Category: Technology

BT Group The pilot scheme’s only charger will close in February BT has abandoned its scheme to turn green street cabinets into electric vehicle (EV) charging points having completed only one of the 60,000 conversions it initially said it was aiming for. The metal cases, seen on streets around the UK, are usually used for phone and broadband cables. When it announced the project in January 2024, BT said repurposing the cabinets was a “unique opportunity” to address a “key barrier” to people switching away from petrol and diesel cars. However, the scheme has now been scrapped with the firm saying it will be focusing on “the Wi-Fi connectivity challenge surrounding EV’s” instead. “It’s disappointing that it’s not going to proceed,” Stuart Masson from automotive website The Car Expert told BBC News. “The good news that we are seeing in the industry is that the overall rollout of electric charging points is accelerating faster than had been predicted a couple of years ago,” he added. However, he said that most of the charging points are in busier areas rather than on streets nearer to people’s homes, meaning BT’s decision was still a setback. Mr Masson welcomed its pledge to improve wi-fi infrastructure around EV charging points. “It’s very frustrating when you turn up to a charging point, you go to log into the app… and you can’t get a connection because you’re buried in a multi-storey car park somewhere and there’s no signal,” he said. “If BT can make a dent in that then that would be really good.” Scheme falls flat Many green cabinets are coming towards the end of their lifespans as BT upgrades to fibre broadband. But only one of them, in East Lothian, was ever actually turned into a public charging point. It will now close in February, according to The Fast Charge newsletter, which broke the story. The charger currently shows as “out of order” on the Evve Charge app, which shows the locations of EV chargers in the UK. East Lothian Council told the BBC there were still many EV charging options in the area. A spokesperson said: “East Lothian has one of the highest numbers of electric vehicle chargers per head of population among Scotland’s local authorities, with more than 370 public places to plug in cars.” A BT Group spokesperson said the trial tested “a great deal about the challenges that many on-street EV drivers are facing with charging and where BT Group can add most value to the UK EV ecosystem.” They added: “Other emerging needs we’ve identified include the wi-fi connectivity challenge surrounding EV’s – our pilots will now shift in focus to explore this further.” The government has set a target of 300,000 public charging points by 2030. Its own statistics show there are 73,334 public charging devices in the UK – a 37% increase on a year ago. Nearly a third of these are in Greater London, according to EV charging company Zapmap. Bumps in the road for EVs The Department for Transport responded to BT’s decision by stressing that 2024 was “a record-breaking year for EV infrastructure,” with nearly 20,000 EV charging points added in the past 12 months. “This comes alongside £6bn of private investment in the pipeline by 2030, helping EV owners drive with the confidence that they will never be too far away from a chargepoint,” it said in a statement. The car industry however has voiced concerns about the speed with which the UK is attempting to transition to EVs. Ford said in November 2024 that the government’s timetable for moving away from internal combustion engine cars would not work without further financial incentives. The following month the government launched a consultation with the automotive and charging industries to shape its phase-out of petrol and diesel cars. It said it had invested £2.3bn to support the switch to EVs, as it reasserted its target to stop sales of new fossil fuel-powered cars by 2030. Source link

Getty Images Apple has suspended a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that drew criticism and complaints for making repeated mistakes in its summaries of news headlines. The tech giant had been facing mounting pressure to withdraw the service, which sent notifications that appeared to come from within news organisations’ apps. “We are working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update,” an Apple spokesperson said. Journalism body Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it showed the dangers of rushing out new features. “Innovation must never come at the expense of the right of citizens to receive reliable information,” it said in a statement. “This feature should not be rolled out again until there is zero risk it will publish inaccurate headlines,” RSF’s Vincent Berthier added. False reports The BBC was among the groups to complain about the feature, after an alert generated by Apple’s AI falsely told some readers that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself. The feature had also inaccurately summarised headlines from Sky News, the New York Times and the Washington Post, according to reports from journalists and others on social media. “There is a huge imperative [for tech firms] to be the first one to release new features,” said Jonathan Bright, head of AI for public services at the Alan Turing Institute. Hallucinations – where an AI model makes things up – are a “real concern,” he added, “and as yet firms don’t have a way of systematically guaranteeing that AI models will never hallucinate, apart from human oversight. “As well as