Meta and YouTube aren’t the only platforms looking to benefit from TikTok potentially disappearing — Substack wants in on the action, too.

The company announced Thursday it’s launching a $20 million “creator accelerator fund,” promising content creators they won’t lose revenue by jumping ship to Substack. Creators in the program also get “strategic and business support” from Substack, and early access to new features.

“We established this fund because we’ve seen creators who specialize in video, audio, and text expand their audience, revenue, and influence on Substack, where the platform’s network effects amplify the quality and impact of the work they’re doing,” the company said in a blog post.

This pivot on Substack’s part has been in the works for a while — for months, the company has been marketing itself not as a newsletter delivery service but as a creator platform similar to Patreon.

“On Substack, [creators] can build their own home on the internet: one where creators, not platform executives or advertisers, own their work and their audience,” the blog post reads. The post also cites “bans, backlash, and policies that change with the political winds” as a reason creators can’t depend on traditional social media services.

That’s all fine (we at The Verge have been saying this for a while). But creators focusing on Substack are also subject to ebbs and flows depending on what the company is prioritizing: first, it was newsletters, then it was tweet-like micro blogs, followed by full-on websites and livestreaming. For some, Substack’s initial stated mission of giving more freedom to independent writers is fading. And TikTok creators looking to move to Substack will need to rebuild their following all over again — you obviously can’t export your TikTok followers.

The $20 million fund isn’t the first time Substack has offered a pool of money meant to entice creators. Under a program called Substack Pro, the company poached top media talent from traditional newsrooms with higher pay, health insurance, and other perks. That program ended in 2022, with Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie saying the deals weren’t employment arrangements but “seed funding deals to remove the financial risk for a writer in starting their own business.” In other words, welcome to Substack. Now that you’re here, you’re on your own — which is more or less the deal other platforms offer.

In an announcement perhaps timed to divert attention away from OpenAI’s Operator, Anthropic Thursday unveiled a new feature for its developer API called Citations, which lets devs “ground” answers from its Claude family of AI in source documents such as emails.

Anthropic says Citations allows its AI models to provide detailed references to “the exact sentences and passages” from docs they use to generate responses. As of Thursday afternoon, Citations is available in both Anthropic’s API and Google’s Vertex AI platform.

As Anthropic explains in a blog post with Citations, devs can add source files to have models automatically cite claims that they inferred from those files. Citations is particularly useful in document summarization, Q&A, and customer support applications, Anthropic says, where the feature can nudge models to insert source citations.

Citations isn’t available for all of Anthropic’s models — only Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Haiku. Also, the feature isn’t free. Anthropic notes that Citations may incur charges depending on the length and number of the source documents.

Based on Anthropic’s standard API pricing, which Citations uses, a roughly-100-page source doc would cost around $0.30 with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, or $0.08 with Claude 3.5 Haiku. That may well be worth it for devs looking to cut down on hallucinations and other AI-induced errors.

In a landmark move for the crypto industry, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to establish a dedicated working group focused on digital assets.

Trump has signed an Executive Order establishing the Presidential Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, a new initiative aimed at bolstering U.S. leadership in digital finance, according to Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett.

The Working Group will develop a Federal regulatory framework for digital assets, including stablecoins, while evaluating the feasibility of a national digital assets stockpile. 

Chaired by the White House AI & Crypto Czar, David Sacks, the group will include key officials such as the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, alongside other agency heads.

The Executive Order mandates collaboration with industry experts to ensure that cutting-edge insights beyond the Federal Government inform policies.

It also directs agencies to review and recommend changes to existing regulations that impact the digital asset sector. The order prohibits any Federal action to create or promote central bank digital currencies.

SEC crypto task force

In tandem with the executive order, the U.S. SEC announced the formation of a cryptocurrency task force. 

This group is charged with creating a regulatory framework that provides legal clarity for crypto assets, addressing longstanding industry concerns about ambiguous regulations.

The executive order also repeals the Biden Administration’s Digital Assets Executive Order and the Treasury Department’s international framework, citing concerns over their restrictive impact on innovation and U.S. economic competitiveness in global digital finance, according to Terrett.

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The Sackler family and the opioid maker they founded, Purdue Pharma, have together agreed to pay $7.4bn to settle liabilities over their roles in the opioid crisis, ending months of negotiations after a previous deal fell apart.

This latest agreement, which still needs bankruptcy court approval, is $1.4bn greater than the previous deal struck between the parties. The new settlement was agreed between more than a dozen US states and other individuals who had filed lawsuits against the company.

The drugmaker initially filed for bankruptcy in 2019 in a New York federal court to manage hundreds of lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis. As part of the agreement, the Sackler family will pay $6.5bn over the next 15 years, while Purdue will pay $900mn.

