Aerwave is an intelligent Wi-Fi platform that enables private network mobility to business and individual users in shared spaces, such as hotels, multi-tenant commercial buildings, coworking spaces, and coffee shops, among others

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The First Amendment Implications of TikTok's Ban

or a server with a with professional-grade or cards. are also available. Rent GPU servers with instant deployment custom configuration NVIDIA Tesla H100 / H100 80Gb RTX A5000 / A4000 GPU servers with game RTX4090 cards Sporting events today are rife with advertising, from commercials on screens to static company logos on stadium billboards. The airwaves span multiple countries with different brands and advertising laws. Thanks to breakthroughs in AI and AR technology, it is possible to customize the information on display for each audience directly during the live broadcast of a match. Advertising in sports arenas was initially static and intended for the people attending a particular event in a particular city. Later, LED screens appeared, which showed alternating adverts. The next evolution was to insert a green screen into the spots on the billboards for a fraction of a second, allowing the AI to define the space and insert a unique text. Nowadays, you can replace anything with anything. The challenge is to make sure that the replacement is done discreetly and realistically. The major players in this market use special cameras. From the photos, we can conclude that there are specialized sensors that discern positioning and alignment information. That is, popular solutions still have hardwired crutches. All this requires enormous computing power, as the inputs and the original broadcast are processed by specialized software online. That is, servers for computing are connected to the cameras and sensors. This equipment is expensive, the market is closed, and the technology is closed, too. This is where AI and cloud GPU servers come to the rescue. Expensive, static, and not for everyone HOSTKEY has a client, a startup called , which has developed its own technology for implementing virtual advertising and integrating digital content (like augmented reality) in a multi-regional mode. And their solution promises seamless (and boneless) integration of adverts directly into the video stream. PTF Lab Some time ago, they saw information about HOSTKEY in the Open Data Science (ODS) community and reached out to us when they needed cloud capacity, appreciating our service, pricing, and a flexible lineup of available options. The startup's goals are noble, understandable, and quite achievable: To get away from expensive proprietary equipment and complex setup, shifting the task of advertising placement and frame construction to artificial intelligence, which takes into account overlapping people and objects in the frame. By doing so, they can cover relatively small events (such as arena fights, etc.) and bring the technology to the masses. Ultimately, sports advertising should be made accessible and relatively inexpensive. Moreover, the startup has set an ambitious goal of surpassing the solutions offered by monopoly giants in terms of flexibility. For example, it can display "virtual adverts" during replays and use angles from any camera, not just from certain angles. How does it work? The video signal from a sporting event venue can be processed using computing power not only at the venue itself but also in the cloud. This allows for flexible load distribution and the choice of when to apply adverts: before or during broadcasting, taking into account different markets. Also, working with cloud services allows you to use advertising in locations where it is impossible to bring a server (and in principle, it is more convenient). Object segmentation is based on the neural network architecture from U-Net. Neural networks are responsible for the location of objects and for detecting and comparing key points. However, the task is non-trivial, so all the solutions and neural networks had to be reworked and trained for use. It is especially difficult in martial arts broadcasts, where literally everything is unpredictable from the point of view of the picture: light sources, shadows, camera angles, the grid overlapping sponsor logos, and the bodies of the fighters and referees. Neural networks are not used everywhere. Sometimes, to solve a problem, it is enough to show ingenuity and use simple algorithms. For example, tracking algorithms combine neural network methods and systems of linear and nonlinear equations. A significant part of the GPU is taken up by segmentation. The better the detection of people and objects in the frame and their separation by plans and type is implemented, the more natural and attractive the frame will look after the advertising overlay. A separate task is related to lighting and shadows, which must be taken into account in augmented reality when rendering a scene. The realism of shadows is a key element in assessing the "believability" of the picture. Traditionally, sports neural networks are trained on real broadcasts using human markings and synthetic models. Here, Blender comes to the rescue. The company builds 3D models of the ring, fighters, and referees and gets both rendered real footage from the right angles and the segmentation mask, or the position of objects and cameras needed for training. Markup of real data is time-consuming and expensive but of high quality for specific venues or types of competitions. Synthetic data with less realism provides more data for training. The main difficulty is that the venues can vary. In one case, it will be a boxing ring with ropes, and in another case, it will be an arena with mesh walls, each of which creates difficulties for segmentation. Camera tracking and advert position are determined by comparing the point cloud from the venue's 3D model with its actual position in the frame. This allows them to determine the position, even for manual cameras with chaotic movement. After reconstruction of the 3D frame from 2D (the determination of the required angle), the direct rendering of the advertisement in the 3D engine is performed and combined with the video broadcast frame. A 3D scene has to be built before we start work, and, in fact, we have a virtual copy of the venue in the frame, into which we fit real people and objects through render masks. It sounds complicated, but with the right power and optimized neural networks, it is possible to perform these somersaults instantly and seamlessly. Why does the project need GPU computing and server rentals? PTF Lab has its own servers (and the possibility of using them on-site at the competition venue was mentioned earlier), but it is more convenient to use remote resources, as the service provider's engineers are responsible for equipment availability, and the company allocates fewer resources to this. And the client votes with his wallet and cost-effective options are always preferable. Also, the capacity required by the company is constantly growing. If necessary, it can be easily scaled up just by renting more (up to and including changing the server configuration to suit the company's needs). In the future, a startup may need a lot of cloud capacity. It is easier to rent them than to buy and sell the physical servers when the demand for their services rises and falls. The leased servers and GPU capacity are now being used in the following areas: Training of neural networks on GPUs (segmentation of people and other objects in sports broadcasts; 3D virtual camera tracking). Data backup (video from events, datasets, etc.). The direct process of working with video-testing cloud production, when the company's software is deployed on remote servers and video signals flow through it: input - without graphics, output - one or more signals with graphics. In addition to our own computing power at HOSTKEY, the startup is currently leveraging the following GPU configurations: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4GHz (16 cores)/128Gb/1Tb NVMe SSD+12Tb HDD/2xRTX 3090+PSU] Xeon E3-1230 3.2GHz (4 cores)/16Gb/2x12Tb HDD/PSU] AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4GHz (16 cores)/128Gb/1Tb NVMe SSD+12Tb HDD/2xRTX 3090+PSU+HDMI emulator] AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4GHz (16 cores)/128Gb/1Tb NVMe SSD+12Tb HDD/2xRTX 3090+PSU] AMD EPYC 7402P 2.8GHz (24 cores)/384Gb/2x1.92Tb U3 NVMe SSD/4xRTX 4090+2xPSU] As you can see, most GPU solutions are rented based on the RTX4090/3090, but as the computing power requirements increase, the startup wishes to have the option for servers with more powerful, professional cards that offer better stability when running in continuous 24/7 operation. In the case of the 3090, renting the same A5000 might even be cheaper. PTF Lab is at the beginning of its journey, but its results are already promising, and we at HOSTKEY wish them success and growth, especially in terms of overcoming the monopoly of sports augmented reality. The witty David always defeats the clumsy proprietary Goliath. If you have any questions for our colleagues from PTF Lab, please feel free to ask them in the comments. or a server with a with professional-grade or cards. are also available. Rent GPU servers with instant deployment custom configuration NVIDIA Tesla H100 / H100 80Gb RTX A5000 / A4000 GPU servers with game RTX4090 cards

How AI Is Fighting Monopolies in Sports Advertising With GPUs and Servers

কিভাবে AI GPU এবং সার্ভারের সাথে ক্রীড়া বিজ্ঞাপনে একচেটিয়া লড়াই করছে

Wie KI Monopole in der Sportwerbung mit GPUs und Servern bekämpft

Cómo la IA lucha contra los monopolios en la publicidad deportiva con GPU y servidores

Comment l'IA combat les monopoles dans la publicité sportive avec des GPU et des serveurs

एआई कैसे जीपीयू और सर्वर के साथ खेल विज्ञापन में एकाधिकार से लड़ रहा है

AI が GPU とサーバーを使用してスポーツ広告の独占とどのように戦うか

AI가 GPU와 서버를 사용해 스포츠 광고 독점에 맞서 싸우는 방법

Como a IA está combatendo os monopólios na publicidade esportiva com GPUs e servidores

Как ИИ борется с монополиями в спортивной рекламе с помощью графических процессоров и серверов

Yapay Zeka, GPU'lar ve Sunucularla Spor Reklamcılığında Tekellerle Nasıl Mücadele Ediyor?

AI đang chống lại sự độc quyền trong quảng cáo thể thao bằng GPU và máy chủ như thế nào