misinforming the public, such hallucinations have the potential to further damage trust in the news media,” he said. Media outlets and press groups had pushed the company to pull back, warning that the feature was not ready and that AI-generated errors were adding to issues of misinformation and falling trust in news. The BBC complained to Apple in December but it did not respond until January when it promised a software update that would clarify the role of AI in creating the summaries, which were optional and only available to readers with the latest iPhones. That prompted a further wave of criticism that the tech giant was not going far enough. A news alert from December 2024 was among the complaints made by the BBC to Apple Apple has now decided to disable the feature entirely for news and entertainment apps. “With the latest beta software releases of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, Notification summaries for the News & Entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable,” an Apple spokesperson said. The company said that for other apps the AI-generated summaries of app alerts will appear using italicised text. “We’re pleased that Apple has listened to our concerns and is pausing the summarisation feature for news,” a BBC spokesperson said. “We look forward to working with them constructively on next steps. Our priority is the accuracy of the news we deliver to audiences which is essential to building and maintaining trust.” Analysis: A rare U-turn from Apple Apple is generally robust about its products and doesn’t often even respond to criticism. This simple statement from the tech giant speaks volumes about just how damaging the errors made by its much-hyped new AI feature actually are. Not only was it inadvertently spreading misinformation by generating inaccurate summaries of news stories, it was also harming the reputation of news organisations like the BBC whose lifeblood is their trustworthiness, by displaying the false headlines next to their logos. Not a great look for a newly-launched service. AI developers have always said that the tech has a tendency to “hallucinate” (make things up) and AI chatbots all carry disclaimers saying the information they provide should be double-checked. But increasingly AI-generated content is given prominence – including providing summaries at the top of search engines – and that in itself implies that it is reliable. Even Apple, with all the financial and expert firepower it has to throw at developing the tech, has now proved very publicly that this is not yet the case. It’s also interesting that the latest error, which preceded Apple’s change of plan, was an AI summary of content from the Washington Post, as reported by their technology columnist Geoffrey A Fowler. The news outlet is owned by someone Apple boss Tim Cook knows well – Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Source link

TikTokers have been saying goodbye to the app and to their “personal Chinese spy” who has allegedly been surveilling them over the years. The BBC spoke to US influencers who participated in these trends and how they feel about a possible move to Chinese app RedNote. A TikTok ban in the US is set to go ahead on Sunday after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal. Video by Meiying Wu Source link

Watch TikTokers weigh in on potential US TikTok ban For online sensation Erika Thompson, TikTok is the most powerful social media platform to educate her 11 million followers about her life’s passion: bees. The loss of the platform in the US – made more likely after the Supreme Court upheld a ban that is set to be enacted next week – will be “substantive” financially for Ms Thompson, a Texas beekeeper, but it is also a loss of an educational tool. “There are a lot of other people on the platform offering educational content or informative content,” she told the BBC. “That’s the biggest loss and that’s what should be focused on, beyond the financial aspect, is the loss that we as a society – the people who use TikTok – will certainly feel.” Some 170 million Americans use the app and website. Unless its China-based parent company ByteDance sells the platform or intervention comes from the executive branch, the platform is set to go dark in the US on Sunday. The fate of the social media giant was left in the hands of the US Supreme Court after both Democratic and Republican lawmakers voted to ban the video-sharing app last year, over concerns about its links to the Chinese government and worries about the app being a national security risk. TikTok has repeatedly stated it does not share information with Beijing. But users and content creators say the social media platform has grown to become a fixture in society – and has helped regular users capture the limelight with millions of followers. It’s quickly become a preferred social media outlet to some and a key revenue stream for others. Now they worry what will happen if the ban is not stopped. Aimee Aubin Erika Thompson shares her beekeeping adventures with her 11 million followers on TikTok The superior platform Creators who make a living off social media apps told the BBC that TikTok is the superior platform. That was true for Ms Thomspon whose first TikTok video received more than 50 million views in the first 24 hours after it was posted. “I have not experienced the same success on other platforms,” she said. “I can post the exact same video on Instagram, for example, and receive not even close to the