Crypto faces a “missing soul” problem, marked by misaligned priorities between people, products, and narratives that stem from a pervasive lack of genuine care. True culture, and the loyalty it fosters, emerges when projects respect shared history and build on existing legacies rather than invent new myths. Vulnerability and authenticity in human-to-human interactions infuse products with real meaning, bridging divides between diverse subcultures. Absent these deeper connections, crypto innovation remains fragmented and transactional, lacking the enduring bonds that define lasting movements.
2025.07.08·links.tldrnewsletter.com·16 min read·TLDR Crypto Visa's Q4 2024 earnings highlight that cross-border volume (13–15% YoY growth) remains a core business driver, especially outside intra-Europe. When users transact abroad, like using an Estonian-issued card in the U.S., Visa must route funds via costly correspondent banking rails, adding surcharges (e.g., 1.5%). In contrast, stablecoins are borderless by default, eliminating both the need to move money across borders and the fees associated with it. This presents a structural threat to legacy networks like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal, whose margins depend heavily on cross-border volume.
Famous rapper Drake has a lyric about Bitcoin in his new song “What Did I Miss?”
In Q2, 20 of the top 100 altcoins outperformed Bitcoin in Q2, with ETH outperforming BTC for the first time this cycle.
By connecting CoinGecko's Market Category Pages MCP to Claude, users can ask for tables comparing category tokens vs BTC over 30 days to identify strong outperformers.
South Korea is experiencing a speculative boom in stablecoins, with publicly traded companies seeing 15–30% stock price spikes after filing for stablecoin-related trademarks.
2025.07.08·links.tldrnewsletter.com·3 min read·TLDR Crypto Framer offers students free access to its website-building platform, including hosting portfolios worth $180 per year. Students receive full access to Framer's Design Canvas, CMS, unlimited use of Wireframer and Workshop AI tools, plus thousands of free templates. The program requires enrollment verification and allows students to reapply every 11 months while maintaining their student status.
A new leaked image reveals a clearer look at the iPhone 17 Pro's redesigned Apple logo, which will be centered on the glass portion of the device rather than the phone's full body. The iPhone 17 Pro is also expected to feature a two-tone design with an aluminum frame and camera bump, while retaining a glass panel for MagSafe and wireless functions, marking a subtle but notable design shift.
H&M launched AI-generated fashion models created as virtual "twins" of real human models, allowing them to maintain creative control over their digital counterparts. The clothing retailer uses these AI models to showcase products across multiple outfits, reducing the need for human models in photo shoots. H&M emphasized that the technology supports, rather than replaces, their human-centered creative approach, though fewer human models will be needed to produce the same volume of fashion imagery.
Product Design Architecture is shaped by eight core user behaviors that determine how information is accessed, with match extraction being one of the most widespread behaviors requiring filtering, comparison, and listing mechanisms. Products like Airbnb and Shazam demonstrate how understanding these behaviors helps teams design coherent systems and spot opportunities for improvement. AI will likely transform search-heavy products the most significantly, while having a minimal impact on exploration-based products, as it excels at handling specific criteria but offers less value for vague, low-effort interactions.
Apple's new "Liquid Glass" design language has sparked confusion and criticism, with many finding it visually inconsistent, functionally unclear, and overly prescriptive, prioritizing aesthetic gimmicks like translucency and rounded elements over usability and clarity. Apple's increasingly homogenized and restrictive design system sacrifices individuality, legibility, and developer freedom in favor of a bland, corporate uniformity that diminishes both app identity and user experience.
Randy Hunt, head of design at Notion, emphasizes the importance of culture, communication, and curiosity in both design leadership and team dynamics, highlighting how rituals like biweekly "Design Lightning" sessions foster collaboration among highly capable, entrepreneurial designers. He sees AI not as a threat but a design opportunity, stressing thoughtful, user-centered integration over trend-chasing, and advocates for preparing future designers with flexibility, entrepreneurial spirit, and a deep understanding of craft, business, and marketing.
Bring your ideas to life with AppStruct's powerful no-code platform. Design, build, and deploy professional applications for any device or platform.
Napkin turns your text into visuals, making it quick and effective to share your ideas.
Draw frame-by-frame animations and create GIFs directly in your browser. A simple, fun, and powerful animation tool featuring onion skinning, timeline controls, and instant GIF export.
A product designer's LLM-assisted workflow has evolved since December 2024, with the role shifting toward code reviews and tool orchestration rather than traditional design work. The current toolkit includes Subframe, UX Pilot, Figma with Dev Mode MCP server, Cursor for development, and Claude/Gemini for architecture and debugging. The key breakthrough was providing rich context to tools like Cursor, transforming prototyping from weeks-long design cycles into hours-long code iterations that put users directly into real experiences.