人工智能如何利用 GPU 和服务器对抗体育广告领域的垄断

Today, I am speaking with Alexander Casassovici, CEO of Azarus, and we'll delve into the dynamic intersection of video streaming, blockchain technology, and gaming. We'll also discuss the genesis of Azarus, the significance of its recent acquisition, and the evolving concept of viewership engagement in the gaming universe. Web3 Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do. I'm Alex, the founder of Azarus, a platform at the convergence of video streaming, blockchain technology, and gaming. I’m a serial founder with four exits, including the recent acquisition by Animoca Brands of a majority stake in Azarus. At Azarus, our mission is to reveal the true nature of streams as an interactive, massively multiplayer, and rewarding medium. What led you to start Azarus? Azarus was born from a realization that while TV and video streaming had evolved technologically, the viewer experience remained largely passive. Today, billions of people are watching streamed content daily, and hundreds of millions watch live-streamed content together. This is probably the densest gathering of people on the Internet, and this captured our imagination. We imagined transforming this experience by introducing interactivity as a core feature. Our thesis from the beginning was that without incentives in place, it would be hard to get the audience’s attention. Our first test with Ubisoft and Rainbow Six: Siege helped confirm our thesis when our prototype encountered overnight success… breaking the platform in the process! Using Web3 core capabilities, such as digital ownership and identity, to create a streaming experience where viewers are not just watching content but actively participating in it made perfect sense to us and was baked into the platform from the very beginning. Can you provide an overview of the recent acquisition of Azarus by Animoca Brands and its significance in the Web3 and metaverse gaming landscape? The acquisition by Animoca Brands is a pivotal moment for Azarus. It represents an alignment with a leader in the Web3 space, enhancing our capabilities to innovate in blockchain, gaming, and streaming. This transition allows us to leverage Animoca Brands' extensive network and resources, enhancing our credibility and expanding our reach in the industry. We recently found out that akin to playable ads on mobile, experiences built on Azarus have the ability to drive viewers to try . Moreover, our partnerships with leading OTT platforms and channels give us access to a broad audience. web3 games Last year only, 20M unique played with Azarus on partner channels. This brings a strong alignment in our missions to educate and onboard billions of new players. Can you explain the concept of viewership engagement in the Web3 gaming universe? We call this the Streamverse - because, ultimately, streams are the most dense place on the Internet, driving millions who are sharing a common online experience watching the same content at the same time. Viewership engagement is not specific to Web3 gaming, but for sure, Web3 gaming has a lot to gain from it. It is about transforming the passive consumption of content into an active and participatory experience. By integrating blockchain technology, we can offer real-time interactive experiences, such as trivia and challenges, where viewers can earn rewards and have a stake in the content they are consuming. Web3 games can educate viewers on the fundamentals of the game and drop coins or NFTs that will kickstart the viewer's journey in the game, but only after having seen proof that they are meaningfully engaged. In what ways is the blockchain-based game streaming experience evolving to make every viewer an active participant and every stream an immersive experience? To clarify, steaming is not blockchain-based. We developed a web3 layer for streams to augment video streams . You still go to Twitch to watch Azarus-enabled Twitch streams: this is one of the superpowers of the platform we developed, which is at the core of the patents we applied for. in place We take existing audiences watching the same content on the same channels they’re already watching today - and we augment the experience with a Web3 layer. Interactive elements such as live polls, quizzes, clicker games, and challenges are integrated directly into streams working on any device with little to no installation, offering viewers a way to compete against each other. Blockchain enables these interactions to be not only engaging but also rewarding through tokens or digital assets. How do blockchain-based tokens facilitate rewards and incentives for gamers and streamers in this emerging industry? Rewards are central to our reward system. With our platform being natively built on our chain, blockchain rewards can be easily manipulated and staked as rewards to games running on Azarus. PoA L2 Our games are smart contracts, starting a new session with staked rewards that get distributed based on the audience’s recorded performance. These tokens can represent anything from in-game assets to exclusive content access, offering real value to gamers and streamers and creating a more compelling engagement loop. Alongside blockchain-based rewards, we also operate a traditional rewards store filled with over 35k items, from gift cards to game licenses. In what ways does the integration of blockchain technology impact the revenue streams for gamers and content creators in the gaming and streaming industry? Blockchain allows for a fair split of the value created. Today, Azarus is mainly being used by brands (game companies, CPGs…) to educate the audience about themselves. In a traditional advertising model, the Viewer, whose time and attention were harvested, gets nothing. The creator gets some share of that value but is unrelated to his efforts to drive the attention. With a token-based economy, every stakeholder - including the viewers - gets a piece of the created value in line with their impact on generating it. Can you elaborate on the role of reward systems and incentives in keeping viewers engaged and loyal in the Web3 gaming and streaming ecosystem? Effective reward systems are essential for maintaining viewer engagement and loyalty in the Web3 space. These systems, powered by blockchain, offer tangible rewards that go beyond traditional engagement methods. They provide a sense of ownership and achievement to viewers, encouraging them to stay engaged and return for more interactive experiences. When viewers see an Azarus game starting, they know that their time is valued and that they’re competing with all the other viewers for real prizes. I see this experience as a digital t-shirt toss. Showing the t-shirt triggers the will to fight for it in everyone who’s watching. Can you discuss the concept of overlay advertising in the context of Web3 gaming and streaming and how it differs from traditional advertising methods? Overlay advertising in the Web3 context is a more interactive and integrated form of advertising. Unlike traditional advertising, which can be intrusive and disjointed from the content, overlay ads in Web3 are part of the streaming experience, offering viewers rewards and interactions that are contextually relevant to the content they are engaged with. Moreover, brands get access to clear performance indicators. Views are hard to measure, but clicks are crystal clear. Just like on any chain, you need gas to run interactions, calculated as a function of unique players. Essentially, Azarus brings video stream advertising into the realm of performance. Can you provide more details about Azarus' Overlay Games and how they make streaming more interactive and engaging for both streamers and viewers? Games built on Azarus offer viewers a chance to participate in real-time challenges and quizzes related to the stream, with rewards for participation. This not only enhances viewer engagement but also adds a layer of entertainment, making the streaming experience more dynamic and engaging for both viewers and streamers. We’ve seen that on Azarus-enabled streams, players stay 7x more than non-players because of the sense of friendly competition Azarus helps foster. How can Overlay Games and similar technologies enhance the interactivity and engagement of gaming streams in the blockchain-based game streaming space? Overlay Games enhance the interactivity of gaming streams by adding a layer of engagement and rewards. These technologies allow viewers to become an active part of the streaming experience, dramatically transforming the viewership experience through participation in real-time activities. This creates a more immersive and engaging environment for viewers, making the streams more than just a passive viewing experience. In the longer term, we see Azarus becoming a fully open-source permissionless chain where anyone can build games/experiences and bid to push these experiences on any channel. This will unlock an ocean of possibilities that we’re only scratching the surface of today. What do you foresee as the future of overlay advertising and audience engagement in the evolving landscape of gaming and streaming, and how might it continue to change the way we experience digital entertainment? The future of overlay advertising and audience engagement is likely to see even more personalized and seamless experiences. As technology advances, these advertising methods integrate more smoothly into content, enhancing the overall digital entertainment experience. This evolution will lead to more sophisticated and interactive viewer engagement, further blurring the lines between content consumption and participation. We’re starting to see creative agencies coming up with fresh ideas, such as having the public vote to pick the end of an ad, real-time predictions, and shouting contests mirrored in-stadium…. This turns the TV into a seat in a digital stadium, expanding the reach of the arena way beyond its physical borders. With the ongoing developments in Web3 technology and the metaverse, how do you anticipate the gaming and streaming industry will evolve, and what new opportunities will this bring for creators, streamers, and viewers? The ongoing developments in Web3 and the metaverse are set to transform the gaming and streaming industry radically. We anticipate a future where digital experiences become more immersive and multi-dimensional, offering new opportunities for creators, streamers, and viewers. This evolution will likely lead to the creation of new forms of content, interactive experiences, and revenue models, reshaping the landscape of digital entertainment. Ultimately, they’re the key to the future of TV, as the format is catching up with the evolution of the medium, from broadcasting over airwaves to streaming over the Internet. I believe that in the future, interactive overlay, which at Azarus we call “Overlay Games,” will be as natural to streams as the play/pause button we’re now so used to.

Viewership Engagement in the Web3 Gaming Universe: The Role of Rewards

I've been so into lately. It's the kind of technology that suddenly emerges and allows us to create things that weren't possible before. In such an initial stage, any developer can start playing with it and create useful libraries or very disruptive projects that have a big impact in the development of others. blockchain development One of the most interesting feature of blockchain projects is that . There are no intermediaries between us and the blockchain. When we need to transfer blockchain money or use any DeFi service, it's us interacting directly with the blockchain, and no other human or authority have a say in that interaction. That's the idea that empowers . we don't need to trust anyone anymore Web3 In applications based on blockchain . we shouldn't trust, we should verify Transactions are public, so we can check the history of any address in the blockchain and review if movements seem legit. And applications are ruled by what are called : small pieces of code that run on the blockchain and create transactions in a deterministic way. smart contracts Smart contracts are verifiable as their code is in the blockchain. When deploying a smart contract we can also upload the source code, so anyone can review it and check that it does what it says it does. For example, , a very popular stablecoin that moves value equivalent to billions of dollars every day. here's the verified code of the smart contract that rules the Theter token The traditional pyramid scheme So in the context of a economy, we can create applications that can distribute money in a transparent way. is an experiment to highlight what means, by taking the concept of pyramid schemes to the blockchain and making it transparent. trustless The Tree of Wealth trustless In case you are not familiar with how the infamous pyramid scheme works (lucky you!), here’s a quick explanation: Somebody convince us to give them money as an investment for some business, and they promise that we'll get a lot more money back. We trust them, the only thing we need to do to get rich is convincing other people to invest. In reality, there is not a real business behind, what happens is that . The promise of easy money brings a lot of initial investors and they actually get paid and share with others the great investment they have done. they use the money of the new investors to pay the old ones But this scheme is completely unsustainable. It works as long as there are new investors, but when the investing pressure start to decrease the scheme collapses, the promises get broken and the last investors lose their money. It's called pyramidal scheme because . some people get a lot of money at the top, and at the bottom there are a lot of people that lose everything Obviously, if this scheme was completely transparent and people were aware of what was happening, nobody would invest. So making the same system, but running on blockchain is completely off the table. On the other hand, the scheme contains powerful ideas like the distribution of money, the need of buying as soon as possible or the engagement of the investors on bringing more investors. If we could create a transparent system inspired by those ideas, where money from new investors is distributed evenly among all the previous investors, we might get a similar engagement. The Tree of Wealth: A transparent pyramidal NFT NFTs are a really nice candidate to create a system that distributes money. The economy of an NFT is completely controlled by a smart contract, so we can program the contract in a way that can distribute the money of every sell among all the previous buyers. Here we go, introducing , . The Tree of Wealth the first NFT that distributes the coins of every sell among all the previous buyers For the sake of transparency, The smart contract is open source and it can be . The rules in the contract try to replicate a system that make the users rush to buy, and then engage them on sharing the project to get their money back. The rules are: verified in Etherscan The price and transactions of the NFT are controlled, owners can't sell it or transfer it freely. It starts very cheap (0.0001 ETH), so initial buyers can get it without risking much. Every time the NFT is sold, the price increases by 0.001 ETH, so it gets more and more expensive at every sell. The coins of every sell are always distributed among all the previous buyers. So every time The Tree gets a new owner, all the previous ones get 0.001 ETH. The wallets owning the The Tree NFT can't decide when the token is transferred, that's why they are not really owners of it, they are called . When we say that somebody buys the NFT, it's because is simpler to understand, but they are not buying anything. hosts They are paying for becoming temporary hosts of the NFT and start participating in the distribution of the coins. As we can see from the rules, it's not exactly a pyramidal scheme. The price of the token increases in a linear way, and there is no promise of getting rich, or even getting the money back. But the rules and the characteristics of the NFT are designed to create a similar buying pressure and engagement: The price increases at every sell, so the sooner you buy it, the cheaper it will be. That generates the urge to buy it ASAP. The money gets distributed at every sell, so hosts start getting the money back as soon as the next sell happens. It’s not mandatory to bring more people to participate. Hosts will benefit from the distribution of the coins evenly at every sell, no matter if they are the ones bringing more people to buy. But for sure, when somebody becomes host of the Tree of Wealth, they will want to share it with others and get them into the loop. This system never collapses. The smart contract is immutable and will run as long as the Ethereum blockchain exists. So getting the money back should be just a matter of time. As the price gets higher and higher, the NFT becomes more and more exclusive and it would turn The Tree's NFT into a luxury item. Being host of The Tree NFT would be like being a member of a very exclusive club. The potential of . So the NFT smart contract has been developed also around that idea: becoming a luxury NFT is what should bring new hosts when the prices gets not affordable for most of the people When buying The Tree, the host receives a second NFT. That token is owned by the host, and can be transferred or sold as they please. . You can check them out in Opensea That token is kind of a proof of have been a host of The Tree. It's not related to the distribution of the coins, but people can find value in them just for show. The goal is to make the buyers . Early hosts will be considered really good investors because they saw the potential of the project, and late hosts will just be considered rich people and institutions who buy it just because they can. In any case, they should want to share The Tree of Wealth story. be proud of being hosts of The Tree Learn more This experiment is just a side project to explore the potential of smart contracts, so do not consider it financial advice or an investment opportunity. It's just an experiment. But if you want to participate on it, you can visit , connect your wallet and become host. The Tree of Wealth dapp The contract is deployed in the Ethereum mainnet at the address and can be verified at . 0x27E1F5CcC4F184A2Ca55B12353c06dA9e1803621 Etherscan If you want a version of the contract easier to read, . The code has interesting parts, like the way the NFT images are generated on-chain. here's the contract repository in github The decentralized application is made with React and it’s also open source, you can find the . The dapp is the gate to use the smart contract, so we need it to be always accessible and keep the protocol available. To ensure it, it has been deployed to many mirrors including to the . A is available at the contract repo. dapp code in this github repo decentralized Arwave’s permaweb list of the mirrors

