APAC sovereign investors move from caution to action on AI - Deloitte

Oct 24, 2026, 12:00 p.m. EDT3 min readNYSE trading floor (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)SummarySince 2025, preferred stocks funded purchases of 135,979 BTC through Oct. 5, Fidelity said. Bitwise expects ETFs to remain the larger demand source, with preferreds attracting yield investors. Dividend obligations and buybacks could constrain further bitcoin purchases. Bitcoin BTC$84,459.46 treasury companies like Strategy (MSTR) and Strive (ASST), whose purchases help maintain demand for the largest cryptocurrency, have a tough balancing act, according to Fidelity Digital Assets and analysts who spoke to CoinDesk. On the one hand, they need cash to fund their purchases. On the other, they need to maintain investor appetite for new sales of the perpetual preferred stock that is their favored fundraising vehicle. As the number of shares in circulation grows, so do the dividend payments. The securities, which sit between debt and common equity in the capital structure with regular payouts and no voting rights, have financed purchases of some 136,000 bitcoin in the 20 months since their introduction, Fidelity research analyst Zack Wainwright wrote in a Tuesday report.

Greentank, started by the grandsons of Shoppers Drug Mart founder Murray Koffler, have developed a device they say reduces the dangers of vaping to nearly zero

Oct 24, 2026, 11:21 a.m. EDT2 min readJack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Block (CoinDesk)SummaryBlock unveiled Dessa, a voice AI trained only on human speech that talks without text and runs locally on a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip. Reactions split between amazement at how human it sounds and fears it could fuel scams and deception, with CZ eyeing uses in children’s education. Block hasn’t disclosed model size, benchmarks or a release date; the research preview is going first to a small group of AI safety researchers. Jack Dorsey's payments company Block XYZ$76.45·Market Closed has unveiled a voice AI model that sounds remarkably human in company demonstrations, prompting reactions ranging from amazement at its conversational abilities to warnings that such technology could make phone scams harder to detect. Called Dessa, the model was trained entirely on human speech rather than text and can listen while speaking, allowing it to handle interruptions, laughter and changes in tone during a conversation, according to the Block’s announcement. “Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence,” Dorsey wrote on X.