From the emergence of “AI x blockchain” use-cases to an increasing role of stablecoins in financial markets, to the maturation of zero-knowledge

3 Greenshoot Sectors in the Blockchain Space

KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 1): Singapore-based property management company Bespoke Habitat has marked its foray into the Malaysian market with its co-living space in Johor Bahru. In a media statement issued on Nov 1, the 200-room co-living space is located near Mid ...

Singaporean Bespoke Habitat launches co-living space in Johor Bahru

Luxury retail brand Bal Harbour Shops is kicking off its new traveling pop-up shop event in Raleigh later this month.

Tiffany & Co., luxury retail shops coming to Raleigh for pop-up event

Lucy chief engineer at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, in a statement. “Instead, we pre-program all the science observations. After the science observations and flyby are complete, Lucy will reorient its high-gain antenna toward Earth ...

NASA’s Lucy mission is about to fly by the first of 10 asteroids

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When envisaging what that might look like, Space Perspective founder and co-CEO Jane Poynter and her team settled on what the British-born Poynter dubs a “loo with a view.” “Why not have a loo with a view?” Poynter tells CNN Travel. Concepts from ...

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which owns the Union Fish Co. building, had a 30-day notice stipulation for tenants. “For us, we had to pause and say, ‘If we’re going to invest a lot of money into this space, is it smart to do that knowing that at any given time, you could be ...

Saturday rally to oppose development of 3,000-square-foot research center at Blasco Library

Craig Underwood, emeritus professor of spacecraft engineering at the University of Surrey Space Centre, is the study's lead author ... decades — including a 30-year stint at NASA where he co-founded the Swamp Works research lab.

New study brings us closer to solar space farms that beam renewable energy back to Earth

In spatial situations, a specific set of space-related cells in the brain's entorhinal cortex ... first author of the study also co-authored by Dr. Gabriel Kreiman Professor at Harvard Medical School. "The ability to extract precise, localized, temporal ...

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On Thursday, Oct. 26, Little Pearl Candy Co. owner Alexandra Taussig and Bom Bom Beads owner Lisa Lewis cut the ribbon on their shared pop-up shop and incubator space at 206 Main St. on the ground floor of the Harbor Village apartment complex. Little Pearl ...

Project: Pop-Up Gloucester welcomes candy and beads to Main Street

CO Space

cospace

**LAS VEGAS, Nevada, July 30th, 2024/CyberNewsWire/--**Amid rising breaches including Snowflake, the platform helps security teams proactively detect and respond to identity-centric threats in business-critical SaaS applications. Adaptive Shield, a leader in SaaS Security, today announced its breakthrough Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) platform for SaaS environments. Since entering this space a year ago, the company has already become a leader in the field, implementing the solution in hundreds of enterprise customer environments. Adaptive Shield will demonstrate its new ITDR platform and award-winning technology at booth #1268 during Black Hat USA, from August 7-8, 2024, showcasing its capabilities with the most complex threat detection use cases and campaigns seen in the wild. The recent Snowflake breach served as a wake-up call for the SaaS industry. On May 27, a threat group announced the sale of 560 million stolen records from targeted attacks on single-factor authentication users in Snowflake. This event, which continues to make headlines, follows a series of significant breaches in SaaS applications over recent months. "The Snowflake breach is a classic example of a SaaS security event that could have been prevented or, if not, detected. Organizations must recognize the shared SaaS security responsibility model, in which SaaS vendors provide native security controls, but it is ultimately the organization's duty to actively ensure these controls are implemented," said Maor Bin, co-founder and CEO of Adaptive Shield. "Major incidents like this could easily be prevented with proper monitoring and hardening tools. Beyond prevention, which is fundamental to SaaS security, having threat detection and response capabilities tailored for SaaS applications would have identified the Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and halted the attack at the perimeter." Adaptive Shield’s ITDR platform works alongside the company’s prevention SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) platform and enables enterprises to proactively cover the breadth of attack vectors within the SaaS ecosystem. Identity-centric threats can originate from misconfigured settings, human and non-human identities, and compromised SaaS user devices. These threats manifest in various forms, such as account takeovers, unintended publicly available links, malicious applications, and more. Real-life sophisticated campaigns detected by Adaptive Shield customers include: Threat actors taking over credentials in a payroll & HR management system and changing employee bank account details to transfer their salary to a different account.


A partially deprovisioned former employee accessed and downloaded very sensitive data. This occurred due to misconfigurations within a highly complex operational platform.


Detection of lateral movement from a disabled MFA demo account into production via OAuth, as a malicious app, directly into employee mailboxes.


Access to public links in the CRM, intended for data sharing. While these public links were password protected, had expiration dates, and usage tracking, they were still accessible to unauthorized users.


Account hijacking through user compromised user devices. “Current ITDR solutions primarily address endpoint and on-premises Active Directory protection, but they do not cover the intricate SaaS environment. Addressing SaaS-related threats demands deep expertise and can be achieved only by cross-referencing and analyzing suspicious events in context from multiple sources, ensuring precise detection of subtle identity-centric threats,” said Gilad Walden, VP Product at Adaptive Shield. Adaptive Shield integrates with over 160 applications out-of-the-box, enabling customers to connect their entire stack and achieve an accurate alerting of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), drastically eliminating false positive alerts. To meet with an Adaptive Shield executive onsite at Black Hat USA or remotely, users can reach out here. About Adaptive Shield Chosen by hundreds of large enterprises, including numerous Fortune 500 companies, Adaptive Shield continues to be the trusted SSPM and ITDR platform that enables security teams to stay on top of their organization’s apps, identities and any unusual user behavior in the SaaS ecosystem. Adaptive Shield leads the SaaS security space and is recognized with awards such as Gartner Cool Vendor, Frost & Sullivan’s Global Technology Innovation Leadership and the Global Infosec Awards 2024. For more information visit www.adaptive-shield.com Contact Senior Account Executive Chloe Amante Montner Tech PR camante@montner.com This story was distributed as a release by Cyberwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. **LAS VEGAS, Nevada, July 30th, 2024/CyberNewsWire/--**Amid rising breaches including Snowflake, the platform helps security teams proactively detect and respond to identity-centric threats in business-critical SaaS applications. Adaptive Shield, a leader in SaaS Security, today announced its breakthrough Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) platform for SaaS environments. Since entering this space a year ago, the company has already become a leader in the field, implementing the solution in hundreds of enterprise customer environments. Adaptive Shield will demonstrate its new ITDR platform and award-winning technology at booth #1268 during Black Hat USA, from August 7-8, 2024, showcasing its capabilities with the most complex threat detection use cases and campaigns seen in the wild. ITDR platform ITDR platform The recent Snowflake breach served as a wake-up call for the SaaS industry. On May 27, a threat group announced the sale of 560 million stolen records from targeted attacks on single-factor authentication users in Snowflake. This event, which continues to make headlines, follows a series of significant breaches in SaaS applications over recent months. Snowflake breach Snowflake breach significant breaches significant breaches "The Snowflake breach is a classic example of a SaaS security event that could have been prevented or, if not, detected. Organizations must recognize the shared SaaS security responsibility model, in which SaaS vendors provide native security controls, but it is ultimately the organization's duty to actively ensure these controls are implemented," said Maor Bin, co-founder and CEO of Adaptive Shield. "The Snowflake breach is a classic example of a SaaS security event that could have been prevented or, if not, detected. Organizations must recognize the shared SaaS security responsibility model, in which SaaS vendors provide native security controls, but it is ultimately the organization's duty to actively ensure these controls are implemented," said Maor Bin, co-founder and CEO of Adaptive Shield. "Major incidents like this could easily be prevented with proper monitoring and hardening tools. Beyond prevention, which is fundamental to SaaS security, having threat detection and response capabilities tailored for SaaS applications would have identified the Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and halted the attack at the perimeter." "Major incidents like this could easily be prevented with proper monitoring and hardening tools. Beyond prevention, which is fundamental to SaaS security, having threat detection and response capabilities tailored for SaaS applications would have identified the Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and halted the attack at the perimeter." Adaptive Shield’s ITDR platform works alongside the company’s prevention SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) platform and enables enterprises to proactively cover the breadth of attack vectors within the SaaS ecosystem. Identity-centric threats can originate from misconfigured settings, human and non-human identities, and compromised SaaS user devices. These threats manifest in various forms, such as account takeovers, unintended publicly available links, malicious applications, and more. Real-life sophisticated campaigns detected by Adaptive Shield customers include: Threat actors taking over credentials in a payroll & HR management system and changing employee bank account details to transfer their salary to a different account. A partially deprovisioned former employee accessed and downloaded very sensitive data. This occurred due to misconfigurations within a highly complex operational platform. Detection of lateral movement from a disabled MFA demo account into production via OAuth, as a malicious app, directly into employee mailboxes. Access to public links in the CRM, intended for data sharing. While these public links were password protected, had expiration dates, and usage tracking, they were still accessible to unauthorized users. Account hijacking through user compromised user devices. Threat actors taking over credentials in a payroll & HR management system and changing employee bank account details to transfer their salary to a different account. Threat actors taking over credentials in a payroll & HR management system and changing employee bank account details to transfer their salary to a different account. A partially deprovisioned former employee accessed and downloaded very sensitive data. This occurred due to misconfigurations within a highly complex operational platform. A partially deprovisioned former employee accessed and downloaded very sensitive data. This occurred due to misconfigurations within a highly complex operational platform. Detection of lateral movement from a disabled MFA demo account into production via OAuth, as a malicious app, directly into employee mailboxes. Detection of lateral movement from a disabled MFA demo account into production via OAuth, as a malicious app, directly into employee mailboxes. Access to public links in the CRM, intended for data sharing. While these public links were password protected, had expiration dates, and usage tracking, they were still accessible to unauthorized users. Access to public links in the CRM, intended for data sharing. While these public links were password protected, had expiration dates, and usage tracking, they were still accessible to unauthorized users. Account hijacking through user compromised user devices. Account hijacking through user compromised user devices. “Current ITDR solutions primarily address endpoint and on-premises Active Directory protection, but they do not cover the intricate SaaS environment. Addressing SaaS-related threats demands deep expertise and can be achieved only by cross-referencing and analyzing suspicious events in context from multiple sources, ensuring precise detection of subtle identity-centric threats,” said Gilad Walden, VP Product at Adaptive Shield. “Current ITDR solutions primarily address endpoint and on-premises Active Directory protection, but they do not cover the intricate SaaS environment. Addressing SaaS-related threats demands deep expertise and can be achieved only by cross-referencing and analyzing suspicious events in context from multiple sources, ensuring precise detection of subtle identity-centric threats,” said Gilad Walden, VP Product at Adaptive Shield. Adaptive Shield integrates with over 160 applications out-of-the-box, enabling customers to connect their entire stack and achieve an accurate alerting of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), drastically eliminating false positive alerts. To meet with an Adaptive Shield executive onsite at Black Hat USA or remotely, users can reach out here . here here About Adaptive Shield Chosen by hundreds of large enterprises, including numerous Fortune 500 companies, Adaptive Shield continues to be the trusted SSPM and ITDR platform that enables security teams to stay on top of their organization’s apps, identities and any unusual user behavior in the SaaS ecosystem. Adaptive Shield leads the SaaS security space and is recognized with awards such as Gartner Cool Vendor, Frost & Sullivan’s Global Technology Innovation Leadership and the Global Infosec Awards 2024. For more information visit www.adaptive-shield.com Adaptive Shield Adaptive Shield www.adaptive-shield.com www.adaptive-shield.com Contact Senior Account Executive Chloe Amante Montner Tech PR camante@montner.com This story was distributed as a release by Cyberwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. This story was distributed as a release by Cyberwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here . here here