Building the First Transparent Pyramidal NFT

Exit Liquidity

তারল্য থেকে প্রস্থান করুন

Liquidität verlassen

Liquidez de salida

Liquidité de sortie

तरलता से बाहर निकलें

出口流動性

유동성 종료

Liquidez de saída

Likiditeden Çıkış

Thoát thanh khoản

退出流动性

I recently spoke with the Co-founder of , Austin Diamond, about the backstory behind the company and the benefits of investing in a crypto market index. Austin shares his passion for finance and how it led him to create Alongside, which is designed to offer exposure to the entire cryptoasset market with a ERC-20 Token. He also discusses the potential impact of index products on the cryptoasset market and how they can change the way retail investors get exposure to markets. Alongside Alongside recently from a seed round led by a16z Crypto with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton, and more. raised $11 million Thank you for joining us today. To begin, could you share with us how you came up with the idea for Alongside and the backstory behind it? Alongside comes full circle and was over a decade in the making for me (Austin)- I was an incredibly weird kid that was obsessed with finance as a teenager. I got really lucky and had an opportunity to work (read: fetch coffee) at a global investment bank with a group that was managing a portfolio of equity index funds. It was there I learned the open secret that is indexing- despite hogging the CNBC airwaves and charging customers insane fees, the overwhelming majority of active managers don’t beat a simple index that tracks the market. I realized pretty early on I didn't want to work in finance and later spent five years working in tech on marketplaces, most recently with a company called Omni where I met my co-founders Jun and Gauthier (Rai would join just after), which was later acqui-hired by Coinbase. Rai worked on Ethereum as a Core Dev for three years and we've followed crypto markets since 2016-ish- seeing everything evolve from theory to working application layer products in 2020 made us want to get off the sidelines. We also realized we’re not smart enough to pick individual winners, hence what we're building at Alongside. What is the potential impact of index products on the cryptoasset market? Index products secure tens of trillions in equity markets and changed the way retail investors get exposure to markets- they’ve saved retail investors tens of billions in fees, and lowered the barrier to entry such that more people have ownership in the stock market. We think the same dynamic can play out in cryptoasset markets. How would you describe your work to someone who is completely unfamiliar with Alongside, and also to someone who is familiar with it? To someone who is completely unfamiliar, I would describe it as buying the entire crypto market with just one token. To someone who is familiar with the industry, I would describe it as a broad-based index that offers exposure to the entire cryptoasset market with a single asset. Where can you invest and get broad exposure to crypto currently? Any insights into the current TAM among these competitors? The average investor has largely not been able to get indexed exposure to cryptoassets- what’s available on traditional exchange venues are products like BITQ that track crypto stocks, not coins. We don’t believe the best way to get exposure to the space is via a bundle of dodgy bitcoin mining stocks or centralized exchanges. Others are available via private placement to accredited investors and generally aren’t redeemable or liquid (so they trade at wild discounts or premiums). For those more familiar with DeFi, we’re fans of on-chain products like those from Index Coop or Indexed Finance, but they can generally only give you exposure to assets in the Ethereum ecosystem, so their products are largely thematic and get you exposure to categories vs. the entire market. How do you determine which cryptoassets are included? One of the hidden secrets in markets is that the most esteemed professional investors don’t actually know better than the market. We don’t either. Our core product gives holders exposure to the top 25 cryptoassets (ex. stablecoins/securities) by circulating market cap which historically speaking has tracked the total market cap of the category with ~97% tracking efficiency- we don’t try to put our thumbs on the scale. Why are coins like DOGE and SHIBA included? DOGE and SHIB are some of the highest returning assets of all time, and one reason we’re so bullish on indexing is because no reasonable person would have predicted that in a million years. Our core thesis is that we’re not in a position to try to pick winners and losers. If history is any indication, you’re better off “buying the market” vs trying to predict which assets will drive returns. With time, we expect assets like DOGE and SHIB to become a smaller portion of the index as more high quality assets emerge and grow to have large market caps. With the markets falling and a recession likely on the way, is now a good time to attempt to level the playing field with a crypto market index? Are there negative repercussions to that mission you foresee? We joke that we are borderline degenerate long-termists. We try to be as up front with the risks involved in our product as possible. In the short term (and maybe always), crypto markets are volatile and we could see major declines like we have in the past. We feel now is a better time than ever to start to explore the space- prices (and gas fees) are low and some of the most talented people in the world are building new products at a faster rate than anytime in history. We think the most negative repercussions to come out of the crypto space have been the extent to which they’ve encouraged “degen” trading, a behavior we hope our product is somewhat of an antidote to.

Changing the Crypto Market with Index Investing: An Interview with Alongside's Austin Diamond

How the Government Nearly Closed the U.S. Air System

Cómo el gobierno casi cerró el sistema aéreo de EE. UU.

Comment le gouvernement a presque fermé le système aérien américain

कैसे सरकार ने अमेरिकी वायु प्रणाली को लगभग बंद कर दिया

政府が米国の航空システムをほぼ閉鎖した方法

Como o governo quase fechou o sistema aéreo dos EUA

Cách chính phủ gần như đóng cửa hệ thống hàng không Hoa Kỳ

政府如何差点关闭美国航空系统

Mapping out a decentralized financial utopia beyond the hype of meme coins, billionaires, speculation, and clickbait. It’s impossible to avoid - even if you tried - the words cryptocurrency, NFT, and the metaverse. It's as if these futuristic concepts are knocking – no, banging – on our front doors. The world is abuzz with thoughts, curiosities, and judgments about the industry, both in theory and in practice; turning once-fringe ideas into cultural talking points, the punchline of a million jokes, and the booze-fueled party conversation that everyone hates to love. While crypto conversations have hit the mainstream with infamous popularity, the evolving technologies and foundational projects that are the bedrock of the industry have been solidly committed to building a next-generation future for years. Bitcoin (BTC) Price-Per-Day - USD Consider Bitcoin (BTC) (while now a household name), which was by a programmer under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and in many investor circles, is thought of as the original cryptocurrency. A coin that ushered in a new age of blockchain technology and decentralized digital currencies. founded in 2009 Since its inception, 13 years of innovation and emerging technologies have transpired, making this “future” of crypto, more realistically a dynamically evolving “present”. A present fervently moving towards a future that aims to dismantle traditional systems, revolutionize the way we all think about money, and usher in a new era of digital existence. The current cryptocurrency industry, as it stands today, is met with a lot of interest and a lot of criticism, yet lacks real comprehension. suggests that 96% of Americans fail to comprehend basic crypto knowledge. This creates barriers around the type of growth and success hopeful investors are able to achieve–in short, for the majority of people it’s not about the strength of the investment, it’s about the hype. A 2021 report by cryptoliteracy.org Meme coins, speculative investors, billionaires, and clickbait articles have generated a pop culture of cryptocurrency interest that has conflated investing with gambling and a promising future with get-rich-quick mentalities. How can the growing community of crypto enthusiasts look past the hype and educate themselves on the highly sophisticated intricacies of a revolutionizing industry? If current trends stay focused on the distraction of the newest meme coin, will that continue to perpetuate the idea that crypto is about as stable of a future as a novelty slot machine? 2021 Markets In Review Whether people love it, hate it, or don’t understand it, cryptocurrency was top of mind for everyone in 2021. The financial system as a whole faced a new kind of scrutiny, as events like the pulled back the curtain on the inequities of traditional investing models. Game Stop Saga The world watched as a group of Reddit day-traders collaborated to push GameStop stock to soar, causing large hedge funds, who were attempting to short the stock, to lose millions of dollars. The worldwide attention of this event, combined with a contemplative pause created by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, and the successful impact of blockchain technology, shifted perspective in a way that put a microscope on the systems at hand, opening a collective eye towards new possibilities, possibilities that pointed directly to the crypto industry. Taking a look at the narrative from the top-performing industry assets according to data from shows that Layer-1 blockchains and metaverse tokens performed at high rates of success. A few of the top-performing assets, like (AXS), even showcased a YTD of 16,000% and a 5 billion dollar market cap, for perspective, any dollar invested saw a potential $16k return. Messari Axe Infinity On the one hand, this is exceptional when compared to publicly traded companies in the stock market that can take 5-10 years to reach a market cap of 5 billion dollars. On the other hand, meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu hold a market cap of over $20 billion. What does this say about the emerging crypto landscape? And how does that affect investing decisions for crypto enthusiasts? If the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency is aimed at dismantling the traditional systems and paving the way for every type of person to be able to make strategic investments, then why are speculative meme coins flooding the airwaves, while tokens that further the interests of the individual investor and the collective community sitting slightly outside the mainstream view? Promising news indicates crypto companies are seeing exceptional potential on returns, showcasing the power of new companies and their fast earning potential. Infrastructure tokens like (MATIC) and (MANA), represent sophisticated ideas that dynamically influence the industry, and create a foundation on which new companies can grow and build on top of them. Polygon Decentraland Before 2013, blockchain technology was almost solely linked to Bitcoin, but in published a white paper that proposed a decentralized application platform. This led to the creation of the Ethereum Foundation, which launched in 2014. 2015 Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine Ethereum paved the way for blockchain technology to be used for purposes other than cryptocurrency. It introduced smart contracts and provided developers with a platform for building decentralized applications. In 2020, Nearly 40% of respondents incorporated blockchain into production, and 55% viewed blockchain as a top strategic priority, according to . Deloitte's 2020 Global Blockchain Survey Crypto companies and tokens that represent this foundation infrastructure of blockchain technology are booming with rocket-fueled interest, showing strong YTD in 2021, but the low market cap, especially in comparison to meme coins like Dogecoin, tells a story that has a different and more complex meaning. Meme Coins and Speculative Investing To understand the rumbling undercurrent that meme investing has brought to the industry, it’s important to look back at an event like the . 2008 financial crisis The use of subprime mortgages by Wall Street and banks left a completely destabilized economy, plummeting overnight, where the trust in systems was flipped on its head. The event left people, both domestic and globally, to wonder if the financial systems they had come rely on, were not as unshakeable as they thought–and understandably! The crisis revealed that regulators were asleep at the wheel and that the traditional stewards of the industry were not taking responsibility for the financial health of our country and the globe seriously. Sowing seeds of doubt proved fertile ground for “rebel” currencies, decentralized finance, and meme stocks, like GameStop and AMC, to take hold in a new way. As the financial collapse of 2008 created a need for the government to bail out the very industries that caused the crisis, student debt piled high, the gig economy forced 9 to 5’ers into working harder for less, and the overall vibe towards Wall Street and traditional hedge funds transitioned into a giant rolling side-eye. The idea of money, and inherently its value, is challenged. If the government can pump out billions in bail-outs, then what is really the “thing” generating the value in those numbers we see on our screens? How much is the value of a currency based on the peoples' belief in that currency and what it represents? The GameStop stock, and subsequently the AMC stock, challenged the systems at face value, asking Wall Street to directly put their money where their mouth is. Did it change anything or have any sort of destabilizing effect on those systems? Not as far as experts can tell. And as of January 2022, both , now at their lowest exchange since the boom at the beginning of 2021. A crash that can be deduced to a public lack of interest and the distracted hype of a new thing. GameStop and AMC stocks have plummeted in value But cryptocurrency is different from traditional stocks as it is built as a sophisticated and decentralized new wave of finance. The industry is essentially setting itself up to take over the financial world as we know it. But just as we have seen with the GameStop and AMC stocks, the double-edged sword of popularity and infamy has splintered the industry, creating dueling crypto worlds, one resembling a casino-like playground and the other, a structurally sound landscape of building blocks. Meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have become a secure placeholder within the world of casino investing. Thriving on the hype and excitement of jumping on the bandwagon, and whose success is congruent with getting in on something before it gets too hot and then cashing out before it all comes crashing down. For millions, this exact pump-and-dump scheme coincides with the idealized American Dream, a pathway to wealth that so much of the world has romanticized. Even after the 2008 financial crisis, , but most people turned them away and deepened their suspicions of an unstable system. banks offered homeowners incentivizing refinancing opportunities Capitalizing on the notion of striking while the iron is hot, while simultaneously furthering the extreme distrust in the systems at hand, has birthed a chaotic mindset, as if to say, it’s all doomed so why not take a chance and risk big to win big? Meme coins are not traditionally backed by projects or ideas that hold true value in the ways traditional investments do, nor do they sustainably contribute to the evolving progression of the industry. Instead, they are propped up by speculative investors, people whose interests are purely to pump the market up, gaining huge profits and exiting as soon as they have earned their desired return, leaving hopeful and often novice investors vulnerable to a devastating crash. As seen in the “Rise of Meme Coins” graph, both Dogecoin and Shiba Inu experienced incredibly high peaks and valleys that flipped in a matter of moments. A volatile aspect of the industry that often leaves people with the wrong impression. Without anything to substantiate the value of these coins the people at the top, like Elon Musk and his popular Dogecoin, hype it all up and control the market. he mentioned Dogecoin in his opening monologue which consequently lead to a 40% tumble after the show aired. He is now utilizing the popularity of internet virality to boost the value of the coins by publicly announcing on his Twitter , he will eat a Happy Meal. When Musk appeared as the host of SNL that if McDonald’s starts accepting Dogecoin as payment The world watches all of this as entertainment, thinking they are in on the next best thing, but much like Wall Street the 1% still win, the hype for these meme coins comes down to clever marketing and staying relevant on the always distractable web, which appears to have a powerful effect, that's for sure. Infrastructure Coins and Pillars Of The Industry While meme coins continue to gain unsubstantiated high market caps and worldwide hype, flooding the internet with clickbait articles, pop culture memes, and Twitter punchlines; the infrastructure of the cryptocurrency industry is continuing to build and expand its bedrock foundation. Companies like , a decentralized crypto VC company, and , holistic gaming, NFT, and metaverse ecosystem, are aiming to influence a greater and more permanent change. BullPerks GamesPad As pillars of the industry, foundational projects are being constructed to dynamically impact cryptocurrency. They have been doing this for over a decade, by cultivating a following and investors who are interested in establishing real value. Pillar companies believe in this future, and the crowdsourcing and VC money fundraised to support their creation are going towards progressing that belief. That strong core value is what sets these infrastructure projects and their coins apart from the casino games that meme coins represent. Layer-1 blockchain tokens like Terra, Polygon, and Solana are the building blocks where new projects are created and can grow. Popular metaverse projects such as Decentraland, and Axe infinity, exist because the infrastructure from layer-1 projects allowed them the capabilities to do so. This is so much more exciting than a meme coin, this is true technological innovation and exploration. This is laying down the blueprint of an entirely new way of interacting with the world. This is the value of something meaningful, something worth investing in, something that breathes a fresh breath of air for the future. Ethereum (ETH) Price-Per-Day - USD is likely a familiar name, but without much context as to the importance of its impact on the industry. It is a decentralized software platform that enables and to be built and run without any interference from a third party. Ethereum (ETH) smart contracts decentralized applications (dApps) The goal behind Ethereum is to create a decentralized collection of financial products that anyone in the world can freely access, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, or faith, essentially becoming a borderless, equitable opportunity. This aspect makes the implications for some countries extremely compelling because those without state infrastructure and state identifications can get access to bank accounts, loans, insurance, or a variety of other financial products, outside of their current opportunities. The way that Ethereum influences the cryptocurrency industry and builds outside of itself as a way to further the progression of a decentralized financial future is what gives the coin its value, elevating it lightyears away from meme coins. and the pillar projects built on top of them create real opportunities to dismantle the systems that the GameStop saga attempted to achieve. The decentralized future is real and it is here, being built by brilliant minds from all over the world. Infrastructure coins BullPerks uses an extremely fine-tuned process of evaluating crypto-projects and helps to promote those projects allowing for VCs and investors to participate in supporting valuable assets. GamesPad approaches the crypto-gaming industry from a similar perspective, high-value games, NFTs, and metaverse projects are cultivated in their ecosystem to ensure a foundational level of success. Where Do We Go From Here? Moving The Industry Forward Worth is community informed, and currency is a form of worth. In a new landscape where there is a true lack in depth of education and information, casino investing appears bright, shiny, and enticing. Meme coins can feel like a rush to the system, like a big middle finger to the man, and an exciting opportunity to "get rich quick". But is it all smoke and mirrors? It appears so when compared to the infrastructure coins and companies that have been structurally building the industry for over a decade and who put forth the effort and profits to continue to build value and worth; setting foundations, developing innovations, and mapping out a real future of new frontiers. As of today, for most of the world cryptocurrency can feel like a scam. People read headlines from a skeptical eye, speculative investors continue to pump schemes into the market, and the hype continues its stronghold on the industry. But what if everyone just ignored the hype. What if instead of encouraging Elon Musk to eat McDonald's, we scroll past the clickbait headlines, hit “mute” on the meme coins, and take the time to view the emerging landscape for the value and worth that is truly being put into it. If everyone decided to invest in pillar companies, and infrastructure coins, and educate themselves on the blueprint of a decentralized future, the future might not seem so far away. As the world turns on its axis and more of the population sees the truth of the systems for what they are, education and real depth of understanding of the crypto industry can provide hope and excitement for a financial future to come–and that sure as hell is worth the hype.

