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14 May 2026, 04:20

Moody’s: Institutional Tokenization Will Start Slow, Then Spread Rapidly

BitcoinWorld Moody’s: Institutional Tokenization Will Start Slow, Then Spread Rapidly Global credit rating agency Moody’s has released a new report forecasting that the adoption of asset tokenization by major U.S. banks and financial institutions will follow a pattern of slow initial uptake followed by rapid, widespread expansion. The report, cited by Cointelegraph, suggests that while tokenization is currently confined to simpler asset classes such as funds and short-term financial products, institutions expect it to eventually encompass a broader range of assets and involve more market participants. Tokenization’s Current State and Institutional Readiness According to Moody’s, most large banks and financial infrastructure firms have already established dedicated digital asset teams and are actively participating in pilot projects. This foundational work indicates that the financial sector is preparing for a significant shift, even if the pace of deployment has been measured so far. The agency notes that the early focus on straightforward assets allows institutions to test the technology and regulatory frameworks before scaling to more complex instruments. Three Scenarios for the Financial System’s Evolution Moody’s report outlines three potential pathways for the evolution of the financial system: gradual growth, low growth, or rapid proliferation. The agency identifies the most likely scenario as one where stablecoins and deposit tokens become more prevalent, while existing banks and asset managers retain their central roles in the financial ecosystem. This path suggests a controlled expansion that preserves the current institutional structure while integrating new digital tools. Rapid Proliferation and Its Implications However, Moody’s also warns that if tokenization spreads rapidly, stablecoins could emerge as the primary on-chain payment infrastructure. Such a development would place significant profitability pressure on some payment companies and banks that rely on traditional transaction fees. The report underscores that the speed of adoption will determine which financial players benefit and which face disruption. Why This Matters for the Broader Market The Moody’s analysis provides a credible, independent perspective on a trend that has generated considerable speculation. For investors, regulators, and financial professionals, the report offers a framework for understanding how tokenization might reshape the competitive landscape. The key takeaway is that while the transition may be gradual at first, the eventual impact could be transformative, particularly for payment networks and traditional banking models. Conclusion Moody’s assessment reinforces the view that institutional tokenization is not a question of if, but when and how fast. The agency’s scenario-based approach highlights the importance of monitoring adoption rates and regulatory developments. For now, the financial industry appears to be laying the groundwork for a future where digital assets and tokenized products play a central role, even if the full transition remains several years away. FAQs Q1: What is asset tokenization? Asset tokenization is the process of converting ownership rights of real-world assets, such as funds or bonds, into digital tokens on a blockchain. This can increase liquidity, reduce transaction costs, and enable fractional ownership. Q2: Why does Moody’s expect a slow start? Moody’s cites the need for regulatory clarity, infrastructure development, and risk management as reasons for a cautious initial phase. Banks are testing the technology through pilot projects before committing to large-scale deployment. Q3: How could rapid tokenization affect traditional banks? If tokenization spreads quickly, stablecoins could replace some payment systems, reducing fee income for banks and payment processors. However, banks that adapt by offering tokenized products could gain new revenue streams. This post Moody’s: Institutional Tokenization Will Start Slow, Then Spread Rapidly first appeared on BitcoinWorld .

14 May 2026, 04:13

Sam Altman shoots up on Forbes top billionaires list with a $6.5 billion net worth

