration by water than is normally seen in CM2 meteorites.
The Hillsborough meteorite is only the 22nd observed fall of a CM-type meteorite and just the second witnessed fall of a CM1/2 specimen, after the Kolang meteorite in Indonesia in 2020. No witnessed CM1 falls have ever been recorded.
‘Thanks to the homeowner’s quick reaction, these are the most pristine CM1/2 meteorites we know of,’ said Jenniskens.
Scientists also identified small, salt-rich fragments that appear to have originated close to the surface of the meteorite’s parent asteroid, where liquid water is thought to have evaporated and concentrated dissolved salts.
Researchers are now working to identify the minerals within those salts and compare them with samples returned from the asteroids Ryugu and Bennu by the Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx space missions.
Scientists believe highly concentrated salty water, or brine, may have played an important role in the chemistry that preceded the emergence of life on Earth.
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‘Isotope studies of carbon and nitrogen suggest that primitive carbonaceous chondrites, including CM-types, delivered organic matter to the early Earth,’ said cosmochemist Queenie Chan of Royal Holloway, University of London, and biogeochemist Nana Ogawa of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.
‘The Hillsborough meteorite contained 1.8% by weight of carbon and 0.07% of nitrogen, and had carbon and nitrogen isotopes typical for CM-type meteorites.’
The team found a broad range of soluble organic compounds, indicating that the meteorite had undergone more extensive water-related alteration than most other CM meteorites.
‘A high fraction of compounds were the product of organic chemistry with minerals,’ said organic mass spectrometry specialist Phil Schmitt-Kopplin of the Technical University of Munich.
‘We do not know if these magnesium organic compounds were contributed by brine chemistry or were simply left over from earlier impact shock processes.’
Researchers also detected numerous amino acids, alongside carboxylic acids and other organic molecules.
Astrobiologist Danny Glavin of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center and colleagues concluded that meteorites of this type may have delivered important organic compounds to the early Earth, contributing to the inventory of molecules from which life eventually emerged. Their findings suggest the complex mixture of amino acids found in the Hillsborough meteorite most likely formed within its parent asteroid, with brine chemistry playing a significant role.
Some fragments of the Hillsborough meteorite will be preserved at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
‘We are thrilled that nature delivered such a precious asteroid sample on our doorstep,’ said curator Denton Ebel.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) stated that while artificial intelligence and Bitcoin are often considered together in investment markets, they fundamentally serve different functions. According to CZ, AI increases productivity, while Bitcoin is a unique asset that can be used to hedge against inflation and preserve wealth.
In a statement on his social media account, CZ said, “AI is amazing, but it can’t protect you from inflation. Bitcoin can.”
CZ stated that while artificial intelligence is a technology that increases business efficiency and overall economic productivity, Bitcoin, as a digital asset with a limited supply, offers a different value proposition.
CZ noted that the artificial intelligence sector is growing rapidly, stating that global companies are investing billions of dollars in AI infrastructure such as software, data centers, and advanced chips. He pointed out that these investments are accelerating transformation in many sectors, particularly healthcare, finance, and manufacturing.
However, CZ reminded that AI companies can issue new shares and raise capital to finance their growth. Therefore, he stated that the investment value of these companies continues to depend on their operational performance, profitability, and intense market competition.
Related NewsTomorrow Is a Critical Day for Cryptocurrencies: A Key Meeting Will Take Place in Russia
CZ stated that Bitcoin’s total supply is limited to 21 million units, a structure that prevents the asset’s supply from being increased and investors’ share from being diluted. According to CZ, Bitcoin’s scarcity makes it stand out as a long-term store of value during periods when the purchasing power of fiat currencies declines due to inflation.
CZ had previously stated that the investment boom in the AI sector could attract some of the capital expected to flow into the Bitcoin market. He noted that with AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic attracting more investor interest, some investors might sell other assets and allocate resources to AI-focused investments.