Don’t Fall For The Hype in Cryptocurrencies

No se deje engañar por las criptomonedas

Ne tombez pas dans le battage médiatique des crypto-monnaies

क्रिप्टोक्यूरेंसी में प्रचार के लिए मत गिरो

暗号通貨の誇大宣伝に惑わされないでください

Não caia no hype das criptomoedas

Đừng để bị thổi phồng về tiền điện tử

不要为加密货币的炒作而堕落

How to deploy your Decentralized Application on 4everland 4EVERLAND is a Web 3.0 cloud computing platform that offers an avenue to deploy and manage Applications on the Decentralized Web. Developers can leverage 4everland to not only deploy Applications but also store objects with the 4everland bucket. Such objects can be NFTs which can be pinned on IPFS and also synced on . Arewave Before the current mainstream adoption of Web 3.0, there were very few frameworks that could be used to develop Blockchain Applications but they were not robust or rather simplified enough for developers who are entering Web 3.0 to be able to build their Applications. By having platforms like 4everland, the process to create, and maintaining your application is done in a simplified way to suit the user’s experience. In this article, we will cover a tutorial on how to build and deploy your decentralized Application on 4everland. For this case, we will be using react js and 4everland will be used to manage our front-end. The Application will use the Ethereum network and it will be written in , a dApp programming language that is simple to learn and has a Javascript syntax. Reach Local setup For this set-up, we are going to fork the repository . This repo is a simple React App that runs on the Ethereum devnet and can be a good building block for anyone looking to learn about Web 3. https://github.com/reach-sh/reach-sample-react-app The Application already has a pre-build configuration and all you need to do is run yarn start and it will be deployed to your local network. From there, you will be able to view the interface seen above. The App will prompt you to connect to Metamask in order to sign transactions when interacting with it. Deploying to 4everland To deploy your dApp on 4everland, you will need to create an account through the official . You will be prompted to sign in with your Github Account and once logged in, You will get access to the 4everland dashboard which looks like the image below. 4everland website In this section, simply search for the DApp and click import. 4everland automatically knows the framework the Application uses as you can see in the image below. ** You will then be redirected to the Basic configuration section. Here you will input your build commands and also select the framework the application is using. For our case, the base command to run our program will be . npm run build You also have the option to deploy hooks if you wish to extract stateful logic from a component for re-using or being tested independently. Once the application is deployed, you will get the IPFS Hash which can be used to verify the contents of your Applications are actually stored on . IPFS The build time may take a few minutes to complete but once done, you will receive this prompt upon successful deployment. See my deployment . here Aside from React, there are other frameworks you can deploy on 4everland like Next.js. Vue.js. Hugo and much more. Simply sign up for an account and start your deployment journey on Web 3.0. Also Published Here

How to Deploy Your Decentralized Application on 4EVERLAND

This story is a part of Hacker Noon's series of interviews. The series is intended for tech professionals contributing the most insightful Hacker Noon stories to share more about their writing habits, ideas, and professional background (and maybe a hobby or two). If you too would like to start contributing to Hacker Noon, . Meet the Writer you can do so here So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. I go by the name Chitose Nakamoto (which is a psuedonym, if you can’t tell), which is derived from the theory of economics and cryptocurrency paradigm I came up with. If you want to know the details, go ! read my article on Hackernoon I’m a bit of a “Renaissance person” for the modern age--I’m a writer, software engineer, and medical professional, just to name a few things. I suppose this community is the right place for me to be, given our ethos as people who are driven by curiosity and creativity to do something amazing. Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? Well, it was actually my first story on Hackernoon! In the article, I present the framework for what I call a . I wrote this because I am terrified by the two most likely scenarios for cryptocurrency: economic anarchy (yeah, anyone who has tried investing in crypto knows it’s a real shot in the dark) or Orwellian-scale authoritarianism (whether solely in the hands of a government or a corporation…ahem, Meta). . Digital Universal Drachma We need to come up with some way to balance powers--to democratize--cryptocurrencies before the dragon flies too high Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? I write on just about anything. Beyond tech and economics writing, I’m also a literary scholar, theologian, and playwright. At first glance, you might assume my mind is either impressively distractable or unbearably insatiable. Though there is an element of veracity to both of those claims, the deeper truth is that I just think by writing. That means I inevitably wander into all these varied domains of thought. I want to take just a moment to touch on the role of writing, and more generally the arts, in humanity. Art fosters the creativity needed for making breakthroughs in science, math, technology, politics, philosophy, sociology, economics, and any other advancement you can think of. Don’t you for a moment believe that art can’t change the world. Entire generations are formed by the cultural art they consume. Just take the existentialism in the post-WWI era that Viktor E. Frankl credits with being the direct predecessors of the apathy that let the Holocaust happen: I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers. Art can either lead us to be callously numb to the suffering of others, or it can inspire in us the courage and resolve to employ our compassion to serve the least among us. As Dostoevsky said: Beauty will save the world. Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) I’m sort of an unusual writer, so don’t design your routine off of me. I’m one of those people who--once I have that spark--can sit down and write it all out at once. I edit as I go, perfecting as I create, completing as I begin. My professors told me how unusual that is, even for gifted writers. My advice to any writer is to use whatever routine that nourishes your muse. Be flexible and willing to learn how your mind functions, and then learn to harness that power through a routine that works for you. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? I’m usually so busy with other things that I get within a few hours of finishing a “masterpiece,” but those last few steps are often left unfulfilled. Maybe its a demon of perfectionism, but it never feels like something is ready to be published because I haven’t had unlimited amounts of time to work on it. Honestly, what person gets done with their job and then decides that is the perfect time to publish a side-project that you want to be perfect? My answer is: not me, but I better buck up and just do it. now What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? I honestly don’t know. I’m someone who has had a variety of career experiences, which have all been great in their own right. In the most sincere way, I’m just looking for how I can leave an impact on this world to give souls yet unborn hope in the crazy world that is currently unfolding. This--I think--is perhaps humanity’s most sacred duty: to ensure that hope remains alive for every soul in despair. Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? Late night comedians. We all need a bit of laughter to keep that hope alive, so I’m very diligent about making sure I shed more tears from joy than sorrow with the aid of airwaves and YouTube. Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? Yes… Wait, I already mentioned some before! Seriously, though, I’m interested in just about everything. One could say learning is a hobby of mine. What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next? I would love for the discussion of the Digital Universal Drachma to spread and be taken into consideration as these crucial moments in cryptocurrency approach. I see myself addressing questions or concerns people have about the DUD to facilitate this discussion, so I hope that happens… Spread the word! And if you have any ideas or suggestions, ! let me know Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read, share, and discuss my writing. It really is humbling to have to opportunity to have my ideas be the subject of public discourse. My hope is that my words make people feel more empowered to make a positive change in the world; and with that we will close this interview until I get the chance to address topics that come up in the future!

