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In this photo illustration, a visual representation of the digital Cryptocurrency Ripple is displayed on January 30, 2018 in Paris, France. 

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The price of the XRP token tumbled Thursday, a day after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed to appeal a 2023 court ruling that determined XRP is not considered a security when sold to retail investors on exchanges.

XRP was last lower by more than 9% at 52 cents a coin, according to Coin Metrics.

Ripple, the largest holder of XRP coins, scored a partial victory last summer after a three-year battle with the SEC. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres handed down the decision, which was hailed as a landmark win for the crypto industry. Still, while XRP isn’t considered a security when sold to retail investors on exchanges, it is considered an unregistered security offering if sold to institutional investors.

Ripple declined to comment but referred to Wednesday evening posts on X by CEO Brad Garlinghouse and chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty.

Alderoty said the company is evaluating whether to file a cross appeal, and called the SEC’s decision to appeal “disappointing, but not surprising.” The SEC, under Chair Gary Gensler, has become notorious for its refusal to provide clear guidance for crypto businesses, instead opting to regulate by enforcement actions.

“XRP’s status as a non-security is the law of the land today – and that does not change even in the face of this misguided – and infuriating – appeal,” Garlinghouse said on X.

Earlier on Wednesday, Bitwise Asset Management, an issuer of ETFs tracking bitcoin (BITB) and ether (ETHW), submitted a registration filing for what would be the first XRP ETF – two days after registering an XRP trust product in Delaware. Grayscale, which also has bitcoin (GBTC) and ether (ETHE) ETFs, introduced a similar trust product in September.

XRP, which was created by the founders of Ripple, is the native token of the open source XRP Ledger, which Ripple uses in its cross-border payments business. It is the fifth-largest coin by market cap, excluding stablecoins Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC).

Elsewhere in the crypto market, bitcoin hovered above the flat line at $60,210.29, while ether fell more than 2% to $2,320.20. Crypto stocks Coinbase and MicroStrategy were lower by about 1% and 2%, respectively.                                   

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Instagram will award top creators with a gold ring. But no cash

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Instagram will award top creators with a gold ring. But no cash

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Instagram announced on Monday the launch of a new “Rings” award that will give 25 creators a literal gold ring and a matching badge on their profile, but no cash.

Winners will be chosen by a panel including Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, filmmaker Spike Lee, designer Marc Jacobs and YouTuber Marques Brownlee.

The move comes as Meta-owned Instagram has wound down its creator bonus program and brand deals are slowing across the industry, raising the question of why one of the world’s richest companies is offering jewelry and profile features instead of direct payouts.

“It’s more about a special visibility and sort of incentive for people to work towards a really cool elevated recognition,” Brownlee told CNBC.

He said he nominated creators whose work showed the most effort and risk-taking, not simply those with the biggest followings.

Winners can also change their profile backdrop color and customize the “like” button.

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Meta ended its Reels Play bonus program, which was a key source of income for many creators, on Instagram and Facebook in 2023. At the time, some vented online that losing the payments left them struggling.

“As stupid as it sounds, in this economy it was a blessing for my household to have the extra money coming in,” wrote a user on Reddit.

Mosseri said in June 2024 that the company is considering changes to creator compensation, but no new plan has been announced.

Rivals YouTube and TikTok have their own creator revenue share programs.

YouTube paid out over $100 billion to creators over the last four years, the company reported in September.

Creators saw a dramatic drop in brand deals in 2024, falling 52%, according to a survey from Kajabi.

In January, Meta was offering deals to creators to promote Instagram on TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, CNBC reported. However, an Instagram spokesperson said these deals had ended.

Against that backdrop, Instagram’s new gold rings stand out as a symbolic gesture rather than direct financial support in an increasingly challenging creator economy.

“This could be looked at as an incentive to make more Instagram stuff, or really just an incentive to make the best possible thing you can and hopefully get recognized for it,” Brownlee said. “No matter where you’re doing it, it feels good to know that it resonates with people, this is inspiring people, or this is impressing people.”

