The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is set to open with Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions, about the 1980s and 1990s Canadian queer trailblazer, organizers said Tuesday.
The doc feature from director Michelle Mama centers on “High School Confidential” singer Carole Pope, who broke barriers for gay musicians on Canadian radio in the 1980s as co-lead of the Rough Trade rock band.
“Carole Pope arrived on the music scene like a meteor, writing about love and lust and queerness in ways nobody had ever seen. A film about her life is long overdue and it was my honor to be the one to bring it to the screen,” Mama said in a statement about the film with appearances by k.d. lang, Peaches, Jann Arden and Rufus Wainwright.
News of the festival opener on April 23 came as a scaled-down Hot Docs released its full film lineup of 80 features for its 33rd edition in Toronto after a chaotic 2024 edition and a leadership and boardroom overhaul.
For its 2026 edition, the festival booked world premieres for Oscar-nominated War Witch director Kim Nguyen’s Vietnam War memory doc Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom, from the National Film Board of Canada; Shalini Kantayya’s Love Apptually, about dating app algorithms; Raha Shirazi’s A War on Women, about 40 years of feminist resistance by Iranian women against the Islamic Republic; The 49th Year, about an imprisoned anarchist and directed by Heidrun Holzfeind; and Andrea Suwito’s A Distant Call, about local tradition and modern faith in a remote Indonesian community.
Ceremony
Hot Docs Festival
There’s also world premieres for Faraz Fadaian’s LandStone, about an elderly man and his wife living in a handmade cave in Iran; Parasisi, directed by Zaïde Bil and Sébastien Segers; Stories for Sandro, director Giacomo Boeri’s portrait of his father after he is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s; Hamed Zolfaghari’s Vanishing Tracks, about a family in Iran’s remote nomadic landscape; and Vegapolis, from director Micha Barban Dangerfield.
Hot Docs will also screen around 30 Canadian features, including the SXSW documentary spotlight audience award winner Ceremony from filmmaker Banchi Hanuse; and world premieres for Sébastien Trahan’s Code of Misconduct, about five Canadian pro hockey players on trial for sexual assault; Ryan Ermacora and Jessica Johnson’s Concrete Turned to Sand; Ree Wright and Meaghan Wright’s The Last Days of April, about a disabled advocate living with a tethered spinal cord and chronic pain; director Rico King’s Nekai Walks; and Evan Adams and Eileen Francis’s təm kʷaθ nan Namesake, where a request from the Tla’amin Nation to change the name of Powell River, British Columbia ignites a heated local debate.
The latest additions to Hot Docs join earlier announced world premieres for Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart, directed by Tony-winning Broadway producer Dori Berinstein; and Mark Myers’ The Tower That Built a City, about Toronto’s skyline-defining CN Tower and its surroundings.
Hot Docs, to run April 23 to May 3, will also include industry events and programs.
Balancer Labs is winding down after a $128 million exploit left the company facing legal exposure and no sustainable revenue.
The protocol will continue under a DAO, foundation, and service-provider structure, with staff potentially moving to a new operating entity.
Experts say the shutdown reflects deeper issues with older DeFi governance and token incentive models that are losing traction.
Balancer Labs has decided to call it quits six months after its namesake protocol suffered a major security breach that founders say caused reputational damage and triggered a sell-off in the Balancer token.
The protocol, created to build and manage a DeFi platform for token swaps and liquidity pools, was hit by an exploit in November last year, after an attacker drained $128 million across six blockchains in just 30 minutes from Balancer V2’s Vault contract.
The “exploit created real and ongoing legal exposure,” co-founder Fernando Martinelli wrote in a statement on Monday, adding that Balancer Labs was left without “any sources of revenue.”
“Maintaining a corporate entity that carries the liability of past security incidents, while the protocol itself needs to move forward unburdened, is not responsible stewardship,” Martinelli added.
Balancer no longer needs a traditional company above it, and its DAO, Foundation, and service-provider structure should carry the protocol forward, with key staff set to move into a new operating arm if governance approves, he added.
The hack worked by exploiting a small pricing error in Balancer’s older V2 stable pools, where the system inconsistently rounded numbers during swap calculations, according to an analysis by blockchain security firm BlockSec.