The Crypto Reformer: Meet Hacker Noon's Contributor Chitose Nakamoto

The history, condition, and direction of communication, media, civilization, and the whole of humankind is not complete without discussing the essence and history of money. The history of human civilization can be explained by the constant struggle between two tendencies--centralization vs. decentralization—exemplified by what has unfolded in the development and evolution of communication media technologies. The same is true for money, or what we should more accurately refer to as currency. You might ask, what does money have to do with communication, marketing, and media? Everything. Money is what makes the world go ‘round.  Contrary to the popular song, money CAN buy you love, and unfortunately, as we will soon see, money hasn’t exactly made the world go-‘round lately. A Very Human Invention Human beings have invented and developed all sorts of ways to connect with other human beings—from mere symbols erected with stones, paintings in caves, and more wired marvels of engineering with the rollout of the telegraph and the unwired airwaves of the broadcast industry to the wired and unwired convergence systems of the internet and various mobile digital technologies—human beings have been finding various ways to send, receive, interact, and connect. Man is, after all, naturally social, and free-market economics tells us those communities that are able to properly trade with others versus closed communities become wealthier and more successful. But for much of human history, a problem persisted, in this natural effort to interact, exchange, and transact with others—which grew in necessity as people traveled across larger areas beyond mountains, terrains, seas, and oceans. The same problems that occupied man in his problem with sending signs, signals, and messages (thus, evolving and developing technologies and systems—the printing press, the phone, broadcasting, the internet—occupied his effort to figure out how to move economic value across time and space. Direct exchange worked in small societies with few families in the same small geographic location. But as societies grew and people spread out to journey ‘yonder, more indirect exchanges were explored and developed.  Indirect exchange replaced barter. The movement and exchange of value was intermediated, and a standard for a medium of exchange was developed—from shells to salt to cow dung, and the more long-lasting commodity money known as gold, and silver—economy moved across locations, and civilizations exchanged and flourished. So this was a good purchased not to be consumed (a consumption good) nor to be employed in the production of other goods (an investment or capital good), but primarily for the sake of being exchanged for other goods. St. Thomas Aquinas said money was invented by the art of man for the convenience of exchange by serving as a common measure of things saleable. Key here is: a measure of things saleable—and so money ought to be stable. It must keep the same value.  With this context, we define money. Money is a to facilitate the communication of value. It is NOT wealth or value. Wealth is the result or yield of the production of goods and services as a result of human action. What is chosen as money is an abstraction of this wealth for the practical and more efficient purpose of being able to exchange with more people from far away, and because it communicates something (value), it is also a language. Like other languages, where certain ideas can be lost in translation, objects or items chosen to mediate the exchange of value can also be “lost in translation.” This is why St. Thomas Aquinas suggests, money ought to be stable and must keep its value. One can also think of it this way—money is the organic and natural translation of human action (premised on human nature and natural law) into something specific and tangible in order to properly move and maintain man and society to civilization. It is an abstraction of true human value as it is precisely the translation of human action, premised on human nature and natural law. To understand further, let’s turn our attention again to the Second Law of Thermodynamics--entropy. medium of exchange A Universal Standard Money, like an engine, facilitates and lubricates the spreading of energy--the spreading of human action to civilization. It is the medium and communicator of the organic standard value of human action. Famed theoretician and social scientist Marshall McLuhan says, “Language is a metaphor in the sense that it not only stores but translates experience from one mode into another. Money is a metaphor in the sense that it stores skill and labor and also translates one skill into another.” Hence, we can say money is the universal and standard language for translating and communicating human action as the following have been attached to it--an objective, numerical, and mathematical value. There is an exactness, precision, and standard to what it communicates as well as its message. Thus, a good medium of exchange would have to meet exactly this requirement proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas—that it should be stable and keep its value. Like the transfer of heat (the proper spreading of energy in the engine, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics states), proper human action proceeds, running and maintaining civilization. Money is in synch and goes with entropy. Let’s formalize this definition--money is Here's where Bitcoin comes in--because as the very genesis of bitcoin suggests in that first block with a message embedded by Satoshi Nakamoto himself, money hasn’t been running and maintaining civilization; and the 2008 global financial crisis began to show the bubble and cracks. We’ve been on a path to decivilization, powered, funded, and run by unsound money—defying the Second Law of Thermodynamics and hence, communication, exchange, and all things real and natural. This is why bitcoin is controversial as the internet was controversial—because decentralizing forces (a natural consequence of human nature) are fighting for what has been unnaturally colonized and hijacked by those breaking the natural law and order of logic, math, balance, and sense in the movement of life and human action. Money wants to make the world go ‘round again. But to better understand what this all means, one should take on the project of reading and understanding the history of money, which is beyond the scope of this article. the universal standard and language, which lubricates, mediates, communicates, and facilitates the exchange of value from human action that propels and maintains continued human relations toward civilization. A Form of Communication Money is language; thus, money is communication—the most precise and universal of all languages as it communicates value. From signs, symbols, wires, cables, airwaves, and digitally embedded complex code and technology, human beings labored to connect and interact with other men and, in so doing, spread information via the transactional process of uncertainty reduction in line with entropy. But communication, information, and media just got and will get a lot more complicated as we’ve neglected their foundation in money, and this money, for the most part of the development of media technologies, has been unsound. But true to natural law, human action, and entropy itself, there’s been a new kid on the block, and it’s been shaking these centralizing forces that have been defying natural law, economics, and human nature and accelerating not yet necessary entropy. This new kid has been Bitcoin, and it has generated blocks and chains of fans, squires, apprentices, copycats, and wannabes into what has been unfolding as the missing ingredient in the proper functioning of life in the digital world. This is just the beginning of the internet of money.

The Internet of Money: 
Lubricant for the Internet of Things

From hijacked routers to an on the World Health Organization, our time of crisis shows that hackers are opportunists to the core. Health records, social security numbers, IP … everything is fair game, nothing sacred or immune. At least in the current online infrastructure. On a long enough timeline, the probability of a hack nears 100%. attempted hack We need to rethink online architecture. We need to give data the ability to defend itself. What if security could travel with data, essentially making it immune to hacks? What if the entire internet had data-centric security, essentially giving it herd immunity to incursions? Now is a pivotal time for blockchain, and US enterprises stand at an inflection point between the old, vulnerable internet and a new bastion of data privacy, security and resilience. It is time to reconsider how we interact with data online. The biggest risk is staying put Ever since the words “data-driven” hit the tech airwaves, enterprises have been cobbling together networks of APIs in order to enable systems where data drives insights, connections and results. The trouble comes in the cobbling. It has become standard practice to wire APIs into application-centric architectures. Designed more than 40 years ago for an era of mainframes, such architectures hold up poorly in the modern online world. The old (yet unfortunately current) data stack goes like this. The middleware or business logic tier sucks up data from a siloed database and feeds it into a firewall-protected custom API layer, which in turn powers cloud-based applications. Since the database is siloed, data management is spread out across middleware, leading to redundancy, bloat and leakage. The only way to make sense of data in a broader analytical capacity is to replicate siloed data into 'data lakes.' There are no mechanisms to ensure data integrity, and no central source of truth. Even if data is encrypted, the nature of the disparate stack presents security vulnerabilities at every stage of use. I don’t need to remind you of the troubles associated with the old data stack. We read about them every day. The new path to data security In order to achieve true data security, the three-tier architecture must collapse. In its place, a natively data-centric architecture will rise. This architecture, which combines data without data lakes, lets you share data without APIs and embeds security inside the data itself, will lay the groundwork for the next iteration of the web, which we call Web3. This new stack uses blockchain to democratize data ownership while making all data secure, interoperable and traceable. It combines the original generous intent of the early internet with levels of security and accountability that online users have come to sorely miss. Because functionality is built into data and not middleware, compliance and data management become far easier, as does running data-centric apps that use machine learning, AI and machine-to-machine communication. The net result? A data value chain that actually works. Secure data that you can both trace and trust. Interoperable data that directly powers applications without the need for middleware. Simpler, more streamlined data architecture. A cleaner platform for innovation; quality data for better business decisions. A solution for our broken internet. A Crisis, an Opportunity China, Australia and Germany are already showing us what the new global standard of enterprise blockchain looks like. China's 100-city has reduced the cost of deploying a blockchain-based app to a mere $300, fueling an innovation ecosystem. The Australian government's and Germany's burgeoning demonstrate how a national commitment to supporting blockchain paves the way for a successful Web3 future. national blockchain network national blockchain roadmap public-private ecosystem Lacking national coordination, our biggest opportunity in the US lies in what we've always been good at: . The world is showing us that blockchain is coming. In this time of crisis, with opportunist hackers hungrier than ever for online assets, blockchain could be one of the biggest opportunities yet. innovation and grassroots adoption

