The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is expanding its efforts to reign in dubious initial coin offerings. The Wall Street Journal reported today that the commission has issued dozens of subpoenas and information requests to technology companies and advisers involved in the market. The SEC first took a public stance on ICOs back in July, when it ruled that ICOs tied ...

Video streaming site iQiyi Inc. is set to be the latest Chinese company to go public in the United States. The company filed paperwork for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday. The IPO will offer American Depository Shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol “IQ,” with a goal of raising $1.5 billion. ...

Intimate, an Australian startup looking to create a cryptocurrency for the adult industry, today announced a $1.1 million investment from digital currency fund Alphabit on top of its previously announced $4.5 million initial coin offering presale. The ITM token was designed to be an open, distributed trust mechanism for all segments of the adult industry, including interactive content, delivery ...

Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp.’s founder and one of the world’s richest men, apparently isn’t fond of bitcoin, claiming in a somewhat bizarre Ask Me Anything session on Reddit Tuesday that cryptocurrencies kill people. Gates was on record in 2014 as saying that bitcoin is “better than currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same ...

IBM Corp.’s Watson is heading to space, specifically the International Space Station, in the form of an 11-pound, artificially intelligent smiling orb. The orb, dubbed CIMON, short for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, will be taken to the ISS in June by German astronaut and scientist Alexander Gerst. It has been designed as an experimental assistance system to support ...

Multiple security companies are reporting on a new type of distributed denial-of-service attack that exploits unprotected servers to launch massive attacks against organizations. The servers use Memcached, a popular open source distributed memory caching system. It’s used in turn to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in temporary memory to reduce the number ...

Amazon.com Inc. has acquired smart doorbell maker Ring Inc. for a figure believed to be over $1 billion, making it the e-commerce giant’s second-largest acquisition to date after Whole Foods Market Inc. Founded in 2012, Ring aims to “reduce crime in communities and empower consumers” with a video doorbell that is claimed to blend “convenience, monitoring ...

Self-driving car technology startup Pony.ai is taking to the streets as the company officially launches its first public road tests of autonomous vehicles using its technology. Pony.ai, little-known in the west but founded by former engineers from both Google X (now Waymo) and Baidu Inc., nonetheless has gotten a lot of financial support — most recently with ...

Fintech and blockchain fundraising platform BnkToTheFuture has raised some money for itself, netting $33 million via an initial coin offering. Founded back in 2010, the Hong Kong-based company, formally known as Keystone Capital Corp., offers an equity crowdfunding platform. It allows users to invest in private companies starting with the equivalent of $10. But unlike others ...

Israeli security company Cellebrite, a major U.S. government contractor perhaps best known as the company that assisted authorities to crack the iPhone used by the San Bernardino massacre shooter, is now claiming to have found a way to unlock nearly every iPhone on the market. The claim suggests that iOS 11 isn’t as secure as Apple Inc. claims ...