In early 2020, Dominic Williams was feted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as the next king of blockchain technology. Mr. Williams is the founder of the Dfinity Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit organization that started an ambitious project called the Internet Computer, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most prestigious venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.

The “Internet Computer” is an ambitious crypto project by the Dfinity Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit organization with big Silicon Valley backers like Andreessen Horowitz. Last month, it was the darling of the crypto world when it held a bonanza of an initial coin offering, valuing its token, known as ICP, at tens of billions of dollars in market cap. It’s a different story now, after ICP has lost more than 90 percent of its value.

Even in the famously volatile crypto market, ICP stands out. The stunning climb and crash has people asking what really happened — and who may have profited.

“Something went wrong,” said Miguel Morel of Arkham Intelligence, a crypto analysis firm that tracked ICP tokens through the blockchain. In a report shared with DealBook, Arkham noted that “a token dropping over 90 percent in the first month after launch is highly unusual.” Arkham said that it found 44 “probable insider addresses” that deposited 10 million ICP tokens worth over $2...

There were curious characteristics about the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 1977-78, which emerged from northeastern Asia and killed an estimated 700,000 people around the world. For one, it almost exclusively affected people in their mid-20s or younger. Scientists discovered another oddity that could explain the first: It was virtually identical to a strain that circulated in the 1950s. People born before that had immunity that protected them, and younger people didn’t.

But how on earth had it remained so steady genetically, since viruses continually mutate? Scientists guessed that it had been frozen in a lab. It was often found to be sensitive to temperature, something expected for viruses used in vaccine research.

It was only in 2004 that a prominent virologist, Peter Palese, wrote that Chi-Ming Chu, a respected virologist and a former member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told him that “the introduction of this 1977 H1N1 virus” was indeed thought to be due to...

The original intended use of the blockchain was to power currencies like bitcoin?—?a way to store and exchange value much like any other currency. Visa and MasterCard were dinosaurs, everyone proclaimed, because there was now a costless, instant way to exchange value without the middleman taking a cut. A revolution in banking was just the start… governments, unable to issue currency by fiat anymore, would take a back seat as individual citizens transacted freely outside any national system.

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A European Central Bank governing council member said bitcoin investors should be prepared to lose their entire investment, the latest such warning from a central banker about cryptocurrency volatility.

"As the UK authority said a few weeks ago, if people want to invest in bitcoin, they have to be prepared to lose all their money – that's certainly my view, " said Gabriel Makhlouf, a governing council member of the ECB, on Bloomberg TV on Friday.

Earlier this month, the UK financial regulator also said bitcoin investors could well "lose all their money." Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are "high-risk, speculative investments," and should be treated as such, the regulator said at the time. 

"If consumers invest in these types of product, they should be prepared to lose all their money," the Financial Conduct Authority said in a January 11 statement.  

The Chinese yuan will become a global reserve currency sooner than most people expect, said billionaire investor Ray Dalio.

The U.S. dollar is currently the world's reserve currency, but billionaire hedge fund manager Dalio said the yuan's role could grow much bigger in the next few years.

Dalio, founder of the world's largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, said more global trade and financial transactions could be denominated in the yuan in the coming years. That's going to help China's currency become more widely used internationally, he told CNBC Managing Asia's Christine Tan.  

Here's the investor's take on why the yuan is going to become more attractive, and how its digital form could be a very viable investment alternative.

China's factory activity expanded at the fastest pace this year in May as domestic and export demand picked up, though sharp rises in raw material prices and strains in supply chains crimped some companies' production, a business survey showed on Tuesday.

The Caixin/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) rose to 52.0 last month, the highest level since December and inching up from April's 51.9.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the index to remain at 51.9. The 50-mark separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis.

New orders rose at the strongest pace so far this year and a gauge for export orders was the highest since November, but the output reading, while still solid, was slightly lower than the previous month.

"Rapidly rising commodity prices began to disrupt the economy as some enterprises began to hoard goods, while some others suffered raw material shortages. Supply chains were also significantly affected," Wang Zhe,...

Exploring space is one of humanity’s most hopeful activities. By going out into the great unknown of the Universe, we hope to extend our reach, find new resources and life forms, while solving many of our earthly problems. But going to space is not something to take for granted—it can actually become impossible. There is a scenario, called the Kessler Syndrome, that can cause the end of all space exploration and dramatically impact our daily lives.

Dead Coins refer to cryptocurrencies that have been abandoned, used as scam, their website is down, has no nodes, has wallet issues, doesn't have social updates, has low volume or developers have walked away from the project.