In a Time of Crisis, Data Must Be Able to Defend Itself

Interview with Chatroulette Founder Andrey Ternovskiy

The youth of the 1980s was enthralled by computer games. Playing Batman: The Caped Crusader, and kicking Joker’s ass, was part of the experience for me. But there’s a movement, the Quantum computing world — how will it shape gaming in the future? Green-Screen Nostalgia When I think of nostalgia, I don’t think about the internet or playing soccer with my friends or watching on TV on a Saturday afternoon. Nostalgia, and I’m talking about the pure kind, was playing computer games. Back in 1985 or ‘86, my grandfather bought me a second-hand Amstrad CPC 64k personal computer. It was a machine that I cherished for many years until I dropped it one day. The A-Team Oh, my youth, how I miss you. Source: ebay Back then, when movie hit the theatres, Duran Duran was dominating the airwaves and the Cold War threatened world peace, I remember sitting in front of my PC for hours playing games like Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Chuckie Egg, Ghostbusters and who can forget Bruce Lee? The Goonies ‘I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.’ — Ronald Reagan, 1983 My parents, Luddites then and Luddites now, were forever looking at me in front of the black curiosity with a green-screen monitor that had taken their son’s attention away and stopped him from doing his chores and homework on a regular basis. Yippee, I thought. Before I’d fallen in love with computers, though (or more importantly computer games), I’d been an avid reader. I’d read a book or two a week: Young adult stuff and enough history books to keep me occupied for eternity. Computer games took all that away, at least for the most part of the 1980s and early 1990s. The Underground Railway, Black Beauty, Animal Farm. Then I became an adult and got my reading mojo back. But the nostalgia of those times has stayed with me. As a fan of popular culture, I can see now how computers and the geek culture have contributed to that genre immeasurably. Without companies like Atari and people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, maybe the world of tech would have been delayed by a decade or two — or at the very least a few years — leaving my childhood a cold, black-hole-like vacuum without the mesmeric attraction of prehistoric pixels on the monitor screen and the three-minute orchestration of beeps and screeches as the game loaded up in the cassette player. What would life have been like then? Let’s not talk about it. Photo by on Magnus Reiß Unsplash Since the massive machines of the early years of the computer dawn in the 60s came about in university campuses, controlled by people in dickie-bows, horned-rimmed glasses and an awkward fashion sense, there has been an exponential growth in their power and ability to entertain. At first, they were expensive and out of reach to the pockets of your average teenager (and their parents). But then things changed by the end of the 1970s. The democratization of computing began. The PC was born. The game consoles, too. And then there were the games that came with them. They were a gamechanger. They created a social ambiance between machine and user. Playing them became a social event, a way of making friends and bonding. What could be better? I’m Not a Hacker Okay, they had a serious angle, too, like for hacking. Who can forget 1983’s with a youthful Matthew Broderick as lead — for me at least, it was the catalyst for my brief career as a hacker when one of my more tech-savvy friends, who owned a ZX Spectrum, got hold of a modem. We were no hackers and connected neither to the WOPR supercomputer or any other for that matter. WarGames very Retirement came early. The ways the technological landscape changed in the 1980s was unbelievable. ‘I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.’ — Ernest Cline Roll on thirty-five years or so, and those computers seem funny in 2019. Sixty-four K of processing power won’t do a fart today but back then it was impressive enough. Moore’s Law has been good to computers. But it’s had its time. There’s a new shift in power that will alter the technological world irrevocably. The chronological line from those first games to the Web was a massive step. Yet now we are moving into a new realm, one far from what most people can get their heads around, quantum computing. With it, the era that I remember so fondly is disappearing. That is not to say video games are a thing of the past. No — the games industry is growing, with the market set to to be worth more than 90 billion U.S. dollars by the year 2020, from nearly 78.61 billion in 2017 , according to reports from Best The News. Yet what will they look like in the future? Quanto World, Baby! You’ve switched on your quantum computer, a work of art if ever you’ve seen one — not quite a Michelangelo as a piece of art, but not far off. More verging on the creativity of a Jony Ives of Apple fame. But sorry, you haven’t ‘switched on’ but ‘done’ whatever you have to do to gain access to it. You’ve got a powerful machine, too, ten, twenty, maybe even fifty superconducting quantum bits that are in the processor. But who’s counting? It’s cold, too, chillingly so, at almost absolute zero, technically zero kelvin — that’s roughly minus 273 Celsius if you’re a European or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit if you’re stateside. Again, who’s counting? Certainly not me. Well, you’re all ready to play and you press the start button (if there’s a start button). A quantum computer. Source: digitaltrends.com This is a quantum computer. It’s here to solve all the problems the classical computer can’t. But how does it work? Tiny particles, of the quantum world, have replaced the binary system of ones and zeros. Computer logic has been erased. A new modality has come into its place. Although scientists are trying to create games for these promising machines that add up at the moment to coin flipping and other simple probabilistic games, in the future computer scientists and physicists aspire to fashion games which not only offer visceral entertainment for the user, but also give them the chance to move around in an AI world as real as the one they live in. Already there are companies which have started putting out basic quantum computers possessing a minimum number of qubit power. Unfortunately, these machines are susceptible to errors at the moment. Giants like Google, Intel, IBM and Microsoft lead the way with their billion-dollar budgets and worldwide influence. Yet there are other companies, with minute budgets in comparison but with no less ambition like , IonQ and D-Wave which believe their systems are just as good. Rigetti This battle of corporations versus the indie clan in quantum computers will be interesting. The contest for the first one to understand the difficult physics behind how the quantum world operates won’t be solved any time soon. However, just the idea that there are researchers and companies trying to change the status quo is exciting. We shouldn’t scold the constructing of simple probabilistic games because at least it’s a start, just like the early computer programmers in the mid-20th century started with their games: Josef Kates’ Bertie the Brain, recorded as the first ever computer game in 1950, led us to Pong, which brought us to Return to Castle Wolfenstein in the early noughties and then to Red Dead Redemption 2, in 2018. Go figure. What makes, then, a quantum computer so very different from a regular computer? First of all, a classical computer can’t factor very large numbers. Additionally, they’re not the best at simulating the behaviour of subatomic particles, as this operation would need too many binary ‘bits’ to pull it off. Quantum computers, meanwhile, could solve these problems (or are they not problems to them but mere trifles) using qubits, which are basically quantum bits. Qubits work, not like regular bits — which operate in the binary system of 0 and 1 — but somewhere in between, in what is called in quantum theory parlance ‘superposition’ This means, in essence, that they can be both 0 and 1 at the same time, or partly both. Spooky, yeah? That’s what Einstein thought, too. But there’s more — ‘entanglement’, that’s when two qubits, separated by spatial reality, can somehow influence each other no matter how far away they are from each other. Now that’s kinda spooky! The Conjuring But not as spooky as the picture below: Photo by on Lucas Ludwig Unsplash With this system, quantum computers will be able to factor very high numbers in a much shorter time than even the most powerful supercomputers we have today. Moreover, they will — in theory at least — replicate how atoms interconnect with each other, which could help us create new molecules, or even, unbelievably, new materials never before seen on earth. In artificial intelligence (AI), too, the prospects look good, with companies researching how quantum computers could improve and enhance AI. Unfortunately, though, the realization of these things is in the distance, as quantum computers are still at the elementary stage of development. One of the fundamental flaws of quantum computers is with the qubits themselves. Sadly, qubits are very sensitive things and any interference from external factors can deprive them of their quantum essence, which turns them into normal bits. Boring! This hasn’t stopped computer scientists creating simple games for the machines, though. The Brains of the Games Dr , a Research Staff Member at the Zurich Research Laboratory, an employee of IBM and fellow writer on all things quantum computers on Medium, has created a game called Decodoku, which is an early game based on quantum error correction theory, though it was made on a classical computer. It is a simple game to play. Quantum Battleships is yet another game by the British physicist, again rudimentary in its application but like Decodoku, it’s a start. James Wootton ‘I do not like it, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it.’ — Erwin Schrödinger One more game, or rather ‘experience’, is Quantum Experience, by Wootton’s employer, IBM, which enables people to write their own programs on its five-qubit computer. To do it, so IBM states, users do not need a science degree nor any substantial knowledge of quantum physics. That counts me in, then. These text-based games are only the beginning of something that, one day, will be big news. Dekodoku, Dr James Wootton brainwork. Source: Twitter Text-based games are all well and good, but what is the future of video games when the technology of quantum principles is relatively advanced enough to head into that direction? Most in the industry believe classical computers will still carry out the donkey work of the video game interface like graphics, sound and movement, while quantum computers could quite possibly, if predictions are correct, enhance the physics engine of the games and mechanics of movement, giving the visualization of the experience a more visceral feel. In actual gameplay, however, quantum principles could add weirdness to games never seen before, such as characters or adversaries who can, quite strangely, act out their quantum ability to be in two places simultaneously, or existing and not, influencing each other through entanglement and behaving against the laws of space and time. This could be a boon for hardcore gamers: Randomness, it seems, goes hand in hand with video games and how they play out. Perceptive gamers, however, quite often after playing a game many times, begin to see patterns of behaviour within the game’s processor algorithm that are not so arbitrary, detracting from the ultimate randomness and ultimately, the gameplay experience. ‘Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense.’ — Roger Penrose Adding quantum principles to a game’s algorithms could truly create random gameplay, and add never-before-seen playable environments and infinitely unique character behaviour. Yet it’s all supposition, and who really knows? One thing that isn’t supposition, though, is to reach this point it will take a lot of hard work and harnessing the intelligence of people in the industry, getting companies like Rigetti, IBM and others to work together in focussing their efforts on improving quantum algorithms. Up to now, all the talk — and quite rightly so, too — has been about the software challenges. Still, the conundrum of hardware and the complexities we could face building it, cannot be ignored. Qubit power — and what would be needed to outperform the operational efficiency of classical computers — is another area of some contention between experts in the industry. The standard amount bandied about by most is fifty qubits, though it has been reported that a quantum machine of at least 1,000 qubits is the optimal amount to accommodate inbuilt errors within the system. We even have a claim — outlandish, no doubt — by Vancouver-based D-Wave of a fully-operational . To achieve this number of qubits is going to take a superhuman effort. If Norishige Morimoto’s — global vice-president of IBM — thoughts of a global ‘quantum supremacy’ are to be realized soon, time is running out. 5000-qubit computer by 2020 Are they dreamers or realists of the quantum computer’s future? Whatever happens, the future of video games and how they evolve will be an interesting one. With quantum computers’ ongoing development, and computer scientists and quantum theorists working flat out to evolve the discipline, exciting times are certainly ahead. The Joker controlled by quantum mechanics? Sounds interesting, if a little unfair for gamers. Don’t think I’m gonna beat him, though! <a href="https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href">https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href</a>

Geek Video Game Culture Verging On Quantum Reality

Cybersecurity like we’re in the year 2000: With the constant chatter of Beijing’s cybersecurity threats an important issue in the western media, giant tech company Huawei needs to get its house in order if it is to remain a big player on the UK telecommunications market Security Fears More bad news for telecom giant Huawei — , Technical Director of the National Cyber Security Centre, has gone on the record by saying the Chinese company’s approach to its engineering practices is ‘shoddy’ at best. The revelation means the British government could, in all likelihood, ban the firm’s mobile equipment in sensitive geographical areas such as Westminster and around military bases, as well as bar it from the UK’s 5G networks, seen by him as being too sensitive, he told BBC Panorama. Dr Ian Levy Plans on restrictions — or even a blanket ban — on the company operating in the UK will be revealed next month, though so far no details on the decision have been leaked out. Huawei, in response to the worries put forward by Levy, has reiterated it will work on any problems it has with its network and technology. Apprehension lies deep. A recent security review of Huawei’s products and technology, backed by GCHQ, confirmed worries it would be tough to control the risk management of any of the Chinese company’s products until flaws in its cyber-security operations are ironed out. Problems stemming from the development of its software have been identified, which in turn have created defects in current products. Although the company has stated the problems have been fixed in past versions of software, this is clearly not the case. Chinese Perspective Ryan Ding, chief executive of Huawei’s carrier business group, stated in a recent interview: “We hope to turn this challenge into an opportunity moving forward. I believe that if we can carry out this programme as planned, Huawei will become the strongest player in the telecom industry in terms of security and reliability.” He also added the company promised to allocate more than $2 billion for a ‘transformation programme’ that will address growing concerns by foreign governments of vulnerabilities in its security systems. Counter Claims In response to Ding’s position, Levy has said he does not believe the claims. He then added: “The security in Huawei is like nothing else — it’s like it’s back in the year 2000 — it’s very, very shoddy.” “We’ve seen nothing to give us any confidence that the transformation programme is going to do what they say it’s going to do.” The Technical Director of the National Cyber Security Centre also asserted “geographic restrictions — maybe there’s no Huawei radio [equipment] in Westminster” In spite of all the fallout, when it comes to sales the Chinese company’s figures have been impressive, with in excess of $100 billion in revenue claimed for last year. Many though, think stopping Huawei in its tracks would see a setback in the implementation of 5G technology in the UK. Dangers also lie if Huawei’s hardware is used at the core of companies networks, which do such functions as checking IDs on devices and the more sensitive issues of encrypted code. Huawei’s equipment was previously used by EE for its 3G and 4G core until the network provider’s takeover by BT. Now, the telecom giant is slowly removing it from its infrastructure because of the ongoing cybersecurity issues. Efficacy Yet, Huawei’s existing infrastructure is not without its clear benefits, especially regarding its base stations and antennae, as these radio access networks are seen in the industry to be essential in permitting mobile devices to connect wirelessly to the network through radio signals which are sent over the airwaves. Secret Service In Washington, too, the fires of doubt have been stoked about the potential threat of Huawei’s products on the market. Many in the White House see one of the world’s biggest tech firms as a proxy secret service to Beijing. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, though not issuing this belief outright, has said: “Huawei is owned by the state of China and has deep connections to their intelligence service. That should send off flares for everybody who understands what the Chinese military and Chinese intelligence services do. We have to take that threat seriously.” The US worries that Huawei follows Xi Jinping’s every word, and that its actions — though covertly — are always first and foremost for the benefit of the Communist Party. Source: freepik.com The National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Trump last year, which set in law the ban on any company or US government agency from using equipment and components produced by any of the Chinese communication companies, ZTE and Huawei included. The Chinese government, as a result of the lost business between Huawei and other Chinese companies and their American telecommunication partners, currently wants to sue the US government as they see the law as unconstitutional. Friendship , a member of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the man chosen to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, interviewed on BBC Panorama had this to say: Congressman Mike Conaway “Obviously, the terrific relationship between the UK and the United States — English-speaking countries — is important to maintain.” He then added: “But as a part of that we will have to assess what kind of risks we would have in sharing… secrets that would go across Huawei equipment, Huawei networks.” Photo by on Chris Liverani Unsplash Supportive words for the UK. But it is obvious Trump and his fellow Americans don’t trust the Chinese more than they can throw them: “We can always share things old-school ways by, you know, paper back and forth. But, in terms of being able to electronically communicate, across Huawei gear, Huawei networks, would be risky at best.” Maybe the UK needs to rethink its strategy. Trade War Words of solidarity with the UK and the rest of America’s allies, but this does not bode well for the ongoing trade war between Washington and Beijing. And with no quarter likely to be given by either party, it only looks to get worse. With a decision on Brexit still up in the air, and the UK on the hunt for friends outside the European brotherhood that is Brussels, it may seem to many in Downing Street a good course of action to listen to its biggest ally across the Atlantic. Doing business with companies like Huawei and ZTE, and the repercussions of that if anything goes wrong in the case of cybersecurity issues, could have massive — as well as long-ranging effects — on the UK for a very, very long time. <a href="https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href">https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href</a>