Adaptive Shield Showcases New ITDR Platform For SaaS At Black Hat USA

অ্যাডাপটিভ শিল্ড ব্ল্যাক হ্যাট ইউএসএ-তে SaaS-এর জন্য নতুন ITDR প্ল্যাটফর্ম প্রদর্শন করে

Adaptive Shield präsentiert auf der Black Hat USA neue ITDR-Plattform für SaaS

Adaptive Shield presenta su nueva plataforma ITDR para SaaS en Black Hat USA

Adaptive Shield présente sa nouvelle plateforme ITDR pour SaaS au salon Black Hat USA

एडेप्टिव शील्ड ने ब्लैक हैट यूएसए में SaaS के लिए नया ITDR प्लेटफॉर्म प्रदर्शित किया

Adaptive Shield が Black Hat USA で SaaS 向けの新しい ITDR プラットフォームを展示

Adaptive Shield, Black Hat USA에서 SaaS를 위한 새로운 ITDR 플랫폼 선보여

Adaptive Shield apresenta nova plataforma ITDR para SaaS na Black Hat USA

Adaptive Shield демонстрирует новую платформу ITDR для SaaS на выставке Black Hat USA

Adaptive Shield, Black Hat USA'da SaaS İçin Yeni ITDR Platformunu Sergiliyor

Adaptive Shield giới thiệu nền tảng ITDR mới cho SaaS tại Black Hat USA

Adaptive Shield 在 Black Hat USA 上展示适用于 SaaS 的全新 ITDR 平台

From primary to higher education, augmented reality apps have already become students’ textbooks, acted as a science lab, or have even been used as a time machine. And the market for educational AR apps is only growing, with one projecting it to grow from $8.34 billion in 2020 to $29.89 billion by 2025. January 2021 report AR apps in school don’t have to be seen as a supplement to the traditional methods of learning anymore. They can be used as the primary learning vehicle, and , in ways that textbooks, slides, and lectures never could, among . Plus, schools and teachers can save time and money on field trips or expensive equipment by using the basic equipment they probably already have like desktop computers, tablets, projectors, and smartphones. improving critical thinking skills encouraging motivation many other studied benefits Here are some impressive AR apps that are paving the way now for universal AR use in future classrooms around the world. Science AR Apps Through the students can drive NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover on the surface of the Red Planet, and take a closer look at how the machine works — all without leaving their desktop computer. ’s tablet app gives students the ability to search and see the inner layers and organs of the human body through high-resolution scans of cadavers. Desktop AR computer app, 4D Interactive Anatomy For the younger students, there are of dinosaurs, planets, or even the periodic table that will “come to life” through the Popar app on their smartphone or tablet. charts, puzzles, books, and toys Math AR Apps Targeted at higher education level students, the phone and tablet app can let you walk around 3D math objects and visualize 3D graphs on the surface in front of you. GeoGebra 3D Graphic Calculator For grades K-12, the apps help students understand spatial geometry. The younger students can fold and unfold 3D shapes while the older students can rotate the shapes and “draw on them” to discover their properties. Shapes 3D And for those students (and parents) that need support to work out a math problem on the page, the app can scan handwritten math problems using a smartphone or tablet’s camera and help you solve the equation, step by step. Photomath History AR Apps Hidden in Google’s Arts & Culture website are what they call “ .” These are virtual field trips where the teacher can lead students through different destinations and cultural artifacts through 360° panoramas and 2D imagery. There are taking students around Stonehenge or Egypt, among other locations, but there are other expeditions in subjects like art and geography as well. Expeditions history expeditions For a more detailed focus, the BBC’s app brings historic artifacts from UK museums into the classroom. Students can scale, rotate, and even use “x-ray vision” to see the layers of a painting or a mummy. Development on the app has ended but the app is still available to download and use as of this writing. Civilisations AR Language Learning AR Apps An important part of learning any language is immersion and the app will insert an animated native speaker into your classroom or home to practice your pronunciations and conversational skills. It also brings animals and objects into the room to help learners remember vocabulary. Mondly AR But for those students that need help with English, the app can help. It uses AR to scan downloadable flashcards to help memorize vocabulary, but the app also combines the student’s first language with English so that they can learn even if their parents don’t speak English. The app is currently in early access. MARVL AR Apps for Other Subjects There are plenty of other areas for AR to be used in the classroom. The app helps students learn to code, create their own stories and games, or design their own virtual exhibition. While in the app, teachers can create their own engaging, AR-powered, and collaborative lesson plans covering a range of subjects. CoSpace Edu Assemblr EDU For the pre-school- and kindergarten-aged children, there’s the app, which brings to life the characters and paper masks as they’ve been colored on the page. Quiver AR has such potential to become a standard tool in classrooms globally. Students get meaningful and memorable experiences while teachers have more options on hand to help their pupils learn.

