VOTING GOES MOBILE. The 2016 U.S. election was not exactly the most secure affair. Even though tech companies and lawmakers are still sorting out what happened, that’s not stopping West Virginia from thinking big and bold in 2018.
According to a CNN report published Monday, the state plans to let soldiers who are permanent residents of the state but are serving overseas vote via their smartphones using a blockchain voting app called Voatz. It will mark the first time U.S. citizens can vote via mobile app.
Public embarrassment is a horrible feeling. We’ve all experienced in one form or another. Predicting the future of technology is daunting enough but mix that with the future of money and markets – forget about it. The effort was to convey a whole worldview in less than ten minutes. Needless to say, it required a fair amount of sweating to be more than an embarrassment, which it undoubtedly will be considered by some as. The risk seems worth it though so let’s do this!
The below video and continued text go into why many of our trusted systems no longer function properly. I don’t know who built the pyramids but they certainly had their measurement system right for it to be possible and sustainable. The damage done by tech advancements are not yet visible in society on a large scale. We hear of declining sales in music, the press, deteriorating health care budgets, automated factories, AI in commerce and about self-driving cars. The heads of many old systems have already been cut, are bleeding heavily and lashing out aimlessly as the body of the octopus still moves. To make some sense of this, the topics include crypto, capitalism, communism, genetics, competition, media, competence, fairness, cultural revolutions and our shared decentralized future.
Most advice around ICOs tends to center on researching the team or project themselves, but Draper favors a different approach.
The never-ending debate is if Bitcoin is a universal currency. I attend the final session of the Blockchain Economic Forum in San Francisco, where venture capitalist Tim Draper was interviewed by former Obama administration CFTC chairman and current MIT lecturer Gary Gensler.
In a wide-ranging conversation, the pair covered many of the key elements causing so much excitement in the crypto space, and confidence in the future was the running theme.
Enterprises everywhere are looking for talent. And those with talents and skills that are in high demand can pretty much control their work life: where they work, how they work, compensation packages, and a host of other specifications about their work life.
This is a huge opportunity for freelancers, if they keep current with demand and continue to enhance and expand their skills. Some, in fact, are predicting that, by 2027, the majority of the workforce will be comprised of freelancers, not regular, traditional employees.
Looking for a new career? Check out the crypto industry.
It can feel like a new cryptocurrency is popping up every hour, and that’s because they basically are. There are more than 1,500 tradeable cryptocurrencies. In 2017 alone, there were between 2.9 and 5.8 million people using crypto wallets throughout the year, compared to 0.3 to 1.3 million in 2013. There’s a $320-billion-plus market cap across all cryptocurrencies today.
It’s safe to say, the crypto market is growing. While this growth has helped some people strike it rich, it’s also benefited the job market. Between December 2016 and December 2017, there was a 207 percent increase in job postings for Blockchain positions on Indeed.com.
Facebook is exploring the creation of its own cryptocurrency, a virtual token that would allow its billions of users around the world to make electronic payments, people familiar with Facebook’s plans told Cheddar.
“They are very serious about it,” said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced plans.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple dominate the cryptocurrency market, representing $241 billion or 70% of the total market cap. The entire cryptocurrency market cap is currently $343 billion, up from $10.5 billion in 2014. The aggregate market capitalization increased by more than 2,500% in 2017 alone.
However, research conducted by Axa Investment Managers shows that despite the massive growth, cryptocurrencies still pale in comparison to the $100 trillion global bond markets and $80 trillion in global equities.
It seems Mastercard is gradually softening its stance on cryptocurrency, after CEO Ajay Banga downplayed non-government mandated digital currencies as “junk” back in October last year.
In a conversation with Financial Times, Ari Sarkar, Mastercard co-president for the Asia-Pacific region, said the company is open to explore cryptocurrencies created and backed by governments.
The cryptocurrency market, which trades various digital-based coins, can look exciting, scary, and mysterious all at once to the casual observer. Its pioneer, Bitcoin, dramatically surged in value and steeply dropped (before picking back up) in recent months. ICOs (initial coin offerings for new cryptocurrencies), meanwhile, are emerging at a head-spinning rate.
It could transform how we track nearly every transaction.
You may have heard the term “blockchain” used when people talk about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. If you’re unsure of what it means, think of blockchains as ledgers that keep track of transactions. In the case of bitcoin, the blockchain is a record of financial transactions between parties. The blockchain is decentralized, meaning that no one is in charge of it, and the data isn’t owned or stored by any one company, but rather dispersed across many computers.
Venezuela launched the presale of its own cryptocurrency, the petro, today. There are currently 82 million tokens available, which the government plans to follow with an initial coin offering (ICO) launch in a month. It’s the world’s first sovereign cryptocurrency, built on the Ethereum blockchain and intended in part to save the country from wild inflation. The bolivar has reached quadruple-figure inflation recently, and one bolivar is currently worth 0.00004 USD.