Sam Altman’s fortune has climbed to more than $6.5 billion, based on Forbes’ latest estimate, after court filings pulled new details about his private company stakes into public view. Sam’s wealth was previously placed at a little above $4.5 billion, but the new estimate includes holdings tied to companies that have had business with OpenAI, plus an indirect interest in the ChatGPT maker through Y Combinator, though Sam did not disclose the size of that OpenAI-related stake in court. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, testified that his personal stake in the company is worth close to $30 billion, while Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI cofounder, was tied to a $7 billion holding. Those numbers came out while Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam continued in court, with Elon seeking $150 billion in damages and asking for Sam to be removed as both an officer and board member. Court filings put Sam’s private stakes under pressure as regulators circle OpenAI The court document said Sam owns more than $2 billion in companies that have done business with OpenAI. That detail landed in the middle of claims from Elon and state attorneys general that Sam had conflicts tied to his personal investments. Elon’s case includes allegations of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. Sam denied those claims and told the court he stepped aside from important talks when a company involved was one he had backed. The investment list was shown Tuesday by Steven Molo, Elon’s lead trial lawyer. Steven presented it during hearings on the lawsuit, and the document gave the fair market value of Sam’s holdings in nine companies that had OpenAI business ties as of December 31, 2025. The biggest name on the list was Helion Energy, where Sam had a $1.7 billion stake. Helion is a private fusion power company. Sam told the court he knew Helion’s founders personally and first put money into the company in 2015. Helion wants to build the world’s first fusion power plant, but it has no revenue yet. Private market investors have valued it at $5.4 billion. The filing also listed a $633 million stake in Stripe, the private financial software company, and a $258 million stake in Retro Biosciences, an anti-aging drug company. Both had deals with OpenAI. Other companies on the list included Cerebras, a chipmaker, Lattice, the people management software company formerly known as Degree, Humane, an AI device company, Software Applications, an AI software firm, and Formation Bio, the AI drug company formerly called Trialspark. The document also said Sam had sold his stake in Reddit (RDDT) by the end of 2025. His Reddit holding was worth more than $600 million on the day Reddit went public in 2024, based on SEC filings from that period. Regulators are now poking around too. Ten U.S. attorneys general asked the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday to review OpenAI documents before a possible IPO. Last week, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked Sam for details on how OpenAI handles conflict-of-interest risks. Sam defends his role in Helion, Reddit, and Cerebras deals while Musk’s lawyer attacks his trust record The Helion deal became one of the biggest parts of the hearing. Sam testified that he asked OpenAI’s board in late 2022 to look at working with Helion. He said he backed the idea because he thought it was a good deal. Helion later signed a 2024 agreement to provide future power for OpenAI, at a time when AI companies were burning through huge amounts of electricity for data centers and model training. Sam stepped down from Helion’s board in March 2026 while OpenAI and Helion were discussing a larger agreement. On the 2024 deal, Sam told the court he was “recused from it on both sides” and said he did not sign the agreement. Steven also questioned Sam about OpenAI’s May 2024 content partnership with Reddit (RDDT). Steven said Sam had an “obvious conflict” because of his ties to Reddit. Sam said OpenAI’s board had to approve the final terms and said other people were present during the talks. “We decided that the board would approve any final terms,” Sam said. “I had other people in the room with me. This was a well-discussed standard corporate recusal.” Steven then brought up OpenAI’s $10 billion computing deal with Cerebras. Sam has a stake in Cerebras worth about $3.2 million, according to the court document. Steven also tried to paint Sam as someone the court should not trust. He referred to earlier concerns from OpenAI employees, including Dario Amodei, who later became CEO of Anthropic. After introducing Dario, Steven also pointed to former OpenAI board members and a long New Yorker article that questioned whether Sam could be trusted. If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter .

14 May 2026, 03:23

Is Claude AI the key to recovering forgotten Bitcoin wallets?

An X user, Cprkrn, who posted on May 13, 2026, claimed that claude.ai just helped him crack the password to his old digital wallet. He tagged Anthropic and said he would name his kid after its CEO, Dario Amodei. The post got millions of views within hours, and the story behind it was even better than the announcement. Cprkrn bought Bitcoin back in his college days, when each coin was around $250, and changed the password to his wallet but forgot it completely. He then spent the next 11+ years trying to recover it. He later revealed the password publicly as “lol420fuckthePOLICE!*:)” and said he had been locked out of $398,000 by a friend’s ideas of a secure password. *]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" data-turn-id="request-WEB:4c0b19a3-ccf3-4b24-9501-8cce1214e5d5-3" data-turn-id-container="request-WEB:4c0b19a3-ccf3-4b24-9501-8cce1214e5d5-3" data-testid="conversation-turn-6" data-scroll-anchor="false" data-turn="assistant"> The AI solution after 11 years Cprkrn said he had spent years trying to reclaim the password and worked through trillions of potential combinations. He adopted popular tools BTCRecover (an open-source Bitcoin wallet recovery software) and Hashca t, which scans billions of potential passwords quickly, to no avail. The breakthrough came when Cprkrn decided to upload the files from his old computer into Claude and asked it for help. Instead of breaking the lock, Claude discovered an old wallet.dat file Cprkrn had forgotten existed. A wallet.dat file is the file that Bitcoin Core (the original Bitcoin software) uses to store your wallet. The software always creates a backup of your old password every time you change it. Cprkrn had a mnemonic phrase (a string of words that functions as the master key to a wallet) written down somewhere. Once Claude combined the phrase with the older wallet file, the original password became accessible. “It found an OLD wallet file that the mnemonic successfully decrypted. Locked out 11+ years because I got stoned and changed the password. Ended up being the most obvious opening ever lol,” Cprkrn said. He also shared a screenshot in the X post showing Claude running multiple commands in a terminal window. Claude checked BTCRecover’s actual decryption algorithm, ran the decrypt with what it described as “sharedKey + password concatenated,” and then posted a line in capital letters: “PRIVATE KEYS DECRYPTED! Let me convert to WIF format and verify addresses: A few lines later, followed by: “WE GOT IT!!! THE 5 BTC IS YOURS!” Cprkrn was now about $400,000 richer than he had been that morning. Some people online assumed Claude had somehow broken Bitcoin’s encryption or guessed the password, while others (mostly on Reddit) said the AI just ran a file search. According to a recovery expert, Claude did not break Bitcoin’s encryption but rather analyzed historical data. What was the response online, and what does it say about how people see AI? Thousands of comments poured in on a Reddit thread , with some mocking the user for spending 11 years trying to crack the code instead of just searching his own files. But one commenter, called irritatedellipses , countered the criticism, saying there are things one has to know before even considering looking into their old files. “To some folks, not searching for an old wallet file with a key phrase in it is a moronic move, but break down the pieces of information you have to have to know to do that: You have to know that wallets store that info. You have to know that it’s readable by some utility. You have to know that old wallets aren’t just deleted with a new one or whatever, they’re .bak’d or what have you,” they said. Some Reddit users even questioned the story’s authenticity, while others looked back on their own Bitcoin regrets. If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter .

