In a 2021 interview with Fox Business, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump blasted Bitcoin, calling it a "scam" that should be regulated "very, very high."

"The currency of this world should be the dollar," he said at the time. "And I don't think we should have all of the Bitcoins of the world out there."

But given his lackadaisical commitment to virtually any belief, it shouldn't come as a shock that Trump has since completely flip-flopped on the topic, even issuing a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in 2022 in a brazen attempt to cash in on a largely unregulated market.

And now, in his bid to be reelected as the president of the United States, Trump is attempting to woo crypto voters — even appearing at this weekend's Bitcoin Conference in Nashville.

"I will appoint an SEC chair who will build the future, not block the future," he told audiences, in a total reversal of his prior position.

But if anybody was expecting him to make a meaningful statement about the future of crypto regulation in the US, they'd be sorely disappointed.

Instead, Trump made a characteristically rambling speech at the conference, leading to raised eyebrows and plenty of boredom.

"Most people have no idea what the hell it is," he said. "So what happens when everyone figures it out? That’ll be something."

The price of Bitcoin actually fell following Trump's remarks, indicating a muted response.

Even crypto enthusiasts who were willing to give Trump a pass for his regressive beliefs, criminal record, and keen interest in ending democracy in the US weren't impressed.

"I was excited to hear what Trump had to say about #bitcoin then I [fell] asleep listening to him ramble and pander to the crowd," attendee Mike Doan wrote in a social media post, as spotted by Raw Story. "I have to remind myself, vote for the platform, not the personality."

Other attendees took a less nihilistic approach.

"I don’t think Trump’s speech will gain him a lot of new voters among Bitcoiners," crypto investor Marc van der Chijs tweeted. "The other way around, many will now see him for what he really is."

"It was my first time watching him speak live," he added. "He sounds like a low IQ conman to me, I wouldn’t believe anything he tells me."

"It was painful to watch, hurting the reputation of the #Web3 community," crypto exec Kai Meinke tweeted. "Having a racist criminal on stage, a notorious liar who just stated 'you don't need to vote anymore after my term' and was babbling a lot narcissistic nonsense between punchlines and empty promises."

During his speech, Trump promised to establish a national "stockpile" of Bitcoin to serve as a "permanent national asset." Exactly how he was planning to do this remains unclear.

Organizers claimed that vice president Kamala Harris declined an invitation to appear at the conference. However, as the Financial Times reports, Harris is looking for a "reset" with crypto companies, suggesting an ongoing dialogue.

In short, Trump isn't exactly the poster child the crypto community was hoping for. But given the upcoming election, there's a lot on the line as far as crypto regulation is concerned. And given Trump's role as a sock puppet that's only swayed by the promise of making money, he may just give them a chance to further their interests as president.

More on Trump and crypto: Trump Has Completely Flip Flopped on Crypto

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Crypto Fans Disgusted by Trump's Rambling Appearance at Bitcoin Event

Locked Away

Claire "Grimes" Boucher and multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk's relationship has soured significantly, with the former couple now embroiled in a custody battle over the three children they've had together.

Now Musk, who has extended the fight into an extended legal dispute in California and Texas courts, is allegedly holding the children hostage, preventing them from going on a family trip with Boucher's extended family.

In a series of tweets, Boucher's mother Sandy Garossino accused Musk of "withholding" the children

Like broken-down Tesla owners, Garossino had to resort to tagging Musk on Twitter-formerly-X to get his attention, indicating just how far the family ties have deteriorated.

"I’m writing here as the only way I have to reach you," she wrote. "As you know, my 93-year-old mother is now at end-of-life palliative care."

"I am alarmed to learn that the children cannot come as you are withholding them and their needed passport documents from Claire," Garossino added.

Expected in Canada

The tweets paint an alarming picture of how alienated Musk has become from his family. The news comes shortly after his estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson was interviewed by NBC News, revealing that Musk had treated her with unbelievable cruelty, deadnaming her and accusing her of having been killed by the so-called "woke mind virus," a bizarre delusion Musk uses to characterize so-called "woke culture."

"I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged," Wilson told NBC. "Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide."

Boucher later rallied behind Wilson, tweeting that "I love and am forever endlessly proud of Vivian."

Considering Garossino's latest comments, Musk's family troubles go far beyond his anti-trans bigotry and disdain for Wilson.

Garossino noted that she had seen Musk appear "on television at the Olympics in Paris yesterday" with X, his son.

"Where are the other children, and with whom?" she pleaded. "They are scheduled to be with their mother. They were expected here in Canada."

"I write with a grandmother’s plea, asking you to honor your agreement, return the children, and provide the documents they need to see their great-grandmother before she passes," Garossino wrote.

