Geopolitics

Google's Quantum AI team said earlier this week that a future quantum computer could derive a bitcoin private key from a public key in roughly nine minutes. The number ricocheted across social media and spooked markets. But, what does it actually mean in practice? Let's start with how bitcoin

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he hopes to complete an IPO in the fourth quarter of this year, but CFO Sarah Friar believes the company is not ready and expects it to be in a position by 2026. There are decision conflicts within internal management, and Altman has repeatedly excluded Friar from the process. The company plans to invest more than $600B in cloud servers, with financing mainly coming from Amazon and NVIDIA. At the same time, competition in the market is intensifying, and Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI. The company has already begun preparations for going public and has held preliminary discussions with multiple law firms and investment banks.

According to Gate News, the United States, Iran, and regional mediators are discussing a 45-day ceasefire agreement aimed at ending the war. Although the chances of reaching an agreement within 48 hours are low, this is the only opportunity to prevent the conflict from escalating. Trump has extended the original deadline from Monday to Tuesday night, saying the U.S. is engaged in in-depth negotiations with Iran.

A Haitong Securities research report says that the conflict in the Middle East has gone beyond short-term impacts, causing capital and supply disruptions. Even if the situation improves, the market’s allocation approach will be different from spring. It expects the U.S. dollar and oil prices to perform better than anticipated. It also calls for paying attention to shortages of goods and supply-chain risks, and maintaining a cautious attitude toward market volatility.

Attorney Ariel Givner said that the 280M-dollar attack incident involving the Drift Protocol, which resulted from failing to follow basic security procedures, could amount to civil negligence. The attacker, after 6 months of planning, used a trusting relationship to steal the developers’ devices; there is already a class-action lawsuit advertisement targeting Drift circulating.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps jointly launched the “True Promise-4” operation on April 5, striking multiple facilities related to Israel and the United States, including the Haifa oil refinery and natural gas and petrochemical plants in the UAE, causing the facilities to halt operations and widespread fires.

Gate News message, April 6, on-chain investigator @tayvano_ posted and disclosed that North Korean IT workers had participated in building multiple well-known crypto protocols, with projects that can be traced back to the DeFi Summer era, including SushiSwap, THORChain, Harmony, Ankr, Shib, and Yearn. @tayvano_ also added that the “7 years of blockchain development experience” marked on these North Korean IT workers’ resumes is not false.

US dollar-pegged stablecoins and Bitcoin (BTC) share a “symbiotic” relationship, mutually benefitting from rising adoption, according to Sam Lyman, head of research at Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), a Washington DC-based digital asset advocacy organization. “Bitcoin is beneficial to the US

Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer who served just weeks in September 2022, is re-emerging with a new focus on bitcoin, monetary history, and long-term economic thinking. Reflecting on the infamous mini-budget in an interview with CoinDesk, he was candid about the

A Middle East scholar, Mohammad Ali Shabani, says the U.S. may carry out its threats against Iran's infrastructure, which could escalate the situation in the region. Iran, meanwhile, has sent a defiant signal by attacking Kuwait's infrastructure, and the risk of a serious escalation within the next 24 hours is high.

News that President Trump is gravely ill and hospitalized spread online in the U.S. on April 4, and the White House communications director posted to deny it, saying that Trump works in the White House and accusing the media of inventing conspiracy theories. White House officials said that Trump has never stopped working and criticized users who spread false information.

Gate News update, April 5, according to Fox News, U.S. President Trump said that if Iran does not reach an agreement as soon as possible, he is considering taking military action to blow up everything and take over the oil resources. Trump also said he believes an agreement with Iran could be reached as early as tomorrow.

Gate News message: On April 5, OPEC+ held a committee meeting on Sunday, expressing concern about attacks on energy assets during the war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran. It said that the repair costs for the relevant facilities are high and will take a long time, which will affect overall supply capacity. The meeting statement emphasized that ensuring the safety of international sea lanes is crucial to keep energy flowing without interruption. The statement also noted that attacks on energy infrastructure are concerning and that restoring damaged energy assets back to full-load operation is both costly and time-consuming, thereby affecting overall supply capacity.

A six-month intelligence operation preceded the $270 million exploit of Drift Protocol and was carried out by a North Korean state-affiliated group, according to a detailed incident update published by the team earlier on Sunday. The attackers first made contact around fall 2025 at a major crypto c

Gate News message: On April 5, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement saying it has launched strikes on petrochemical plants in the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain, on refinery plants in Israel, and on natural gas facilities in the UAE. The statement warned that if attacks on civilian targets within Iran occur again, the intensity of the blow to the United States’ economic interests in the region will further increase.

Gate News, on April 5, the Speaker of the Iranian Islamic Consultative Assembly Kalibaf posted a photo of aircraft wreckage on social media and commented that if the United States were to achieve such a “victory” again, it would be “completely destroyed.” Kalibaf wrote: “If the United States achieves 3 more such victories, it will be completely destroyed.” Iranian student news agency and other Iranian media had previously published the same photo, saying that the wreckage shown in the picture is of a U.S. military aircraft that took part in the rescue operation. Some Iranian media said that Kalibaf’s post this time was intended to mock the “imagined victory” claimed by U.S. President Trump.

Iranian parliamentary speaker Qalibaf threatened on social media to block commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, citing the strait’s importance to global oil and food transportation. In recent years, the Strait of Hormuz has been targeted by attacks from Houthi forces supported by Iran, and in 2023, about 12% of global seaborne oil passed through this area.

The UK government is working to help AI company Anthropic expand its operations in the UK, including an expansion in London and a dual listing, with plans to raise it during the company CEO's visit. The move comes amid the backdrop that Anthropic has been placed on a U.S. government blacklist due to national security risks, and it is currently challenging that decision.