14 May 2026, 00:39

OpenAI advocates for AI governance body globally

OpenAI says AI needs the same regulation as nuclear energy and wants the US to initiate the creation of a global regulator to handle it. As reported by Cryptopolitan , this comes as President Trump traveled to Beijing for the first US–China state visit in nine years, during which AI policy was expected to be on the agenda. According to Chris Lehane, the vice president of global affairs at OpenAI, Trump and Xi in the same room is a rare opportunity for the two nations to build something lasting for AI. “AI, in some level, transcends a lot of the prevailing or traditional trade type of issues. There is an opportunity to really start to build something up globally, and have countries around the world, including China, potentially participate,” Chris Lehane said during a briefing. What is OpenAI, and why is its opinion about global policy a big deal? OpenAI is the American company that developed ChatGPT , a popular AI assistant/chatbot used by hundreds of millions of people every day. The company has always participated in every major debate about powerful AI systems. Its CEO, Sam Altman, usually meets with heads of state to discuss AI and even testifies before Congress, giving the company significant influence over global AI policy. OpenAI is also in a separate legal fight after Tesla CEO Elon Musk sued the company in 2024. Musk is one of OpenAI’s original founders, and he says that Sam Altman and other executives went against the company’s nonprofit mission and made it a for-profit organization. The trial is still running, but the bigger story this week is happening in Beijing. What did OpenAI propose, and what is the IAEA comparison? Vice President of Global Affairs at OpenA, Chris Lehane, proposed linking two things to create something new. He wants the US Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation and AI safety institutes to come together and build a global network. He used the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as an example of how countries connected their nuclear regulators into one overal body. The US Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation is a government office that creates technical standards for AI systems. At the same time, countries are establishing AI institutes worldwide. For example, the UK has one, the EU is developing frameworks, and several Asian governments are also working on similar bodies. Lehane said a unified body for AI will help build safer, more resilient systems that are less susceptible to attacks. He also wants the US government to make it mandatory for the country’s researchers to test the most powerful AI models before deploying them. What is the Mythos model, and why does it rattle both Washington and Beijing? Mythos is a new, powerful AI model that found “thousands” of major vulnerabilities in operating systems and other software. Anthropic (the AI safety company backed by Google and Amazon) developed Mythos. The scale of what Mythos can do shocked the world as banks and governments scrambled to fix their security defenses after the announcement. White House officials even acknowledged that models like Mythos made communication with China more important than ever before. China was locked out of early access to a Mythos preview, raising concerns about the ability of the country’s developers and government to defend themselves against attacks that use the AI model. Market intelligence firm IDC China even warned that leaving China out of Mythos could create a “generational gap” in AI defense capabilities between China and the West. According to researchers , attackers could use advanced AI to design bioweapons, trigger financial shocks, or act autonomously without human control. The scariest part is that AI just needs to be powerful, fast, and pointed in the wrong direction to do all these things. What happened at the Trump-Xi meeting, and what did they discuss? The US delegation to China included Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and top White House technology policy advisor Michael Kratsios. Their presence on the trip made the meeting a priority and an urgent issue, as both sides came prepared to discuss AI issues directly. China proposed a formal dialogue on AI issues, led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Finance Minister Liao Min. But expectations for the channel are low because neither agency specializes in AI. The US also planned to raise concerns that Chinese developers were using outputs from advanced AI models to build systems at a fraction of the cost, but with fewer safety guardrails. Both sides also discussed the possibility of establishing a no-blame hotline to report suspected AI-driven incidents, similar to military hotlines. Analysts even suggested that both governments could commit to guardrails for frontier AI models, similar to the 2015 US-China Cybersecurity Agreement . Finally, the discussions could also touch on the MATCH Ac t, a proposed US law that aims to limit China’s access to semiconductor supply chains. Sun Chenghao of Tsinghua University participated in the US-China AI talks and said the US should draw a clear line between managing AI safety risks and simply trying to block China’s technological development. “China likely hopes the US will appropriately distinguish between AI governance and technological containment,” Sun Chenghao said. If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter .

13 May 2026, 20:02

KULR Technology Deposits 300 BTC Into Coinbase Prime as Unrealized Losses Near $18 Million

Onchain data published Wednesday shows KULR, a tech company focused on thermal management and energy storage, moving 300 bitcoin into Coinbase Prime, a transfer analysts say looks less like a custody shuffle and more like a sell. SALE OR COLLATERAL? KULR Technology Group (NYSE: KULR), the thermal energy management firm that launched a bitcoin treasury

13 May 2026, 19:40

User Recovers 5 BTC From 11-Year-Old Wallet With Help From Claude AI

BitcoinWorld User Recovers 5 BTC From 11-Year-Old Wallet With Help From Claude AI An X user known as @cprkrn has successfully recovered a Bitcoin wallet that had been inaccessible for over 11 years, using the AI assistant Claude. The recovery unlocked 5 Bitcoin, worth approximately $150,000 at current market prices, after previous attempts by commercial recovery services had failed. How Claude AI Helped Unlock a Lost Wallet The user uploaded old computer files from their college years to Claude, an AI model developed by Anthropic. Within the files, the AI identified encrypted wallet data that had gone unnoticed by the user and by several paid recovery services. Claude then analyzed the open-source recovery tool btcrecover, identified a configuration error, and provided corrected instructions to successfully decrypt the private key. The AI also assisted in converting the key into the Wallet Import Format (WIF), a standard format required to import the key into a modern wallet client. According to the user’s posts on X, they had previously paid around $250 to multiple commercial recovery services, all of which failed to regain access to the wallet. The successful recovery using Claude came after the user decided to try a different approach, leveraging the AI’s ability to analyze large sets of unstructured data and debug technical tools. Implications for Cryptocurrency Recovery This case highlights a growing trend: the use of advanced AI models to solve complex problems in cryptocurrency management, particularly around lost or inaccessible wallets. For years, the crypto community has struggled with the issue of lost private keys, with estimates suggesting that millions of Bitcoin are permanently locked in wallets whose keys have been forgotten or misplaced. Traditional recovery methods often involve specialized software, brute-force attacks, or expensive hardware analysis. AI models like Claude offer a new avenue, capable of sifting through large datasets, identifying patterns, and debugging software in ways that can bypass the limitations of conventional tools. What This Means for Bitcoin Holders For individuals holding cryptocurrency in old wallets, this development provides a glimmer of hope. However, it also raises important security considerations. While AI can assist in recovery, it also introduces potential risks if private keys or wallet data are uploaded to cloud-based AI services without proper precautions. Users are advised to exercise caution and consider using local, open-source AI models or air-gapped systems when dealing with sensitive cryptographic material. The case also underscores the importance of maintaining organized backups and records of wallet credentials, as even advanced AI cannot guarantee recovery in all scenarios. Conclusion The recovery of 5 Bitcoin from an 11-year-old wallet using Claude AI represents a notable milestone in the intersection of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency management. It demonstrates both the potential of AI to solve long-standing technical challenges and the ongoing risks associated with lost private keys. As AI tools continue to evolve, they may become an increasingly important resource for individuals and businesses seeking to recover digital assets, provided security and privacy considerations are carefully managed. FAQs Q1: Is it safe to upload old wallet files to an AI like Claude? Uploading wallet files to any online service carries inherent security risks. For maximum safety, users should consider using local, open-source AI models or air-gapped systems to avoid exposing private keys to third-party servers. Q2: Can Claude AI recover any lost Bitcoin wallet? No. The success of recovery depends on many factors, including the availability of encrypted wallet data, the complexity of the encryption, and the accuracy of the user’s files. AI can assist in analysis and debugging but cannot guarantee recovery. Q3: What is btcrecover? Btcrecover is an open-source tool designed to help recover lost Bitcoin wallet passwords and private keys. It supports various wallet formats and can be used with custom scripts to automate recovery attempts. This post User Recovers 5 BTC From 11-Year-Old Wallet With Help From Claude AI first appeared on BitcoinWorld .