Automattic lays off 16% of staff, CEO Matt Mullenweg says to become “more agile and responsive”; Automattic website listed 1,744 employees ahead of the layoffs (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Automattic lays off 16% of staff, CEO Matt Mullenweg says to become “more agile and responsive”; Automattic website listed 1,744 employees ahead of the layoffs  —  Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce.

FDUSD stablecoin depegged 9% after Justin Sun raised concerns over Hong Kong-based First Digital Trust’s solvency; Binance alone holds ~$2.2B worth of FDUSD (Daniel Kuhn/The Block)

Daniel Kuhn / The Block:
FDUSD stablecoin depegged 9% after Justin Sun raised concerns over Hong Kong-based First Digital Trust’s solvency; Binance alone holds ~$2.2B worth of FDUSD  —  – Justin Sun is warning users to pull funds from First Digital Trust, a Hong Kong-based firm once employed by TrueUSD’s owner Techteryx as a fiduciary.

Anthropic debuts a Claude for Education tier for colleges, with Learning Mode, where it asks questions to test understanding, shares templates for papers, more (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Anthropic debuts a Claude for Education tier for colleges, with Learning Mode, where it asks questions to test understanding, shares templates for papers, more  —  Anthropic announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new Claude for Education tier, an answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu plan.

Sources: Justin Sun bailed out Techteryx’s TrueUSD after $456M in reserves, managed by First Digital, became illiquid; Techteryx says it was a victim of fraud (Sam Reynolds/CoinDesk)

Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk:
Sources: Justin Sun bailed out Techteryx’s TrueUSD after $456M in reserves, managed by First Digital, became illiquid; Techteryx says it was a victim of fraud  —  Justin Sun bailed out Techteryx’s TrueUSD stablecoin after nearly half a billion dollars of its reserves were rendered illiquid …

Trump pardoned BitMEX owner HDR Global Trading, which had pleaded guilty and was fined $100M for money laundering, possibly the first US pardon of a corporation (Matt Sledge/The Intercept)

Matt Sledge / The Intercept:
Trump pardoned BitMEX owner HDR Global Trading, which had pleaded guilty and was fined $100M for money laundering, possibly the first US pardon of a corporation  —  In what may be an American first, President Donald Trump pardoned a company sentenced to $100 million in fines for breaking money laundering laws.

Google replaces Sissie Hsiao, leader of its consumer AI apps, including Gemini, with Josh Woodward, who leads Google Labs and oversaw NotebookLM’s launch (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)

Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Google replaces Sissie Hsiao, leader of its consumer AI apps, including Gemini, with Josh Woodward, who leads Google Labs and oversaw NotebookLM’s launch  —  The Scoop  —  Google is replacing the leader of its consumer AI apps as the focus of the AI race shifts from the underlying models …