It's a heartbreaking revelation, suggesting Musk is actively keeping his children from spending time with their mother and her family.

"Some moments in life last forever, and we get no second chances," Garossino wrote. "Family is priceless."

More on Grimes: Grimes Comes Out in Support of Elon Musk's Daughter He Publicly Attacked

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Elon Musk Accused of Withholding His Own Children From Visiting Grimes' Dying Grandmother After She Supported His Trans Daughter

Earlier this month, a 360-foot blade of a wind turbine off the shore of Nantucket shattered.

The bizarre event, which experts believe was caused by a thunderstorm, led to nearby beaches being flooded with massive pieces of sharp fiberglass, leading to outrage among local residents.

Fishermen were furious, accusing the company behind the wind farm Vineyard Wind of turning a blind eye.

And then, of course, pundits who oppose green energy started using the incident to decry renewable power.

But while the turbine's operator Vineyard Wind should be held accountable, the fallout absolutely pales in comparison to environmental tragedies caused by the fossil fuel industry — like an oil spill, which is vastly more damaging event.

You might recall one example, when the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in April 2010, causing millions of oil to flood the Gulf of Mexico and cause an incomprehensible amount of damage to the local environment, with officials suggesting that more than 25,000 marine mammals were harmed.

In short, while a federal investigation into Vineyard Wind incident is gaining steam, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the risks for renewable energy are dwarfed by the ecological destruction caused by activities like oil drilling, fracking and mountaintop removal.

There are over 150 oil and chemical spills in US waters every year, according to the Office of Response and Restoration. While modern wind turbines have been known to catch fire or leak lubricating fluids, government data shows that those incidents are rare. Oil spills, on the other hand, are notoriously difficult to contain, measure, and even detect. In comparison, floating chunks of fiberglass are less harmful and far easier to identify and dispose of.

That's not to say green energy providers are off the hook for safety. Vineyard Wind has since shut down operations, but several other wind farm projects are still active in the area, as the Vineyard Gazette reports.

Local Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) tribal council chair Cheryl Andrews-Maltais called for the government to slow down and tread more carefully.

"They should be shutting down every single offshore wind project until they know what is going on," she told the newspaper. "We warned them of these potential catastrophic failures."

The Gazette reported last week that the splintered wind turbine was caused by a defect that manufacturer GE Vernova failed to spot.

On a larger scale, the state of Massachusetts is looking to make headway in the renewable energy sector by taking on several new bids for energy contracts.

"The offshore wind industry is a critical component of Massachusetts’ economy and the country’s transition to clean, affordable energy," governor Maura Healey told the Gazette in a statement. "It is essential that we gain a full understanding of what happened here and how it can be prevented in the future."

More on the incident: Beaches Covered in Shards and Debris as Giant Wind Turbine Shatters

The post If You're Upset About That Broken Wind Turbine, Remember the Time BP Spilled 210 Million Gallons of Oil Into the Gulf of Mexico? appeared first on Futurism.

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If You're Upset About That Broken Wind Turbine, Remember the Time BP Spilled 210 Million Gallons of Oil Into the Gulf of Mexico?

Sotto Voce

A scammer attempting to trick Ferrari executives was thwarted by a stalwart safety measure: common sense.

As Bloomberg reports, the scammer in question earlier this month reached out to a Ferrari executive via WhatsApp. From an account with the name and profile of Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna — though not from the real CEO's usual number, of course — they attempted to convince the C-Suiter that a major acquisition was soon to be underway.

"Hey, did you hear about the big acquisition we're planning? I could need your help," the Vigna impersonator wrote, adding that they should be ready to sign a non-disclosure agreement ahead of the big deal.

"Italy's market regulator and Milan stock exchange have been already informed," the scammer continued. "Stay ready and please utmost discretion."

That's when things got even shadier, according to Bloomberg. The unnamed executive then jumped on the phone with the phony Vigna, who used a deepfaked voice to "speak" in a live conversation with the targeted scam-ee. In Vigna's voice, the scammer fibbed that the CEO was using a super-secret number to conduct super-secret business, hence the strange messages from the new number. But still not quite convinced, the executive asked the scammer a question that only the real Vigna would know: what book did the exec just lend to his high-powered boss?

And with that, the scammer hung up the phone. The enduring security question tactic stands strong!

Scamly Reunion

AI-powered deepfakes of human voices and even faces are getting increasingly convincing, meaning that it's getting increasingly difficult to rely on simply trying to dissect whether someone looks or sounds real. So, with deepfaked-abetted scam sprees on the rise, the Ferrari executive's time-tested strategy is a great example of a way to defend yourself — yes, this stuff can happen to anyone, not just executives of billion-dollar Italian companies — against a similar scam.