engagement.” Ross Smith who shares funny videos with his 98-year-old grandmother to more than 24 million followers on TikTok described it as one of the few platforms where it is easy to become a creator. On TikTok, he said, “you can find success overnight”. Other platforms trying to replicate the short-form scroll format featured on TikTok have yet to find success, Mr Smith told the BBC. Ms Thompson agreed. “I rarely hear of people going viral on Instagram or someone being an Instagram sensation but those are words you hear frequently on TikTok,” Ms Thompson said. Codey James, a fashion influencer with tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, told the BBC that audiences do not necessarily transfer from one platform to another. “I know someone who has hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers and maybe only ten thousand Instagram followers,” Mr James told the BBC. Ross Smith Content creator Ross Smith posts funny videos with his 98-year-old grandmother Substantial financial loss Many content creators survive off the income they earn on TikTok. Some told the BBC that their lives would change inordinately without the platform. When brands and companies want advertisement content from a creator, they want those creators to post on TikTok, Nicole Bloomgarden, a fashion designer and artist, told the BBC. “Indirectly, TikTok was the majority of my income because all brands want their stuff to be promoted on the app,” Ms Bloomgarden said. It is not clear statistically if creators’ most lucrative source of income is TikTok, but many told the BBC that it makes up a substantial portion of their revenue. A 2022 survey from the creator-focused start-up Linktree, found some 12% of full-time creators made more than $50,000 a year from their social media platforms. Some 46% said they made less than $1,000, the survey of 9,500 people found. What about alternative apps? This is not the first time a major social media platform has disappeared. In 2017, Vine – a platform where users could share up to six-second-long video clips – shut down. For creators at the time, it was a shock. Q Park, a content creator with 37.7 million followers on TikTok, was one of those people. He spent years building a following on Vine – the only platform he used at the time – and when it disappeared, he said it “felt like my whole business was shutting down”. But in some ways, it was good for him, too. It forced him to learn how to create different content for different audiences. “That experience showed me that if you have faith in your ability to create content, you’ll build a following somewhere else,” Mr Park told the BBC. As the ban approaches, some creators have started flocking to another Chinese platform, RedNote – a TikTok competitor popular with young people in China, Taiwan and other Mandarin-speaking populations. RedNote was the most downloaded app on Apple’s US App Store earlier this week. While some creators are diversifying where they post in hopes of growing audiences elsewhere, others are hoping the ban won’t come to fruition. “TikTok is a beast,” Mr Park said. “Part of me thinks it might be too big to fail.” “It will be revived somehow, it’s too big of an economy now.” Additional reporting from Grace Dean and Nathalie Jimenez. Watch: TikTokers’ say goodbye to their ‘Chinese spy’ as they move to RedNote Source link

Digital driving licences are to be introduced in the UK as the government looks to use technology to “transform public services”. They will be accessed on a new government smartphone app and could be accepted as a form of ID when buying alcohol, voting, or boarding domestic flights. Physical licences will still be issued, but ministers believe the voluntary digital option will “drag government into the 2020s,” according to The Times. A government spokesperson told BBC News: “This government is committed to using technology to make people’s lives easier and transform public services. “Technology now makes it possible for digital identities to be more secure than physical ones, but we remain clear that they will not be made mandatory.” The virtual licences could be used at supermarket self checkouts, The Times said, allowing customers to verify their own age without waiting for a member of staff. The new digital licences will be introduced later this year, the newspaper reported. A possible feature could allow users to hide their address in certain situations, such as in bars or shops. It was estimated there were more than 34 million full driving licence holders in England in 2023, according to government data. The digital licences are likely to be launched as part of a “wallet” within a new government app called Gov.uk. The wallet is understood to be secured in a similar way to many banking apps, and would only allow the genuine owner of a licence to access it. It will use features found on many smartphones, such as biometrics and multifactor authentication, like security codes. The government is said to be considering integrating other services into the app, such as tax payments and benefits claims. Other forms of identification, such as national insurance numbers, could also be added – but it is not thought physical identification will be replaced entirely. The new technology appears to stop short of being a broad digital ID card – as previously called for by Sir Tony Blair and Lord William Hague. At the time, the head of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said such a move “would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the UK”. In 2016, the then-boss of the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) said digital licences were being developed. Virtual licences are already in use in Australia, Denmark, Iceland and Norway, as well as some US states. In the European Union, every member state is required to introduce at least one form of digital ID by 2026. Source link