K-12 EdTech: AR Apps Are Changing the Way Kids Learn

In an article published by in August of 2020, Magic Johnson was quoted saying, ‘I would just lay low’, in response to what he advised startups to do amid the Covid-19 pandemic. CNBC Make It “If I was an entrepreneur and started [a business] today, I think I would just lay low and see where [the economy] is going to go,” - Magic Johnson; Enterprises Chairman and CEO I'm sure this isn't the first celebrity turned entrepreneur who is advising the latest generation of entrepreneurs to reconsider their 'new great idea' and instead, hold off on turning it into a business, at least until there's more certainty post-pandemic. Celebrities like Drew Barrymore seem to have a different train of thought to Magic Johnson; in fact, during the pandemic and started up a new venture. Drew Barrymore grew her lifestyle brand Startup Founders are Leading the Way through Rocky Waters I don't know about you, but as optimistic of a person I am, I'd dare say, we'll be moving into 'post-pandemic' anytime soon. And, even if the world recovers faster than expected, who's to say we won't be hit with another world crisis, be it health, financial, or both. With that said, I'd like to think that now is just as good a time as any to start a business. The only difference to starting now is that we can see more of the obstacles ahead whereas prior to the pandemic, we may have been more oblivious to them. Before going on too much of a rant, let's take a step back. It's been almost one full year since the world became affected by the start of the pandemic. The road we've all traveled to get to where we are today has likely been challenging, for some more than others, but nonetheless, it's been a transformational experience. Through all the uncertainties, there were countless businesses who decided to situation and turn those into opportunities, and today, we'd like to share some of those businesses with you. The newly created companies we interviewed, have either an unusual startup story, have developed a unique product or service as a result of the pandemic, or share valuable insights into pandemic struggles and how they've navigated them. take the shortcomings of the pandemic Let's get ready to dive in! 👇 Jordan Walker, Founder of YAC Jordan Walker, Justin Mitchell, and Hunter Mckinley, joined forces to come out with the voice collaboration solution, they call , which was originally built to be used within their remotely distributed team at So Friendly Designs (a remote design agency they've been running for the last 6 years). They noticed that the daily stand-ups were running were almost always inconvenient for at least 1 person, which is why they decided to find an . That's when the idea for Yac came about. Yac So Friendly Designs asynchronous way to keep everyone in the loop Although the first version of Yac was built more than a year ago, once the pandemic hit, they saw a greater need than ever to scale Yac and release it to more remote teams to help them improve the way they communicated asynchronously. In our chat with Jordan, he emphasized and how this was one of the reasons behind what fuelled the creation of Yac. the power of spoken communication Yac positions itself as an audio-first messaging platform that helps eliminate unnecessary meetings with voice messages, searchable transcription, and async screen sharing. Having raised over $10 million in funding from Slack, GGV Capital, Betaworks Ventures, and Active Capital since they were founded roughly a year ago, Yac is backed by some big players who know what's worth investing in so needless to say, we can expect some exciting things coming up for Yac! Jamie North, Founder of Few "Human interaction levels have drastically deteriorated in the last 12 months, and Few was built to not only allow users to develop their physical, mental and spiritual selves... but reconnect, with real people with a passion for what they do! We call them our Positive Practitioners. " Although the idea for Few came during the summer of 2019, it wasn't until that same November that Jamie began working more on creating something from it. When the pandemic hit, it was clear that the need for Few was more present than ever. As feelings of isolation kicked in for many, the need for human connection grew. I'm pretty sure we all can agree that the pandemic has placed stress on multiple aspects of our lives in one way or another. It's no denying that the pandemic has taken a toll on our mind and body. With Few, along with addressing the : physical, mental, and spiritual fitness for their users, they are also focused on elevating small wellness and fitness businesses that have been hit hard during the pandemic. The idea is to make these businesses more accessible to users. By helping the small businesses, they're helping the masses. three pillars of health More than a Fitness App Having been live for just over 3 months, Few already has around 1000 users and is ready to take on investors. Although their product and positioning is spot on, what's most attractive, and likely why users are flocking to their platform, isn't because of simply what they offer in terms of health and wellness experiences. Apart from addressing the 3 pillars of health emphasizes in their product, Few aims to educate users on the importance of nourishing the full self. Creating awareness and . This idea of making people more aware when they are doing something, and more mindful of it, is an important part of Few's mission. Inspiring and educating their users to embody every action is key for them. Although you can only find Few in a select number of locations across Europe, their plans to expand will likely mean you'll have access to an activity near you very soon. bringing people into their conscious realm Michael Kalmstrong, Co-Founder of Kalmstrong "We wouldn't have formed in the way we did, without the pandemic; it was like a paradigm shift" is now solving the problems of by bringing together training and technology to help remote workers bond, but as you'll read on, the business that Kalmstrong is today wasn't the same as it was in the beginning. Michael shared with us that after a lot of they decided to start up Kalmstrong as a service-based business and develop a product around it as they went along. Kalmstrong interpersonal connections for remote workers soul searching and pivoting in the sense that they were diving into a business startup without having an actual product or service to sell; however, the way they decided to build was far from risky when you look deeper. Some would have called this risky Michael and his team knew many of the struggles they had ahead of them due to the pandemic, which is why they built their growth strategy based on this knowledge. Their focus was to spend time understanding their customers' problems first and testing out various offerings to find out what their ideal customers needed the most. "In March, as the world was going crazy, I was lucky enough to find myself surrounded by a group of incredibly talented people who recognized that; paradoxically the world is becoming increasingly 'connected' and simultaneously isolated. We wanted to use the same tools that big tech companies use to encourage mindless addiction for the benefit of advertisers (cyberpsychology) - to make people feel more present and connected. In the words we used back then - we wanted to 'make mindfulness mainstream". Like other startups who go through the trial and error phase of creation, Michael's team worked through getting their message across clearly, and as Michael shared, figuring out, 'what are we going to do and what's the basis of this company'. Many people would have thrown in the cards, but as a true entrepreneur, Michael knew that they were sitting on a great idea, all they had to do was they were aiming to solve. create the right solution for the problem The Unconventional Way to Build a Startup There's a perceived knowledge around how you should do a tech startup. Michael mentioned how normally, you'd work out what the fundamental assumptions for the business are, and what's the fastest way you can test them. If those tests are negative, then you stop and try something else. Michael admits that the process of testing assumptions hasn't been one they've yet mastered, but what they've become really good at is and what their shared values are around it. Together, this has given them a very solid basis for understanding that the practical way to solve the problem is not as important right now as the problem itself and the reason they want to solve it. identifying the problem in the world they want to solve Fast forward some months - Kalmstrong is now purely focused on remote work, and solving problems around the issues companies face when it comes to serendipity and synchronicity within remote work. Although as Michael describes, they're still very much in the embryonic stage. To consult remote companies, they use their 8 element model as a framework to help work out the best solutions for the problems these companies face. Kalmstrong has run various online events with great success, and as of late, a training session for a well known UK charity, the Prince's Trust. Alex Schrecengost, Founder of Virtual With Us With the onset of the pandemic came a need for greater connection and unity amongst teams. , who previously worked within the wine and hospitality industry, along with having spent many years running digital communications teams for brands like Wilson Daniels, pulled together her experiences and with her passion for wine, founded . Alexandra Schrecengost Virtual With Us ''I wanted to do something that was impactful and something that was building a different type of culture'' Together with her team, they deliver online curated virtual experiences for their corporate clients who are looking for within their teams. The experiences Virtual With Us provides not only help companies improve their team building, but contribute to increasing morale and strengthening their diversity and inclusion communities. unique ways to promote engagement, creativity, and collaboration Alex's company caters to businesses of all shapes and sizes and has noticed that sales organizations, in particular, are benefiting greatly from their events, many commenting on how they've found Virtual With Us events to be a fantastic way to help them grown and maintain their contacts. What sets Virtual With Us apart from other has a lot to do with the background and experience of Alex and her team combined, but also, the company's attention to detail in all aspects of each and every event they host. Companies like Virtual With Us are transforming the online corporate events space! online experience providers Sam Harris, Co-Founder of Syncify Syncify's social podcasting app is all about reducing isolation and loneliness by bringing together Spotify users to create connections around what they listen to. With Sam Harris' professional background and knowledge in evolutionary psychology, he's no stranger to understanding social behaviors. Together with the team at Syncify, they've created a product that allows users to listen live with friends, share playlists, and chat about the content they're consuming. So, rather than being in your own world of audio, allows you to . Syncify share experiences and connect with others "Lockdown meant living and working together, which definitely had its ups and downs. But at the heart of Syncify is the intention/need for us to all stay together and share experiences; if we can do it like this in real life we can make it possible in the digital world." The team that makes up Syncify is truly international; apart from their UK Team which managed to live and work together in Cornwall (pictured left), they also have members of their team in the Netherlands, Philippines, and Nigeria. Even with the best team, creating a startup is no walk in the park, let alone during a pandemic. Navigating the right way to communicate among the team, figuring out the , and knowing how to properly manage their time have been a few of the things that the pandemic has put pressure on. laws around hiring remotely "You're overworking and then realizing that you're actually underperforming because you're overworking, these things are all very confusing and hard to really know yourself until in hindsight it's all very obvious, but at the time, there's chaos going on." Benton Allen, Co-Founder of Copper Clean "We believe that the best products often come from the most simple solution to a big problem. Our world is full of big problems in need of simple, safe, and effective solutions." With a background in product development, Benton has been working with BTG Products, a Thinktank like R&D style company, commercializing technology that's developed within the Texas A&M University System. At BTG products they've been in and out of product development around preventing microbial growth in various industries; primarily working in oil and gas. Through a few product iterations, testing different applications around how they could put their antimicrobial technology out into the world, it was 5 years ago that they came across ways they could protect touch surfaces from microbes. "We went down that path a little bit, but basically, no one really cared, we didn't think we'd be able to sell it, we thought we put a bunch of work into it and would need to pivot to something else" Once February 2020 rolled around, Benton and his team realized that it would be a good time to move their project forward and use it to help people stay safe as the pandemic began expanding. The new product line they launched soon after, became its own company which they called , a self-sanitizing surface line. Essentially, the product was a simple antimicrobial copper surface that you could apply to high-touch areas around your facility to protect them from microbial growth. Copper Clean is taking the market by storm, and their solution to retrofit existing surfaces with copper technology is being adopted by companies across all types of industries. Copper Clean Pulkit Garg, Founder of Aanya Wellness The corporate health & wellbeing platform Aanya Wellness evolved from a previous concept and business that dates back to 2016. Having started out providing beauty tips, Pulkit and his team shifted towards making the decision to move into wellness in October of 2018, a lot has evolved since they came up with their original business startup idea. It wasn't until November 2019 that they officially incorporate their discovery platform for wellness tourism, now known as Aanya Wellness, which as you can imagine, once Covid-19 hit, was a bit difficult of a sell. Regardless of the struggles ahead, Pulkit and his team, starting pivoting in March and soon after, began offering online sessions focused on maintaining a high level of health and wellbeing for those working from home. Pandemic Startups in India The company Pulkit founded to address the wellness needs of remote workers in India was officially incorporated in 2019 with the name Aanya wellness. The real shifts for Aanya Wellness happened in March of 2020 when the pandemic hit India. The company experienced a big downturn, as most businesses did, and after 3 months of soul searching and trying to identify their pivot point, they finally found their niche in . corporate wellness I'm sure we could all agree, the pandemic has taken a toll on us all both personally and professionally as a new global uncertainty grew and people began working from home. One of the main areas of life that were sacrificed for many during the pandemic was wellness. Pulkit Garg and his team at Aanya Wellness decided to offer the that companies were missing at the start of the pandemic. wellness support During the covid-19 situation, the company adapted to the needs of businesses seeking assistance and started offering corporate programs, wellness packages for employees, week-long yoga packages, and more. Aanya Wellness isn't only a place for wellness enthusiasts but also a central space to enable the masses to achieve holistic well-being. David Smyth, Co-Founder of Complish Last but not least, we couldn't write an article about startups founded during the pandemic without including our story as well 😉. There's been an obvious shift to remote and distributed work over the last year, but as much as everyone has grown and learned how to better manage in this environment, teams are still struggling to work like they're in the same room. Whether you're full or half remote, distributed teams communicate differently; to maintain productivity, cohesiveness, transparency, and a whole lot more. As companies across the world shifted to remote work, our reliance on digital tools exploded, but most teams were not prepared. The lack of connection and visibility that came along with the shifts, were unexpected for most businesses. Many simply looked for ways to replicate the practices that worked in the office in a remote environment. This was the catalyst for David Smyth and Stuart Hunter to start building Complish. teams need a whole new set of habits and practices Find out more about and, if you want to test out our asynchronous collaboration tool, check us you below 👇 why Complish was built Have a unique business startup story to share & were founded in 2020? If so, head over to our and send us a message to connect. We'd love to feature you! Instagram Previously published at https://www.complish.app/blog/startup-founders-businesses-spawned-by-pandemic

