Batteries are a triumph of science—they allow smartphones and other technologies to exist without anchoring us to an infernal tangle of power cables. Yet even the best batteries will diminish daily, slowly losing capacity until they finally die. Why does this happen, and how do our batteries even store so much charge in the first place? Adam Jacobson gives the basics on batteries.
Tokenization of Gold and Precious Metals
Alexander Tkachenko, CEO & Founder of VNX speaks about stablecoins and the regulated tokenization of gold and precious metals.
Inside the strange world of NFTs
Celebrities, sports people, politicians – anyone and everyone seems to be getting into NFTs. These non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have changed the business of buying, selling and owning art and digital property, and ‘collectibles’ like ‘Bored Apes’ have sold for millions online.
Many say they are buying these images to be part of a community and because they love the art. But, in reality, how much of this is a speculative bubble that could soon burst?
Creating INSANE Cameras with Artificial intelligence (Dalle.2 demo)
Artificial camera designs created with Dalle.2
Rising Lithium Prices Could Upend The Electric Vehicle Revolution | Forbes
One of the guiding principles of the belief that electric vehicles will take over from internal combustion is the falling cost of batteries. From a pack price of around $1,200 per kWh in 2010, the prices had dropped to $137 per kWh by 2020 and £132 per kWh in 2021. There was an expectation of costs below $100 by 2023, by which point EVs would hit price parity with equivalent internal combustion vehicles and the game would be over for oil and gas. But the global surge in lithium prices have led some to question whether this dream would really become a reality.
Lithium carbonate prices had been dropping since a peak in 2018 of around $15,000 per ton to half that price by the end of 2020, according to Edison Group. But, in large part due to the demand for EVs, the price has been growing all through 2021, hitting over $25,000 per ton by the end of last year, and now reaching over $40,000 per ton. This looks like a dire situation, because EV demand is only going up and some are now saying that production can’t scale because lithium prices will hold it back, along with surging prices of other minerals. According to Trading Economics, cobalt has gone from $30,000 in 2020 to $80,000 per ton today and nickel has surged even more, relatively speaking, from $20,000 to $80,000 per ton.
The reality of blockchain and the explanation you’ve been looking for | Mason Manns | TEDxBGSU
Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency have gone from novelty to serious discussion in less than 15 years since Bitcoin was first mined in early 2009. Despite a meteoric rise in popularity over that time span, the average person is typically either poorly educated or extremely misinformed regarding what many consider the technology of tomorrow. So, what is all of this and how does any of it work? I’m an aviation student and part time content creator with a passion for spreading financial literacy. In my free time I enjoy learning about developing financial technologies and creating content geared towards educating others. Outside of college and content creation I’m a part time server at a local restaurant and enjoy working out, reading, and continuing to challenge myself every day. Life is what you make of it and my biggest goal is to be better than I was yesterday.
What Are Smart Contracts and How Do They Work – Simply Explained for Beginners
Smart contracts are electronic contracts that enforce and verify agreements as written in code. Since the future of cryptocurrency hinges on smart contracts, let’s take a look at what they are and how they work.
I have a question for all of you. Have you ever heard of Kickstarter? When you want to pursue an idea, but you can’t do it alone, you basically make a page and show off your idea hoping that other people will help you out with donations. For example, I may have an idea for a book that teaches cryptocurrency ideas and concepts. I would make a page stating that I am attempting to get $1,000 in donations. If people donate at least $10, I’ll give them a book. It took around a week, and I came up with $1,300 in donations. Once I reach my goal of $1,000, Kickstarter will provide me with all of the money that has been donated. Though if I didn’t reach the $1,000 goal and my grandma donated $1,000, I would not get any money, and all the people who donated would get their money back.
This smart contract is simply a piece of code that executes certain commands. These people are referring to something like If A, then B. The most popular smart contracts are written on the Ethereum network and use Solidity. Let’s explore how a smart contract can work with these as examples. If you send me five Ethereum in exchange, I will send you 20 Basic Attention Tokens. If you have over 100,000 subscribers, you will receive an additional 20 Ethereum this year. Additionally, if the temperature is above 95 degrees for more than four days, you will receive $100,000 as crop insurance this year.