TikTok has gone offline in the US, hours before a new law banning the platform was due to come into effect. BBC News Tech Correspondent Lily Jamali explains what led to this and shows what now happens when she tries to access the app. It comes after the social media platform warned it would “go dark” on Sunday unless the outgoing Biden administration gave assurances the ban would not be enforced. President-elect Donald Trump has said he would “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a ban once he takes office on Monday, but the popular app’s future in the US remains unclear. Source link

Meta says its working urgently to fix a problem with Instagram which results in a “results hidden” message when users search for the terms “Democrat” or “Democrats”. Some social media users have accused the company of political bias, pointing out the issue has been occurring after President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, which was attended by Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg. Social media expert Matt Navarra said it was more likely to be a technical problem but told the BBC it was “embarrassing” for Instagram regardless. “In a hyper-partisan environment, even unintentional errors like this can escalate into accusations of partisanship,” he said. “If these issues are not resolved quickly they risk fuelling conspiracy theories and damaging Meta’s reputation.” While users who type “#Democrat” or “#Democrats” see no results, the hashtag “Republican” returns 3.3 million posts on the social media platform. By manually searching Instagram for “Democrats”, rather than clicking on a hashtag, users are greeted by a screen reading “we’ve hidden these results”. “Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content,” it says. There are also limited results when people search for “Republicans” as opposed to “Republican”. “We’re aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it”, Meta told the BBC in a statement. Mr Zuckerberg attending Trump’s return to office is the latest in a series of moves that have seen him – and other tech bosses – move closer to the incoming Republican administration. In January, Meta announced a major shake-up of its policies towards how material on its platforms is moderated, with Mr Zuckerberg citing the “cultural tipping point” Trump’s re-election represented. Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican, has been chosen to replace Sir Nick Clegg as Meta’s global affairs chief. Mr Zuckerberg visited the US president at his resort in Mar-a-Lago in November and Meta made a donation to a Tump fund. Trump and his allies previously criticised Met, claiming censor right-wing voice and even threatened the Meta boss with jail. However reacting to its decision to axe fact checkers, Trump told a news conference he was impressed by Zuckerberg’s decision and said Meta had “come a long way”. Source link

Watch: How TikTok ‘went dark’ in the US TikTok is resuming services to its 170 million users in US after President-elect Donald Trump said he would issue an executive order to give the app a reprieve when he takes office on Monday. On Saturday evening, the Chinese-owned app stopped working for American users, after a law banning it on national security grounds came into effect. Trump, who had previously backed a ban of the platform, promised on Sunday to delay implementation of the law and allow more time for a deal to be made. TikTok then said that it was in the process of “restoring service”. Soon after, the app started working again and a popup message to its millions of users thanked Trump by name. In a statement, the company thanked the incoming president for “providing the necessary clarity and assurance” and said it would work with Trump “on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States”. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration Monday. Posting on Truth Social, a social media platform he owns, Trump said on Sunday: “I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark! I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.” TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, previously ignored a law requiring it to sell its US operations to avoid a ban. The law was upheld by Supreme Court on Friday and went into effect on Sunday. It is unclear what legal authority Trump will have to delay the implementation of a law that is already in effect. But it expected that his government will not enforce the ban if he issues an executive order. It’s an about-face from his previous position. Trump had backed a TikTok ban, but has more recently professed a “warm spot” for the app, touting the billions of views he says his videos attracted on the platform during last year’s presidential campaign. For its part, President Joe Biden’s administration had already said that it would not enforce the law in its last hours in office and instead allow the process to play out under the incoming Trump administration. But TikTok had pulled its services anyway on Saturday evening, before the swift restoration of access on Sunday. The short-form video platform is wildly popular