7 Startups Founded During the Pandemic

Welcome to our "Behind the Startup" series, where we dive into the world of decentralized content creation with Mick Tsai, the founder of COS.TV. In this interview, we discuss the inspiration behind the platform, the role of AI and VR technologies, and how COS.TV is revolutionizing the content creation industry with the power of Web 3.0. Join us as we explore the challenges and opportunities facing the platform and the future of content creation. : Vested Interest Disclosure The author is an independent contributor publishing via our . Be it through direct compensation, media partnerships, or networking, the author has a vested interest in the company/ies mentioned in this story. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR brand-as-author program Ishan Pandey: Hi Mick Tsai, great to have you here for our "Behind the Startup" series. Can you please tell us what inspired the creation of COS.TV? Mick Tsai : During my time working for the popular streaming platform LiveMe in LA back in 2017, I had the chance to interact with many YouTubers who expressed their growing concerns regarding centralized content platforms. The issue at hand was the feature algorithm, which controlled both their viewership and monetization, leaving content creators and users with no control on the centralized platform. As a solution, we established Contentos and COS.TV, with the goal of creating a new decentralized content platform that would empower global content creators by allowing them to truly own their creations, while also providing users with great content to enjoy. Ishan Pandey: What problem does your platform aim to solve in the content creation industry? Mick Tsai: At Contentos, we firmly believe that the creators, the audience, and the platform should all have equal standing, as each of them plays a crucial role in the content creation ecosystem. Unfortunately, centralized content platforms have become dominant, leaving the other two parties with limited power. We aim to change that by creating a decentralized platform where the value of the content is generated collaboratively by all three parties. Our token design ensures that the value is shared fairly among contributors, including creators, audiences, and the platform. Those who make positive contributions to the community are rewarded and gain influence on the platform. This approach significantly alters the current dynamic between content creators and centralized platforms, providing a more equitable and fair system. Ishan Pandey: How does COS.TV plan to integrate emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality into its platform in the future? Mick Tsai : Currently, A.I. is playing a significant role in enhancing the experience of creators and audiences on COS.TV. For instance, through the OpenAI integration, including ChatGPT, creators can now easily generate an appealing video introduction by providing just a few words. This feature is particularly beneficial for creators who struggle with writing video introductions, which is a vital part of attracting an audience to watch their content. Moreover, this feature facilitates global creators that want to reach a broader audience in different countries. In the upcoming release, we plan to integrate even more OpenAI/ChatGPT-like features into COS.TV. One of the new features currently in testing is a video search behavior that uses ChatGPT-like design, which can significantly enhance the video searching experience not only on COS.TV but also on other video platforms. Regarding VR, we are thrilled to announce the latest update to COS.SPACE, our metaverse project built for content creators. COS.SPACE now supports VR headsets, which offers creators and their fans a more immersive experience. We welcome you to visit our Consensus 2023 booth and try it out! Ishan Pandey: How do you envision AI transforming the content creation industry, and what role do you see COS.TV playing in this transformation? Mick Tsai : With the advent of various AI tools, AI-rendered virtual avatars have become increasingly popular. Moreover, more and more channels on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok now feature entirely AI-generated content. This type of content can be produced quickly and inexpensively, posing a potential threat to traditional content creators. Additionally, AI-generated content may eventually overtake the recommendations algorithm of these platforms, leading creators to explore alternative strategies to retain their viewership. However, the core issue remains the same - identifying the type of content that users desire and how best to help them find it. At Contentos and COS.TV, we believe that human participation and community support are still key. While AI tools may be capable of executing tasks perfectly, the initial inspiration must come from the creators themselves. Moreover, the valuable feedback and input from the community are essential for identifying high-quality content and personalizing recommendations for each user. Ishan Pandey: Can you explain how COS.TV utilizes web3 technology to differentiate itself from traditional content platforms? Mick Tsai : At Contentos and COS.TV, we strongly believe that anyone who makes a positive contribution to our ecosystem and community deserves to be rewarded and become an integral part of the platform. In addition, we believe that community members should have the right to participate in content moderation, or a content DAO. Unlike traditional content platforms, where content moderation is solely the responsibility of the platform team, in Web3 we believe that everyone should have the power to participate in this crucial task. We are proud to say that on a daily basis, over 500 community members from all around the world join the content DAO and actively contribute to filtering out bad content for the community. Our system is permissionless, which means anyone can join or leave the content DAO at any time. Moreover, all decisions made by every member, along with the final decision, are recorded on the Contentos blockchain, ensuring complete transparency in the decision making process. In the future, we plan to introduce more community-driven content tagging and decision-making features on Contentos and COS.TV. We believe that decentralization and transparency are the key advantages of Web 3.0 content platforms compared to their Web 2.0 counterparts. Ishan Pandey: How does COS.TV plan to incentivize content creators to join the platform and produce high-quality content? Can you describe the revenue model of COS.TV and how it plans to monetize the platform? Mick Tsai : Most content creators are likely familiar with the Ad revenue sharing model, first introduced by YouTube a decade ago. COS.TV also utilizes this model, but with one key difference: creators receive 60% of ad revenue instead of the typical 50%. In addition to this, several unique Web 3.0 monetization mechanisms have been introduced in COS.TV, providing creators with additional revenue streams. One such mechanism is the Gifting Vote, a peer-to-peer donation system where Contentos native token COS is used to purchase the Gifting Votes, with 60% of the revenue going to the creator and 40% to block producers. Pay Per View and subscription models are also available to creators for monetization. Another exciting feature is the video NFT model, allowing creators to mint NFTs of their videos which can be traded on OpenSea right after publishing. Our latest feature is COS.SPACE, a 3D metaverse product that enables creators to host exclusive private 3D parties for their fans. Creators can sell VIP NFT tickets, allowing fans to purchase tickets and join the event. Ishan Pandey: How will COS.TV balance the benefits of AI with potential concerns around privacy and data protection for its users? Mick Tsai : With the rapid advancement of AI technology, it's only a matter of time before it's able to accurately interpret video content, including live streaming. It will be able to identify valuable content, flag any potential unwanted or copyright-infringing material, and categorize content with proper hashtags for interested audiences. Take, for example, the popular "HOW-TO" search keyword on YouTube. While users can search for videos on their own, an AI-enabled chatbot could understand a user's needs and deliver highly relevant content, providing specific instructions with video clips and transcripts. However, privacy is a big concern, as no one likes being watched. Zero-knowledge technology could be a good solution for protecting chat/search history. Users could choose to "contain" specific conversations, so the AI bot doesn't track the session. Additionally, data shared by creators or audiences must be anonymous but still proof-able to maintain legitimacy. Blockchain can store video view counts, vote counts, and other data that anyone can verify, but without identifying user identities. Ishan Pandey: What steps is COS.TV taking to ensure that AI-powered content moderation is effective and unbiased? Mick Tsai : COS.TV has several layers of defense to ensure appropriate content moderation. The first line of defense is powered by AI, which can detect and remove any pornographic or violent content. This is a widely-used technology in many content platforms today. The second line of defense is the community members. Any user who holds a small amount of VEST statking tokens (5000, approximately $35) can become a DAO member and help decide on problematic content that is reported by the community. As it is a permissionless design, anyone can participate, which empowers the community to moderate the content and align it with their interests. The third line of defense is currently under development, which involves leveraging an emerging AI, similar to ChatGPT, to gain a deeper understanding of the content. This will assist in categorizing and filtering low-quality or bad content, providing higher quality content more exposure to reach a broader audience. Even with the implementation of this new component in the future, the community DAO will still play a critical role in justifying the AI's work. Ishan Pandey: What kind of community-building initiatives does COS.TV have in place, and how do you engage with your user base to foster a sense of belonging and ownership on the platform? Mick Tsai : COS.TV is unique in the crypto space because it offers an accessible user product that brings together creators, audiences, and Contentos mainnet participants. This is also where our team and I engage with the community the most. With over 100K daily active users, COS.TV is a platform that fosters genuine content creation and consumption. In addition to COS.TV, we also use social media platforms such as Twitter, Telegram, Medium, and our community forum to connect with and engage Contentos supporters. Ishan Pandey: Can you talk about the role of cryptocurrency in COS.TV's ecosystem and how it benefits both content creators and users? Mick Tsai: COS is the utility token circulated in the Contentos ecosystem. Creators who contribute the content can get COS from the main-net mining process, so does any user who makes positive contributions to the ecosystem such as helping content moderation, or providing valuable feedback. The calculation process is built in the Contentos main-net, which is a fully open-sourced project on Github. Meanwhile, the block producers election also requires COS as the vote, those elected block producers can become the infrastructure providers in the Contentos main-net, in this case, they also have the right to enjoy the new mining reward. Any regular user can also use COS as the payment instrument to purchase the utility provided in cos.tv such as GiftingVote or the PaidPerView function. Holding the COS can also help you potentially acquire more chances to be featured in the cos.tv main page and attract more viewership. COS is the utility token used within the Contentos ecosystem. Creators that share content earn COS through the mainnet mining process, while users who contribute positively to the platform, like assisting with content moderation or providing feedback, can also earn COS. The calculation process for rewards is built into the Contentos mainnet, which is a fully open-sourced project on Github. In addition, COS is used to vote in the election of block producers, who become infrastructure providers in the Contentos mainnet and receive mining rewards. COS can also be used by regular users to purchase utilities on COS.TV, such as Gifting Votes or the Pay Per View function. Holding COS may also increase a user's chances of being featured on the COS.TV main page, and attract more viewership. Ishan Pandey: Finally, what are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing COS.TV in the next few years, and how does it plan to navigate them? Mick Tsai: Gaining public trust is a major challenge, particularly in light of negative news surrounding cryptocurrency, such as the incidents involving Luna and FTX. Mainstream media often highlights the negative aspects, leading to skepticism among the public and hindering adoption of crypto in the content creation industry. However, the current centralized content platforms have stringent monetization requirements and content censorship, which has raised awareness for the need for a truly decentralized content product. A decentralized content platform presents a great opportunity for global creators and product developers. The impact of emerging AI on content creation and consumption cannot be overlooked. With AI, creating and remixing content will become easier and even become fully automatic, reducing costs. In the future, Web3 technology will play a crucial role when AI tools are linked together and the content monetization system is calculated and settled by a token economy. This will become one of the most important use cases for the blockchain industry. Don’t forget to like and share the interview!

Mick Tsai Discusses the Inspiration Behind COS.TV and Its Goal to Empower Content Creators

Mick Tsai habla sobre la inspiración detrás de COS.TV y su objetivo de empoderar a los creadores de contenido

Mick Tsai discute de l'inspiration derrière COS.TV et de son objectif d'autonomiser les créateurs de contenu

मिक त्साई COS.TV के पीछे की प्रेरणा और कंटेंट क्रिएटर्स को सशक्त बनाने के इसके लक्ष्य पर चर्चा करते हैं

Mick Tsai が、COS.TV の背後にあるインスピレーションと、コンテンツ クリエーターに力を与えるというその目標について説明します

Mick Tsai discute a inspiração por trás da COS.TV e seu objetivo de capacitar criadores de conteúdo

Mick Tsai thảo luận về nguồn cảm hứng đằng sau COS.TV và mục tiêu của nó là trao quyền cho những người sáng tạo nội dung

