Tag:

Growing

Litecoin Climbs 4% to Top $84, With ETF Odds Growing

by admin June 24, 2025

Litecoin shook off last week’s slump, rising 4% to an intraday high of $85.45 and then holding ground near $84. The move came on volume above its 20-day average, signaling conviction behind the breakout.

An easing in global stress helped, with a supposed ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

The next catalyst may be regulatory. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reviewing two bids for a spot Litecoin ETF.

A green light to such a fund this year, to which Polymarket traders assign an 83% chance, would open LTC exposure to investors betting on crypto through traditional brokerages. Bloomberg analysts see a 95% chance of a spot LTC ETF approval.

Technical Analysis Overview

Litecoin’s price burst through the $83.40 ceiling backed by 331,459 LTC being traded in a single hour, according to CoinDesk Research's technical analysis data model.
LTC has since been bouncing between $84.00-$84.20 support and $85.30-$85.45 resistance.
A descending intraday channel printed lower highs until buyers defended $84.20.
Holding above $84 keeps $90 in play while a close below $84 risks a slide to $79.

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June 24, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Texas Joins Growing List of US States With Bitcoin Reserves

by admin June 23, 2025

In brief

Senate Bill 21 and House Bill 4488 were signed into law, enabling and protecting the Bitcoin reserve fund.
Only digital assets with a 24-month average market cap of $500B qualify, limiting it to Bitcoin for now.
The reserve will be managed by the Comptroller with advisory oversight and strict custody rules.

Texas has officially opened its state-managed fund for Bitcoin, with Governor Greg Abbott signing Senate Bill 21 into law Friday, establishing the state’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and joining two other states in the process.

The reserve enhances the state’s financial resilience by serving as a “hedge against inflation and economic volatility,” with its comptroller authorized to buy, sell, hold, or manage any investments in the reserve, its bill reads.

Governor Abbott’s signature comes a month after the Texas House of Representatives passed the legislation on May 21, despite initial opposition to the bill.

The Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will operate under detailed operational guidelines. Digital assets may enter the reserve through multiple pathways: “direct purchase, a fork, an airdrop, or as a donation.” This flexibility allows the state to accumulate Bitcoin through various market mechanisms beyond simple purchases.

However, the legislation requires any eligible digital asset to maintain “an average market capitalization of at least $500 billion for the 24-month period” before acquisition, a threshold only Bitcoin currently meets.

Security measures for reserve assets would adhere to institutional standards, requiring the comptroller to “contract with a qualified custodian or a liquidity provider” for asset storage, thereby ensuring custody arrangements align with industry best practices.

An advisory committee will oversee, but the comptroller retains authority. The bill mandates transparency through status and performance reports, which should be made public and filed twice a year with state leadership.

Public Bitcoin Reserves

While Texas comes in third after New Hampshire and Arizona in exploring crypto frameworks, it is the first U.S. state to commit public funds with explicit legal protections. The reserve cannot be dissolved by future legislatures, either, even if no Bitcoin purchases happen immediately.

New Hampshire was the first to authorize public investment in Bitcoin, but it kept those assets inside the state treasury without creating a separate reserve or long-term legal protections.

Arizona, meanwhile, created a structured fund for managing unclaimed crypto, but it didn’t commit any new public funds or pursue active investment.

The legal protections for the Texas bill fall under House Bill 4488, which enables Senate Bill 21 to work as intended and ensures the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve won’t be automatically abolished at the end of the legislative session, as would normally happen to new state funds.

HB 4488 legally exempts SB21 from the default sweep and protects its dedicated revenue and interest from being redirected into general state funds. In effect, it guarantees the long-term survival and financial independence of the Bitcoin reserve authorized by SB 21.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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June 23, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Dogecoin (DOGE) Down 5%, but Social Dominance Growing

by admin June 21, 2025

Dog-themed cryptocurrency Dogecoin fell nearly 5% in the early Saturday session amid a market decline that resulted in $458 million in liquidations.

At the time of writing, Dogecoin was trading in red alongside the broader crypto market, down 3.63% in the last 24 hours to $0.1639. Dogecoin has steadily declined since reaching a high of $0.206 on June 11, just marking two days in green out of 10. The drop hit a low of $0.1584 in Friday’s session where Dogecoin found support.

Amid the recent drop, Dogecoin is drawing attention on social media, ranking among trending coins on Friday.