America250 is a nonpartisan initiative organizing the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, aiming to create the most inclusive commemoration in U.S. history. Its visual identity features a flowing red, white, and blue ribbon forming the number 250, symbolizing unity and celebration, and is supported by the “America's Invitation” campaign, inviting citizens to share personal expressions of what America means to them.
Tripadvisor's rebrand, led by creative studio Koto, centers on authenticity and community, emphasizing real stories, photos, and voices from travelers to reflect its evolution from a review site to a full-scale travel platform. With a refreshed visual identity—including a dynamic owl mascot, warmer color palette, and user-generated imagery—the brand leans into its human roots, rejecting generic design trends in favor of a more personal, relatable, and experience-driven approach.
Google Arts & Culture Lab launched Moving Archives, partnering with the Harley-Davidson Museum to animate still archival photographs using Veo AI technology.
Comic artist Lee Carter, who has contributed to 2000 AD for 18 years and recently worked on Jupiter's Legacy, operates from a cluttered home studio filled with action figures, art supplies, and personal mementos.
A politically motivated hacker recently breached Columbia University's systems, locking students out of their coursework, email accounts, and video conferencing services. The hacker also stole around 460GB of data, some of which they provided to Bloomberg to showcase that the university employed discriminatory admissions practices. The data includes the Social Security Numbers of students, faculty, staff, applicants, and their families, as well as university ID numbers, citizenship status, admissions decisions, and the program to which they applied.
Thousands of vulnerabilities were discovered in the Schengen Information System II (SIS II), which is used by EU border agencies to track illegal migrants and suspected criminals. An audit by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) found that the system contained an excessive amount of accounts with administrative privileges, was vulnerable to hacker overload and unauthorized access, and that 69 external employees had access without proper clearance. The EDPS found no evidence of a breach but warned that a breach could be catastrophic.
The HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) was recently alerted that Medicare.gov accounts had been created for 103K individuals without their knowledge. The investigation determined that the accounts were created using information gathered from external sources. The unknown threat actor could use their access to view the user's Medicare beneficiary ID, coverage start date, birth date, and zip code.
DeepSpecter exposed a five-year data breach involving Uffizio's GPS fleet management platform, leaking sensitive data from police, ambulances, and critical infrastructure across 12 countries. Despite claims of GDPR compliance and CVE disclosure, the exposure persisted through global resellers, underscoring that regulatory compliance alone does not provide adequate security protection.
AWS IAM Roles Anywhere is a method for authenticating to AWS using certificates signed by a configured trust anchor. By default, the Roles Anywhere policy does not include any conditions, and any role attached to it could be assumed by any request signed by any trust anchor in that region. Unit 42 recommends specifying an ARN using conditions in the default policy, utilizing ACM-PCA for the trust anchor, and adhering to the principle of least privilege.
2025.07.08·unit42.paloaltonetworks.com·12 min read·TLDR InfoSec Attackers exploit AWS EventBridge's cross-account features using six MITRE ATT&CK attack patterns: establishing persistent backdoors via check-in events, creating bidirectional command and control channels, conducting reconnaissance by capturing all events, exfiltrating data in small chunks disguised as telemetry, lateral movement exploiting trust relationships, and exploiting vulnerable Lambda functions for unintended AWS API calls. These bypass traditional controls and evade detection because EventBridge PutEvents API calls aren't logged in CloudTrail. Defenses include Service Control Policies, specific event patterns, input validation, and monitoring CloudWatch for unusual activities.
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Cloud data protection is messier than ever, and most DSPM tools are just throwing more alerts without giving you an actionable way to address risks. Learn how Fortra [11] can protect your organization's sensitive data thanks to its unique architecture, which combines data protection (DLP, network access) with discovery and classification.
RepoAudit is a repo-level bug detector for general bugs. Currently, it supports the detection of diverse bug types (such as Null Pointer Dereference, Memory Leak, and Use After Free) in multiple programming languages (including C/C++, Java, Python, and Go).
An IDA plugin that helps decompile Objective-C code by removing superfluous runtime calls related to ARC.
Caracal is a Rust-based implementation of eBPF techniques. It can hide target BPF programs and maps, making them invisible to tools like bpftop and bpftool. Additionally, it can conceal processes, rendering them undetectable by commands such as ps, top, and ls /proc, and is resistant to certain brute-force methods for uncovering them.
