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Publicly Traded Semler Scientific Buys More Bitcoin as Law Firm Targets Company

by admin May 24, 2025

In brief

A law firm has opened up an investigation into Semler Scientific’s compliance with securities laws and other business practices.
Bragar Eagel & Squire urged Semler’s shareholders who have “suffered losses” to contact its lawyers.
Semler disclosed another $50 million Bitcoin buy this week, bringing its BTC stash to $466 million worth.

A U.S. law firm is considering potential legal claims against Nasdaq-listed healthcare technology firm Semler Scientific, on behalf of the Bitcoin-holding company’s shareholders—though it hasn’t stopped Semler from buying up BTC.

Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. on Thursday said it is looking into whether Semler Scientific violated federal securities laws or engaged in other unlawful business practices. In a statement, the law firm urged Semler’s shareholders to contact its lawyers in relation to the investigation.

The medical device company revealed in February that the U.S. Department of Justice might file a legal complaint against its business.

$SMLR acquires 455 #Bitcoins for $50 million and has generated BTC Yield of 25.8% YTD. Now holding 4,264 $BTC. Flywheel in motion. 🚀

— Eric Semler (@SemlerEric) May 23, 2025

The DOJ opened an initial civil investigation into Semler’s reimbursement claims, or requests to be reimbursed for certain business expenses related to its QuantaFlo device, in 2017. The federal agency also sent several follow-up requests to Semler in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023. And, more recently, the two parties tried and failed to settle the matter.

It isn’t immediately clear whether the potential upcoming Justice Department legal complaint would go beyond the breadth of the agency’s initial inquiry into Semler Scientific’s business practices.

Neither Semler Scientific nor Bragar Eagel & Squire immediately replied to Decrypt’s request for comment.

Semler Scientific shares were trading at $44.20 on Friday, down 1.6% over the past 24 hours. Semler, which has pivoted its focus to become a Bitcoin treasury, has rallied following a rough patch for the company’s stock following the announcement of the DOJ investigation.

The company recently bought another $50 million worth of Bitcoin, as announced Friday, bringing its total holdings to 4,264 tokens, worth roughly $466 million based on current prices.

Bitcoin was recently trading at $108,915, down 2.5% over the past 24 hours but up 16% during the past month, according to CoinGecko data.

Edited by James Rubin

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May 24, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

One of Whoop’s new wearables has a bug so bad the company is issuing replacements

by admin May 23, 2025

Whoop’s new screen-less, fitness-focused Whoop MG wearable might have a major bug that can leave the device unusable, according to reports from Android Police and TechIssuesToday. Whoop launched the Whoop MG and Whoop 5.0 at the beginning of May, the company’s first major hardware release since it launched the Whoop 4.0 in 2021.

According to complaints on Whoop’s community forums and X, after setting up a Whoop MG, the wearable can mysteriously became unresponsive hours later, refusing to connect to a smartphone even when it should be charged. “I wore it for about 20 hours or so, but then it suddenly disappeared from the app, no sensor lights on, nothing appearing in the app,” one new Whoop MG owner shared on Reddit. On the company’s forums, Whoop suggests trying things like charging the MG, reconnecting it to your phone or resetting the wearable to see if that fixes things. Whoop owners have also been directed to contact Whoop’s Support team, and multiple faulty Whoop MG owners report that they’re being sent replacement wearables.

Engadget has contacted Whoop to get a sense for how widespread this issue is and what the company is doing to address it. We’ll update this article if we hear back.

Unlike other companies, Whoop doesn’t expect customers to buy a fitness tracker and then pay a subscription; Whoop’s subscription fee is inclusive of its hardware. With the Whoop 5.0 and Whoop MG, the company is also hoping to expand the number of metrics it tracks beyond just activity and sleep tracking to things like real-time stress monitoring and, in the case of the MG, blood pressure and ECG readings. What features you’re able to access ultimately depends on both the wearable you have and the subscription you’re paying for, though.