“Beyond the immediate financial impact, the incident led to three lasting pressures: unrecovered funds, ongoing legal and operational exposure, and a significant erosion of user trust,” Brian Wong, senior audit engineer at BlockSec, told Decrypt.
Transitioning to a DAO governance model could help “isolate legal risk, reduce fixed operational overhead, and shift governance and accountability more directly to the community,” Wong added.
“I believe Balancer still has a chance to turn things around and prove to token holders who stay that there can be product market fit and sustainability,” Martinelli said.
Balancing act
The wind-down points to both the longer-running weaknesses in Balancer’s token and governance model and the pressure the November hack put on the protocol’s ability to sustain itself, observers told Decrypt.
Balancer’s decision “exposes structural failure” that points to how it has “capitulated to a broken model where emissions faded, governance weakened, value capture stayed shallow,” Dominick John, analyst at Zeus Research, told Decrypt.
While streamlining its operations could be the right call, it comes as a “late-stage patch,” he said, adding that older DeFi models built around token rewards and incentive-driven growth are being “phased out.”
The shutdown also appears to be Balancer’s way of finding “a quick way to escape legal risks” after the November 2025 hack, Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told Decrypt.
It gives Balancer a way to use the DAO transition to drop veBAL, its escrow governance model, which Yoon suggested had become part of the protocol’s broader structural problems.
The next test is whether Balancer’s smaller team can “actually fix governance,” Yoon said, by keeping governance aligned, security intact, and the treasury stable enough to carry the protocol forward, areas John said are “critical to keeping Balancer relevant.”
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Hostplus CIO Sam Sicilia says the retirement fund is eyeing a potential launch as early as next financial year.
The fund is looking beyond Bitcoin at a wider range of digital assets, including tokenized exposure to areas like music rights.
It comes as AMP Super, the first Australian fund to back crypto, exited most of its Bitcoin futures position ahead of this year’s market decline.
Crypto is inching closer to Australia’s retirement system, with one of the country’s largest super funds now actively exploring how to offer it to members.
Australian industry superannuation fund Hostplus is exploring whether to open a path into Bitcoin and other digital assets for its members, according to a Bloombergreport.
This move would put the $105 billion (A$150 billion) retirement giant among a small group of global pension funds willing to take on crypto exposure.
“As soon as one super fund breaks ranks on crypto assets, I’d say there’s a high probability the rest follow,” Jason Titman, CEO of Australian crypto exchange Swyftx, told Decrypt. “Around a quarter of Australians want their super funds to offer digital assets, and that number is likely to increase when the market is regulated.”
The fund’s CIO, Sam Sicilia, told Bloomberg the plan is focused on Choiceplus, a self-directed window that lets members manage a slice of their own retirement savings, currently about 1% of the fund’s total book.
“There’s certainly a demand from some of our members who write in and say, ‘Why can’t I have access to cryptocurrency?’” he said.
A launch could come as early as next financial year, pending regulatory approval and internal product design work, Sicilia said.
Hostplus, which serves nearly two million members with an average age in the mid-to-late 30s, is still reviewing consumer protections and product design.
Sicilia said the fund’s view of crypto has evolved considerably since an earlier assessment roughly a decade ago, and that the current review covers not just Bitcoin but a broader universe of digital assets, including potential tokenized exposure to areas such as music rights.
Kraken Australia managing director Jonathon Miller told Decrypt the move, if implemented, is a “positive step forward for the sector.”
“We have come a long way in the last decade, and for many Australians, digital assets are increasingly viewed as a legitimate long-term investment; however, access to them, outside of SMSFs, has remained limited,” he said.
“Expanding availability through platforms like Choiceplus gives investors more flexibility in how they build and diversify their portfolios,” Miller said, adding that “more choice” and “easier access” would benefit “both consumers and the broader market”.
Still, volatility remains a key barrier as AMP Super, one of the few funds to experiment with crypto, recently cut its Bitcoin futures exposure to around 0.02% after a sharp downturn wiped out roughly $700 billion from the market earlier this year.
“We’ve had essentially no exposure during most of the recent sell-off,” AMP Super head of portfolio design Stuart Eliot toldInvestment Magazine last month.
