Author: GW Alger

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Why Central Banks Want To Get Into Digital Currencies

Intense interest in cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin, and the Covid-19 pandemic have sparked debate among central banks on whether they should issue digital currencies of their own. Advocates argue that central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, can make cross-border transactions easier, promote financial inclusion, and provide payment system stability. Here’s how central bank digital currencies could become the future of digital finance.

Intense interest in cryptocurrencies and the Covid-19 pandemic have sparked debate among central banks on whether they should issue digital currencies of their own.

China has been in the lead in developing its own digital currency. It’s been working on the initiative since 2014. Chinese central bank officials have already conducted massive trials in major cities including Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou.

“China’s experiment is very large scale,” said J. Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “When the world arrives in Beijing next winter for the Winter Olympics, they are going to be using the new digital renminbi to shop and to stay in hotels and to buy meals in restaurants. The world is going to see a functioning [central bank digital currency] very soon, within the coming year.”

The U.S. is playing catch-up. In late February 2021, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the U.S. will engage with the public on the digital dollar this year.

Advocates contend central bank digital currencies can make cross-border transactions easier, promote financial inclusion and provide payment system stability. There are also privacy and surveillance risks with government-issued digital currencies. And in times of economic uncertainty, people may be more likely to pull their funds from commercial banks, accelerating a bank run.

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The Tesla Mafia: How Elon Musk’s Ex-Employees Are Becoming His Top Rivals | Forbes

PayPal is famous not just for its pioneering of electronic payments but also for its mafia—a group of successful alums who went on to start or fund companies ranging from Yelp and LinkedIn to Palantir and Affirm. Now Elon Musk, the gang’s most famous capo with his vast Tesla wealth, has spawned a newer mob that might one day rival the original. A string of former employees at the carmaker have gone on to form electric vehicle and battery companies, mostly in California. (Dozens of others have landed at EV companies like busmaker Proterra and truckmaker Rivian.) These ex-Tesla staffers are poised to have an outsize impact on the $6 trillion global auto industry in the decades to come.

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Secrets of The Token Sale: What is Token Design?

What is Token Design and why do we need it?

Despite the fact that well-functioning token architectures are a fundamental component of any healthy crypto protocol, the vast majority of crypto protocols make serious mistakes in their token architectures. This results in fewer fundraising opportunities for early-stage crypto protocols and in lower utility and market caps of live crypto protocols.

The goal of this video is to give readers an overview of all token architecture mechanisms currently in use. If crypto protocols implement them correctly, these mechanisms have the potential to exponentially increase the value and market caps of their underlying tokens.

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Nano Coated Salt Technology

The energy storage sector is becoming a pretty crowded and competitive field as more and more companies come up with solutions that will be absolutely crucial to dealing with the intermittency of renewable technologies. Now there’s one more technology to add to the list that looks set for a bright future, not just as a supplier of grid balancing power but also because of its ability to feed direct heat energy into industrial processes and municipal heating systems.

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If You Understand This Video About Blockchain You Are in The Top %0.0001 of People That Get it

The true power and potential of blockchain is incredible. This is way more impactful than the power of any social media platform or digital-born business like Uber, the blockchain can actually change the fundamental structure of society, and not everyone is necessarily going to be happy about it. There is a lot of good to come from blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, but there are plenty of entities who are in control now that would lose their power if blockchains were to become part of everyday life. Be aware of these things as you are navigating the space and always keep in mind the long term consequences this technology can have on how the world operates.

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Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Technologies In 2021

In this video, we are bringing to you the top 10 Artificial Intelligence Technologies that are going to impact a numeber of different domains. Artificial Intelligence is rapidly changing numerous things in our day to day lives. It has changed the way we live with innovative technologies and has profoundly impacted various sectors of society.

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Is Superintelligent AI an Existential Risk? – Nick Bostrom on ASI

Artificial superintelligence or a superintelligence in general is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds.

According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, called intelligence explosion, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a “runaway reaction” of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an “explosion” in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.

I. J. Good’s “intelligence explosion” model predicts that a future superintelligence will trigger a singularity.

Four polls of AI researchers, conducted in 2012 and 2013 by Nick Bostrom and Vincent C. Müller, suggested a median probability estimate of 50% that artificial general intelligence or AGI would be developed by 2040 to 2050.

Public figures such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have expressed concern that full artificial intelligence or strong AI could result in human extinction. But the consequences of the singularity and its potential benefit or harm to the human race have been intensely debated.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom defines an existential risk as one in which an extinction-level event is not only possible but likely. He argues that advanced artificial intelligence is “likely” to be an existential risk.

In addition, time frame is also a factor, as a superintelligence might decide to act quickly before humans would have a chance to react with any countervailing action. A superintelligence might decide to preemptively eliminate all of humanity for reasons that may be incomprehensible to us.

There is also a possibility where a superintelligence might seek to colonize the universe. A superintelligence might do this in order to maximize the amount of computation it could do or to obtain raw materials for manufacturing new supercomputers.

While it may seem alarmist to worry about these scenarios in a current world where only narrow AI exists, we do not know how long it takes or if it’s even possible to develop safe artificial super-intelligence that shares our goals. Thus, we better start planning today about the advent of ASI… While we still can!

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