Mick Tsai 探讨 COS.TV 背后的灵感及其赋能内容创作者的目标

Imagine if you could get all the tips and tricks you need to tackle a binary classification problem on Kaggle or anywhere else. I have gone over 10 Kaggle competitions including: $35,000 Toxic Comment Classification Challenge $25,000 TalkingData AdTracking Fraud Detection Challenge $20,000 IEEE-CI S Fraud Detection $50,000 Jigsaw Multilingual Toxic Comment Classification $25,000 RSNA Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection $30,000 SIIM-ACR Pneumothorax Segmentation $65,000 Jigsaw Unintended Bias in Toxicity Classification $65,000 Santander Customer Transaction Prediction $25,000 Microsoft Malware Prediction $25,000 Humpback Whale Identification – and pulled out that information for you. Dive in. Modeling Use two BiGru layers layers feeding into two final Dense Decide on the of 250 runs with Bayesian optimization best parameters by selecting the best out Use a 2-level by max-pooling and 2 fully-connected layers bidirectional GRU followed Dealing with imbalance problems Check this extensive notebook on handling imbalanced classes Class balancing of one-shots: Getting top-1 frequencies of classes and replacing “new whale” class with classes that are one-shots and not presented @ top-1 Metrics Global AUC explained (+alternatives) ROC AUC score for fraud detection Good Old Accuracy Mean Average Precision (MAP) Binary Log Loss F beta score, where beta is equal to 0.5 Loss BCE and Dice Based BCE with Logit Loss DICE loss for segmentation BCE + DICE Combinations of BCE, Dice and Focal loss Focal Loss Based Focal Loss Function BCE + focal loss Weighted Focal Loss Custom Losses Weighted subgroup negative samples Others Lovasz Loss Weighted sigmoid cross-entropy loss Hard triplet loss Center Loss Additive Angular Margin Loss Margin loss CosFace Loss KL-Div loss with soft label Cross-validation + proper evaluation Use Adversarial validation Apply GroupKFold cross-validation about last 100k records as a validation set Simple time-split and using Generate predictions using unshuffled KFold Use stratified test data 5 fold without early stopping for predicting Implement LightGBM on 10 KFolds with no shuffle If using pseudo labeling, to avoid overfitting don’t validate on the pseudo labels Use the for the final blend Standard 10 fold Stratified cross-validation with multiple seeds Post-processing Use of the history of submissions to tweak our test set predictions Select random 30% of CV, optimize the thresholds for the 30% and apply them to the remaining 70% and check how far off they are from the optimal thresholds of the 70% Use a re-scaling factor for predictions >0.8 as well as <0.01 through the use of probabilistic random noise that introduces a small penalty Scale up the predicted probability of comments that contain cursed words of different languages Label the test samples , adding them to the train set, and training to convergence using the best-performing ensemble Ensembling Averaging Averaging over multiple seeds Average 10 out-of-fold predictions Average multiple seeds Add model and bagging models with different folds diversity by seed averaging Geometric mean An ensemble of LightGBM, CatBoost weighted geometric mean Average different models of An average ensemble XLM-R models Average predictions for 7 language-specific models An ensemble of XLM-R models An ensemble of CatBoost, XGBoost, and LightGBM Stacking Stack Bi-LSTM, Bert-Large-Uncased with WWM, XLNET, with the meta model as ExtraTreesClassifier LightGBM Stacking Stack LightGBM with heavy bayesian optimization using and Stack models PyStackNet MlXtend An of RNN, CNN, LightGBM, and NBSV ensemble Use 5 time bagged XGB CV scores with heavy bayesian optimization Blending Use power blending Blend using and Hyperopt OOF to find optimal weights Others ensembling Implement Hillclimb Apply LGB g data samples bagged 10 times with different trainin Repositories and open solutions Repos with open source solutions Image based solutions Humpback Whale Identification 1st Place Code Data Science Bowl 2nd Place Solution Forecasting Lung Cancer Diagnoses with Deep Learning Kaggle data science bowl 2017 RSNA Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection 1st Place Solution 2nd Place Solution — RSNA Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection 3rd place solution RSNA Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection 4th Place Solution with code RSNA Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection 5th place solution for RSNA Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection RSNA Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection Entrypoint for the 5th-place-solution SIIM-ACR Pneumothorax Segmentation 1st Place Solution SIIM-ACR Pneumothorax Segmentation 3rd Place Solution 5th place solution SIIM-ACR Pneumothorax Segmentation Humpback Whale Identification 5th Place Solution Humpback Whale Identification 4th Place Solution Kaggle Humpback Whale Identification Challenge 2019 2nd place code Tabular based solutions How to implement and how it was used in the LibFM in Keras Talking Data competition on Kaggle XGB Fraud Detection Solution Fraud Detection Feature Engineering 2nd Place Solution Santander Customer Transaction Prediction Santander Customer Transaction Prediction 5th Place Solution S olution to the Kaggle Santander Customer Transaction Prediction competition 2nd place Solution the Microsoft Malware Prediction Challenge on Kaggle Text classification based solutions Toxic Comment Classification Challenge, 12th p lace solution for the Code and write-up Kaggle Toxic Comment Classification Challenge Jigsaw Unintended Bias in Toxicity Classification 4th Place Solution An open solution to the Toxic Comment Classification Challenge Challenge TalkingData AdTracking Fraud Detection 4th Place Solution Bronze medal Jigsaw Solution 2nd place solution for the 2017 national data science bowl Jigsaw Unintended Bias in Toxicity Classification 10th Place Solution Code for 3rd place solution in Kaggle Humpback Whale Identification Challenge Final thoughts Hopefully, this article gave you some background into binary classification tips and tricks, as well as, some tools and frameworks that you can use to start competing. We’ve covered tips on: architectures, losses, post-processing, ensembling, tools and frameworks. If you want to go deeper, simply follow the links and see how the best binary classification models are built. See also: Image Segmentation: Tips and Tricks from 39 Kaggle Competitions Text Classification: All Tips and Tricks from 5 Kaggle Competitions Tabular Data Binary Classification: All Tips and Tricks from 5 Kaggle Competitions This article was originally written by Derrick Mwiti and posted on the Neptune blog . You can find more in-depth articles for machine learning practitioners there.

Practical Tips For Binary Classification Excellence

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are volatile. They are hard to transact and even harder to understand. Most people wouldn’t consider them an asset class, never mind a viable form of money. So what does it tell us that a debate has begun as to whether crypto is a good hedge against everything else? It tells us that something is not right with “everything else.” Not as measured by the economy, which is doing fine, by the way, but by the policymaker response. Here in the US, second quarter GDP grew at a respectable 2.1 percent. The latest core inflation numbers came in hot above 2%. Unemployment is at an all time low and the stock market is near an all time high. And yet, the Federal Reserve cut rates earlier this summer for the first time in a decade, at the time calling the action a “mid-cycle adjustment” and indicating that it would be a one and done. The markets and the President were , so the central bank went ahead and “mid-cycle adjusted” again shortly thereafter. not pleased Over in Europe, interest rates have already been negative for years with dubious results, but the European Central Bank recently took them down even further. Their actions have driven yields on German bonds so deep into negative territory that based on the formulas taught in high school economics you’d think Deutschland is in the grips of a horrible deflationary winter. The actual German inflation rate? A serviceable 1.4% If a time traveler visited us from the depths of the financial crisis and saw the level of economic policy panic they’d think things are somehow worse today than a decade ago. But then Marty McFly would see that unemployed has halved, stocks have quadrupled and real estate prices are way up and be thoroughly confused. How could an economy so copacetic warrant a response so acute? One explanation is that policymakers know something that we don’t, a rather unlikely scenario given their track record of knowing little. Another is that they are more confident in their abilities than ever before, particularly when it comes to printing money and setting rates. Money and interest used to be sacred. As far as policy tools were concerned, they used to have a glass cover with “break only in case of emergency” on them. There was a time, not that long ago, when any kind of rate cut or quantitative easing action was referred to as “extraordinary policy.” But that sanctity is no more, and interest rates and currency values are today nothing more than variables meant to be manipulated by bureaucrats. Doing so is so very ordinary Growth slowing slightly? Throw a trillion Euros at it. British voters not doing what you’d hope? Cut rates. The President tweeting that rates are too high? Pretend you are independent then do exactly as he demands. losing money on her carry trade? Print a gazillion more Yen. Mrs. Watanabe Economic policymakers increasingly resemble an amateur DJ who doesn’t know much other than the fact that he wants to be famous, so he keeps upping the gain and adding more bass. There are knobs and levers to be manipulated, and success is only a question of trial and error. If two years of negative rates in Europe haven’t accomplished anything (other than Deutsche Bank) then clearly they weren’t negative enough! Thankfully for the ECB, the NIRP knob . cripple goes to 11 Gone is any pretense of respect. The more you are willing to tweak, turn, manipulate and maul something, the less respect you have for it, and by that standard, few people have less respect for traditional fiat money than the folks in charge. Bitcoiners, for all their faults, are the opposite. Money to them is sacred. So sacred that inflation is handled by an algorithm and even the slightest technical changes need almost universal acceptance to be adopted. A few years ago, an almost comical debate over something as trivial as the size of a block led to a total schism. You can call those people a lot of things, but disrespectful is not one of them. Back in fiat land, the most controversial debate is not, as you might think, whether positive interest rates — an idea that predates the Bible — should be abandoned. That bit was decided with surprisingly little disagreement. The only remaining controversy is what you, the little plebeian who is nothing more than an entry in an economist’s spreadsheet, should do with your hard earned money now that saving is a punishable offense. Should you buy a bunch of crap you don’t actually need, or invest in a tech company that will never make money? Critics of cryptocoins often claim they are not backed by anything, but that’s a misnomer. Every currency is backed by the same thing: the collective faith of its users that it will preserve purchasing power and be widely accepted in the future. With crypto, that faith is hard coded in software and preserved by math. With legacy money, it’s maintained by constantly calling for panicked paisanos “more cowbell.” The English word respect originates from the Latin respectus, which means “to look back at, regard.” Looking back over the past decade, one kind of currency has been turned into nothing more than the preferred tool of the incompetent, while the other has not only survived but arguably even thrived despite constant critique and ridicule from those who probably don’t get it, definitely don’t own it and possibly fear it, which is almost everyone. Which currency would you rather own?

