The Block launches standalone AI website The Latent

Episode 38 of The Starting Block, hosted by The Block's Gareth Jenkinson, was broadcasted live with The Block's Publisher, Adam James, and Bitwise's Head of Research Europe, André Dragosch.

Key topics
• The Block launches The Latent, a standalone AI news and data website.
• The Latent uses Pangram scores to show readers how much of each article is AI-written.
• The Latent Score benchmarks AI models by performance and cost-per-task.
• Bitcoin ETFs recorded $999 million in single-day inflows, an 11-month record.
• André Dragosch declares the bear market over, targets $100K–$150K for Bitcoin.

Summary

The Block's Publisher Adam James joined Gareth Jenkinson on The Starting Block to announce the launch of The Latent, a spin off of The Block that covers AI news and will have benchmarking and dashboard similar to what The Block does for crypto. Larry Cermak, president of The Block, and Adam James came up with the idea that there needed to be a better source of information when it comes to AI. The Latent has now gone live on thelatent.co with its own newsletter and social media pages. They hope to provide the same quality news as The Block provides for Crypto.

One feature of the latent is it will use pangram on all articles to give it an AI score. So you will know how much of that article was created by AI. James said its something they believe in as journalists and can benefit them as well because Google search is pushing articles created by AI lower in search results. They will have some articles that are created with AI assistance but will disclose that to the reader. All articles will be at least some what written by humans.

They also will be doing benchmarking with their Latent score. It will show you what model is ranked #1-#21 and what cost per task each model offers. Not only what model is best but how much it costs. They will also have dashboards that resemble The Blocks dashboards. These will cover things like how many US businesses are using AI. All free to the public.

During the Block Briefing, Gareth went over the latest headlines in the last 24 hours in the crypto space, starting with US spot Bitcoin ETFs seeing $999M flow in yesterday. That is the most in 11 months with iBit leading the way with $381M. Ether ETFs had $275M flow in which is the highest since October. Also in the briefing Binance bought $100M worth of Circle and agreed to a commercial partnership for 5 years to help push USDC. Strategy bought 950 more Bitcoin at $76M and now owns 846,000 BTC. Coinbase will allow US customers to buy IPO shares starting with Aura. And Fairshake is dropping $30M into an Ohio race to take down Sherrod Brown due to the Senate not passing the clarity act.

Bitwise's Head of Research Europe, André Dragosch, joined Gareth for the Market Pulse to go over why he believes we are firmly out of a bear market and witnessing a "crypto spring."

Outline

00:07 - Introduction
01:19 - The Block Briefing
04:47 - Market Pulse: Bitcoin Above $85K
12:27 - Hot Seat: The Latent Launch
18:36 - AI Transparency
21:23 - AI Model Benchmarks
24:56 - Data Dashboards & Wrap-Up

About the guest
Adam James is the Publisher at The Block, the leading global information services brand covering cryptocurrency and blockchain, where he previously served as editor-in-chief and managing editor for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before joining The Block, he was a managing editor and podcast host at OKX Insights, the research arm of crypto exchange OKX, and also served as editor-in-chief at Bitcoinist.com.

Guest links:
Adam James - https://x.com/XBT002
The Block - https://x.com/theblockco
André Dragosch - https://x.com/Andre_Dragosch

Host links:
Gareth Jenkinson - https://x.com/gazza_jenks
The Block - https://x.com/TheBlockCo