The position dates back to May 2024, when AMP Super added Bitcoin futures via its dynamic allocation strategy.
On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, market sentiment leans toward upside, with users seeing a 50.7% likelihood of Bitcoin reaching $84,000 rather than falling to $55,000.
The world’s largest crypto currently sits at $70,599, up 3.6% on the day, according to CoinGecko data.
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Islamabad, Pakistan – The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said Pakistan is ready to host talks between the United States and Iran amid US President Donald Trump’s claims of ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran.
“If the parties desire, Islamabad is always willing to host talks,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. “It has consistently advocated for dialogue and diplomacy to promote peace and stability in the region.”
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Hours later, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also wrote on X that Pakistan “stands ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict”.
Iran has categorically denied that it is engaged in any talks with the US, contradicting Trump.
But multiple US and Israeli media outlets have reported that Pakistan, Egypt and Turkiye have been serving as messengers between Washington and Tehran, hoping to broker an off-ramp in a war that has led to the greatest energy crisis in modern history.
Some of those reports have suggested that Islamabad could emerge as the city to host talks later this week. According to US-based outlet Axios, two possible formats are under discussion for a meeting in Islamabad. One involves Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Another envisions US Vice President JD Vance meeting Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has dismissed Trump’s claims of talks as an attempt to “escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped”.
Still, some facts are confirmed: Pakistani army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir spoke to President Trump on Sunday. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian a day later. This was followed by Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar holding separate calls with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts.
Fragile diplomacy, hardened positions
The picture emerging from analysts and officials is one of tentative but fragile diplomatic movement, significant enough to pause some military activity but not yet amounting to substantive negotiations.
Trump claimed the US and Iran had already reached “major points of agreement”, suggesting tentative steps towards de-escalation in the US-Israel war on Iran.
Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed that messages had arrived through “friendly countries”, conveying a US request for negotiations, but said Iran had responded according to “the country’s principled positions”.
An Iranian official, quoted by state-linked Press TV, outlined Tehran’s conditions for ending the war on Monday. These included guarantees against future military action, closure of all US military bases in the Gulf region, full reparations from Washington and Tel Aviv, an end to regional conflicts involving Iran-aligned groups, and a new legal framework governing the Strait of Hormuz.
The White House has declined to spell out details of the talks that Trump claims were held. “These are sensitive diplomatic discussions, and the US will not negotiate through the press,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Mehran Kamrava, director of the Iranian Studies Unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, said Trump’s approach followed a familiar pattern.
Washington, he argued, has relied on sustained military and economic pressure to force Tehran to negotiate on US terms, a strategy that has yet to succeed.
“This is consistent with Trump’s resort to gunboat diplomacy and his assumption that he can continue to pressure and threaten Iranians into negotiating,” he told Al Jazeera. “We have seen, however, that there has been resistance to this sort of pressure tactic by the Iranian side and that the Iranians have not responded to threats the way the Americans have anticipated.”
Part of the explanation for the Iranian refusal to succumb to Trump’s pressure, analysts say, is structural. Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued that the war had — paradoxically — strengthened Iran’s position on the key issue of sanctions.
“The reality is that the war has provided Iran with de facto sanctions relief. Iran is exporting more oil now than before the war at twice the price,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the Trump administration’s decision, last week, to lift sanctions on Iranian oil already on boats out at sea. “It has leverage, and it will not agree to end the war without formalising sanctions relief.”
That, he added, is precisely what Washington appears reluctant to offer. “I am not seeing signs in the US that Trump is fully ready for serious diplomacy, since it will have to entail sanctions relief for Iran.”
Khalid Masood, a former Pakistani diplomat and envoy to China, said pressure to find an exit was nonetheless mounting on all sides.
“The US has also realised there are limits to hard power, you can be powerful and still not achieve everything in your favour,” he said. “There is war fatigue, with regional and global fallout, and US allies are feeling it. When you put all of this in context, one comes to the conclusion that the US is now keen on some kind of arrangement,” Masood told Al Jazeera.
Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum, however, urged caution. Any settlement, she said, would require sustained and intensive diplomacy.