Money That You Can Respect

Demons in Digital Gold, Part 1 If you have not already done so, please read to this series. the introduction A derivative is security with a price that is dependent upon or derived from an underlying asset. The derivative itself is a contract between two parties based upon the asset. Its value is determined by fluctuations in the underlying asset. The most notorious derivatives were the primary cause of the 2008 great financial crisis. — Financial Times The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks — Message embedded in the Bitcoin Genesis Block by Satoshi Nakamoto This detail, “second bailout for banks,” suggests that rescuing banks [from reckless investments in financial derivatives] was a problem for Satoshi. It is seen as one of his motivations for developing Bitcoin. — Bloomberg Summarizing the quote-a-thon: financial derivatives can be dangerous and lead to ruin on an individual or MUCH larger scale. When a party cannot meet their contractual obligations, bad things can happen. Combining “much larger scale” with widespread failure to “fulfill their obligations” and TREMENDOUSLY “bad things can happen.” A derivative is a contract between parties that must TRUST each other to fulfill their obligations. Fair to say that Satoshi loathed financial derivatives, and Bitcoin was developed as an anti-derivative. TRUSTLESS. DECENTRALIZED. SECURE. Stone tablets Those three properties certainly make it onto the stone tablet of Bitcoin’s customer-perceived value proposition. (Quotes in the bullets below are taken directly from the original whitepaper.) the system is entirely self-enforcing, so parties do not have to trust each other — or even know each other — to transact. “What is needed is a system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust.” Trustless: the system is peer-to-peer, and eliminates the need for “financial institutions serving as trusted third parties.” Decentralized: the system absolutely assures transactions between parties. Confirmed transactions are “completely non-reversible.” Secure: Before continuing, let’s address perspective as discussed in to this series (that you’ve already read). the introduction This series focuses on the present perspective, because we live here. So far, I’ve spilled quite some ink on the past perspective. That’s copacetic: these were not only foundational elements serving as key motivations and objectives in 2009, In other words, we are firmly in the present perspective. these remain core elements that define Bitcoin (et al) in the eyes of today’s cryptocurrency users. Bitcoin you’re HODLing “What does all this have to do with my Bitcoin?” you may be thinking, and justifiably so. I am working from the assumption that you hold Bitcoin for one or more reasons, and hopefully not STRICTLY because the price goes up. Your reasons have to do what makes Bitcoin different, and most all of those differences are rooted in the three “stone tablet” properties. Speaking for myself, I consider them THE BIG THREE: these are the properties that initially attracted my attention, then piqued my curiosity, then drove me to learn about technology down to “the bare metal,” and built my enormous respect for what Bitcoin (et al) has accomplished and represents. Hell, I was inspired enough to . blockchain write a book I’m betting we agree that these are key properties that help define Bitcoin’s value. TRUSTLESS. DECENTRALIZED. SECURE. I’m betting we agree that these are key reasons that we own Bitcoin. May be a derivative “Major dissonance!” you contend. “You used the term ANTI-derivative. How the hell could my Bitcoin be a derivative?” I feel you, the dots do not seem to connect. At long last, a thousand words into this post, I am gonna’ get down to dot connecting. I’m here to lay out facts that you may have overlooked. You’re here to reach your own conclusions. Y’all being a sophisticated readership, many of you hold Bitcoin (et al) on your own private wallet. Some of you hold your Bitcoin on an exchange, and I’ve got news for you: you don’t own Bitcoin, you own a bitcoin derivative. [Those of you with your own private wallets need to keep reading, as this also impacts you in a BIG WAY, albeit indirectly.] This is NOT a matter of definitions/nomenclature. While the explanation that follows is not technical, curious readers may want to consult This cuts straight to the matter of what makes a Bitcoin a Bitcoin. Your Bitcoin (et al) on an exchange does not pass the test. Where is a Bitcoin? What’s in YOUR wallet? Bitcoin held in your own private wallet — Mac/Windows/Linux/mobile app, full node, Trezor, etcetera — includes the PRIVATE key of each bitcoin address you own. That private key enables your wallet to construct and submit transactions to the bitcoin network, transactions that SPEND your Bitcoin. Let’s quickly evaluate The Big Three … check. You transact with other entities across the bitcoin network with complete certainty, with absolutely no implicit trust. Trustless: check, as long as you pass . You interact directly with the bitcoin network, peer-to-peer, not relying on ANY intermediary. Decentralized: Our Bitcoin wallet checklist check, ditto passing the checklist. Your wallet performs its own cryptography, generating its own digital signatures when sending Bitcoin and verifying applicable data when receiving Bitcoin. Another facet here is cyber-security — keeping your private keys, well, private — and that element (for example, proper anti-malware and backup) is up to you. Secure: Holistically, this is the promise to “be your own bank” fully realized. What’s on your exchange? “Aren’t you nitpicking?” you ask. “Holding Bitcoin (et al) on an exchange just means that the exchange manages my wallet, right?” WRONG. “But right there on the home page it says ‘My Wallet’ and lists my balances by coin!” What you see is simply your account balances tracked by an internal database maintained by the exchange. On an exchange, you DO NOT HAVE a bitcoin wallet, full stop. **Let’s unspool this**You open and fund an account on an exchange. You purchase Bitcoin on the exchange. The exchange records that purchase in their own internal database. You cannot see the private key corresponding to your Bitcoin purchase. You cannot even see the public key corresponding to your Bitcoin purchase. In fact, THERE IS NO private-public key pair corresponding to your Bitcoin purchase, and furthermore, your purchase IS NOT RECORDED on the bitcoin blockchain. “Say WHAT?!” Re-read the above paragraph and refer to as needed. Before evaluating The Big Three, let’s see what IS on an exchange. Where is a Bitcoin? Your exchange DOES own Bitcoin (et al). Your exchange holds its Bitcoin in a real wallet with a private-public key pair for each address the exchange owns. In other words, your exchange holds an amount of Bitcoin in its wallet equal to the grand total of all bitcoin holdings of all users as recorded in their own internal database. In theory, every exchange keeps a full reserve of each cryptocurrency they own. An exchange expands its reserve by purchasing Bitcoin from another exchange, or when a user transfers (“deposits”) externally held Bitcoin onto the exchange. An exchange reduces its reserve by selling Bitcoin to another exchange, or when a user transfers (“withdraws”) Bitcoin off the exchange. If you routinely review your exchange’s published audits, you’re probably quite comfortable that your exchange is fully backed. If you are confident that your exchange is routinely audited by a reputable third-party, you’re probably pretty comfortable. Do a little homework and you’ll sleep easier. The “in theory” qualifier two paragraphs above may or may not make you uncomfortable. So you’ve done your homework and are secure in the knowledge that your exchange holds a full reserve of Bitcoin. Your account is a balance recorded in their own internal database. Recognize that you DO NOT own any Bitcoin at any specific address. You literally own a bitcoin derivative: an entry in their internal database, representing a tiny fraction of the underlying asset that is the exchange’s reserve of Bitcoin held in its wallet. **Let’s continue to unspool this by selling some of your Bitcoin**Your sell order is matched against buy orders in the exchange’s dark pool. The match — your sell order and one or more buy orders — is settled entirely within the exchange. Your bitcoin balance is reduced reflecting your sell, and some other user(s) bitcoin balance is increased reflecting their buy. Fiat currency balances are adjusted accordingly for you and the other user(s). Now let’s look at what DOES NOT happen in this trade. The exchange’s reserve of Bitcoin does not change. The private-public key pairs in the exchange’s wallet do not change. The only time your activity is recorded to the blockchain is a transfer off the exchange, for example, to your own private wallet. NO TRANSACTION is recorded on the bitcoin blockchain. By now you have an inkling of what evaluating The Big Three will yield … NO. You depend on your exchange and trust them implicitly. Trustless: NO. All of your activities — and the activities of your fellow users — strictly run through the exchange. Decentralized: check, with caveats. A top-notch, reputable exchange is secure on a transaction basis. Such an exchange should also be secure on a cyber-security basis, with low risk that your Bitcoin will be lost. This shouldn’t be a surprise, because successfully hacking an exchange is extremely profitable and VERY difficult to catch. Every one of the major exchanges has a ginormous target painted on their back. Secure: You in an awkward position, nevertheless, as significant hacks with significant losses regularly make headlines. That is such a great question, I will tackle it in two sections. “So I hold a bitcoin derivative,” you acknowledge. “Why should I care?” Bitcoin derivatives: your own holdings Recognizing that on an exchange you hold bitcoin derivatives — as opposed to “Bitcoin proper” — is the first step. If you bought Bitcoin (et al) because you feel strongly about The Big Three, your next step is adjusting your thinking, planning, and actions. I wrote about the pros and cons of on an exchange, complete with actionable mitigations. Check out that post. Keeping your cryptocurrencies **Know thy exchange**One key takeaway from the section above: you are placing A LOT of trust in your exchange. No FDIC insurance. No zero-liability credit card protection. No “contact us” (it’s hard enough to get a reply out of an exchange in the best of times). And most pertinent to our dialog, none of the “be your own bank” dynamic that many of us hold so dear. If something happens to your exchange — through hacking, malfeasance, or plain bad luck — you will be in a world of pain. In short, you could be SOL. So do your homework. Read the terms and conditions. Read reviews from reputable (that would exclude Reddit) sources. You might decide that a different exchange is more trustworthy and/or secure than your own. If you are wedded to keeping your Bitcoin (et al) on an exchange … there is a concrete measure you can take to mitigate risks of your exchange being hacked: . spread your cryptocurrency holding across multiple exchanges … technically speaking, that spreads but does not reduce your risk. **Consider using your own private wallet**There are many options here: an app on your Mac/PC, an app on your mobile, running a full node, and a hardware wallet. Read my earlier series for an overview of these options. Yes, you can “be your own bank!” Where can I keep my Bitcoin? With that said, a note of caution from is in order … The Bitcoin Tutorial Throughout , we’ve discussed the contemporary cryptography that protects Bitcoin. Should you end up on the wrong side of all that cryptography, there isn’t a person on the planet who can help you. If misused, however, every bitcoin wallet has the potential to LOSE all of your bitcoin. The Bitcoin Tutorial It is unbreakable. If you are not comfortable with a wallet you’re considering, find another wallet. Please RTFM. **One last reality check**Transferring Bitcoin (specifically BTC) has become more challenging and expensive in the past months. This is not much of an issue if you are HODLing Bitcoin, as you will not make frequent transfers to and fro. If you want to trade your Bitcoin (specifically) at the drop of a pin, however, you need to be aware of the transaction traffic jam that is the bitcoin mempool. [Lest you wonder, yes, an upcoming post in this series will dissect said traffic jam in detail.] Bitcoin derivatives: the macro picture Hey! You with your own private wallet! This is the where I describe how … this also impacts you in a BIG WAY, albeit indirectly. ... thanks for rejoining the class. There are many reasons why ALL cryptocurrency owners should be concerned about bitcoin derivatives. **The adoption bullshit**First, recognize that the VAST majority of bitcoin (et al) owners keep their holdings on an exchange. When you read about soaring “adoption” rates, those new users are opening an account on an exchange. As spooled out above, such “adoption” has NOTHING to do with the bitcoin ecosystem. Headlines proclaiming “Mass Adoption of Bitcoin!” are bullshit. Are more and more real people transacting commerce in Bitcoin? Quite the opposite, as the aforementioned Bitcoin traffic jam REDUCED the number of businesses and people transacting in Bitcoin in 2017. That would be fabulous news, but you would be quite wrong to reach such a conclusion. **The price discovery distortion**Next, consider a properly functioning price discovery mechanism that reflects the customer-perceived value of a cryptocurrency. Yes, I know, this exercise requires temporary suspension of disbelief … we can at least PRETEND to be value investors driven by fundamentals. Sense of scale: the number of trades of Bitcoin (specifically BTC) on exchanges EACH DAY is greater than the number of transactions recorded on the bitcoin blockchain IN A MONTH. [Ratio extrapolated using data for the last quarter of 2017.] In other words, “bitcoin activity” is dominated by trading that has NOTHING to do with the bitcoin ecosystem. If you’re a speculative trader, you’re totally cool with that. Let me drive that point home with … If you’re fundamentals-driven investor, you must recognize that the price discovery mechanism has little if anything to do with any underlying value. **A creative thought experiment**Finally, imagine that the entire bitcoin ecosystem suddenly goes “poof” and we find ourselves with no miners, no peer-to-peer network, no blockchain. Nope. We’re in the world of make-believe here, so work with me. Everyone trading on the exchanges goes on merrily trading on the exchanges (other than a tiny number of souls unable to transfer Bitcoin to/from their private wallets). Ask yourself: is the disappearance reflected in the hulking bulk of trading activity? I am not working a philosophical “if a tree falls in a forest” exercise with you. I am playfully illustrating that the VAST amount of cryptocurrency activity has precious little to do with the underlying blockchain, much less customer-perceived value of the cryptocurrencies. at least a dozen circa 2013 cryptocurrencies — each built atop the bitcoin code base with their own blockchain ecosystems— continue to trade today on exchanges, Sotto voce: despite the fact that their respective blockchains have long since gone completely dark. Long-time Bitcoin bull and top-flight FinTwit contributor Brent Johnson ( ) recently opined thusly: @ SantiagoAuFund Bitcoin as described in Satoshi’s whitepaper is a marvelous & revolutionary invention. But from what I can see, it is being used very little as Satoshi intended. Once again, I remind you that the of this series is for you to assimilate facts and reach your own conclusion. Neither Brent nor I are throwing the bitcoin baby out with the blockchain bathwater. raison d’etre We believe Bitcoin holds value, and we strongly believe everyone needs to evaluate its value with the latest facts in mind. Future perfect tense? “But what about SegWit and Bitcoin Cash?” you ask. “Won’t they ‘fix’ the derivatives conundrum and make this issue moot?” In a word, NO. Yes, SegWit increases Bitcoin’s (specifically BTC) transaction throughput by as much as 5x. Yes, Bitcoin Cash increases its transaction throughput by as much as 8x compared to pre-SegWit BTC. And neither improvement changes the 1+ hour latency needed to fully confirm a transaction on their respective blockchains. Those are both laudable and useful improvements, though hardly of the scale needed to close the gap with trading activity. Furthermore, exchanges are struggling — to say the least — to support trading activity within their independent closed systems. They have ZERO interest in adding complexity, as would be required for a fully blockchain interwoven system. Even granting a miracle would not “fix” the derivatives conundrum. A suitable could reveal your PUBLIC keys, but the exchange can never hand you the corresponding PRIVATE keys; that would open the Pandora's Box of an entity yanking the bitcoin carpet out from underneath the exchange, with no way to determine if the entity was you or any random ne’er-do-well. deus ex machina Can’t we get a simple Thomas Cook? Way back when I first heard the term “cryptocurrency exchange,” I had a mental image of a simple Thomas Cook exchange. Ya’ know, the airport booth where you exchange “your” fiat currency for local fiat currency. This is entirely workable … Your private wallet app generates a new private-public key pair Your wallet calculates a Bitcoin address from the public key You include that address with the fiat currency transfer to the exchange The exchange sends Bitcoin (et al) to the address you provided Your private wallet acknowledges receipt of the expected Bitcoin … indeed, the above is EXACTLY how some bitcoin ATMs operate! So why don’t cryptocurrency exchanges work that way? Hell, we haven’t even mentioned MARGIN extended by most of the major exchanges. These highly profitable aspects of running an exchange are NOT compatible with the vision of a fully blockchain interwoven system. They are maximized by a closed system trading within the exchange’s dark pool. Simple: there isn’t much money in it. There is way, WAY more money to be made off spreads and fees in crazy-high-volume crypto-currency trading. I leave this post with a word-association exercise … derivatives dubious price discovery exchange dark pools (a.k.a. “ponds” of liquidity) margin (a.k.a. leverage) … see if that rings any bells. Next in the series … Do exchanges pose a systemic risk? Follow me @ Pressed250 on Twitter Copyright © 2018 Bruce Kleinman. All Rights Reserved.