According to an X post by Santiment, coins that are driving markets and drawing the most social media attention include Dogecoin, which is being discussed about its unlimited supply and community-driven influence.

What’s happening?

Elon Musk is moving X closer to becoming an “everything app,” with X CEO Linda Yaccarino saying on Tuesday that the platform might soon feature in-app investing and trading. Beyond trading, X will launch its long-awaited peer-to-peer payment system, X Money, which Musk announced in January, but there is no hint of crypto integration, including Dogecoin.

Time Stranger Shows The Series Is Still Growing

by admin June 20, 2025

Remember how, when Palworld was blowing up, fans were excited that a Pokémon competitor might force The Pokémon Company to get its act together and stop releasing busted games like Scarlet and Violet? Whether that pans out remains to be seen, but given that Digimon, arguably the most notable competition Pokémon had in the 90s and early 2000s, has been quietly running circles around Pikachu and friends on the video game side for years, I’m not holding my breath. I played about half an hour of Digimon Story: Time Stranger at Summer Game Fest earlier this month, and though my time with the RPG was brief, it was a succinct reminder that Digimon has been cooking up some excellent, polished RPGs in its own lane. The last mainline Story game, Cyber Sleuth, was a hidden gem of 2016, so I’m hopeful Time Stranger breaks through the noise when it launches later this year.

Tactical RPGs, Creepy Circuses & More New Releases | The Week In Games

If you’ve ever played Digimon or watched the anime, you know the general conceit of the franchise. The titular critters live in a digital world that humans are able to enter via virtual reality. Time Stranger focuses on a different “server” than the one where previous Story games took place and is set in the digital world of Iliad, managed by a powerful pantheon of Digimon called the Olympos XII.

As a longtime Digimon fan, I’ve always been drawn to how the games riff on the lore by finding new ways to implement old characters and mythological figures into new iterations of the Digital World, and Time Stranger already has me intrigued. Recent Story games were set in a somewhat barren cyberspace world that was aesthetically compelling in a minimalist way, but weren’t that stimulating to walk around in. Time Stranger’s shift to Iliad not only opens up the visual identity of these games to include lush environments and lively towns filled with Digimon living in harmony; it’s also paving the way for new stories with different major players. Cyber Sleuth was a sort of Avengers moment for some of the series’ mainstays, so Time Stranger putting the focus on the Olympos XII for the first time in several years is an exciting prospect.

Image: Bandai Namco

In the short time I was able to spend in Iliad’s Central Town hub, I was excited to explore and meet all the Digimon living there as civilians, unbothered by the petty squabbles of humanity in the real world. There’s so much character to this little town that even as the game pans over it in a cutscene, so many lively details catch your eye. Little touches like seeing Zudomon using its hammer to pound away on an anvil as a blacksmith and Etemon hanging off the signage on the buildings make the town feel lived in, and nearly every inch of the town is covered in Digimon interacting with the world and each other like this.

I didn’t plan to spend most of my time playing Time Stranger comparing it to Pokemon, but the stark difference between it and Game Freak’s RPGs is top of mind for me right now after playing a bit of Scarlet and Violet on Switch 2. Yeah, the games finally run at a smooth 60 frames-per-second, but the world still looks and feels like a GameCube-era tech demo, whereas Time Stranger, and Digimon games more broadly, feel like childhood dreams realized. They take risks, change up the formula constantly, and most importantly, they feel like fully realized worlds visually, narratively, and systemically. Whether it’s been in the Story series, the World games, or more off-the-wall spin-offs like the the visual novel tactics RPG Digimon Survive, this franchise has never stopped swinging for the fences, even after it was deemed the “loser” of the ‘90s and ‘00s monster tamer race. Maybe that’s what happens when you still feel like you’ve got something to prove and can’t rest on your guaranteed millions of sales. There’s some freedom in not being beholden to the same machine your rival is, and it makes for more interesting games.

Image: Bandai Namco

While exploration is much more of a priority this time around, Time Stranger is still focused on the monster taming aspect above all else. With more than 450 Digimon available to you, there’s a lot of room for experimentation in what might look, at a glance, like a pretty straightforward turn-based battle system. Time Stranger still utilizes the rock-paper-scissors structure Digimon always has, but it also has a Final Fantasy X-style swapping system that lets you adjust your strategies on the fly by switching between your active party and your benched teammates without penalty. Some of the battles I took part in were your standard random fight affair, but the boss fight against a super-powered Parrotmon really showed the potential of its turn-based battles. This clash felt more like a raid battle that required a lot more setup with support abilities, pushing me to prioritize defense rather than just bulldozing through with my most powerful attacks, and demonstrating that Time Stranger could be more dynamic than its predecessors.

