Cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in a bid to protect its US assets from creditors in the country, as reported earlier by Bloomberg and CNBC. Representatives for the Singapore-based company made the filing in a Southern District New York court on Friday, which legally protects the US assets of insolvent foreign debtors from creditors in the US.

Founded in 2012 by Kyle Davis and Su Zhu, 3AC managed about $10 billion in assets as recently as March, later sinking to $3 billion in April. Like several other crypto firms, including the lending giants Celcius and Babel Finance, 3AC’s turn in fortunes is part of the so-called crypto “winter” that’s brought down stablecoins and sent Bitcoin’s value plunging.

Earlier this week, reports emerged that 3AC failed to pay a $670 million loan provided by crypto broker Voyager Digital, which has since halted all trades, deposits, and withdrawals as a result. Sky News later reported that a court in the British Virgin Islands has ordered 3AC’s liquidation and that the firm is reportedly working with business consulting company Teneo to oversee the process.

In May, Davies and Zhu admitted in an interview with the WSJ that the company lost out on a $200 million investment following the crash of Luna and its sister coin TerraUSD. At the time, the two remained optimistic about the prospects of crypto, telling the WSJ that they’ve “always been crypto believers” and “still are.”

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which became available to stream on Disney Plus last month after landing in theaters in May, sends the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s charmingly grumpy sorcerer on an adventure that spans multiple realities. The 28th MCU movie brings director Sam Raimi back to Marvel for the first time since 2007’s Spider-Man 3 and leans hard into his signature horror style, with one of the two post-credits scenes riffing on a moment from early in his career.

The movie takes place after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which saw Strange offering Peter Parker some magical help as the teen dealt with the entire world knowing his secret identity.

Let’s step into a portal and explore a universe full of SPOILERS. We also have a separate ending explainer, a deep dive into the Illuminati and a list of WTF questions the movie left us with.

Another sorcerer

In a mid-credits scene, Strange is happily strolling through Manhattan’s streets, having seemingly accepted the corruption caused by his use of the Darkhold. He’s intercepted by a blonde sorcerer in a purple and pink costume (Charlize Theron). She opens a portal to the Dark Dimension, the hellish reality ruled by 2016 Doctor Strange big bad Dormammu.

“You created an incursion and we’re gonna fix it… unless you’re afraid?” she says.

“Not in the least,” he responds, his Darkhold-induced third eye opening.

What does it mean?

She isn’t named until the credits start rolling after this scene, but Theron’s character is Clea — a Dark Dimension magic wielder who’s been in the comics since the ’60s.

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She’s the daughter of Dormammu’s sister Umar and Dark Dimension Prince Orini, and became fascinated by Strange during one of his early adventures in that reality. Their paths have crossed many times in the years since, with Clea becoming Strange’s student and later his wife.

Following the events of 2021’s Death of Doctor Strange miniseries (you can imagine the premise), Clea replaced Strange as Sorcerer Supreme of Earth. Stephen will undoubtedly be resurrected and return to the role soon though, since status quo shifts like this seldom last long in the comics.

You might have been too busy reeling or screaming with joy when Reed Richards (John Krasinski) explained what incursions were earlier in the movie, but they’re catastrophic events that occur when a multiversal reality crashes into another. In the comics, this happened in 2015 event Secret Wars.

It’s unclear how Strange caused an incursion — he jumped through a whole bunch of realities in Multiverse of Madness — or what this means for the MCU, but it could see elements from a different cinematic universe crossing into this one.

Such a crossover already created a dangerous scenario (filled with delightful cameos) in No Way Home, so it’s possible we’ll see characters from Fox’s X-Men reality next. The presence of Professor X (Patrick Stewart) may have been foreshadowing this.

Or maybe that’s just more wishful thinking.

Poppa Pizza returns

In an alternate reality’s Manhattan, rude street vendor Pizza Poppa (Bruce Campbell) earlier accused America Chavez of stealing his precious dough balls. Strange hit the poor guy with a spell to get him off their backs, and they left him to be attacked by his own hand.

The post-credits scene brings us back to Pizza Poppa just as his meat hook’s campaign of violence ends.

“It’s over!” he says joyously.

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What does it mean?

This scene is unlikely to have any MCU-scattering implications, since it’s more of an homage to Campbell and Raimi’s relationship. The pair have been friends since high school, and the actor played hero Ash Williams in Raimi’s 1981 breakout feature The Evil Dead. In that movie’s 1987 sequel, Ash’s hand is bitten by one of the undead, becomes possessed and tries to kill him.

Unlike Pizza Poppa, he tries to solve the problem by severing his hand and replacing it with a chainsaw (which is extremely metal). His former hand stalks him for the rest of the movie.

Campbell also shows up in Raimi’s non-MCU Spider-Man trilogy, seemingly playing three different characters. He was a wrestling announcer in the first movie, a snooty usher in the sequel and a French maître d’ in the third. If the scrapped Spider-Man 4 had come to fruition, the actor could have played Mysterio, Raimi confirmed to Rolling Stone.

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In a nutshell: Intel’s accelerated computing group has started shipping its second-gen Blockscale ASIC for SHA-256 cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The launch is months ahead of schedule, but still too late to capitalize on the most recent cryptocurrency craze.

Intel announced that it was developing Blockscale ASICs in January when Bitcoin was worth twice as much as it is now and hardware was desperately in demand. Its second-gen is arriving after the market has satiated its need, which is usually when Intel starts shipping its hardware (I’m looking at you, Arc GPUs).

Despite that, the Blockscale ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is a great chip. It measures 7 mm by 7.5 mm and consumes just 4.8-22.7W but hashes Bitcoin at up to 580 GH/s (gigahash per second). It’s only capable of SHA-256 proof-of-work calculations, though.

Raja Koduri, executive VP and general manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) Group for Intel, tweeted the news at the end of last week…

Intel AXG Custom Compute team is now shipping the Blockscale ASIC! First product will always be unforgettable, congratulations team’
Excited to see how @ArgoBlockchain @griid and @HiveBlockchain improvise around Blockscale and our open design. pic.twitter.com/0rxtNTLMfw

— Raja Koduri (Bali Makaradhwaja) (@RajaXg) June 29, 2022

Koduri seems to have forgotten about the first-gen Blockscale ASIC that was announced in February. Intel did say at the time that a second-gen model was in-development and then it announced it just two months later, so perhaps the first version doesn’t qualify as a fully-fledged product in Koduri’s eyes.

In any case, the second-gen model is much better than the first. It consumes just 26 J/TH (Jules per terahash) while its predecessor consumed 90 J/TH. It’s also more competitive with offerings from other companies. Intel’s system with 256 ASICs can hash at a rate of 148 TH/s with the consumption of 3,850 W, about on par with Bitmain’s S19 Pro at 110 TH/s and 3,250 W. Both systems cost between $5,000 and $6,000.

Koduri tagged GRIID Infrastructure, Hive Blockchain Technologies, and Argo Blockchain in his tweet, three companies that mine cryptocurrencies using renewable power sources. Intel markets the Blockscale ASIC as an environmentally-friendly product and it’s good to see it standing by those principles by partnering with like-minded companies.

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