among its many millions of US users. It has also proved a valuable tool for American political campaigns to reach younger voters. Under the law passed last April, the US version of the app had to be removed from app stores and web-hosting services if its Chinese owner ByteDance did not sell its US operations. TikTok had argued before the Supreme Court that the law violated free speech protections for its users in the country. The law was passed with support from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress and was upheld unanimously by Supreme Court justices earlier this week. The issue exposes a rift on a key national security issues between the president-elect and members of his own party. His pick for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had vocally supported the ban. “TikTok extended the Chinese Communist Party’s power and influence into our own nation, right under our noses,” he said last April. But he seemed to defer to the president-elect when a journalist asked if he supported Trump’s efforts to restore the ban. “If I’m confirmed as secretary of State, I’ll work for the president,” he told Punchbowl media last week. After Trump intervened on Sunday morning, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas, broke with Trump by saying that any company that helps TikTok stay online would be breaking the law. “Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs,” he wrote on social media. An executive order that goes against the law could be fought in court. Several states have also sued the platform, opening up the possibility to TikTok being banned by local jurisdictions, even if it is available nationally. Although the platform went live again on Sunday for existing users, the question of whether third-parties – hosting platforms or app stores like Google or Apple – could support TikTok in the US remains murky, says University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias. The app had been removed from those stores in anticipation of the ban. “It is murky,” he told the BBC. In a post on Truth media, Trump promised to shield companies from liability, opening the door to TikTok being available on Apple and Google again. “The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order,” the president-elect said on Truth Social Sunday. But during the Supreme Court hearings, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar was adamant that an executive order cannot change the law retroactively. “Whatever the new president does, doesn’t change that reality for these companies,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said during the hearings. “That’s right,” Prelogar said. Professor Tobias said that the law does include a provision that would allow the president to postpone the ban for up to 90 days, if he can show that the company is making substantial progress on alleviating national security issues. But, he said, it’s not clear whether those conditions have been met. “The best thing Trump could do is work with Congress, and not potentially be in violation of the law or have any questions left hanging,” he said. “I don’t know that we’re going to know a whole lot more until we see that executive order.” Source link

Getty Images TikTok briefly went dark in the US over the weekend, after the Supreme Court denied a bid by Chinese owner ByteDance to overturn a law banning it. But it was back after a day with a message thanking incoming president Donald Trump for his “efforts” in restoring the app. And one of Trump’s first actions after resuming office was to sign an executive order giving TikTok another 75 days to comply with the law that demanded it was blocked if its owners would not sell it. So what happens now? Has Trump overturned the ban? An executive order is an instruction from the president which has the weight of the law behind it. But Trump’s order does not overturn the ban law. Instead it tells the US attorney general not to enforce it for now – something experts had expected would be his first move. That buys time for his administration to, as the order puts it, “determine the appropriate course of action.” Trump has floated the possibility of TikTok becoming a joint venture, telling reporters he was seeking a 50-50 partnership between “the United States” and ByteDance, though he did not give any further details on how that might work. For now though the order creates a situation where the president is directly opposing a ruling made by the Supreme Court, which on Friday upheld a law to ban TikTok. It said the ban was “designed to prevent China – a designated foreign adversary – from leveraging its control over ByteDance to capture the personal data of US TikTok users”. Getty Images Technically, even after the 75 days have passed, it would be possible for Trump to allow the law to stand but tell the Department of Justice (DoJ) to continue to ignore it. The government would be effectively telling Apple and Google they will not be punished for continuing to allow people to download TikTok onto their devices, meaning the law would remain in place but would essentially be redundant. Obviously, the firms might be uncomfortable about breaking the law even if they have been told doing so is fine – as it would be effectively requiring them to take the president’s word for it that they will not face punishment. Who could buy TikTok? When he signed the order, Trump said “every rich person has called me” to signal their interest in TikTok. Up until now, ByteDance has been resolute that no sale of its prize asset in the US is on the table. But could that change now? Potential buyers continue to line up – with Bloomberg News reporting on Tuesday that the firm was looking at a sale to billionaire Elon Musk, though TikTok described this as “pure fiction”. Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt are among those who have previously expressed an interest in buying it. Mr McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, said he had secured $20bn in verbal commitments from a consortium of investors to bid for TikTok. There is an even more left field – and considerably less serious – proposed owner. The biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson – AKA MrBeast – has claimed he is now in the running to make a deal after he had billionaires reaching out to him about it. What about TikTok’s sister apps? Watch: Can young Americans live without TikTok? TikTok was the only ByteDance app which immediately became available again after the ban – though only for people who already had the app. It’s still unavailable to download from Apple and Google’s app stores. But on Tuesday morning, other apps owned by the company began to become available to use in the US once again. Two which remain inaccessible are Lemon8, another social media app which has been compared to Pinterest, and CapCut, a video editing app. Meanwhile Marvel Snap, a digital card game published by a ByteDance subsidiary, is now available once again after it too went down – which caught even its US-based developer Second Dinner off guard. What platforms could people turn to instead? TikTok says it has 170 million users in the US who, on average, spent 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024. Experts say, if Trump’s efforts fail, rivals such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts may benefit. Users bring advertisers – so this could be a big financial boost to those platforms. “Chief marketing officers who we’ve spoken with confirmed that they will divert their media dollars to Meta and Google if they can no longer advertise on TikTok,” said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at market research company Forrester. Other potential winners include Twitch, which made its name on hosting livestreams – a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is well known particularly to gamers, though it continues to grow with other content. Other Chinese-owned platforms, such as Xiaohongshu – known as RedNote among its US users – have seen rapid growth in the US and the UK. Source link

Incoming first lady Melania Trump has launched a cryptocurrency on the eve of her husband’s inauguration as US president. The announcement comes after President-elect Donald Trump launched the $Trump cryptocurrency. Both coins have risen but have seen volatile trade. “The Official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $Melania now,” she posted on the social platform X on Sunday. Disclaimers on the websites of both the $Trump and $Melania coins said they were “not intended to be, or the subject of” an investment opportunity or a security. According to the CoinMarketCap website, $Trump has a total market valuation of about $12bn (£9.8bn), while $Melania’s stands at around $1.7bn. Trump had previously called crypto a “scam” but during the 2024 election campaign became the first presidential candidate to accept digital assets as donations. During the campaign, his family launched a cryptocurrency company called World Liberty Financial – which aims to lead “a financial revolution by dismantling the stranglehold of traditional financial institutions”, and is also selling a crypto coin. The new Trump coin was launched from Trump Organization affiliate CIC Digital LLC, which is linked to previous sales of crypto collectable NFTs launched in 2022 that made millions of dollars but have since fallen dramatically in value for their owners. According to CoinGecko, the NFTs once sold for more than $1,000 but have since dropped in value to around $300. On the campaign trail, Trump also said he would create a strategic Bitcoin stockpile and appoint financial regulators that take a more positive stance towards digital assets. That spurred expectations that he would strip back regulations on the crypto industry. In the wake of Trump’s victory, Bitcoin jumped to a record high of around $109,000 according to crypto trading platform Coinbase. On Friday, the incoming artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto tsar David Sacks held a “Crypto Ball” in Washington, DC. Other cryptocurrencies, including Dogecoin – which has been promoted by high-profile Trump supporter Elon Musk – have also risen sharply this year. Under President Joe Biden, regulators cited concerns about fraud and money laundering as they cracked down on crypto companies by suing exchanges. The growth of Dogecoin has significantly increased the interest in so-called “meme coins” – cryptocurrencies typically linked to a viral internet trend or moment. Melania’s Meme coin has come from her own incorporated company MKT World LLC – a firm she has used since 2021 for various ventures including selling portraits of her as first lady. Meme coins can be created and launched by anyone, and there are thousands in existence. With their profile and social media presence, Trump coin and Melania coin have already entered the top 100 coins in terms of value, and Melania’s coin is now worth more than AI entrepreneur Sam Altman’s Worldcoin. Source link