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The price of bitcoin hit a record high for 2020 on Wednesday, after PayPal announced plans to integrate cryptocurrency into its online payment platform.Bitcoin’s price rose by more than 5 per cent following the news, taking its total gains since last week above $1,000. It is currently trading above $12,400.PayPal said customers will be able to pay using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at the 26 million merchants on its network from next year.As the world’s number one online payments platform, bitcoin’s reach will extend to its roughly 346 million customers worldwide.“Our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange,” said PayPal CEO Dan Schulman.Read moreBitcoin remains a long way off the all-time price highs seen in late 2017, when its value briefly rose to $20,000, but the latest gains come just seven months after bitcoin was trading below $5,000.Some analysts have attributed price gains since March to global economic uncertainty brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. “Ongoing – and heightening – global political, economic and social turbulence suggests that there will be a price surge before the end of the year,” Nigel Green, CEO of financial advisory firm deVere Group, told The Independent.“Like gold, bitcoin can be expected to retain its value or even grow in value when other assets fall, therefore enabling investors to reduce their exposure to losses. Investors will increase exposure to decentralised, non-sovereign, secure digital currencies, such as bitcoin, to help shield them from the potential issues in traditional markets.“There’s a growing sense that we’re set to experience a mini-boom similar to that seen at the end of 2017.”Other analysts warned that bitcoin’s volatile nature means investors should remain weary of any sudden price jumps.Simon Peters, a multi-asset analyst at online trading platform eToro, told The Independent: “Emphasis will be on how the price reacts at $12,000, given we haven’t convincingly stayed above the threshold this year. Before investors look to the next bull run, we need to see the price remain above $12,000 for an extended period of time.”

TikTok videos that promote false antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros and the Rothschilds have been watched by million and remain easy to find on the platform, despite the company saying it is cracking down on racist and misleading content.Such antisemitic and conspiratorial content is untrue. The notion that wealthy Jewish figures exert some form of malicious control over world events is a well-documented myth.One account with over 26,000 followers, which also posts transphobic and antivax videos, claims that the Black Lives Matter movement “was given to us by George Soros”. Another showed an edited clip of political commentator Bill O’Reilly which discusses the organisations Mr Soros has donated to, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the NAACP.“That is why you are seeing the collapse of our criminal justice system…. George Soros, in my opinion, has funded the worst Bolshevik elements he could support. I’ve never seen anyone do as much damage to the United States of America,” the video states.Read moreOther videos place Soros at the centre of “every conspiracy on the leftist side”, and has been “funding everybody that hasn’t been going to work, blocking traffic, for the past year and a half”.In one video a supporter of president Donald Trump talks about the “top three people she would like to snipe right now”, mentioning both George Soros and Hillary Clinton.The hashtags #rothschild and #rothschildfamily, which have over five million views and 450,000 views, respectively, feature numerous conspiracy theories that the Rothschilds “won’t stop until they have everything” and that they funded the Nazis. In fact the Nazis used the Rothschilds as political propaganda, such as the film The Rothschilds’ Shares in Waterloo which can be read on many antisemitic websites. Other conspiracy theories linked to from these videos include the “depopulation agenda” and Agenda21 (11.2 million views). Agenda21 was a nonbinding UN resolution from 1992 about sustainable development, but is popular among conspiracy theorists because of the myth that it is a plot to impose a totalitarian world government.TikTok also recently updated its Community Guidelines in order to take a stronger stance against antisemitism on its app.“As many monitoring organisations are reporting that antisemitic sentiment is increasing in the world, we’re proud that we have already taken steps to keep our community safe, for example, by not permitting content that denies the Holocaust and other violent tragedies”, the company wrote in a blog post. “We know there’s always more we can do which is why we are taking further action to remove misinformation and hurtful stereotypes about Jewish, Muslim and other communities. This includes misinformation about notable Jewish individuals and families who are used as proxies to spread antisemitism.”However, TikTok has seemingly not removed numerous videos that promote antisemitic themes related to George Soros, the Rothchilds, or the Bilderberg group.TikTok has previously taken action against other harmful content. Searching for popular Nazi code words surfaces no results, with TikTok telling users that the phrase “may be associated with hateful behaviour”.Similarly, the hashtag #savethechildren, which is popular among QAnon believers, also has no videos related to it. TikTok tells users that the phrase “may be associated with behaviour or content that violates our guidelines” following the company’s crackdown on the conspiracy theory. “Hate has no place on TikTok. That’s why we are building on the work we already do to tackle antisemitism by taking further action to remove misinformation and hurtful stereotypes about the Jewish Community”, a TikTok spokesperson said.”We have removed the violating videos and blocked a number of the hashtags brought to our attention. We’ve always been open about the fact that we won’t catch every instance of inappropriate content or account activity, and we recognise that we have more to do to meet the standards we have set for ourselves today. This is why we continue to invest at scale in our Trust and Safety operations, which includes both technologies and a team of thousands of people around the world.”Many other social media companies have also taken action against conspiracy theories and antisemitism on their platforms.

