BroadChain has learned that at 11:30 on April 23, AI research lab NeoCognition announced the completion of a $40 million seed round of financing. The round was jointly led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst Ventures, with participation from Vista Equity Partners, Intel CEO Tan Zhongliang, Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica, and others. The lab was founded by Ohio State University professor Yu Su and focuses on developing self-learning AI agents, aiming to build "expert" intelligent agents capable of continuous learning and rapid specialization, primarily targeting enterprise and SaaS customers. The current team consists of about 15 people, most with PhD backgrounds.
Coinbase has moved a lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General against its prediction market business from state court to federal court. Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal stated that the case involves "significant disputes under federal law" and should be subject to "complete preemption." Previously, New York State accused Coinbase Financial Markets and Gemini Titan of offering contracts for betting on sports, entertainment, and election events to users, including those aged 18 to 20, without obtaining a gambling license.
According to a report by The Information, Tencent and Alibaba are in talks to invest in AI company DeepSeek at a valuation exceeding $20 billion. Meanwhile, Robinhood Ventures Fund I announced that it had purchased approximately $75 million worth of OpenAI common stock on April 17, incorporating it into its private equity investment portfolio.
Coinbase announced the launch of a free 1:1 exchange service between tGBP and GBP and plans to gradually open the tGBP-USDC spot trading pair in compliant regions once liquidity conditions are met. Additionally, Coinbase announced that it will list Fluent (BLEND). Users can already generate deposit addresses, but the specific trading time is yet to be determined.
A new documentary titled "Finding Satoshi" suggests that Bitcoin founder "Satoshi Nakamoto" is likely a pseudonym used by the late cryptographers Hal Finney and Len Sassaman in collaboration. The investigation team QRI reached this conclusion by analyzing early mining activities, code style, and interpersonal networks but acknowledged a lack of cryptographic verification as definitive proof.
An incident of home invasion targeting cryptocurrency holders occurred in the Brittany region of France. Three adults were tied up and forced to transfer approximately $820,000 worth of crypto assets to wallets controlled by the attackers. Since the beginning of this year, French police have recorded over 40 cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking related to cryptocurrency.
Binance.US announced a significant reduction in trading fees, lowering the maker fee for all spot trading pairs to 0 and the taker fee to 0.02%, attempting to attract U.S. users with a "near-zero fee" strategy. Data shows that its trading volume over the past 24 hours was approximately $14.8 million, far below the $10.7 billion of the global Binance and $1.9 billion of Coinbase.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that the team is collaborating with multiple parties to advance solutions to reduce exposure related to the KelpDAO incident. He noted that the Arbitrum Security Council has recovered approximately $70 million worth of ETH, which is expected to significantly reduce potential losses.
Cardano core development company Input Output Global submitted nine budget proposals for the 2026 annual community treasury, with the total requested funding reduced by nearly 50% compared to last year. The core of the proposals is to promote the mainnet launch of a scaling upgrade named Leios, aiming to increase Cardano's monthly transaction processing capacity from about 800,000 to over 27 million.
According to Bloomberg citing informed sources, venture capital firm Blockchain Capital is raising a total of $700 million for two new funds, including its seventh early-stage fund and its second growth fund. The company has already begun deploying some of the new funds, and the fundraising is expected to be completed within five to six months.
Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes has stepped down, with Kevin McGurn appointed as interim CEO. The company's stock price has fallen approximately 90% from its all-time high in early 2022. Its current market capitalization is about $2.7 billion, with annual revenue of only $3.7 million and losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order prohibiting state employees from using non-public information obtained in the course of their duties to place bets on prediction markets. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker issued a similar order on the same day. Prediction market platform Kalshi stated that it has handled three insider cases involving candidates betting on themselves and imposed penalties.