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Cerebras CEO explains IPO withdrawal, says it still intends to go public

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Cerebras CEO explains IPO withdrawal, says it still intends to go public

Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman speaks to the media at the Colovore office in Santa Clara, Calif., on March 12, 2024.

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Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman admitted that his artificial intelligence chipmaker made a mistake last week when it didn’t immediately explain its decision to withdraw its registration for an IPO.

In a LinkedIn post late Sunday, Feldman wrote that the company still wants to go public but has changed significantly since its initial filing a year ago. The company wants to revise parts of its prospectus before selling shares to the public.

“Given that the business has improved in meaningful ways we decided to withdraw so that we can re-file with updated financials, strategy information including our approach to this the [sic] rapidly changing AI landscape,” Feldman wrote.

Days before filing its withdrawal notice on Friday, Cerebras announced a $1.1 billion funding round at a valuation of $ 8.1 billion. Some of the investors in the new round, including Tiger Global and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, weren’t named in the 2024 filing, he added.

“We made this call because it’s in the best interest of our investors, partners, and team — and it will allow potential investors to better understand the value of the business when we enter the public markets,” Feldman wrote, without providing a timeline for a new filing.

In its prospectus, Cerebras characterized itself as a company that produces large-scale chips for training and running AI models. This year the company has added cloud business as it operates data centers that can handle incoming requests from AI models.

What’s remained is Cerebras’ insistence that its hardware outperforms graphics processing units (GPUs), a market that Nvidia dominates but where Advanced Micro Devices is trying to play catchup. AMD said on Monday that OpenAI committed to setting up to 6 gigawatts’ worth of the company’s AI processors and could end up owning 10% of the chipmaker.

WATCH: Cerebras CEO: Here’s why our chips are a more efficient alternative to Nvidia

Cerebras CEO: Here's why our chips are a more efficient alternative to Nvidia

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Anthropic lands its biggest enterprise deployment ever with Deloitte deal

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Anthropic lands its biggest enterprise deployment ever with Deloitte deal

Samuel Boivin | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Deloitte on Monday announced a deal to bring Anthropic’s artificial intelligence assistant Claude to its more than 470,000 employees around the globe. 

The rollout will be Anthropic’s largest enterprise deployment ever, building on a partnership the two companies first unveiled last year.

Deloitte, which offers consulting, tax and audit services, is one of the 300,000 business customers Anthropic has amassed in the four years since the startup’s founding. 

“We are both investing a significant amount in this partnership, whether that’s financial or whether it is just simply the engineering resource that we’re going to put into this as well,” Paul Smith, Anthropic’s chief commercial officer, told CNBC in an interview.  

The companies declined to disclose the financial details of the deal.

Deloitte will build out and deploy different Claude “personas” for different groups of employees, ranging from accountants to software developers, over the next several months. Staffers can also get support from specialists within Deloitte’s Claude Center of Excellence, which is designed to help teams deploy and benefit from the technology more quickly.

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Ideally, exposing Deloitte employees to AI will help them reap the personal benefits like productivity gains, while also inspiring them to think about how the technology could be used to transform other industries and sectors, said Ranjit Bawa, Deloitte’s U.S. chief strategy and technology officer.

“Our clients obviously want to know: ‘Are you using it as well?’ So we can advise them better, we can be more credible,” Bawa said. “That’s why we said we got to start with ourselves as we continue to have our clients reimagine their future.”

Deloitte’s Claude deployment, which will take place across more than 150 countries, comes as Anthropic has been working to beef up its global presence.

The startup said in September that it would triple its international workforce this year, and brought on a new executive, Chris Ciauri, to spearhead that expansion.

That same month, Anthropic announced its latest AI model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and that it closed a $13 billion funding round at a $183 billion post-money valuation. The Amazon-backed startup has had to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google for customers.

“We’re still pretty busy,” Smith said. “But it’s good busy.”

WATCH: Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its latest AI model

Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its latest AI model

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