DragonForce and RansomHub, two major ransomware groups behind attacks on UK retailers like M&S and Harrods, are engaged in a turf war that could increase cyber risks for companies. The conflict began after DragonForce rebranded as a "cartel" and attacked RansomHub's site, potentially leading to double extortion of victims.
Identity-based cyberattacks increased 156% due to advanced phishing kits such as Tycoon 2FA and info-stealing malware. Phishing-as-a-service platforms, which cost $200-$300 monthly, make sophisticated attacks accessible, now comprising 59% of security investigations, often resulting in business email compromise (BEC) and ransomware.
Brazilian police have arrested João Roque, an employee of C&M, for allegedly selling his credentials to hackers. This breach facilitated a cyberattack that diverted $100 million from Brazil's PIX payment system and impacted several financial institutions with fake transactions in a single night. Authorities have since frozen $50 million in assets and are pursuing four more suspects.
The makers of Call of Duty: World War 2 took the PC game offline after reports of hackers taking over players' computers during matches.
AT&T has agreed to pay $177 million to settle lawsuits related to two major data breaches in 2019 and 2024, which exposed the personal and call data of millions of current and former customers.
Qantas suffered a cyberattack that exposed the data of 6 million customers, with police investigating and the attackers seeking extortion.
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A new report by Bloomreach [4] explores how conversational AI is teaching people to shop like humans again — and what that means for your brand.
Google does not penalize or reward AI-generated content based on its presence alone. An analysis of 600K pages showed that 86.5% of top-ranking pages contained some level of AI assistance, while only 13.5% were purely human-written. The correlation between AI usage and search rank was 0.011, indicating no meaningful relationship. However, pages that rank in the #1 position tended to use less AI, suggesting a slight preference for lightly AI-assisted or more human-created content.
Gen Z favors authenticity, speed, and cultural alignment over polished campaigns and linear journeys. Nearly half of them say they would prefer life without the internet. This reflects their desire for transparency and meaningful connection in a saturated digital world. They rely on social platforms and creators for product discovery, often skipping traditional search engines in favor of TikTok or generative AI tools. The funnel is not broken, but fragmented and looped, requiring brands to engage with fast and participatory content across multiple touchpoints.
AI prompts should include clear context, structure, and intent. Assign expert roles and outline specific processes to guide results. Use iterative feedback loops to refine ideas through ongoing reviews. Encourage pattern-breaking by prompting for unusual, risky, or unconventional ideas to inspire fresh thinking. Incorporate strong, opinionated personas to challenge assumptions and offer contrasting perspectives.
Acquiring a new customer costs 5X more than retaining one. Improving retention by 5% can boost profits by up to 95%. Netflix's win-back email failed because it gave generic reasons to return and did not address the specific reason the customer canceled. Athletic Greens succeeded by responding directly to a cancellation reason with a helpful solution, showing the power of segmentation. Companies should act quickly, build objection-specific funnels, and offer solutions that directly address customer concerns to improve retention.
This tool analyzes how well your webpage performs for AI-driven search queries. By entering a target keyword and URL, it generates related search variations, breaks your page into sections, and uses semantic analysis to match content with search intent. It reveals keyword opportunities, shows which parts of your page best match queries, highlights content gaps, and compares your page against top competitors. This helps you improve AI search visibility and better structure content for SEO.
77% of TikTok users are more likely to search global music artists than the average listener. Use TikTok's Creative Center to monitor trending sounds by region, TokChart to track audio performance over time, and CapCut templates that pair emerging audio with ready-made video formats.
The future of travel loyalty is shifting from points to emotional connections. Travelers now value recognition, exclusive access, and personalized experiences. Gen Z and Millennials want programs that feel modern and relevant. Airlines, cruises, and hotels are using AI and data to offer tailored perks and memorable moments. Loyalty programs now focus on driving direct bookings and creating loyal customers through emotionally engaging travel experiences.
B2B marketers continue to rely on outdated funnel models even as automation and attribution tools become more advanced. Agentic Marketing replaces these legacy systems with intelligent agents that engage leads instantly across chat, email, and web without delays or manual routing. Demandbase and Crunchbase have used this approach to double the volume of meetings booked, triple AI-driven conversations, and increase pipeline while reducing dependency on SDR headcount.
Tactics include guest posting on Hackernoon, sponsoring hackathons, and responding to relevant topics on Reddit/Quora.
Billboard ads still work today because of ‘costly signaling', where the high cost signals higher value to people.
This week's Prime Day sales is projected to be equivalent to two Black Fridays.
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Every exec is asking for an AI strategy. But as a PM, how do you bridge the gap between a cool demo and a product that ships?