Bitcoin you’re hodling may be a derivative

is an Ethereum based lending platform that aims to unbank lending and offer blockchain liquidity backed by crypto assets. In short, ETHLend does this by allowing borrowers to put different types of tokens up as collateral for pseudonymous and transparent borrowing and liquidity. While the the idea is simple, in practice, the engineering necessary to provide a rich set of features to the user is non trivial since the ethereum infrastructure is still in it’s infancy. Today we’ll investigate one of the challenges. ETHLend Price Feeds When a user provides a token as collateral to the ETHLend smart contract, the question is: what is this collateral really worth, and who gets to decide this? Is it the lender, or the borrower? or someone else completely? As an example, perhaps I would like a loan of 10 ETH for my Sunday Lambo shopping. I’m willing to give you 10 DOGE as collateral for this loan. Obviously this is an extreme example, and I would hope no lenders would be willing to take such a laughable loan, however, what about a loan of 1 ETH for 45 OMG? It becomes clear that we need a way of accessing data outside the ethereum network in order to have an agreed upon standard for fiat, ether, and token values. Rather than letting any one person decide the value, we can allow the market to decide. But how are we going to get this data? It isn’t readily available to the Ethereum blockchain. Oraclize Many in blockchain are already familiar with the phenomenal service. For those not familiar, a brief explanation from Oraclize themselves: Oraclize “Oraclize is a service offering a set of tools and APIs aiming to enhance the power of smart contracts. By providing access to both on-chain and off-chain data, Oraclize allows to find an answer to any query your contract may have.” Essentially, what Oraclize does, is it empowers smart contracts to access information outside of the blockchain in a trustless way. Want to pay a user ether every time they tweet your hashtag? Oraclize makes this possible. Want to ? Oraclize makes this possible. The possibilities with the brilliant Oraclize service are endless. attach a bounty to your stack overflow question Tying Them Together ETHLend has developed an Oraclized based smart contract that allows for loans to be requested in USD but transacted on the Ethereum blockchain using the API for the exchange rate. Internally, ETHLend’s contract keeps the USD/ETH price updated every minute through the EthTicker method. It then exposes this publically to dApp developers through a call to the smart contract’s “ethPriceInUsd” variable. Any time a user would like to create a loan in USD, or even get the exchange rate, this can be readily retrieved and accessible to all ETHLend participants as the agreed upon value. Obviously this contract can easily be extended to any fiat currencies currently trading against ETH, as well as any number of ERC20 tokens as well. Kraken Edge Cases There are, and will continue to be, a number of different edges cases that may arise in the lending cycle, and ETHLend is continually closing the gap on these. Let’s take a few short toy examples to illustrate how this external price feed comes in handy. How do we know if the borrower has enough value in the tokens they’ve offered as collateral for a loan? Easy, have the smart contract check the exchange rate for the collateral and the requested loan amount to ensure the borrower and lender are copacetic on the value proposition. What about when the loan has been filled and the collateral drops or rises in value before the loan is repaid? Crypto is highly volatile after all. With the current ETHLend smart contract, since the loan was presumably created in USD, the volatility of the underlying cryptocurrency is irrelevent. A loan for 500 USD today may involve .625 ETH, and at the time of repayment, 50 ETH, however, as long as the two parties are comfortable treating USD as the pegged currency, they are happy with the outcome. With this new smart contract, they now have the ability to do so, should they choose. Conclusion As I said, even a simple concept such as lending on the blockchain is actually fraught with different edge cases. Because of this, ETHLend is always looking out for talented blockchain engineers to ! contribute As we saw, having a way to value currencies in a loan market is of utmost importance for decentralized lending. With Oraclize, ETHLend has this power, and is able to give a much more rich set of functionality to users than it can without Oraclize, making the loan process even more transparent in the process.