However, CZ believes that AI and Bitcoin should not be considered direct competitors. According to the Binance founder, while AI supports technological progress and increased productivity, Bitcoin plays a complementary role by offering a store of value unaffected by supply expansion.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin wrote that the state AGs “present compelling evidence that the combined firm resulting from the transaction will possess substantial market share in the wide-release theatrical distribution market.”
“On this combined firm market share alone, the Court is persuaded that it can presume the proposed merger is likely to violate antitrust laws,” the judge wrote.
The judge’s order bars Paramount and Warner Bros. “from closing or consummating the Transaction or taking any steps, directly or indirectly, to integrate or consolidate their operations pursuant to the Transaction.”
The states claim that the merger creates undue concentration in the markets for wide release films, distribution of anticipated top-grossing theatrical films and licensing of basic cable channels.
A TRO is an order to preserve the status quo in the short term as the judge more fully considers the merits of the case. But in her order, Martinez-Olguin wrote that the “balance of equities, combined with the public’s vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief.”
The states had asked that a temporary restraining order was needed because Paramount had not made any guarantee that it would not close the transaction after July 22. The European Union is expected to its decision on the transaction around that date.
The judge’s granting of a TRO is not a major surprise, and Paramount had signaled that it would delay a close to the transaction. At a hearing on Friday, Paramount’s lead attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, said that they were prepared to commit to not closing the merger for the next 28 days.
Bonta said in a statement, “This is a critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day.”
He added, “We have a full tank of gas, the law on our side, and look forward to continuing to make our case.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James said, “This lawsuit is about a simple fact: when one company controls a massive share of our film and television industries, workers, artists, businesses, and consumers suffer.”
A Paramount spokesperson said, “We are confident the evidence will demonstrate that the State AGs’ antitrust arguments are without merit as their alleged markets and claims of anticompetitive effects are without any basis in modern market realities. This merger is lawful, pro-competitive, and will benefit consumers, creators, workers, and the entertainment industry. We will continue to vigorously defend the transaction and will look forward to the hearings on the substance of the State AGs’ action.”
The timing of the legal proceedings is significant. Paramount faces the prospect of paying a $7 million per day “ticking fee” to Warner Bros. for each day that the transaction is not closed after Sept. 30. That was a sweetener that Paramount made to win the bidding for WBD.
The judge set a schedule for the stage AG’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which could halt the merger indefinitely as the legal process plays out. She set a hearing date of Aug. 3, with the motion due by Thursday, the opposition brief from Paramount due by July 27 and the state AGs’ reply by July 30.
The judge wrote that even though Paramount’s legal team argued that certain market concentration figures are not binding on the courts, they did not present “countervailing evidence” to rebut the data.
Paramount also argued that the state AGs presented “fundamental misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions regarding the economics of theatrical film distribution in the United States,” pointing to the opinion of a competing expert witness. But the judge wrote that their proof still did not show that the merger would not “substantially lessen competition.”
She wrote, “At best, Defendants’ proof regarding these robust, dynamic markets creates disputes regarding the facts and legality of the Transaction’s market effects.” She wrote that the state AGs showed that “serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief.”
The judge also signaled that she was not sympathetic to Paramount’s arguments of economic harm if the merger is blocked beyond Sept. 30. She wrote, “Even if Defendants argued that they would suffer economic harm as a result of delaying the merger, the equities do not weigh in their favor when contrasted with the potential public harms that would result from consummation of the Transaction, including the loss of competition.”
The transaction looked to be on its way to closing in June, after the Justice Department announced that it was closing its investigation and, in a statement, explained why it believed that the merger was not anticompetitive.
Paramount contends that the transaction would bolster competition in streaming, as the combination of Paramount and Warner Bros. would stand a better chance against stronger rivals like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime.
The states, though, focused on theatrical and cable markets, arguing that consolidation impacts theater owners and cable distributors, with consumers ultimately feeling the impact.