Cyber Sleuth’s story and Persona-esque vibe were the draw above all else, with some critics arguing that the battle system was generic and uninvolving. (Kotaku’s Mike Fahey called them“a mindless chore.”) Time Stranger, by contrast, is certainly not reaching the elaborate, systems-heavy turn-based play of something like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but what I played of it suggests developer Media.Vision is taking that criticism to heart, and I”m interested to see just how far it can take these systems when the game launches on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on October 3.

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June 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

A Roblox game about growing vegetables is seemingly now bigger than Fortnite

by admin June 18, 2025

Everybody loves palpating their turnips; just look at the success of Stardew Valley and its ilk for proof of that. But it turns out people really love some vegetable action, if the staggering success of Roblox game Grow a Garden is any indication, given it’s seemingly smashed through Fortnite’s previous gargantuan record for most players at the same time.

Let’s break out some numbers. According to third-party monitoring tools, Grow a Garden – the specifics of which we’ll get to shortly – soared past 16m concurrent players this weekend on Roblox (16,411,769 to be exact). By way of comparison, Fortnite announced record-breaking concurrents of 15.3m players during its Marvel season finale event back in Covid-era 2020.

So what, you may be wondering, has garnered all this attention? Grow a Garden is, according to its official description from developer The Garden Game, very much what it sounds like. It’s a game of buying seeds, shoving them in the ground, then waiting for your blueberries, coconuts, daffodils etc. to grow – which they’ll happily do whether you’re in-game or offline.

After that, you can sell your massive produce for profit, purchasing more seeds or temporary boosts you’ll need to slowly craft in real-time, then start the whole cycle over again. Frankly, absolutely nothing about it sounds like the sort of thing that might capture the imagination of 16m players all at once, but then I’m not a 13-year-old looking to do something mindless online with my friends after school. Also, there’re Grow a Garden pets, so maybe that’s the appeal.

As to how Grow a Garden’s impressive 16m concurrent users stacks up with other games, PUBG currently holds the Steam record for most concurrent players, coming in at a comparatively paltry 3.3m, while it’s nearest rival, Black Myth: Wukong, barely squeaks over the 2.4m player threshold. In fact, Steam itself recently saw a concurrent high of 40m players, so Grow a Garden’s 16m looks positively gargantuan given we’re talking about a single game.

Whether all those players should be playing Roblox is another matter entirely, of course, given the game continues to be embroiled in controversy amid ongoing accusations of child safety failures. Developer Roblox Corporation last year announced a sweep of policy changes – including updated parental controls and the banning of social hangouts for children under 13 – in a belated effort to improve things. Currently, Roblox Corporation is being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, possibly due to reports it previously misled investors by inflating player numbers, although the reason hasn’t been made public.

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June 18, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Gardyn Indoor Hydroponic Garden Review: Better Growing Through AI

by admin June 17, 2025

I’m in the midst of putting together a buying guide of indoor vertical gardening systems, and the Gardyn—the 30-plant Home 4.0, to be exact—was the first tester to arrive at my house. I had it unboxed and set up within a couple of hours, lights on and water pump running. I’m already a pro! I thought.

Sure enough, within a couple of weeks, all of Gardyn’s proprietary seed-filled yCubes had sprouted, and a couple of weeks after that, I was harvesting bowlfuls of herbs and salad greens. Even though from setup to harvest the Gardyn required the use of about five brain cells, I was quite pleased with myself, despite having long ago given up gardening outdoors due to deer, rabbits, and my own incompetence with anything other than starts from the big-box store.

What I failed to understand, but would come to grasp with subsequent systems, was that indoor hydroponic gardening is just as hard in some ways as outdoor gardening. I had no way of knowing this, however, because Gardyn’s pricey add-on app and AI gardening assistant, “Kelby,” had been doing all the real work via a network of sensors and live-view cameras (two on the larger Home model, one on the smaller Studio).

Easy Living

My new friend Kelby had been gathering data in order to set its own watering times, schedule its 60 LED lights, and send me the occasional customized task that never took longer than 10 minutes. And this customized maintenance isn’t just helpful for convenience, as mold, bacteria, or roots clogging up the plumbing are extremely common in hydroponic gardening. Kelby told me when to add the needed nutrients (included) and how much to add, when and how to attend to the plants’ roots, and even when to harvest.