Huawei’s Ability to Manage its Security a Growing Concern

There’s been a lot of talk about the next “revolutionary” wave in telecom networks starting to roll out, aptly dubbed “ ”, or “5th Generation” of cellular network standards. For those who are already able to stream on their phone with ease, though, this begs the questions — what’s the big deal and why should I care? 5G This article will hopefully clarify what 5G technology actually is and how it’ll affect far more than just our ability to watch cat videos on the train. I’ll cover the basic vocabulary, technological concepts, and discuss how/when it’ll actually be implemented. Let’s start with the basics. What is 5G and why is it any better than the status quo? To understand 5G and its relevance, we first need to examine its predecessors (with each iteration rather uncreatively named 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G) and how it built off of them: Introduced in the 1980s, was the first mode for mass wireless communication, allowing us to make simple calls between mobile phones. The data transfer speed was about 0.01 MB per second. 1G was introduced a decade later in 1991, offering greater security through its use of digital encryption, as opposed to analog signals, and greater speed (3.1 MB per second). It also allowed for regular, text-only SMS messages to be sent. 2G came out in 1998 and made way for the eventual smartphone revolution, offering higher speeds (14.4 MB per second) and bridging mobile devices to the Internet. 3G The current standard, , was released in 2008. The most notable change here was the incredible jump in speed to 300 MB per second, allowing users to engage in activities like high-definition media streaming. 4G/LTE That brings us to 5G. It offers the same fundamental features as its predecessors (SMS messaging, cellular voice calls, and internet connectivity), largely built upon the core of 4G LTE technology. There are four notable changes here, though: bandwidth, which is expected to reach up to 1 GB per second, decreased latency times (less than a millisecond), energy efficiency, and greater capacity. network The relevance of the speed is pretty self-explanatory, but to put that number in perspective, a full 1080p HD movie is typically between 2 GB to 3 GB. For potential applications like self-driving cars (discussed below) which generate up to petabytes (1 million GB) of data at a time, this is a game-changer. Relatedly, the lowering of latency, which is a delay in the actual process of transferring data, is also a pretty big deal. No matter how large the data packets you can transfer at a given moment (bandwidth) are, the speed is rate-limited by the actual rate at which the information gets from point A to B (latency). This is why currently even on high-bandwidth internet, your Netflix app might still pause and load to process more data. Reread this paragraph if you didn’t understand it — latency is going to come up a lot in just a bit! Energy efficiency is relatively straightforward. 5G will consume less power on devices, meaning longer battery lives, and perhaps by extension, less carbon waste from charging devices less often. As for greater network capacity, this is quite possible the most important change of all. With the rapid expansion of the Internet of Things, more and more devices are being designed for use on cellular networks, meaning that we an infrastructural change to accommodate this (and future) demand. need OK, so 5G includes some pretty big technological improvements. I’m still not seeing how this will affect my day-to-day life, though. This is a fair statement, and a sentiment I shared at first as well. The core logic likely underlying such a claim, though, is the fallacy that cellular networks exist primarily to be used by cell phones. While 5G certainly will allow for a much quicker user experience in that regard, there are also several very different technologies it will altogether . Below are brief explanations on some of the most exciting (in my opinion): revolutionize 5G’s low latency (in tandem with powerful edge-computing algorithms) would allow autonomous vehicles to respond quickly to any sudden environmental shifts, while also potentially communicating with nearby vehicles to optimize traffic and route times. To clarify, edge computing essentially designates a significant portion of computational activity to the car itself, rather constantly relaying information back and forth all the way between the car and a remote server (thus placing less burden on the cellular networks). 4G networks even then aren’t able to handle such high-speed, high-volume transfers of information, nor send data with low enough latency to keep passengers safe. Self-driving cars: Virtual reality is the placement of a user (typically with a headset) in a completely simulated, digital world. Augmented reality is the placement of digital constructs on top of a live feed of the real world. In both cases, the user is interacting in real-time with their environment. When this is being done without the need for cellular connection (ex: the landscape for the VR world is downloaded locally, or the AR object layered on the world is pre-configured) that’s not an issue. When the user needs to interact in real-time with the digital environment over a cellular connection, though (ex: Facebook’s virtual reality world), it’s only with the low latency of 5G that there can be a seamless, responsive experience. Virtual and augmented reality: This is essentially real-time, haptic feedback on a machine, is perhaps the most interesting prospect. In surgery, for example, a surgeon could in theory control robotic equipment to perform the surgery with, which allows him/her to make much more precise movements than just the human hand. With tactile internet then, the device they’re using will be able to buzz/move/etc. at certain positions so that the doctor controlling the equipment can feel what the machine “feels”, such as the firmness of a bone or pumping of blood through an artery. This allows them to benefit from the senses of a human, while using the precision of a machine. To be able to simulate what something like over the internet in response to real world events, though, requires a (perceived) instantaneous transfer of information, which only the low-latency of 5G can allow. It’s possible the same technology could even be used for remotely performed surgeries. Tactile internet: feels Here, it’s a general combination of 5G’s core capabilities (high-speed, low latency, larger capacity) that creates the possibility of smart cities. The smart city is basically applying IoT capabilities to every function/service in a city, ranging from the power grid to public transportation. For example, (self-driving) buses could target locations with the highest population density at any given moment (as determined by connected security cameras), eradicating the need for constant, permanent bus stops as the system evolves. Everything connected to the internet is suddenly optimized to interact with the rest of the city. Smart cities: These are just a few example, but as you may have noticed, 5G’s low latency is the key to unlocking quite a few capabilities. It’s crazy to think that these revolutionary technologies, all of which we’ve been discussing for decades, have been limited primarily by data speeds, rather than a product development issue itself. Speaking more broadly, we now have the opportunity to create entire industries that were once stuff of science fiction. The ability to quickly transfer information will rarely again serve as a bottleneck for innovation. Often, we connect to cellular networks when we just don’t have access to WiFi or ethernet. In a world with 5G though, that 5G service becomes the preferred default (speaking from a technological standpoint — pricing/general implementation is a whole different ball game, as discussed below). It sounds like 5G is going to be everywhere. What resources do telecom companies need so that they can offer it? Offering 5G will soon enough be a baseline expectation, meaning that those who can’t keep up will be left behind. As I’ll explain below, though, keeping up isn’t such an easy task. There’s two core resources to discuss here: spectrum and fiber. Spectrum is a collection of all the frequencies (of the electromagnetic spectrum) at which wireless signals can be deployed between a wireless tower and the device being used. It exists in three main forms: unlicensed, licensed, and shared. is pretty straightforward, and it’s what we typically expect. It consists frequencies that anyone can use, like a WiFi connection (in this case, the spectrum is between a device router and a router, rather than a tower). There’s not really a limit on the use here, as its freely available and locally hosted. Unlicensed spectrum , however, isn’t as easy to get ahold of. The government holds a highly competitive auctioning process so that companies (such as AT&T, Verizon, etc.) can own certain frequencies across the country for their cellular networks. Companies bid based on frequencies and locations that they’d like to own, both of which are variables that depend entirely on the specific company’s intentions (different frequencies are optimized for different applications/technologies). It may seem odd that the government is essentially putting the country’s airwaves for sale, but if spectrum wasn’t sold on a per-company basis, multiple companies using the same frequencies in the same area would for all practical purposes destroy the signals being sent. Licensed spectrum allows third-parties that don’t own specific frequencies of spectrum to use the frequencies for their own purposes. Despite the competitive process to get spectrum, there are places at which as little as no purchased spectrum is being used. This allows those with spectrum licenses to generate passive income, while also optimizing the use of resources by creating opportunities for other businesses (who, for example, may be smaller and couldn’t compete in the spectrum bidding war). Shared spectrum The FCC has announced that the 5G spectrum auction begins on November 14, 2018, and we can expect the bids to get astronomically high, as spectrum is generally regarded to be a relatively rare resource. Mobile spectrum alone is estimated to be worth $500 billion. Some believe more spectrum will be made available as the technology to communicate over more frequencies is developed, but at least for now, availability is scarce. The market will only get more competitive in the meanwhile. The other key component telecom companies will need in order to offer 5G is fiber. Fiber is shorthand for fiber-optic technology, which transmits information by sending pulses of light through wires made of optical fiber. It’s essentially wired internet, and it’s incredibly fast (as in, equal to the speed of 5G). This may seem a bit confusing, as I’ve been going on endlessly about the power of 5G as a wireless connectivity service, so requiring fiber optic cables sounds like it’s going against what we’re trying to do with wireless technology. This is actually quite a prominent and dangerous misconception about 5G. It turns out that to reach the speeds that 5G requires, the signals need to be at very high frequencies (meaning that the spectrum companies bid on in a few months are significantly higher frequencies than what we use for technologies like 4G). With a quick flashback to high school physics, you may remember that a higher frequency indicates a shorter wavelength. In this case, it means that 5G signals can only travel up to about 100 meters during the day with absolutely no obstruction (such as the walls of a house), and significantly less with obstruction. As a result, to make 5G a reality, we’re going to need to set up millions of “stations” (which are essentially antennas sending out the 5G signal) all across the country, in places ranging from our neighborhoods to our highway. These stations are built upon fiber optic cable, which can carry the massive volumes of information that we want for hundreds of miles with pretty much no degradation. Because of how easily the signals can be interrupted, we may even end up bringing stations into our houses at some point as well. Essentially, the underground, wired fiber brings all the data to the 5G stations that will be everywhere, and from these stations, the “5G part” happens when the signal is wirelessly transmitted to our device. To clarify, the reason 5G is so fast isn’t just because it’s right next to the stations. The waves themselves can carry far more information than 4G could, and the actual process of transmitting the information doesn’t have nearly as high of a latency. The technology is more powerful (though I concede you could make a valid argument saying the distance constraint actually nullifies this claim), but it also happens to have constraints. It seems like spectrum has been mostly dealt with. What about fiber, though? Doesn’t requiring millions of stations render 5G useless? It’s certainly not useless (or I wouldn’t be writing this much about it). However, it’s definitely not something we’re going to see in mass market applications for a while. In order to actually make 5G accessible to the average consumer, we’re going to first need fiber laid across pretty much the entire country. Right now, it exists primarily just in large cities (and even then, there’s no station present for 5G). Stations can just be added to existing infrastructure like lamp posts, but this effort is still an undertaking will cost up to $150 billion and take around five years, as per a Deloitte estimate. The current situation also means that 5G technologies will first come to urban areas, then suburban, and likely much later, rural as well. While companies, such as AT&T, have already begun preparing 5G networks for deployment, it’s important to remember this isn’t true 5G. As explained by 3GPP, the organization which writes the standards, “5G will remain a marketing & industry term that companies will use as they see fit” until the standards are published (which was only this past December). Case in point: AT&T’s supposed 5G network essentially just leverages 4G LTE technology. How are policymakers preparing us for this future? This has actually become quite a big issue that’s manifested itself several times in the past year alone. 5G is for all intents and purposes an arms race between two countries: the United States and China. That said, given the current situation, most seem to agree that China has pretty much already won. Sure, part of the reason both countries are taking 5G so seriously is because of its direct application to technologies like self-driving cars and their economic implications. What’s really on their mind, though, is artificial intelligence. Once 5G networks are operational, that’s more of data being generated, processed, and transferred. Artificial intelligence algorithms are taught and improved based on data, meaning that they get better when they’re fed more data (so long as its useful data). Whichever country can implement a true 5G network first is essentially going to end up light years ahead of the other in artificial intelligence because of this advantage, which in turn pretty much guarantees geopolitical dominance for eternity (or at least, a really long time). worlds This calls into question how exactly China is currently ahead. The most apparent way is from an infrastructure standpoint. With regards to the millions of local stations that I mentioned need to be created for 5G to be operational, it’s estimated that China has built over 350,000, while the United States has only built about 30,000. Less obvious, but equally important, is the spectrum distribution process. The highly competitive spectrum auctioning process among numerous cellular carriers in the US leaves a dent in the wallets of the participants, meaning their ability to actually invest in technology development after they buy the rights to it is hurt quite badly. In China, on the other hand, there’s only a few major players, all of which are government owned. This means that they can still invest heavily in developing 5G stations across the country after their auctions because it’s ultimately the Chinese government that’s footing the bill. Some have suggested that the US should change their spectrum auction process to basically turn the entire network into a shared spectrum, which is allocated by a non-carrier third party. The Trump administration seems to be quite open to this “nationalized” 5G network concept, though details about how to pay for things like building the stations aren’t known (and there also hasn’t been any talk of cancelling the auction yet). This race is why the Trump administration blocked Broadcom (a Chinese company) from purchasing Qualcomm (a US company), as Qualcomm is generally regarded to be America’s 5G leader alongside Intel. Some policy experts also believe it’s the real reason behind the recent tariffs placed on Chinese imports, with a supposed intention of stunting China’s massive investment in the technology. Overall, the situation isn’t going too well here for America. China’s network is expected to roll out in early 2019, while the timeline in the United States still remains quite unclear. Heavier investment is needed to compete. Alright, so 3,000+ words later, what are the major takeaways here? 5G allows us to develop all sorts of fantastical new technologies, but it’s several years away from being a reality. Geopolitically speaking, it’s crucial to develop a full-fledged 5G network as soon as possible, which is why we need policymakers to take more action in this domain. I’ll conclude with a quote from the World Economic Forum for some final perspective: “Economists estimate the global economic impact of 5G in new goods and services will reach $12 trillion by 2035 as 5G moves mobile technology from connecting people to people and information, towards connecting people to everything.” It may not be here tomorrow, but there’s no doubt about it: 5G is the future. Sources: , , , , , , , , , , , . NBC Wired CNN Deloitte World Economic Forum Cisco 5G.co 1 5G.co 2 Spectrum Futures Network World Axios Forbes