“Iran, for its part, may also seek to impose sufficient costs to reinforce long-term deterrence, and it is not yet clear that it believes this objective has been met,” she told Al Jazeera.
Left to right, Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, Pakistan’s PM Shehbaz Sharif, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in September last year [Handout/Press Information Department via AP]
War escalation and global stakes
After 12 days of fighting last year, and months of sabre rattling since the beginning of this year, the latest war on Iran began on February 28 when the US and Israel launched coordinated strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many other senior officials, just a day after Oman’s foreign minister had declared a breakthrough “within reach”.
Iran responded with sustained missile and drone attacks on Israel, US bases and civilian infrastructure across Gulf states.
The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that the disruption already exceeds the combined oil crises of 1973 and 1979. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global crude oil flows, has effectively been closed since the first day of the war, though Iran has in recent days allowed a few tankers from India, Pakistan, China and Turkiye to pass through, and is in talks with other countries — including Japan — to allow their vessels transit through the narrow passageway.
Trump had initially announced a 48-hour ultimatum for Iran to reopen the strait or face strikes on its power plants, which was due to expire on Monday night. Hours before that, he announced a five-day pause on those attacks, which will end on Saturday.
Even as diplomacy appears to have kicked in, the Pentagon accelerated deployments to the Gulf. The USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit were moved from California three weeks before schedule.
The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit on board the USS Tripoli is already en route from Japan. The US is also weighing options, including seizing Kharg Island, which handles about 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports, and sending ground forces to secure Tehran’s enriched uranium stockpiles.
The US has already struck military installations on Kharg Island, warning that critical oil facilities could be targeted if Iran continues to block the strait.
Masood said the parallel military build-up was deliberate.
“The US is still moving the Marines, which signals that if the talks do not work out, it could lead to something,” he said.
“Israel wants the action to continue and is likely unhappy with the talks. The Israelis might well play the role of spoiler. If this process does not reach a conclusion, then the US and Israel will resort to force, which would be deeply unfortunate.”
Pakistan’s diplomatic opening
Pakistan’s role in the current diplomacy draws on a set of relationships built over time.
When Munir visited the White House for an unprecedented lunch meeting with Trump in June 2025, the first time a US president had hosted a Pakistani military chief who was not also president, Trump said publicly that Pakistan “knows Iran very well, better than most”.
The meeting, which lasted more than two hours, included discussions of rising Israel-Iran tensions.
Ahead of last year’s strikes, Munir also travelled to Iran alongside Sharif, meeting senior Iranian officials.
Since the war began in February, Islamabad has maintained its outreach. On March 3, Foreign Minister Dar told parliament that Pakistan was “ready to facilitate dialogue between Washington and Tehran in Islamabad”.
In the same address, Dar revealed that Pakistan had pushed back against Washington’s demand for zero uranium enrichment, instead proposing a monitored framework. “It was agreed that there should be surveillance of two to three countries, and Iran was happy with that,” he said.
Pakistan’s leverage lies in a rare combination of ties. It is the only Muslim-majority country with nuclear weapons and does not host US military bases.
It maintains longstanding ties with Saudi Arabia, dating back to 1947, reinforced by a strategic defence pact signed in September 2025. At the same time, it shares a 900km (560-mile) border with Iran and hosts the world’s second-largest Shia Muslim population.
Left to right, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif and Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meet in Tehran on May 26, 2025 [Handout/Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via Reuters]
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, recently referenced Pakistan in a message marking the Persian New Year, Nowruz, saying he had a “special feeling” towards its people.
Masood said these overlapping relationships give Islamabad credibility.
“Pakistan’s importance also stems from its standing as a major Islamic country with considerable credibility. It has ties with the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia, and with Iran; everybody is open to Pakistan playing a mediating role,” he said. “Iran has publicly praised us, and in that sense, Pakistan is well-placed to make a positive contribution.”
Former diplomat Salman Bashir said mediation also serves Pakistan’s own interests.
“Pakistan’s relations with the Trump administration have been very good, and we have been talking to Iran as well,” he said. “It would very much be in our interest, because we could be affected by this conflict.”
Quincy Institute’s Parsi agreed Pakistan is well-positioned but cautioned that timing remains critical.
