After the spectacular fall of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, you might have expected the embattled cryptocurrency sector, and its sophisticated lobbying operations, to have ground to a halt. But if anything, both are back with a vengeance--and the regulatory post-SBF crackdown that followed has spurred the sector to potentially become a major political force in 2024. A new, unholy alliance has emerged on Capitol Hill, and it's hoping not just to recraft governmental policy around digital funny money but to push its antiregulatory agenda across a whole host of elections. To do so, the crypto industry is teaming up with the people behind the latest megahyped, bubblicious tech trend: the artificial intelligence boom. You may already have noticed crypto and tech money swishing around in the 2024 primaries.

The blossoming of fintech shows financial regulators need to update their tools, Rep. Patrick McHenry, possibly the next chair of the House Financial Services Committee, said today. Regulators need to start using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to adapt rules quickly to a rapidly changing financial system, a Republican Congressman who is often mentioned as the next possible head of the House Financial Services Committee said today. To meet the fintech challenge, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) also called for regulators to begin employing Big Data to develop strategies. "The basic way consumers are interacting with the banking system is fundamentally changing," said the Congressman. McHenry revealed he will be introducing a bill soon to bring financial regulation into the fintech era.

Travel planning can be time consuming and frustrating. With constantly fluctuating prices, securing the cheapest flights and hotels seems more like an urban myth. But it's not just big providers that may struggle with setting the right price. Airbnb hosts face the same uncertainty in how to set flexible listing prices in response to changing market demands. The fancy economic term for this dilemma is "dynamic pricing," and several startups, along with Airbnb itself, have tapped into the market. One of the startups working to bring dynamic pricing to the masses, Wheelhouse, builds its pricing model on "over two dozen factors," according to its help page.