Everything you need to know about 5G technology (non-technical)

by Anne Szustek Talbot, director of content at BX3 Ah, summer 2013: When Daft Punk’s “ ” was dominating the airwaves and, other than coverage of a then-sparkling new investment vehicle called , the term “ICO” was merely a typo in financial news articles. Get Lucky MasterCoin Five years later, Daft Punk hasn’t since released another album and ICOs have evolved beyond a one-time headline. They have become a . And they have made a name for themselves beyond their three-letter abbreviation. Bloomberg reported on August 2 that . Now that ICOs are winning, it’s time to change the game plan. cultural touchstone during the first six months of 2018, ICOs raised a record $7 billion A couple of years ago, a typical ICO marketing strategy would have centered around gathering a large following on Telegram. A social media ad campaign with online community management would have been the extent of building the story around a new offering, with perhaps a sort of ragtag roadshow hitting up various conferences to help put a face to a name. For an ICO to take such a tack now would be amateur hour at best; dwindle investor confidence at worst. “I would advise the team behind an upcoming ICO to have a heavier reliance on public relations: getting their story out there and telling it to the crowd you want to tell it to,” says Kyle Asman, co-founder of blockchain/cryptocurrency consultancy and many times veteran of ICOs. Bx3 In other words, beyond an investment vehicle created in someone’s apartment. Accordingly, the corresponding communications strategy should expand beyond a similar DIY-from-your-bedroom approach. Yet, considering that many cryptocurrency devotees essentially live in online forums, how to broaden the message may seem befuddling. This is where a PR/marketing professional can step in and provide the proper guidance. ICOs have evolved “Blockchain presents a great opportunity for traditional marketers to step in to do effective storytelling and design thoughtful campaigns,” says Kelcey Gosserand, a longtime communications professional and founder of , a platform that seeks to build the world’s largest community of blockchain professionals. While knowledge of blockchain is certainly important to gaining traction and respect among sector peers, “there is so much more involved to get a project off the ground in terms of a sophisticated media and public relations strategy.” Trellis For many people in 2018, blockchain and cryptocurrency remain buzzy terms at best, residing somewhere in the popular consciousness as things that are “the future” and “good to know about,” yet are not actually able to describe how these technologies work beyond “something like Internet.” Yet within the past year or two, even seasoned cryptocurrency aficionados may have fallen prey to the zeitgeist, getting caught up in the rising wave of assets and wealth in the sector. Or, as Gosserand describes it, another of-the-moment term: FOMO. For those blockchain projects run by excitement rather than a reasoned business plan, marketing often tends to be an afterthought. This, says Gosserand, can be detrimental to an ICO’s consistent success. Not having a clear strategy about communications from a project’s inception can mean having to backpedal on messaging about its key goals and milestones — if not worse. Thirst for the next big thing — or perhaps more accurately, the money therein — can leave key investors and other industry players unable to separate clear messages from the noise; clear messages being star projects and the noise being bad actors looking to capitalize on…yes, FOMO. In the current crypto landscape, the investor base has matured, therefore, so should an ICO marketing strategy. Accordingly, the typical marketing plan should broaden and focus on a more traditional marketing mix, with a slant towards storytelling and earned media in the beginning stages. “Leveraging a traditional marketing mix of paid, earned, social and owned media is the best way to get your company’s messages and value propositions to your key audiences,” says Carol Lin Vieira, VP Corporate Marketing and Public Relations for Bx3. “At the heart of it all is the ability to tell your story in a compelling manner, and connect with the influencers and media who can help amplify your message so it captures the attention of investors, industry, and end users.” Moreover, the ever-evolving regulatory environment about blockchain makes a strategic approach to communications all the more crucial. According to Gosserand, blockchain professionals should consider marketing as one peg of a three-legged stool, along with technical knowledge and legal counsel. While blockchain professionals tend to have plenty enough tech savvy to hold up that end of the project, the ever-changing regulatory environment around ICOs means that without the two other sides of the equation, the team behind a project might inadvertently put its foot in its collective mouth. In some instances, regulation has even removed that obstacle. As for the aforementioned social media publicity-as-strategy, in January 2018, , with a spokesperson citing projects “that are not currently operating in good faith” as the rationale. Facebook banned advertising for cryptocurrencies and ICOs Other times, the communications side may need to rely on the legal peg to advise on specific language. Gosserand describes a time when she was working with a client whose legal team was convinced they were working with a different utility. These sorts of internal disconnects are only going to complicate external messaging, defeating the whole point of publicizing an IPO. So how can viable ICOs keep themselves above the riffraff? “Blockchain has the reputation of being the Wild West,” says Asman. “Anything went and anything goes.” As the market has matured, so do new launches’ public and investor relations. The first step, Asman and Gosserand agree, is to identify the targets. Often, but not always, these are high-profile investors of venture capital fund caliber, if not outright. “The key to success for most of the big ICOs has been getting the Tim Drapers and Michael Terpins on board,” says Asman, “as well as those so-called ‘strategic partners’ whose presence will get the attention of other funds.” Any pitch decks should be tailored to this market; media pitches to the publications that this community reads and respects. Once a project is successful, then communication needs to profile and highlight the milestones the organization has achieved. From an investor relations standpoint, getting out there and doing a roadshow should be on the docket. “If you’re launching an ICO, likely you’re a high-net-worth investor yourself, and the venture capital fund you want to attract isn’t looking for their investment opportunities on Facebook,” says Asman. Gosserand concurs. “If your marketing strategy is posting things on Telegram and Reddit, that’s not really a strategy. That’s a tactic.” Or, in the words of Daft Punk, your ICO doesn’t have much of a plan besides being “out to get lucky.”

The New Rules of Marketing an ICO

The whole game has changed. I remember talking about the stock market with my grandfather. He would tell me things about reading quarterly reports or potentially seeing the names of the stocks he owned in the newspaper. If you wanted information about a company, you had to wait. Imagine trying to explain this to a young investor today: “Sorry, you can’t read about your stock or its earnings right now. But in two weeks, I’ll use the United States Postal Service to mail you a report about the latest quarter.” An entire generation of American investors once lived like that. All of the information they got about their companies were random sightings in a newspaper, an occasional showing on TV, or a mailed report. That’s it. I don’t think many investors could live like that that today. I also don’t think many investors really understand how easy it is to get information about any company, executive, or product. It’s all here. Somewhere on the Internet. It just takes skill, time to dig it up, and the ability to share it at scale. I want you to think about communication. The simple act of spreading an idea or sending a message from one party to the next. It might be a news release, a product announcement, or a something else related to the company. How do founders, and leaders of a company send a message to the shareholders who own their company? Or passionate fans? Those who pay attention to these simple questions will win. Those who overlook it, will fall behind. First, let’s talk about how things worked many years ago. Or back when my grandpa was an investor. You only had a few ways to get a message about your company to the people who were investing in it or cared about it: Newspapers and magazines Radio TV Quarterly reports 20 years ago, all of the most important messages were disseminated through institutions. You needed a national newspaper to disseminate a message, interview, and even an advertisement. Or a local radio broadcast to get a word spread across airwaves. You needed an institution to be your medium. That game is over. The medium is now the person. And that’s how it should be. Or it should have been like that all this time. But it took hundreds of thousands of fiber optic cables and satellites hovering above a blue marble to make it happen. Sometimes I think the Internet was invented, whether they knew it or not, as a means to give everyone a voice. The hipster techies in San Francisco might say, it democratized public conversation. I think if you look around at the current landscape, you can see how that comment marinated over time. People no longer need the institution or organization. They can do it themselves. Back in 2011, a mentor of mine said to me, “As more people connect through social networks, institutional media will fade.” Imagine a world where anyone can send and spread any message they want at scale across the world for a cost that equals zero dollars. That world is right in front of you. The game changer is social media. It’s still only in its early innings. A whole new line of communication has opened . It’s public, it’s free, and it’s fast. Here’s something to think about further: the latency for a single message to reach a group of people has never been lower. Meaning, at no other point in our wonderful history of mankind have people been able to send a message as fast or as far as we are able to do today. Social media for investors and fans means the end of waiting for a signal. It’s fascinating to me how quickly people forget that just thirty years ago everyone needed a morning paper to find out what was going on around them. Think about that. Thirty years ago. Imagine how confused you would be reading this post then. Even twenty years ago. Today, you create, build, and learn from anyone in minutes. The merit is in the message. Followers, and fans are the proof. And that brings us to . Elon Musk Put your opinions or emotions about Musk aside for a few more minutes. Because today, he’s giving everyone a glimpse into the of investor communication and message dissemination. Musk controls his own message. future He wields Twitter like his own TV network. People want to hear from people. That’s true for every industry. For investors, it means they no longer want to hear from the company. They want to hear from the company’s leaders and founders. Investors of every size and interest will want this, and they will get it. Reuters wrote a Tweet about Tesla. It’s negative, and it has potential to sway the decision-making of investors and traders: Elon Musk responds. It’s open to the public, he defends Tesla, it’s straight from him: Here’s Raj Mathai posting a video showing what he believes is the current state of Tesla manufacturing: Musk responds, clarifies, and provides what he thinks is actually true about the situation: If you’re an investor in Tesla, a fan of the electric vehicles, or someone who thinks Musk is a fraud, the conversational aspect and real-time nature of this exchange has never happened before so openly and public. Currently, only a few companies and their CEOs are doing this. But controlling your message will become more important, and more founders, CEOs, and leaders of companies will begin to act like Musk — being vocal and outspoken about what they think is right and what they think is wrong. The only other name that comes to mind right now is the CEO of T-Mobile. The CEO of T-Mobile is John Legere, and you can find him posting daily: In five to ten years, I believe the biggest winning companies will operate like Legere and Musk. Investors, fans, and followers will no longer want to hear from companies. They will no longer want dry, corporate or dull sounding messages spread through an institution. They will want to hear directly from them. They want color. They want voice. And they want someone with a real meaningful opinion. Those who understand this will use social media, like Twitter, to engage in free debate, and to transmit messages instantaneously. When Musk tweets, the big bulge bracket banks, the ones with billions of dollars under management, or more than 10,000 employees, get the exact same information as me, the guy who moved to New York City a year ago, manages his own account, and lives in an apartment the size of some closets. This is a new paradigm. People talk about how Bitcoin decentralized currencies. Or how blockchain is bringing transparency to the financial ecosystem. In my opinion, social media is right in front of us and having a far bigger impact. It’s decentralized the message, and it’s made it more free and transparent than ever. If the pen is mightier than the sword, we still have yet to fully grasp how insanely powerful this new ability is. I hope you enjoyed reading about. I hope to expand on it further down the road. And I hope you’ll follow me on Twitter where I talk about stocks, investing, and the future of finance. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, and I’ll send you some of my other writings and notes. Make sure you’re also following me on and . I also invite you to read some of the other posts I’ve written: subscribe to my email here Twitter StockTwits A Simple Hack To Stop Making Dumb Investments and Regretful Trades How the Founder of the 5th Largest Cryptocurrency Learned About Long-Term Investing What I Learned From the Investor Letter Warren Buffett wrote after the Financial Crisis

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