Photograph: Kat Merck

There’s also remote monitoring, of course, and a vacation mode that keeps the plants in a sort of stasis. Most of the work on my end was simply me admiring my plants, and admire them I did. The first time I ever saw a Gardyn was a couple of years ago, in a Parade of Homes show house, adjacent to a floor-to-ceiling wine cabinet. “Wow, what is THAT?! I want one!” announced nearly every person who shuffled by in their paper booties. Even in a $2 million spec house, the lit-up display of lush herbs, flowers, and vegetables was a showstopper.

When I began testing other systems, I was feeling quite big for my britches. At this point, I had successfully grown sunflowers, lemon balm, and even an entire kohlrabi. I’ve got this! Within five minutes of opening the other systems’ boxes and finding pH test strips and vials, manual-dial timers, and multiple bags of supplements, however, I realized I did not have this. In fact, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Gardyn had only made me think I knew what I was doing. And, according to founder FX Rouxel (pronounced F-X, like the initials), that’s Gardyn’s entire raison d’être.

Engineered Growth

Courtesy of Kat Merck

You might expect the founder of a hydroponic gardening system to have an agricultural background (perhaps even a certain kind of agriculture), but Rouxel is a tech guy. Though he did once work for the French version of the Environmental Protection Agency, his most recent pre-Gardyn gig was at French IT company Capgemini, deploying cloud, automation, and AI technologies. Although he is also a parent, cook, and Ironman athlete, his passion lies in using technology to lower the entry barrier to growing your own food.

“With other systems, they’re basically a pump on a timer,” Rouxel told me during a recent interview. “You need to know what you’re doing. We looked at, ‘Can we use AI to actually solve this problem?’ Unlike our competitors, we have a big chunk of the company that is just engineers.” They make sure the Gardyn app is constantly adjusting through data collected via the system’s two cameras and sensors that track water usage, humidity, temperature, and plant growth. If the system identifies an issue, it will send the user a specific task through the app to fix it.

Note that I did find the cameras to be slightly glitchy during the seven weeks I’ve been using the Gardyn, requiring periodic resets of the system to keep them both online. It didn’t seem to affect any of my tasks or plant stats, but I found it irritating nonetheless. Though if I weren’t using the Kelby feature, it wouldn’t matter, as the cameras are essentially useless otherwise.

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June 17, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

CoinShares Solana ETF Joins Growing List of Applications for Altcoin-Based Funds

by admin June 16, 2025

In brief

European asset manager CoinShares has filed for a SOL exchange-traded fund.
A number of top asset managers have proposed Solana-based funds.
Altcoin ETFs may get approval this year under the SEC’s new leadership.

European digital asset manager CoinShares became the latest firm to file for a Solana exchange-traded fund, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday.

The CoinShares Solana ETF would track the price of SOL, the native coin of the Solana network, and trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market, according to the S-1 prospectus.

The application comes less than a week after seven issuers submitted revised SOL ETF applications, clarifying language that would enable them to stake their held SOL. Analysts view such amendments positively for the probability of an approval, although the revised prospectuses do not guarantee a regulatory greenlight.

Earlier this year, Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Balchunas penciled in a 70% chance that Solana ETFs receive approval this year, although he could not pinpoint the timing.

Funds from 21Shares, Bitwise, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, VanEck, and Canary Capital are also aiming to offer investors exposure to Solana and are part of a massive wave of altcoin-based funds proposed in recent months to capture soaring investor interest in crypto-focused products.

U.S. regulators and lawmakers have ratcheted back restrictions on the digital assets industry, creating a more inviting environment for investors.

SOL is the sixth biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. Developers favors Solana blockchain for its speed and efficiency in creating decentralized applications such as crypto exchanges and games.

The price of SOL recently stood at $156.87 after rising by nearly 4% in 24 hours. The coin hit an all-time high of $293.31 back in January, crypto data provider CoinGecko shows.

CoinShares did not immediately respond to Decrypt‘s request for comment.

The SEC last year approved Bitcoin ETFs and later their Ethereum counterparts. Both products have been popular, with Bitcoin funds now managing well over $100 billion in assets.

Last week, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) needed just 341 days to reach $70 billion in AUM, faster than any fund in history, according to Bloomberg data.

Ethereum-tracking funds have generated a respectable $3.9 billion in net inflows, according to U.K. asset manager Farside Investors.