“Families throughout New York and across the nation are suffering from the immense pain and loss wrought by the opioid crisis,” New York attorney-general Letitia James, one of the officials who helped broker the deal, said on Thursday. “While no amount of money will ever fully repair the damage they caused, this massive influx of funds will bring resources to communities in need so that we can heal.”

The latest Purdue settlement is one of the biggest potential payouts to emerge from the US opioid crisis, which has led to more than 600,000 deaths since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A previous $6bn deal agreed between the Sackler family and creditors — which was largely negotiated during the pandemic — was struck down by the US Supreme Court last summer. The agreement relied on shielding family members from future lawsuits, which the high court said was impermissible without the family members filing for bankruptcy themselves.

The new deal is structured so that the Sacklers are not given automatic protection from liabilities, but victims will need to agree to not pursue further legal action in order to receive a payout, according to the New York attorney-general office’s statement.

The Supreme Court decision had left lawyers and companies trying to decide how to resolve so-called “mass torts”, where corporate product liability claims totalled in the thousands of victims and hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

The funds committed by the Sacklers and Purdue will be used over the next 15 years to fund opioid addiction treatment and recovery programmes, Texas’s attorney-general’s office said.

Critically for many victims, members of the Sackler family will no longer be allowed to sell opioids in the US as part of the deal, and their ownership of Purdue has ended.

The Sackler family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to review the creation of a “National Digital Asset Stockpile,” according to Fox News.

• As reported by FOX Business White House correspondent Edward Lawrence and shared by partner Eleanor Terret, the executive order established a “Presidential Working Group” on digital assets.
• This group is tasked with “evaluating the creation of a strategic national digital assets stockpile,” as well as creating a federal regulatory framework for digital assets and stablecoins.
• It will be chaired by White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks, and include heads of the SEC, Treasury, and other relevant agencies. Among other things, it also bars federal agencies from taking action to establish, issue, or promote a CBDC.
• Finally, this executive order revokes the Biden administration’s crypto executive order, issued in 2022.
• Trump initially promised to create a “strategic national Bitcoin stockpile” in July, but has now seemingly expanded the scope of its inclusion to other digital assets.
• Senator Cynthia Lummis is pushing legislation to formally establish a Bitcoin reserve, and to have the U.S. government sell some of its gold stash to buy 1 million BTC.
• Trump has already shown openness to other coins personally, launching his own official memecoin last week on the Solana blockchain.

Recent developments suggest that crypto investors looking to catch the next quick 5x should be keeping an eye on the Dogecoin price. This is based on both technical and fundamental analysis, which proves that DOGE could record a 500% price surge from its current level. 

Analyst Predicts 500% Surge For The Dogecoin Price

In an X post, crypto analyst Javon Marks predicted a 500% surge for the Dogecoin price, representing a 5x increase from its current level. The analyst explained that Dogecoin is back showing strength, and by its historical performance, DOGE can be set for an over 432% gain at the least from its current level.

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Javon Marks further remarked that the Dogecoin price could rally above the 1.618 Fib extension, which is currently at $2.2. In line with this, the analyst added that market participants could still be early, considering that DOGE could witness a 5x price increase from its current level.

Crypto analyst Trader Tardigrade also recently predicted that the Dogecoin price could rally above $2. In an X post, the analyst stated that the meme coin had formed a bull flag on the 2-day chart. According to the analyst, this DOGE bull flag pattern puts a target of over $2 for the foremost meme coin. 

The crypto analyst had previously predicted that the DOGE price could even rally as high as $8 if it mirrors the 2017 bull run. He added that DOGE could also reach $30 if it mirrors the 2021 bull run. These projections further prove that the foremost meme coin could at least record a 500% price surge from its current level. Crypto analyst Master Kenobi has also previously predicted that Dogecoin could rally to $2 in this cycle and top around $3. 

Bullish Fundamentals Also Support A 5x Increase For DOGE

The Dogecoin price also boasts bullish fundamentals, which support a 5x increase from its current level. One of the fundamentals includes the potential launch of a Dogecoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US. Asset manager Bitwise recently filed for a Dogecoin ETF in Delaware, indicating that an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may be next.

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Asset manager REX Shares, in collaboration with Osprey, already filed with the SEC to offer a Dogecoin ETF. This is bullish for the Dogecoin price, considering the amount of institutional funds that could flow into the DOGE ecosystem if the SEC approves these funds. There is also a huge likelihood that the SEC will approve these funds, considering the pro-crypto climate under Donald Trump’s administration. 

It is also worth mentioning that there has been a huge accumulation trend among DOGE whales, which is also bullish for the Dogecoin price. IntoTheBlock data shows there has been a 41% spike in the meme coin’s large transactions, with $23.35 billion traded in the last 24 hours. Another bullish fundamental is Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which puts the foremost meme coin in the limelight. 

At the time of writing, the DOGE price is trading at around $0.35, down almost 4% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview.com