To access the Whoop MG in particular, you have to pay $359 annually, which starts to feel pretty egregious when the wearable might not work. Prior to this issue, Whoop was also caught denying free hardware upgrades to existing customers after previously suggesting it would send out new wearables to anyone who’d been a member for six months or more. Whoop reversed that decision a few days later.

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May 23, 2025 0 comments

Bitwise is still the only company that disclosed its BTC addresses. Why don’t others follow?

GameFi Guides

Bitwise is the only company that disclosed its BTC addresses. Why don’t others follow?

by admin May 20, 2025

The number of Bitcoin-centered companies is growing. More than that, more and more companies from other sectors set corporate Bitcoin treasuries as an inflation hedge. However, most of these companies don’t disclose Bitcoin addresses. Why is there reluctance in disclosing corporate addresses, and is there a chance these companies don’t actually hold the bitcoins they claim to own?

Bitwise’s move

On Jan. 24, 2024, Bitwise made history by becoming the first company to disclose its spot Bitcoin ETF address for everyone.

Announcement: Today the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) becomes the first U.S. bitcoin ETF to publish the bitcoin addresses of its holdings.

Now anyone can verify BITB’s holdings and flows directly on the blockchain.

Onchain transparency is core to Bitcoin’s ethos. We’re proud to… pic.twitter.com/1JTUh3zvDE

— Bitwise (@BitwiseInvest) January 24, 2024

By disclosing its Bitcoin ETF address, Bitwise explicitly made it impossible for skeptics to doubt its solvency and the fact that the company actually holds what it claims to own. More than that, this step towards transparency is in line with the transparent design of the Bitcoin network itself, where all the transactions and the parties involved are visible and auditable.

As Bitwise is one of the biggest Bitcoin holders, some observers suggested that other corporate holders will follow the trend and make their treasuries transparent. However, it didn’t happen. Nearly one and a half years after the disclosure made by Bitwise, no other Bitcoin holding company followed suit.

Possible improvements

Did Bitwise do it the best possible way? Co-author of the Big Bitcoin Book, Fred Krueger, took to X to outline how it is possible to disclose BTC addresses with some improvements, using Bitwise as a reference point. Actually, Krueger made his post as a recommendation to Strategy.

1. ✅ Add Cryptographic Ownership Proofs

Right now, Bitwise discloses the wallet address, but hasn’t published a signed message proving they actually control the private keys.

Anyone could theoretically list any address.

A one-time signed message (e.g., “MSTR controls this…

— Fred Krueger (@dotkrueger) May 19, 2025

Interestingly enough, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley shared Krueger’s post in his account, not shying away from exposing what Krueger believes to be weak spots of Bitwise’s way of making disclosure.

One of the ideas offered by Krueger was that Strategy should use cryptographic ownership proof, which Bitwise doesn’t have. He notes that just providing a wallet address is not transparent enough, as it should also be signed.

On top of that, Kureger pointed out that sharing only one address (that’s what Bitwise did) is good, but as funds are moving, the company needs to provide several more addresses. They will naturally appear as a result of rebalancing and other operations.

Another idea was that Strategy should disclose addresses with caution and not expose too much in order to prevent quantum attacks, which are theoretically possible, while many doubt that the Bitcoin network will suffer from them.

Krueger recommended using unspent Taproot and SegWit addresses for public balances. Once they are used, they should be replaced by new ones. It would mitigate quantum hacking risks.

On top of sharing the addresses, Krueger recommended deploying third-party audits to ensure the authenticity and soundness of addresses for everyone, including institutions and regulators. More than that, automated real-time cryptographic proofs could enhance transparency even further.

Addresses of other companies

Lack of transparency may give companies some space for maneuver, or at least people think that sometimes companies holding Bitcoin may cash out in secret. Some even doubt that companies like Strategy actually own the bitcoins they buy and demand public disclosure of the corporate addresses.

Well if Bitcoin is supposed to be 100% transparent where is @MicroStrategy bitcoin at? nobody seems to know.