“Pakistan is well-positioned to help advance the diplomacy, but ultimately, the conflict has to be ripe for mediation,” he said. “It does not appear that it is quite yet, but it is important to begin the diplomacy before the moment of ripeness has arrived.”
The groundwork for the latest diplomatic push was laid in Riyadh last week, when Saudi Arabia convened an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from 12 Arab and Islamic countries, including Pakistan and Turkiye.
The meeting produced a joint statement condemning Iran’s attacks on Gulf countries’ infrastructure and affirming their right to self-defence.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud warned that Riyadh’s patience was not unlimited and that the kingdom “reserves the right to take military action if deemed necessary”.
On the sidelines, the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkiye also held a separate coordination meeting, the first in that format, and some Pakistani sources say Islamabad’s emergence as a potential venue for dialogue between the US and Iran stems from that meeting.
Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, right, met his counterparts from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye on the sidelines of the consultative meeting of Arab and Islamic countries in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [File: Handout/Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs]
Meanwhile, the Gulf states, which have been targeted by Iran, have notably stayed out of formal mediation.
Thafer of the Gulf International Forum said the calculus was unlikely to shift until the attacks on Gulf countries stopped.
“For some Gulf states, stopping hostilities against their respective country would be a prerequisite for taking on any meaningful mediating role,” she said. “If a country such as Pakistan or any other country were able to facilitate that outcome, it would likely be viewed positively across Gulf capitals.”
Kamrava identified Israel as a central obstacle, even though the US and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were willing to end the war on Iran.
“Israel does not want an end to the war and does not want the US to negotiate with Iran, directly or through intermediaries like Pakistan,” he said. “The GCC and the US want the war to end, and end soon, and therefore welcome it.”
On the limits of mediation, he was blunt. “No one can compel Iran to negotiate. It seems that Iran has the real leverage here through its missile capabilities.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he had spoken to Trump about the negotiations, and that the US president believed that there was a chance to leverage gains made by US and Israeli troops in Iran to “realise the war’s objectives through an agreement that will safeguard our vital interests”.
However, he stopped short of endorsing the talks and made clear that Israeli strikes in Iran would continue regardless.
Parsi said regional actors would need to exert pressure on Washington as well as Tehran.
“Trump has in the past shown that he listens when regional players present their position as a bloc,” he said. “Israel will undoubtedly seek to sabotage any such efforts, though.”
Masood, the ex-Pakistani diplomat, however, saw a convergence of interests.
“I think everybody should want this to succeed,” he said. “The Israelis have taken a significant hit in the last few weeks, so there would be a general interest among all parties in finding an off-ramp and an avenue for de-escalation.”
Welcome to Hogwarts! A first look at the fictional school of witchcraft and wizardry from HBO’s upcoming “Harry Potter” series has finally been unveiled.
The photo, posted to the show’s official Instagram page, shows Harry (Dominic McLaughlin) from behind as he walks towards the quidditch pitch while wearing a red and gold cloak, which represents Hogwarts’ Gryffindor house and has his last name and player number on the back. Ahead of him is a large group of students entering the pitch, which is displaying flags for Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. See the full photo below.
Mara LePere-Schloop, a production designer whose credits include “Interview With the Vampire” and “Pachinko,” is behind the look of the school for the new series.
“Harry Potter” is currently in production at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in the U.K. Along with McLaughlin, the cast includes Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley, Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger, John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape, Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid and more. See a full cast guide here.
HBO’s adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s famous book series-turned-movie franchise is being led by showrunner Francesca Gardiner and director Mark Mylod. Executive producers include Rowling, Neil Blair, Ruth Kenley-Letts of Brontë Film and TV and David Heyman of Heyday Films. The series will follow young Harry as he discovers he’s a wizard, leaves his Muggle family behind and sets off to attend Hogwarts. Along the way, he befriends Ron and Hermione Granger and battles Lord Voldemort.
Just two days after their epic reunion concert at Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square, BTS performed a second show some 7,000 miles away — at New York’s Pier 17 for an exclusive fan event with Spotify on Monday titled “Spotify x BTS: Swimside.”