The Independent has been given an exclusive look at the first-ever series filmed using Snapchat Spectacles.The docuseries, First Person, follows young people around the world solving environmental problems and tackling the climate crisis with innovation.The10-episode series premieres this Saturday on Snapchat’s Discover page with an episode on a young innovator who is revolutionising how toilets are used in Zimbabwe in the face of increased drought.The Spectacles are augmented reality glasses with steel frames and dual HD cameras that are “inspired by the human eye”. The product allows users to capture images and video to post to the social media site.Read moreOther episodes explore methods to build houses using human urine, making synthetic hair out of plants and training rats to sniff out landmines.Another, titled Rhino Wars, looks at how conservationist groups’ adopted the radical idea of cutting off rhinos’ horns to protect them from poachers who kill the endangered species for the highly-trafficked part.First Person was created by Yusuf Omar, journalist and co-founder of Hashtag Our Stories with his wife Sumaiya. The couple have spent the past two years training more than 3,000 people in 140 countries to tell stories via their phones. In the US, 90 per cent of 13-24 year olds use Snapchat, according to the company’s own figures, while 3.5 billion Snaps are shared every day around the world.

Nasa’s audacious mission to grab a piece of an asteroid has been successful, the space agency said on Wednesday morning, as data show its Osiris-Rex spacecraft has managed to “tag” the object and may now commence its journey back to Earth.According to Nasa, the pinnacle of the operation came as the ancient but well-preserved asteroid, known as Bennu, was more than 321 million kilometres from our planet.Radio signals received from the spacecraft confirmed that it had touched the asteroid as planned, but scientists will still have an agonising wait for more signals to know if asteroid material was indeed picked up, and in the required quantity.Nonetheless, principal investigator from the University of Arizona Dante Lauretta told BBC News: “The team is exuberant; emotions are high; everyone is proud.””This was the key milestone of this mission. Now it’s a few days to figure out how much of this amazing sample we got that we’ve been thinking about for decades,” added Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa’s associate administrator for science.The aim was to acquire at least 60g of material, but the probe has the capacity to grab around a kilo.Scientists believe that analysis of Bennu’s surface, consisting mostly of grit and dust, could provide insights into the formation of the Solar System more than 4.5 billion years ago.According to Nasa, if the spacecraft has fetched the right material in its “touch and go” (TAG) mission, it will commence its journey back to Earth in 2021. However, they will make another attempt in January if things don’t go the way they were planned.Either way, the spacecraft wouldn’t reach the surface of the Earth before 2023.The van-sized spacecraft was aiming for the relatively flat middle of a tennis court-sized crater named Nightingale – a spot comparable to a few parking places here on Earth. Boulders as big as buildings loom over the targeted touchdown zone.While Nasa has previously brought back comet dust and solar wind particles, it has never attempted to sample one of the nearly one million known asteroids lurking in our Solar System – until now.Japan, meanwhile, expects to get samples from asteroid Ryugu in December – in the milligrams at most – 10 years after bringing back specks from asteroid Itokawa.