Edited by James Rubin

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June 16, 2025 0 comments

Perkz enters free agency after VIT failures

Esports

Growing up in the FGC: How two young prodigies became fighting game legends

by admin June 15, 2025

It’s no secret that North America struggles in almost every esport. As competitive gaming has taken the global stage, the region has been left behind. This makes the story of fighting game heavyweights, NoahTheProdigy and KingReyJr, an anomaly.

These NA prodigies were competing in tournaments against adults when they were still in elementary school. Both also grew up as one of three siblings, with their fathers getting as involved as they could to help them achieve their dreams despite trying to raise two other children at the same time.

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In their respective fighting games, they’re carrying NA on their back as full-time pro players, managing to turn fighting games into their job before they turned 20.

NoahTheProdigy had the highest NA placement at both Capcom Cup 11 and EWC for Street Fighter 6, and KingReyJr is the highest ranked NA player on the Tekken 8’s 2025 World Tour. They’re changing the storyline of their whole region.

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But, after sitting down with and talking to them, it’s clear that there’s a lot more separating these two than the game they compete in. Just because they both grew up in the fighting game community doesn’t mean they have the same story.

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NoahTheProdigy decided being a Street Fighter pro was the only option

NoahTheProdigy has been making headlines since he was in grade school. Entering his first tournament at seven years old, he’s been competing for over a decade. And, according to him, being a Street Fighter pro was his only plan. He wouldn’t have accepted anything else.

“I never had a backup plan. This is 100%. If you have a backup plan, that means your plan A isn’t good enough and you’re not confident enough,” he said.

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“Only b*tches give up. If you give up, you’re a b*tch.”

Noah’s approach is a brazen one, and one that rarely works out in esports. No backup plans, no compromises, just a full commitment to competing and getting better. But rarely doesn’t necessarily mean never.

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His father fully supported him on this journey, encouraging him to focus less on school and more on Street Fighter.

Instead of homework, Noah was studying the Street Fighter GOATs. His father Moises encouraged him to chase his dreams and never give up on them, no matter what anyone told him.

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“I explained to [Noah] ‘There’s gonna be crowds yelling and all that and all you do is tune ’em out and just focus.’ You just have to teach your kid what’s right, wrong. Noah, when he loses, you know what I say to him? ‘This is what it’s called, son. You take a licking and keep on ticking,’” Moises said in an interview with Giant Bomb all the way back in 2011.

NoahTheProdigyNoah’s father got a custom-printed shirt just to cheer his son on at tournaments when he was younger

Even before esports was a feasible career path, Noah’s father supported him. When it did become a real possibility, his father supported him even more, buying him a new PC setup during 2020’s lockdowns so he had a good setup to play on and make content.

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Moises’ never-back-down mentality stuck with Noah, even through harder times when he had to work whatever job he could get to stay afloat and prove he was serious about Street Fighter.

“I was working some sh*tty-ass jobs, I ain’t gonna lie. But I always knew that it was gonna work out.”

From there, Noah grinded until he finally got signed with Twisted Minds in 2024 and was able to turn his dream into a full-time job at 19. Now, he’s trying to find out how to put North America on top of Street Fighter.

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“I wouldn’t say I’m the best. This business is just hard. It’s hard to win. I mean, Japan is so strong, I think as of right now they’re just better than us. They won Street Fighter League. They placed way higher than us in the Esports World Cup. They won Capcom Cup,” Noah explained.

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“America has an ego, and they don’t know how to control it. That’s why we don’t get better.”

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Though Noah talks a lot of trash and regularly calls people out, he tries to keep things surface-level and focus his criticisms on his and his competitors’ shared profession, Street Fighter. The trash talk is just part of his personality, and he’s a lot nicer in person than you’d think from scrolling his Twitter timeline.

Noah cheering on some Street Fighter players between his pools matches at Combo Breaker 2025

“I’m a really nice guy. I only talk sh*t on Twitter because it’s full of b*tches. I mean, they don’t understand me because, like, they have college tuitions set up. They don’t understand my background and what I came from,” he explained.

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While Noah has ambitions of winning the biggest events in the world, he already feels a deep sense of satisfaction in what he’s been able to achieve and using his skills to uplift himself, his family, and his community.

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“I’m already a legend in life with where I come from and where I’ve been. If I start losing now, I’m still a legend in my hood. That’s all I care about.”

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KingReyJr was making reads in Tekken before he could read books

KingReyJr was competing in tournaments even earlier than Noah was, going to his first Tekken tournament when he was five. However, his journey started even earlier, at only two and a half years old, when his father noticed something truly special.

KingReySr, Rey’s father, would host Tekken 5 sessions in his home, and Junior would pull up a chair and watch. He was barely old enough to speak but was already analyzing the game deeper than anyone thought.

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KingReySr recording his son’s match against E1P1C, one of Chicago’s best Tekken players, at Scrims Gaming Center

Older Tekken titles have a joke character called Mokujin that mimics the moves of a random character on the roster, and that moveset changes every single round. The challenge is figuring out which character you got stuck with. In the case of the original Tekken 5, it would have been 32 different characters.

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Before he was even in Kindergarten, KingReyJr could figure out who around 80% of the cast was from their animations alone.

“Mokujin popped up on the screen, he started moving, and Junior pointed at the screen,” KingReySr told me. “He said, ‘That’s Steve Fox!’ We were blown away with the fact that he knew who it was just based on the movement. I had never sat down and taught him the names of the characters.”

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KingReySr took this as a sign that he had to teach his son how to play Tekken, that there was talent there he wanted to refine. He then entered his son in his very first tournament at five years old. Now, he’s a world-class player at just 19.

After years of dedication, competing full-time in Tekken has become KingReyJr’s first real job.

“Never worked a ‘legitimate’ job. Vitality is the first official job I’ve actually had,” Rey told me. Even at 19, he’s got more time under his belt than most fighting game pros.

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“I’ve just grown into it, I was born into this and raised in it. I’ve been a part of the FGC for 14, going on 15 years, I was literally molded and shaped by it,” KingReyJr explained.

But, unlike Noah’s parents, having good grades was a must for Rey Sr. The moment KingReyJr’s grades dropped, Tekken was over. And even then, he had to prove he was still putting effort into improving in the game, especially considering his dad was paying for him to travel worldwide.

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“I’ve always seen it as an investment in [my son’s] future. Granted, there always needed to be things in place like keeping his grades up, doing well in school,” Rey’s father explained. “And then, on top of that, showing that he’s always trying to improve. It didn’t make sense for me to put him in events where he wasn’t continually trying to improve his game and get better.”

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I asked KingReyJr if he felt like being in the FGC changed his life, but he doesn’t really know of any other way of living. He’s been in the FGC from the very beginning.

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“I kind of don’t know anything else. I was growing in the FGC my whole life. This is kind of the only thing that I do know. But, I mean, I’m happy with where I came from, happy with how I grew up to be where I am today,” he explained.

“I’ve been ready for something like this for what feels like my whole life. Even at VS Fighting 2024 – cause that was my first time making it to Top 8 at a big tournament ever – I still managed to get second.”

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VS Fighting is one of Europe’s biggest competitions, and KingReyJr’s 2024 performance is likely a big part of what landed him his sponsorship with Vitality. A North American player demolishing a European major was almost unheard of at the time, especially since Fergus, one of Europe’s best competitors, plays the same character as Rey.

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I told him I’d expect players over there to know how to play against him because of that, and Rey had this to say in reply:

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“They don’t know how to play against me.”

KingReyJr and NoahTheProdigy may have a similar background, but they’re two very different people. However, there are two distinct similarities: Both men worked incredibly hard to get where they are, and their fathers did everything they could to support that journey. There’s no “correct” way to be a parent, but this is about as close as it gets.

The next best fighting game players in the world are probably hitting their first Evo this year thanks to months of begging their parents to pay for it.

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NoahTheProdigy’s journey with Street Fighter and KingReyJr’s journey with Tekken have not only given them careers most people can only dream about, but these experiences have also molded them into men their fathers can be proud of.

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June 15, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

SEC Adds Dogecoin, Hedera ETFs to Growing List of Delayed Decisions

by admin June 15, 2025

In brief

The SEC extended review periods for multiple crypto ETF proposals, including Bitwise’s Dogecoin ETF, Grayscale’s Hedera Trust, and Canary Capital’s HBAR ETF.
Four Solana ETF filings and Grayscale’s Cardano ETF also face delayed decisions, with new deadlines set in July.
The regulator said it seeks further public comments and has not made any final determinations on the filings.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has extended the review periods for multiple crypto ETF applications, including those involving Dogecoin and HBAR, on Wednesday and Thursday.

The SEC instituted formal proceedings on June 11 for the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF and on June 12 for the Grayscale Hedera Trust, extending deadlines while requesting additional public comments. A similar document on Canary Capital’s HBAR ETF was published on June 10.

Four separate Solana ETF proposals from Bitwise, 21Shares, VanEck, and Canary Capital have been postponed to early July 2025. The Grayscale Cardano ETF received a July 15 extension, while Bitwise’s Ethereum staking ETF faces a July 6 deadline.

About 72 crypto-related ETFs are “sitting with the SEC awaiting approval to list or list options,” according to Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, following a roundup from earlier in April.

Pushing back the dates for the proceedings is “appropriate at this time in view of the legal and policy issues raised” from the proposed changes, the SEC’s latest filing on Grayscale’s proposal reads.

It’s worth noting that the SEC clarified in writing that the delays do not “indicate that the Commission has reached any conclusions with respect to any of the issues involved.”

Instead, it means that the regulator “seeks and encourages interested persons to provide comments on the proposed rule change.”

When exchanges want to list new ETF products, they must file “proposed rule changes” with the SEC to modify their own listing standards to accommodate the new products.

The “legal and policy issues” the SEC mentions relate to whether these crypto-based ETFs meet the standards to “prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices” and “protect investors and the public interest” as required by Section 6(b)(5) of the Securities Exchange Act.

The SEC then reviews whether these exchange rule modifications comply with federal securities laws.

For the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF, NYSE Arca filed to list and trade the ETF under NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E (Commodity-Based Trust Shares), with shares designed to track the performance of a specific commodity or derivative, as the exchange maintains fair and transparent trading.

For Grayscale’s proposed Hedera ETF, Nasdaq filed to list the ETF under Nasdaq Rule 5711(d), which shares similar aspects to the NYSE rules, setting a framework for how these trust shares are structured, traded, and monitored.

Canary’s HBAR ETF proposal is also being reviewed under this rule.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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June 15, 2025 0 comments

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Gaming Gear

The growing shadow in healthcare: securing the vulnerable supply chain

by admin June 4, 2025

In today’s hyper-connected healthcare environment, the supply chain has quietly become one of the sector’s most vulnerable digital frontiers. Once viewed purely as a logistical or procurement function, the modern healthcare supply chain now includes everything from pharmaceutical distributors and cloud-based software providers to diagnostic platforms and medical device manufacturers. This expansive ecosystem, while critical to patient care, is also under siege and must be protected.

Cybercriminals have recognized this opportunity. Rather than targeting hospitals directly, they are increasingly breaching third-party vendors to disrupt services, access sensitive data and hold patient-critical systems hostage. The implications are far-reaching, leading to delayed treatments, compromised medical equipment, shortages of critical supplies and the alarming risk of counterfeit or tampered materials entering the system.

As the NHS drives forward its transformation from analogue to digital, as part of the UK government’s plan to build an NHS Fit for the Future, the need for robust cybersecurity becomes even more pressing. Empowering individuals to take control of their own health is a powerful step forward, but it also expands the digital footprint that must be protected. To safeguard patient trust and ensure seamless, secure care delivery, defenses must now extend beyond hospital walls to every point in the healthcare supply chain.

An overlooked entry point in a complex ecosystem

The very interdependence of today’s digitalized, interconnected network of the healthcare supply chain is increasingly putting the whole system at risk. Gone are the days of cybersecurity in healthcare being mainly focused on internal systems. Today, a vulnerability in a third-party supplier can be the weak link that opens the door to widespread disruption. Whether it’s patient records held by cloud providers, digital tools used in diagnostics, or the logistics systems that ensure timely delivery of medications, every component in this ecosystem is a potential target.

Trustwave’s latest research report reveals that vulnerabilities in third-party systems or devices can have cascading effects for healthcare organizations. To maximize harmful impact, cybercriminals target healthcare software providers, knowing that compromising a single vendor could grant them access to multiple hospitals and healthcare facilities at once. A prime example of this was the 2022 ransomware attack on Advanced Computer Software Group, a major IT provider to the UK health and care sector. The breach, which exploited an account lacking multi-factor authentication, disrupted critical NHS services including NHS 111 and compromised the personal data of over 79,000 people, some of whom were receiving care in their own homes.

Ransomware attacks

Similarly, the ransomware attack on that pathology partnership, Synnovis, which occurred as recently as 2024, caused significant disruptions to NHS services in South East London. The attack affected all Synnovis IT systems and severely reduced the capacity to process pathology samples. This led to delays in diagnostics and treatment, with multiple patients negatively impacted and some procedures postponed or cancelled altogether.

Such incidents serve as a stark reminder that the stakes in healthcare are uniquely high. A ransomware attack doesn’t just lock files. It freezes operating theatres, delays chemotherapy, or prevents prescriptions from being processed. In the worst-case scenario, such threats can result in clinical errors or delayed diagnoses, with life-threatening consequences.

Hospitals and healthcare providers cannot afford prolonged downtimes. Cybercriminals are aware of this vulnerability, making the healthcare sector one of the most targeted industries. The pressure to pay ransom and restore services quickly makes it a prime target for financially motivated attackers.

Medical devices are particularly at risk. Imagine a compromised infusion pump or a malfunctioning ventilator caused by tampered firmware. These aren’t just hypothetical threats rather, very real possibilities in today’s increasingly dangerous cyber environment. In fact, as recently as January 2023, an insulin pump maker disclosed an IP address exposure The following month, an infusion pump provider acknowledged a vulnerability enabling unauthorized access to personal data. Soon after, a cardioverter defibrillator product reported a vulnerability leading to a data breach affecting over 1 million individuals.

Such incidents underscore a harsh reality: when cybersecurity fails in healthcare, it’s not just data, but lives that are at stake.

From national risk to global priority

In the UK, the NHS is one of the most trusted institutions and maintaining public confidence is vital. But cybersecurity cannot be tackled in isolation. The cyber threat to the healthcare sector is not just a national risk but a part of a broader, international challenge. It requires a coordinated and cooperative response, both within the UK and with partners across Europe and beyond.

One critical component to strengthening the healthcare supply chain’s cyber defenses is cross-border threat intelligence sharing, as the digital nature of healthcare means attacks can come from anywhere. UK institutions, cybersecurity companies and government agencies must work closely with their international counterparts to share threat intelligence, track criminal activity and respond rapidly to emerging risks. This includes monitoring forums where NHS-related data may be traded or discussed.

Shared intelligence is also only effective when it’s specific and actionable. The healthcare supply chain has unique challenges that require a tailored analysis. National bodies such as the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), in collaboration with industry consortia, should lead efforts to coordinate information-sharing networks tailored to healthcare.

Additionally, the NHS and private healthcare providers alike must begin to impose more stringent security standards on their vendors and partners. As best practice, contracts should clearly spell out responsibilities around breach notification, data protection and compliance with UK regulations such as the Data Protection Act and NHS DSP Toolkit standards. Adopting a zero-trust architecture can help mitigate the impact of supply chain breaches.

Efforts underway

Efforts to this effect are already underway, with the government drawing up the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill. Set to be introduced in Parliament in 2025, this Bill aims to bolster the UK’s cyber defenses by expanding regulatory coverage to include more digital services and supply chains, both of which are increasingly targeted by cybercriminals.

With recent high-profile cyberattacks on critical public services such as the NHS underscoring the urgency, the Bill will address vulnerabilities in the nation’s critical infrastructure, ensuring that essential services like healthcare are better protected. It will also enhance reporting requirements to improve the government’s understanding of emerging threats and provide regulators with the tools needed to proactively identify and address potential risks.

Alongside external collaboration and regulation, the internal cyber defenses of UK’s healthcare providers must also be brought up to par. That starts with culture. Frontline NHS staff and administrators must receive regular training on phishing, social engineering and password security. Moreover, implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), robust access control and continuous monitoring significantly reduces the risk of future cyber attacks. Finally, legacy systems must be patched regularly and backup and data recovery plans should be tested and refined to ensure that healthcare services can bounce back quickly from any disruption.

Cybersecurity as public health duty

At the end of the day, securing the healthcare supply chain is not just a technical task, rather, it’s a duty of care. Patients trust their healthcare providers to keep their data and their lives safe. As the digital thread in healthcare becomes more essential to how we diagnose, treat and deliver care, this trust must extend to the technologies and the third-party suppliers our healthcare providers choose to partner with.

Recent cyber incidents in the healthcare supply chain are not isolated attacks. They are signals that action must be taken now and in collaboration to close the security gaps and protect the arteries of our healthcare system. Only through shared responsibility, strong standards and relentless vigilance can we ensure that the technologies meant to heal do not become the very vectors of harm.

We’ve compiled a list of the best Electronic Health Records software.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro’s Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

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June 4, 2025 0 comments