External Price Feeds in ETHLend using Oraclize

Next entry in the Hacker Finances series. In the most general sense, stocks fall into 3 categories; , value or income. Growth stocks are those that are expected to grow significantly over time. Value companies are purchased by investors who believe their stock prices are lower than their actual value. Income stocks are purchased because they pay dividends. growth New companies in newer markets typically qualify as growth companies. Growth is the mantra of many startup accelerators and incubators, as well as VCs in general. Given the immense scale of incumbents, growing into a sizable company quickly is key to long term survival. New companies need to get big before their big competitors can react and squash them. Uber and AirBnb are great examples of this. Neither were taken seriously by their competition until it was too late to stop them. Tesla Motors is a prime example of a growth stock. The market for electric cars has been around for a long time, but like the iPhone, the market was waiting for someone to get the product right. I’d say Tesla has it right, and so far, the stock market agrees. If they deliver to their projections, and likely they’ll under-perform their own projections but still exceed what we could have hoped for, Tesla will ascend to take the position that Chrysler held in the US. I’ve owned TSLA, the stock but not the car, since they released the Model S, and I am determined not to make Mistake Number 4, Selling Too Soon. Yes, they could totally fall on their face trying to mass produce the Model 3. But to date, betting against them has proven a losing bet. So far, so good. Taking my ego back down a peg, and continuing with the Chipotle saga, I waited impatiently for Noodles & Company to go public. Noodles was started up and run by the former COO of Chipotle. So it stood to reason that he’d manage the same type of success with Noodles & Company that he’d brought to CMG, and I’d get that second chance I’d been dreaming of. Noodles was a growth story. They were building new stores and expanding. Revenues were increasing. Noodles went public and I bought in. It’s not pretty: In short, you can make money with if they actually do grow. Noodles & Company sales did in fact grow, but their profits didn’t. growth stocks The analysis is that NDLS didn’t train new store management well and customer experience wasn’t where it needed to be. Same store sales languished. The roll out slowed. The stock slid. And slid. And slid. When evaluating the performance of a company that is in a Growth phase, if they don’t grow but their competitors do, there is something wrong with the company. If their competitors don’t grow either, there is something wrong with the market. In the case of NDLS, they are in a saturated market that was growing slowly, and the couldn’t differentiate their stores sufficiently. They grew revenue by opening new stores, but profit margins were very low and declining. Contrast that to ULTA, which maintains healthy net margins as they grow. NDLS is not healthy. NDLS ULTA Value stocks are stocks that have a price that’s lower than the company’s actual value. It’s not always obvious when this is the case, but it is true that different market segments go in and out of favor with institutional investors and stocks can become undervalued. Fund managers may transition out of one sector and into another. If several large funds do that at the same time, the ‘from’ sector can get over sold, presenting a value opportunity. It also may be the case that a company encounters a rough patch that is specific to their business. In those cases, strong leadership will usually guide them through it and they’ll come out stronger. That’s why company leadership is a key place to analyze when choosing individual stocks. If you can spot value stocks, and really, I have not learned how to tell when a solid business has a weak share price, you can do well. One signal would be a company that has a low P/E ratio relative to their cohort. However, if they’ve run into long-term profitability issues, the low P/E may be justified. One possible Value example is Caterpillar. They build earth moving equipment and have a significant international business. The machines are built in the US, which is great for American workers, except that today, the US dollar is especially strong. That makes Caterpillar equipment unusually expensive overseas, and international sales account for more than 50% of their revenue. As a result, they’ve lost significant market share to Japanese competitors like Komatsu. A value investor would postulate that when the dollar weakens again, CAT sales will recover and so will the stock price. So if you have a sense for where the dollar is headed, you might make a little money with CAT. Personally, I haven’t specifically targeted buying stocks for value, so if you have any additional insights, I’d love to hear about them in Comments. Income stocks are mature long-term businesses that are consistently profitable, but not growing much. These are known as Blue Chip stocks. Blue Chips make money consistently, and have increasing cash positions, but their stock price doesn’t move much. So they sometimes try to increase their stock price by increasing their dividends. Dividends are cash payments made to share holders out of the company’s profits. By paying dividends, the company makes their stock more attractive and increases demand for their shares so that the share price goes up. Some Blue Chips increase their dividends annually. Those that continue increasing their dividends for very long time periods, in effect, 25 years or more, earn the moniker Dividend Aristocrat. Dividend Aristocrats actually, in some ways, become addicted to their own dividends. The management is typically incentivized with stock options. The options are only worth something if the stock goes up. And the only way to make the stock go up for a well run, venerable business that is not growing is to a) increase dividends and b) buy back shares. Buying back shares reduces the number of shares on the market, reducing supply, and thereby goosing the price a tad [1]. But the real juice comes from dividends. Since I am sailing into retirement soon, one vehicle I’ve started in is dividend stocks. I look for companies that increase their dividend payout every year. Effectively, that increases the yield on the initial investment every year as well. It’s like buying a certificate of deposit that increases the interest paid every year. Over a medium term period, like 10 years, this has an interesting effect. From 2006 to 2016, AT&T’s share price rose from $26.62 to $40.34. This is not huge. It’s a 4.2% annualized growth. However, over the same time period, AT&T increased their dividend from $1.33 per share to $1.92 per share. Over those ten years, the dividend yield, which is simply the annual dividend divided into the price you paid, increased from 5.0% to 7.2%. That means that the combined yield, assuming the performance continues, is now 4.2% + 7.2% = 11.4%. If you take a really long view, and can identify the true Aristocrats, you can do really well with dividends. One of the all time greats, like it or not, is McDonald’s. In 1991, MCD was paying 9 cents per share on a share price of $8.75 (adjusted for splits) which was a 1.1% dividend yield at that time. If you’d bought the stock in May of 1991 and held till now, the current dividend is $3.56 per share. That is a 42.5% annual cash yield on the initial investment. investing When you’ve got a long horizon, at least 15 years, try to identify growth stocks. If you are less than 15 years to retirement, start a transition and gradually shift into dividend stocks as one of your investment vehicles. When choosing them, look at their dividend history and see that they’ve kept paying dividends through thick and thin. Thins like the Internet Bubble and the Housing Bubble Financial Crisis. Choose those that increase their dividend each year, without fail. Keep an eye on the payout ratio. The payout ratio is the % of their profit they are paying out in dividends. If the payout ratio is high, say, over 70%, you’ll want to be cautious and take a look at some other things, like how much cash and short term investments the company carries on its balance sheet. If it has a high payout ratio and little cash, there is a risk that they’ll not have the cash to pay dividends and may stop or reduce them. That will send their stock price into a sharp decline. For what it’s worth, the verdict is still out on my dividend strategy. I started buying specifically for dividends about one and a half years ago. The stocks have done well overall, both in terms of dividend yield and share price. I targeted higher yielding stocks, which generally meant they were in a price trough for some reason and most have since come out of their respective trough. And they have increased dividend yields, as their histories suggest they would. The current average among the several I hold is 5.2% dividend yields. Four that I’ve invested in are McDonald’s (MCD), AT&T (T), Mattel (MAT) and Prudential (PRU). If you’re wondering what kind of mood I’m in today, take a look at how these four are doing. The scary thing about Dividend stocks is that if their business really hits a rough patch and they have to reduce, suspend or stop paying dividends, it can really kill your returns. In many cases, if they’ve suspended dividends, they’ll resume in a few years. But you can never be sure whether they’ll fully restore them. Check back with me in 5 years or so and I’ll tell you how I did. Let’s hope I don’t have a Kodak Moment [3]. And in any case, be sure to diversify such that dividends are just one component of your portfolio, and you don’t have all your eggs in the dividend basket. Those are the basics of buying individual stocks. There is a lot more to stock investing, but those other, more advanced approaches are not for novices or part time stock investors (or me). I’ll discuss them each a bit, but seriously, until you have your finances on very solid ground and you can afford to lose some play money, don’t mess with this stuff. Buying stock on margin is a way to amplify your gains and your losses. When you buy stock on margin, you borrow cash from your brokerage to buy more shares. The shares you bought are collateral for the loan. You pay interest on the amount you’ve borrowed. If the shares go up, you’re in great shape and you’ve made more than you would have if you hadn’t borrowed. If not, you’re going to lose more than you would have. If the stock goes down a lot, and your brokerage begins to think that the value of the shares might become less than the amount you borrowed, they may make a ‘margin call’. Margin calls are really bad news. It means you have to come up with enough cash to get the account back into solvency, usually by selling a large portion of the shares. As an example, let’s say you wanted to buy 100 shares of LinkedIn at $140, but you only had $7,000 in your brokerage account. Once you’re signed up for margin trading, you’d place the order for 100 shares anyway. Your broker would buy the shares with your $7,000, and they’d loan you another $7,000. You’d start paying interest on the $7,000 that you borrowed. Then, as long as the LNKD shares stayed somewhat above $70 per share, your broker would be copacetic because if needed, they could compel you to sell your 100 shares in order to get their $7000 back. If LNKD headed up, you’d amplify your gains thanks to the borrowed funds. If it headed down, you’d amplify your losses. If you get a margin call and are forced to sell to cover the loan, you’re basically wiped out and you’ve lost 100% of your original principle. In our example, it means you’ve lost all $7,000, plus the interest you paid along the way. This is not the Hacker way, unless you really want to juice up your day with more than caffeine, and can afford the losses easily. Though, if you have to borrow to buy the shares, maybe you can’t afford the losses. Another somewhat less controversial trading approach is to buy options. Options are like insurance. They minimize your down side exposure. For example, as of this writing, you can purchase an option to buy MSFT at a price of $52.50 for a time period of three months. What that means is that if MSFT goes up over the next 3 months, you can buy it at $52.50 and then immediately sell and pocket the difference. If it does not go up, you do nothing and the option expires. There is a price for this right, and as of this writing, the price per share for this option is $3.10 per share. So for example, if you bought the 3 month option on 100 shares, you’d pay your broker $310. Then, if at any point in the next 3 months you saw an opportunity to exercise the options, you’d do so. The $310 is spent, regardless. But if MSFT goes down, you do nothing and are only out $310. There are actually 2 primary types of options, Call Options and Put Options. Call options give you the option to buy a stock at a specified price over a specific time period. Put options give you the option to sell at a specified price. Essentially, if you buy a Call Option, you are betting the stock will go up. If you buy a Put option, you are betting the stock goes down. Options are really for sophisticated investors who like more finesse in their investing. Options can limit your downside, but if you are wrong too many times, they can still eat into your portfolio. Generally, they will take more of your focus than you likely would want to commit, so don’t bother with them. I never bought an option, and I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything important. Perhaps when I have more time on my hands, I’ll learn more about the mechanics and strategies and give it a whirl. But not this day. If you’d like unlimited down side, short selling is for you. I’m tempted to say just don’t, and try to erase the term from your memory completely. There is no good reason for a sensible hacker to short a stock, unless they have definite inside information, like, that Renaud LaPlanche was going to abruptly resign [2]. Of course, if you did know in advance, and you did short LC just before the announcement, you’d have done splendidly up to the point that the FBI slapped handcuffs on you. If you buy a stock ‘long’, it means you are expecting it to go up. In essence, your upside is unlimited. As long as it goes higher, your gain goes up. Short selling means you are selling a stock you don’t actually have. If the stock goes down, you then buy it and cover your short position. Your profit is the difference in the prices. Short selling is done when investors are dead certain a stock is headed down and that they will be able to profit from the drop. If you short a stock, the upside is limited to the share price you shorted at. The best you can do is that finite amount. However, if you take a short position and the stock goes up, that’s where true heartburn sets in. The higher it goes, the greater your potential loss. There is no upper limit to your potential loss. When heavily shorted stocks go up sharply, they can trigger what is called a short covering rally. When this happens, the investors who have shorted the stock start to lose faith in their short position and buy to cover their shares, taking a loss. If many of them cover at the same time, the additional buying drives the price up further and still more short investors lose their nerve and cover. This is great for those of us who are long since we get an additional kick in the rally. It’s devastating for the shorts. Personally, I put short sellers in the same category as undertakers. They’re just not the kind of people you want to be. [1] http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/does-a-stock-buyback-affect-the-price.aspx [2] http://ir.lendingclub.com/file.aspx?IID=4213397&FID=34233669 [3] Okay, it’s a really weak play on words. Kodak had a tag line: “Kodak Moment” which meant the moment that you take a snapshot. They also had one of the worst ‘dividend collapses’ of all time, after paying increasing dividends for several decades. http://www.dividend.com/dividend-education/the-biggest-dividend-stock-disasters-of-all-time/

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