In the same vein, security experts have encouraged families to come up with secret "code words" to use with each other in the case that, say, a scammer impersonates a family member in a ploy to abscond with some cash.

While the attempted Ferrari scammer was foiled, other corporate executives should remain vigilant. Earlier this year, a CEO was fooled into handing over tens of millions of dollars to deepfake-assisted scammers. And in an incredible twist of irony, the security firm Know Be4 recently revealed that it was tricked into hiring a North Korean hacker as a remote worker, who used an AI-generated headshot to conceal their identity.

In other words, scammers stay scamming, and they're using AI to do it. Stay safe out there, kids!

More on AI scams: Security Firm Alarmed to Discover Their Remote Employee Is a North Korean Hacker

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Ferrari Exec Suspects Call From CEO Is Deepfaked, Asks Question Only He Would Know the Answer To

Hack Job

Over the weekend, Elon Musk posted an AI-doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris on X-formerly-Twitter — and thus far, he hasn't apologized for it.

In the video, which Musk posted on July 26 and has since been viewed hundreds of millions of times, the presidential candidate's voice was altered to make it sound like she was bragging about being "the ultimate diversity hire."

"I'm both a woman and a person of color," the fake-Harris in the altered video says, "so if you criticize anything I say, you're both sexist and racist."

"This is amazing," the billionaire Donald Trump booster boasted of the video, originally posted by an account that calls itself @MrReaganUSA.

In that initial post, the user admitted that the video was a parody. When Musk posted it as his own, he made no such acknowledgment, seemingly violating X's own rules barring users from sharing "synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm."

Other Foot

At press time, the video has been up for nearly three days, and although Musk spent the weekend posting his usual drivel — including misinformation suggesting Democrats are "importing" undocumented people to vote illegally and that the party controls Google — he hasn't said a word online or in response to press requests, including from Futurism, about the AI-manipulated video he shared.

Though Musk himself has stayed mum on the subject, the Harris campaign hasn't.

"We believe the American people want the real freedom, opportunity, and security Vice President Harris is offering," declares a statement from the campaign to CNN, "not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump."

Electioneering aside, it's not at all hard to imagine that if a Democratic donor shared a doctored video of Trump without disclosure or apology, Musk and his fellow travelers would be up in arms about it — but then again, that crowd isn't exactly known for not being hypocrites.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Accused of Withholding His Own Children From Visiting Grimes' Dying Grandmother After She Supported His Trans Daughter

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Elon Musk Won’t Apologize After Sharing Faked AI Video of Kamala Harris

Ready Or Not

SpaceX is slated to launch a billionaire benefactor into orbit for the world's first private spacewalk in the next few weeks — that is, if the mission doesn't get postponed yet again.

As Space.com reports, the Elon Musk-owned company admitted in a press briefing over the weekend that its Polaris Dawn mission will now launch no earlier than August 19 following reschedulings that pushed it back to July 31.

The mission, which will take fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman aboard a Falcon 9 rocket to become the first space tourist to ever attempt a spacewalk, was postponed in the wake of another of the company's rockets exploding earlier in July — though the official reasoning behind the slip seems to be traffic-related.

"There's a lot going on on [the International Space Station] right now," explained Sarah Walker, the director of SpaceX's Dragon mission management, during the presser. "We opted to fly the Crew-9 mission as our next [astronaut] mission and are ready to fly Polaris Dawn in late summer, as soon as we fulfill those obligations."

She later clarified that "late summer" meant at some point in August, Space.com notes.

Flying Solo-ish

This will be neither the first time Isaacman has flown up on a SpaceX rocket — he previously took an incredibly expensive orbital vacation in 2021 — nor the first time this specific mission has slipped launch dates.

As Space.com explains, Polaris Dawn was originally slated for late 2022, but it's been pushed back repeatedly. Given the official cause of the slip, it's unclear whether this most recent postponement is due to the Falcon 9 explosion or not.

When the Polaris Dawn mission — which is supposed to be the first of three additional trips after his first one — is finally launched, it won't link up with the ISS but will instead see Isaacman and his comrades fly farther into Earth's orbit than any other Dragon mission to date.

Postponements aside, it's nevertheless going to be incredible to watch Isaacman and the crew flying up with him to ghostride the whip — as he becomes the first space tourist ever to do so.

Updated to better describe the Falcon 9 failure.

More on space tourism: Billionaire Promised Crew Free Flights Around Moon, Then Dashed Their Dreams

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SpaceX Preparing to Launch Billionaire Adventurer for First Ever Private Spacewalk