With a smart contract, we could easily automate donations where a particular recipient is eligible to receive, say, 500 Ethereum. Every person who donated would be rewarded in the form of an artwork or some digital in-game collectible or something more tangible like reading a digital book. The potential of smart contracts is immense, but two specific aspects of them make them helpful to everybody.
Why Are Smart Contracts so Important to Cryptocurrency?
First of all, they are immutable, which means they do not change. I mentioned that many people call smart contracts ‘if this, then that’ because most smart contracts react to a triggering event by doing something. Those are coded on the blockchain, which executes the smart contract’s code. There are upsides and downsides to that; if there is a problem or the code isn’t well done, it will be there permanently. While that’s the case, you could make a new smart contract and notify everyone not to use the old one if you wanted to. That’s often the case.
A second important thing to know is that these words are spread out, meaning that there is no issue with disagreement. That is, you can’t hire a lawyer and claim. I had a completely different agreement with them because a few parties executed these smart contracts. In this context, smart contracts refer to an all-computer code that, in effect, removes any possibility of human error or issue. In short, if you can afford a lawyer, it may not be worth your while. Anyone who looked would be able to find your smart contract and trace how you were involved in it. We have standardized financial agreements because nobody can contest them when they’re written in code, the code never changes, and everyone has access to them.
Coinbase cuts 18% of workforce and bitcoin briefly falls to $20,000: CNBC Crypto World
On today’s show, Emilie Choi, president and chief operating officer of Coinbase, explains the company’s decision to cut its workforce.
Why Nuclear Energy Is On The Verge Of A Renaissance
For some, nuclear power may conjure images of mushroom clouds or bring back memories of disturbing nuclear disasters like Chernobyle and Fukushima. But despite public fear around nuclear power, the technology has proved to be an emission-free, reliable way to produce large amounts of electricity on a small footprint. As a result, sentiments about the technology are beginning to change.
Both the U.S. government and private companies including X Energy, NuScale and, Bill Gates-backed, TerraPower are pouring money into developing, what they say will be smaller, safer nuclear reactors. CNBC visited Idaho National Laboratory to see the Marvel microreactor firsthand and learn what such developments could mean for the future of nuclear power.
After humankind discovered nuclear fission, the first applied use was the atomic bomb. The study of fission for electricity production came later.
In December 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his fateful Atoms for Peace speech, an impassioned plea to reconstitute the power of the atomic bombs dropped in World War II for a more noble cause.
“Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace,” Eisenhower told the United Nations.
Almost 70 years later, the tension between those end uses still underlies the space today.
From the 1950s through the 1970s, the United States dramatically increased its nuclear energy generation.
But the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and Chornobyl meltdown in 1986 changed the landscape, spurring fear that nuclear energy could not be controlled safely.
Since the 1980s, nuclear energy capacity and generation in the U.S. has largely stayed flat. Today, the country’s fleet of nuclear power reactors produces only 19% of the country’s electricity, according to the government’s Energy Information Administration.
In more recent times, the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan in 2011 — and earlier this year the capture of nuclear power plants in Ukraine by invading Russian forces — have added to public concerns.
But despite its fraught origin story and the psychological effect of high-profile accidents, nuclear energy is getting a second look.
That’s largely because nuclear energy is clean energy, releasing no greenhouse gasses. Meanwhile, the world is seeing more of the effects of climate change, including rising global temperatures, increased pollution, wildfires, and more intense and deadly storms.
“We need to change course — now — and end our senseless and suicidal war against nature,” Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, said in Stockholm on Thursday.
“There is one thing that threatens all our progress. The climate crisis. Unless we act now, we will not have a livable planet,” Guterres said. “Scientists recently reported that there is a 50-50 chance that we could temporarily breach the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next five years.”
Zinc Bromide GEL batteries. Cheaper, greener, simpler & safer than lithium-ion!
Energy storage is becoming an increasingly crowded market which, at least at utility-scale, is still dominated by lithium-ion technology. But cheaper, greener and safer alternatives are being developed all the time. One of the latest candidates uses well-established zinc-bromide chemistry but with a completely new twist, all wrapped up in very inexpensive and easily recyclable packaging from existing battery production lines. Very clever!