— traderjeremy.algo (@jeremygleeson6) May 19, 2025

As of May 20, 2025, Strategy owns over 570,000 bitcoins, which makes it the biggest Bitcoin holder among companies. On May 19, it was revealed that Strategy is facing a class action lawsuit. A group of investors claimed that the company reps, including executives, were making misleading claims about Bitcoin strategy. Probably, increased transparency would have eliminated such problems before they appeared.

While companies are not in a hurry to show their Bitcoin addresses, third-party sleuths are finding these addresses and making them public. It provides people with much-needed confidence and opportunities to observe the movements of the assets. At the same time, companies may not admit that these findings are correct.

Arkham Intelligence is a very cool tool.

You can see how MSTR acquires BTC mainly from Coinbase (3137 addresses), Bitstamp (83 addresses) and NYDIG (5 addresses), and that they’re mainly stored with Fidelity.

All the BTC MicroStrategy stored with Coinbase Primed (3,269 BTC)… pic.twitter.com/toxuRfGBTG

— Radu ⚡️☯ ΙΧΘΥΣ Ω ♒︎ (@LizardWizardBTC) January 4, 2025

By the end of January 2025, Arkham Intelligence identified 96% of Strategy’s addresses. According to Arkham’s findings, most bitcoins belonging to Strategy come from Coinbase Prime and Anchorage Digital and are stored via Fidelity Digital omnibus custody.

The largest Asian Bitcoin holder, a Japanese company Metaplanet, is going to accumulate 10,000 BTC by the end of 2025 and add 21,000 BTC more in 2026. The company is famous for its consistent periodic buy-ins of Bitcoin. However, we mostly know about them from Financial Statements that don’t contain Bitcoin addresses. As of May 20, Metaplanet holds 7,800 BTC. Just like any company, except Bitwise, Metaplanet is not sharing its address information.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

LEGO seemingly shuts down Bionicle fan game after 8 years of development, because as we all know Bionicle is a scorching hot IP that the company is doing a lot with right now

by admin May 20, 2025

Bionicle: Masks of Power – a fan game that has been in development for eight years – has been shut down following a request from The LEGO Group, its developers claim.

In a statement released to the public via a Google Doc, the team broke down the situation for fans who’ve been waiting to actually play the game after all this time. The devs, who were preparing to drop a demo this August, claim that LEGO reached out to request they shut down development on the project and remove the game from the public eye.

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In the statement, the team expressed its historical intention to keep in line with the official LEGO Fair Play Guidelines, as to not draw the eye of an legal action from LEGO looking to protect its copyright. Despite these intentions, the hammer has seemingly come down. While it says no official reason for the takedown was given, the team suspects that it was because the average person may mistake the game for an official game, rather than a fan project. It seems this fan game was a victim of its own good SEO.

In reaction to the news, the development team has released a walkthrough of the demo, and has decided to form a new indie studio: Unmasked Games. That name is great by the way, hinting towards its Bionicle roots but taking the mask off for future endeavors. They conclude the statement with the following: “This has been heartbreaking news for our entire team, but we’re also incredibly excited about what the future has in store, and for what we’ll get the chance to create next. We hope that you’re all just as excited as we are. For the final time… May the Great Spirit guide you.”

Bionicle has been a dead IP product line since 2010 by the way. That’s the last time any actual toys were produced by The LEGO group. There was a series of comics written by Greg Farshtey, though that has also been dead for over a decade. It’s clear that the Bionicle IP is scorching hot, something LEGO is clearly doing a lot with. Sarcasm aside, such are the ways of legal departments. IP must be protected, even for IP that has had no development or frankly relevancy for over a decade. That is, aside from a relatively small community of fans who were, until very recently, excited for a new fan game. Damn shame!

It’s a bummer. It’s a common belief that the best way to approach making fan games is to “shut the f**k up”, but obviously not all fan project teams have the luxury of silence and a sudden shadow drop before any cease and desist can come through and ruin all the fun. Still, if you were excited for Mask of Power, why not give the folks at Unmasked Games some love, and support them going forward.

We’ve reached out to The LEGO Group for comment, and will update this article if and when we get a response.

When’s the last time you even thought about Bionicle, this fan game aside? Let us know below.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments