Vance: Crypto Needs Clear Laws

CRYPTO
Vance: Crypto Needs Clear Laws

At the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to creating a clear and innovation-friendly regulatory framework for crypto. Addressing a crowd of 35,000, Vance said a pro-market structure bill is critical to fully integrating digital assets like Bitcoin into the U.S. economy and preventing future administrations from reversing progress. He warned that without regulatory clarity, the $3 trillion crypto industry could migrate offshore.

Vance also expressed optimism about the GENIUS Act — a stablecoin bill — reaching President Trump’s desk soon, which would pave the way for broader crypto regulation. He criticized the previous administration's SEC enforcement tactics and confirmed that “Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is dead.”

He praised the early support from crypto leaders like Coinbase and the Winklevoss twins, urging the industry to maintain its political engagement. Vance also emphasized the growing overlap between AI and Bitcoin, calling on the community to influence both sectors.

TECH
DeepSeek Upgrades AI Model Quietly

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has quietly released an upgraded version of its breakthrough reasoning model, DeepSeek R1, on the open-source platform Hugging Face — without any formal announcement. Earlier this year, the original R1 model stunned the global tech community by outperforming offerings from Meta and OpenAI, despite being developed at low cost and speed. Its success triggered a selloff in major U.S. tech stocks, including Nvidia, raising questions about excessive infrastructure spending by American AI firms.

The new version of DeepSeek R1 is a reasoning model designed to handle complex tasks using step-by-step logic. It currently ranks just behind OpenAI’s o4-mini and o3 models on LiveCodeBench, a benchmarking platform.

DeepSeek’s rise underscores China’s resilience in AI development, despite ongoing U.S. chip export restrictions. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently criticized these curbs, warning that the assumption China couldn’t develop advanced AI chips was “clearly wrong.” China, he said, already has AI — and it's catching up fast.

POLITICS
Musk Ends Government Efficiency Role

Elon Musk has concluded his role as a special government employee with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a position he held to help streamline federal operations and reduce unnecessary spending. In a post on X, Musk thanked the administration and emphasized that the DOGE initiative would continue to grow as a government standard.

During his time with DOGE, Musk claimed the team achieved over $160 billion in savings by cutting redundant federal programs and reducing foreign aid expenditures. According to independent reports, nearly 60,000 federal jobs were eliminated and over 70,000 employees took voluntary buyouts, with more cuts planned.

Musk initially committed one to two days a week to DOGE while continuing to lead Tesla. He said the work was necessary to prevent waste and inefficiencies from returning. Despite falling short of his $1 trillion savings goal, Musk stated the effort laid a foundation for long-term government reform through data-driven efficiency improvements.

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