A federal judge on Friday declared a mistrial in the case of two Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated brothers charged with carrying out a novel scheme to steal $25 million worth of cryptocurrency in 12 seconds that prosecutors said exploited the Ethereum blockchain’s integrity.

U.S. District Judge Jessica Clarke in Manhattan sent jurors home after they were unable to reach agreement on whether to convict or acquit Anton Peraire-Bueno and James Peraire-Bueno of charges that they carried out a first-of-its-kind wire fraud and money laundering scheme.

The mistrial was confirmed by William Fick, a lawyer for Anton Peraire-Bueno at Fick & Marx. A spokesperson for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton did not respond to a request for comment.

Both brothers attended Cambridge, Massachusetts-based MIT, where prosecutors say they studied computer science and developed the skills they relied on for their trading strategy.

They were indicted in May 2024, before U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration came into office, ushering in a new, crypto-friendly approach to enforcement. Despite the shift in priorities, the case against the brothers proceeded to trial.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Nees in his opening statement on October 15 accused the brothers of carrying out a “high-speed bait-and-switch” designed to lure trading bots into a trap and drain the accounts of other cryptocurrency traders.

Prosecutors said that for months, the Peraire-Bueno brothers plotted to manipulate and tamper with the protocols used to validate transactions for inclusion on the Ethereum blockchain, a public ledger that records each cryptocurrency transaction.

They did so by exploiting a vulnerability in the code of software called MEV-boost that is used by most Ethereum network “validators,” who are responsible for checking that new transactions are valid before they are added to the blockchain, prosecutors said.

“Then they planted a trade that looked like one thing from the outside, but was secretly something else,” Nees told jurors in his opening statement. “Then, just as the defendants planned, the victims took the bait.”

Katherine Trefz, a lawyer for James Peraire-Bueno at Williams & Connolly, countered that the trading strategy they executed was not just novel but legitimate and “consistent with the principles at play in this very competitive trading environment.”

India’s Ambassador to the U.S. Vinay Mohan Kwatra discussed with Intel’s CEO Lip Bu Tan the company’s semiconductor and AI initiatives and plans in India.

The virtual interaction on Saturday (November 8, 2025) came as New Delhi accelerates efforts to strengthen its semiconductor and AI industries under the India Semiconductor Mission and IndiaAI initiative.

“Had the pleasure to interact with Mr. Lip Bu Tan, CEO of INTEL to discuss INTEL’s initiatives and plans for India operations in coordination with the Government’s goal to develop semiconductor and AI industry in India under the aegis of India Semiconductor Mission and India AI,” Kwatra said in an X post.

The interaction comes as India prepares to host a crucial AI summit in February next year.

The India-AI Impact Summit 2026 will be held February 19-20 in New Delhi, the first global-scale AI summit hosted in the Global South.

WhatsApp on Thursday (October 30, 2025) announced it will introduce a new method for users to access their encrypted chat backups with passkey support. The passkey will allow users to encrypt their chat backups using their fingerprint, face or screen lock code instead of them having to remember a password or a 64-digit encryption key. 

The platform had initially rolled out the option for users to encrypt their chat backups to the cloud in 2021. Users can enable the encrypted passkeys under Settings tab. They will have to turn up the ‘End-to-end encrypted backup’ option in the ‘Chats’ option, which is under ‘Chat backup’. 

This update will be rolled out gradually for all users in the coming weeks. 

In April, WhatsApp introduced a new advanced privacy feature for users in both individual and group chats that lets only the sender and the recipient see the texts.

Samsung Wallet will start supporting small-ticket UPI-linked transactions by using the biometrics of users registered on their devices, and thereby eliminating the need to use a PIN for every transaction, a senior company official said.

Madhur Chaturvedi, Senior Director, Services & Apps Business, Samsung India, said the facility will be rolled out from December.

“Samsung Wallet’s authentication experience has been enhanced with the introduction of biometric verification, device fingerprint and facial recognition, eliminating the need for PIN entry for everyday use. Users will be able to access the app and make UPI payments using just their Galaxy device’s fingerprint or face recognition,” Mr. Chaturvedi said.

At present, UPI Lite users can pay without using a PIN for small transactions.

Mr. Chaturvedi said the new Samsung smartphones, to be sold from early next year onward, will come with a UPI account onboarding feature that will enable users to add their UPI account at the time of setting up their new device.

He said Samsung Wallet will soon start supporting direct online usage of stored credit and debit cards across a wide set of key merchants without the need to manually key in card details.

Apple shares rose about 2% premarket on Friday after upbeat forecasts for the lucrative holiday quarter suggested the latest iPhone 17 models were driving a sales rebound despite delays in shipping to key market China.

While the supply constraints weighed on sales in the fourth quarter, investors remained optimistic as the September launch of the new iPhone lineup helped Apple shares cross above $4 trillion in market capitalisation earlier this week, joining Nvidia and Microsoft.

The outlook has also helped allay concerns around Apple going slow on the integration of some long-awaited artificial intelligence features even as other tech majors race ahead.

“I just know that owning this stock for many decades … When you’re really big like Apple, you don’t have to move fast, sometimes you just have to get it right eventually,” said Eric Clark, chief investment officer at Accuvest.

Amazon and Apple shares are still the worst performers for the year so far among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group of magacaps, though the e-commerce giant’s stock soared before the bell on Friday on stellar cloud growth in the quarter.

Apple’s stock trades at 33.4 times analysts’ profit expectations, representing a premium to Microsoft’s 31.7 and Meta Platform’s 22.3, according to LSEG data.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Friday he hoped the company’s state-of-the-art Blackwell chips can be sold in China, although the decision needed to be made by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Speaking during his first official visit to South Korea in more than a decade, a day after Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held talks there, Huang said he was delighted by the success of the meeting between the two presidents, but was not aware of what they spoke about.

After the talks on Thursday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that semiconductors had been discussed and China was “going to be talking to Nvidia and others about taking chips”.

But Trump added: “We’re not talking about the Blackwell.”

“We’re always hoping to return to China, and I think that Nvidia in China is very good. It’s in the best interest of United States. It’s in the best interest of China,” Huang said.

“So I’m hopeful that both governments will arrive at a conclusion someday where Nvidia’s technology could be exported to China.”

The extent of China’s access to Nvidia’s chips has been a key point of friction with the United States as the two wrestle for dominance in high-end computing power and artificial intelligence.

Washington has put export controls on sales of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China, seeking to limit its tech progress, particularly in applications that could help its military.

Huang has tried to persuade the Trump administration to loosen the controls, saying Chinese AI’s dependence on U.S. hardware was good for America.

Nvidia has been working on a new chip for China based on its latest Blackwell architecture that will be less capable than the model sold outside the country but more powerful than the most advanced model it is currently allowed to sell there, the H20, sources have previously said.

But while private Chinese companies are believed to be very interested in purchasing such a chip, the Chinese government has turned cool towards Nvidia, discouraging purchases of the H20, and is instead promoting domestic chip manufacturers such as Huawei.

Huang told reporters that Nvidia had been hoping for “non-zero market share” in China, but was now expecting zero.

U.S. national security concerns that the Chinese military could use U.S. technology did not make sense, he added, because China’s own domestically produced AI chips were good enough for their military applications.

He also said it would be “foolish” to underestimate the incredible competitive spirit of Huawei, which last month unveiled its plans to compete against Nvidia in AI chips.

“It’s deeply uninformed to think that Huawei can’t build systems,” he said. “It is foolish to underestimate the might of China and the incredible competitive spirit of Huawei. This is a company with extraordinary technology.”