The name of the event was loosely tied to “Swim,” a track from the group’s new album, “Arirang,” as was the location: Pier 17 is located at the top of a five-story building in the city’s Seaport neighborhood, and although New York enjoyed unusually warm temperatures last weekend, the weather gods went in the other direction on Monday night: temperatures hovered in the 40s during the day and even dropped into the 30s as the evening progressed, combining with the wind, the elevation and occasional light rain to make for a frigid experience for the 1,000 specially invited fans who were treated to a brief Q&A with the seven members led by British singer Suki Waterhouse, followed by a three-song performance.
However, the setting was stunning: Facing the stage, fans — who were selected because they were the area’s top BTS streamers on the platform — could see the New York City skyline to the left and the Brooklyn Bridge to the right, with the Statue of Liberty, the Wall Street district and the harbor at their backs. It was an intentionally iconic setting for the group’s first U.S. performance of songs from “Arirang” and their reunion as OT7.
(L-R) Suga, V, Jin, Jungkook, RM, Jimin, and J-Hope of BTS (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Spotify)
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Spo
And as they always do, the fans — aka BTS’ Army — turned up and turned out. Word of the concert’s location leaked out early in the day and fans lined up hours in advance, enduring the cold winds and rain to secure a spot closest to the stage. Yet despite the conditions, their enthusiasm never faded, as they cheered, sang along and waved special hand-held “Army Bomb” lights.
The event kicked off with the Q&A moderated by Waterhouse, which included some queries submitted by fans. “It’s really an honor for us to do our first stage in America here,” the group’s RM said. “Thanks to Spotify for giving us this chance. And thank you for being together again with us
When asked “What is the message you’d like to leave for the Army in this album?” RM replied, “First is that we are here — second is that we are here together.
“It’s been four years but now we’re here,” he continued, referencing the group’s hiatus due to their service in the South Korean Army. “We seven, and with you all, Army. We, with you, can take over the world.”
In the second half of the Q&A, BTS got a bit casual by playing a game called “Alien vs. Normal,” referring to two tracks from their “Arirang” album. That segment of the Q&A became comical when RM jokingly called out Jimin for never being on time because “he spends too much time on the toilet,” and Suga admitted that he actually hates swimming because he doesn’t like the water.
Another question asked, “Is it Alien vs. Normal to change your clothes once you get home?” Jimin replied, “Typically when I get home, I’m naked,” which caused the crowd to start shouting. Jung Kook joined in while RM and Jimin shook their heads.
During a 20-minute intermission before the performance, the fans showed just how dedicated they are: “Arirang” had been out for just three days, but as songs from the album played, the gathered Army sang along to every word, waving their Army bombs in sync. The group then took the stage to perform the album tracks “2.0,” “Normal” and of course “Swim.”
Some fans held up red hearts that read “We Stayed!” and waved them throughout the performance. Their efforts paid off at the end of the night, when V acknowledged them by shouting, “You stayed? Army stayed?” before the group walked offstage.
As the shivering but exhilarated fans made a quick exit, all made enthusiastic comments about the performance, the album, how far the group has come the cultural impact they’ve had in South Korea and beyond. But one fan spoke for all when she said, “I’m just happy to see them all together again.”
MoonPay released the Open Wallet Standard, an open-source framework for AI agents to manage funds and sign transactions across multiple blockchains. The standard provides a unified way to store keys, authorize payments, and interact with services without exposing private keys.
The initiative builds on MoonPay Agents, launched earlier as a non-custodial software layer for autonomous transactions. During development, the company identified fragmentation across agent tools, where each system used separate wallets and key management methods. The new standard addresses this by introducing a shared interface and secure local vault.
More than 15 organizations contributed to the launch, including PayPal, Ripple, the Solana Foundation, and the Ethereum Foundation. The code is available under an MIT license.
The standard integrates with emerging protocols such as x402, AP2, and MPP, which enable machine-driven payments but do not define wallet infrastructure. The Open Wallet Standard introduces a single encrypted storage layer and policy-based signing system, allowing agents to operate within defined limits.
Keys are encrypted and processed in isolated memory, with no exposure to applications or language models. The wallet supports multiple chains through one interface and runs locally without cloud dependency.
