Bitcoin’s buzz is gone. Investors chose real gold in 2025 | Nils Pratley

Another week, another record high for the price of gold. And another blow to the bitcoin fan club’s hopeful thesis about owning “digital gold”. This year has been hard for the bitcoin brigade: while real gold soared in value, their cryptocurrency didn’t. Correlation went out of the window. Gold is up 70% so far in dollar terms; bitcoin is down 6%

Bet365 boss receives at least £280m in pay and dividends despite profit slump

Denise Coates, the billionaire boss of Bet365, a self-described “ultimate gambler” and Britain’s highest-paid woman, took home at least £280m in pay and dividends in 2025 despite a slump in pre-tax profits.Coates’s Stoke-based gambling empire recorded turnover of £4bn in the year to March 2025, up from £3.7bn the year before. Pre-tax profits fell to £349m, from £627m in the previous year.Bet365 incurred a £325m increase in expenses as it reshaped its global footprint, expanding its presence in the US and South America while giving up its sometimes controversial presence in China, where online betting is illegal

Elon Musk, AI and the antichrist: the biggest tech stories of 2025

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, wishing you a happy and healthy end of the year. I myself have a cold.Today, we are looking back at the biggest stories in tech of 2025 – Elon Musk’s political rise, burst and fall; artificial intelligence’s subsumption of the global economy, all other technology, and even the Earth’s topography; Australia’s remarkable social media ban; the tech industry’s new Trumpian politics; and, as a treat, a glimpse of the apocalypse offered by one of Silicon Valley’s savviest and strangest billionaires.At the close of 2024, I wrote that Elon Musk’s support of Donald Trump had made him the world’s most powerful unelected man

Activist group says it has scraped 86m music files from Spotify

An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86m music files from Spotify and 256m rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100m tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, said it had “identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping”

Wounded England must salvage more than pride in MCG Boxing Day Ashes Test

The world famous Boxing Day Test awaits England’s beaten cricketers and we are about to discover whether the mighty coliseum that is the Melbourne Cricket Ground becomes their arena of the unwell; whether pride can be salvaged or it is just another stepping stone for Australia in their pursuit of an Ashes whitewash.Last year a record 373,691 spectators passed through the turnstiles across five days as Australia overcame India in a slow-burn thriller. This fourth Ashes Test was tipped to top that remarkable figure potentially but that will hinge on it similarly going the distance. It also needs the locals to be energised still by a series that has already been won by their team – even if simply beating the old enemy is usually enough.England lasted just seven sessions here four years ago, the match settled before lunch on day three when Scott Boland ran through them on debut like a bull down the streets of Pamplona

English cricket meets Spinal Tap as Rob Key delivers latest Ashes autopsy | Barney Ronay

“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” David St Hubbins, lead vocalist, Spinal Tap.“There’s a real difference between aggressive and dumb.” Rob Key, managing director, England cricket.Listening to Rob Key deliver the latest four‑yearly Ashes autopsy deep in the grey concrete underworld of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, it was tempting at first to conclude that what we have here is a basic category mistake