Bernstein, a leading asset management firm on Wall Street, has published a noteworthy assessment of Bitcoin. The company stated that the Bitcoin price has largely bottomed out and maintains its year-end target of $150,000.
According to Bernstein analysts, despite recent volatility, Bitcoin’s downward movement is largely considered complete. This view has strengthened expectations that a new uptrend may begin in the markets.
The report also included Strategy, one of the largest institutional Bitcoin investors. Although the company’s shares have fallen by approximately 50 percent compared to their peak levels, Bernstein noted that Strategy maintains its financially sound structure.
Analysts have described Strategy as a “high-beta” investment vehicle with high sensitivity to Bitcoin. They noted that the company follows a strategy of buying more BTC instead of reducing positions during market downturns. In this context, it was stated that Strategy has increased its Bitcoin holdings by raising approximately $7.3 billion this year alone.
It was also emphasized that the company holds approximately 3.6% of the total Bitcoin supply. This makes Strategy a significant player in the cryptocurrency market.
Experts say that institutional investors maintaining their long-term positions indicates continued confidence in Bitcoin and is considered a positive signal in terms of price expectations.
200 protesters marched from Anthropic to OpenAI and xAI offices in San Francisco.
Activists called on AI companies to pause development of new frontier AI models.
Organizer Michael Trazzi previously staged a multi-week hunger strike outside Google DeepMind.
Protesters took to the streets of San Francisco on Saturday, stopping outside the offices of Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI to call for a conditional pause in the development of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence.
According to Stop the AI Race founder and documentarian Michael Trazzi, roughly 200 protesters participated in the demonstration. Participants included researchers, academics, and members of advocacy groups such as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, PauseAI, QuitGPT, StopAI, and Evitable.
“There are a lot of people who care about this risk from advanced AI systems,” Trazzi told Decrypt. “Having everyone marching together shows people are not isolated in thinking about this by themselves. There are a lot of people who care about this.”
The march began at noon outside Anthropic’s offices, then moved to OpenAI and then to xAI. At each stop, activists and speakers from the participating organizations addressed protesters.
According to Trazzi, the protest aimed to push AI companies to agree to a coordinated pause in building more powerful AI models and create treaties with AI developers in other countries to do the same.
“If China and the U.S. agreed to stop building more dangerous models, they could focus on making the systems better for us, like medical AI,” he said. “Everyone would be better off.”
Stop the AI Race’s proposal calls for companies to stop building new frontier models and shift work toward safety, if other major labs “credibly do the same,” which Trazzi said makes protesting in front of AI labs’ offices more important.
Steady opposition
The protest is the latest in a series of efforts to disrupt AI development.
In March 2023, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter demanding a moratorium on further enhancements to the leading AI tool following the public launch of ChatGPT the year before.
Signers included xAI founder Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. Since then, the “Pause Giant AI Experiments” open letter has garnered over 33,000 signatures.
In September, Trazzi staged a week-long hunger strike outside Google DeepMind’s London offices, while Guido Reichstadter held a parallel hunger strike outside Anthropic’s San Francisco offices.
Government officials and supporters of continued AI development argue that slowing research in the U.S. could give competitors abroad an advantage.
Last week, the Trump Administration published its AI framework to establish a national standard for laws governing AI development. The White House framed it as a commitment to “winning the AI race.”
“Even if you’re in China or any country in the world, nobody wants systems they cannot control,” Trazzi said. “Because we’re in this race between companies and countries to build the systems as fast as possible, we’re taking shortcuts and cutting corners on safety. There is a race that has no winners. What we have is a system we cannot control, and that’s why it’s called a suicide race.”
But even if AI developers agreed to pause development, verifying it may be easier said than done. Trazzi suggested one way to verify a pause would be to limit the computing power used to train new models.
“If you limit how much compute a company can use to build these systems, then you’re pretty much limiting developing new models,” he said.
Following the San Francisco protest, Trazzi said additional demonstrations could take place in other locations where major AI companies operate.
“We want to show up where the employees are,” he said. “We want to talk to them, and we want them to talk to their leadership and have things moving from inside,” adding that whistleblowers will have some amount of power because “they’re the ones building it.”
OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s requests for comment.
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