The Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE) cryptocurrency project Bakkt celebrated New Year’s Eve with the announcement of a $182.5 million equity round from a slew of notable institutional investors. ICE, the operator of several global exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange, established Bakkt to build a trading platform that enables consumers and institutions to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.
Continue reading… “NYSE operator’s crypto project Bakkt brings in $182M”
Digital cash may soon start replacing the physical kind.
The market for digital currency is down, but it’s certainly not out. Even if private cryptocurrencies are falling in popularity, it appears likely we are headed toward an era of national digital currencies that are backed by central banks.
Central banks are the institutions that set monetary policy for a nation, manage inflation, and act as the “lender of last resort”—such as the Bank of England in the UK and the Federal Reserve in the US. In fact, no fewer than 15 such central banks around the world are taking the idea seriously, and many others are at least exploring it, according to a recent report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Continue reading… “At least 15 central banks are serious about getting into digital currency”
Seven-year-old Ryan of YouTube fame has made it offline, too. The mini mogul now has a collection of toys and apparel sold at Walmart stores nationwide.
Ryan of Ryan Toysreview really isn’t that different from any other first grader. The 7-year-old loves trains and cars; he giggles over Disney characters; he builds entire civilizations with Legos.
Except when he plays, he does so in front of a camera. An adult, presumably, then promptly uploads these videos onto his YouTube channel for his millions of followers—most of whom are elementary-school-age peers.
Continue reading… “How this 7- year old made $22 million playing with toys”
From wealth management to autonomous robots: four prominent startups at the end of 2018
Investors are no longer interested in ICO projects with no real use. According to Icodata, $150 million were raised in October 2018 through token sales compared to $1.5 billion in January of the same year. “The blockchain space is getting to the point where there’s a ceiling in sight,” claims Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The Russian-Canadian programmer believes that the next step will be “real applications of real economic activity.”
Despite the statements and hopes that the end of 2018 will bring about a return to practicality, it is still difficult for applicable projects to break through the information noise. We have picked out four noteworthy blockchain projects that have not yet gained traction in the media, despite featuring a range of out-of-the-box solutions.
Continue reading… “4 Blockchain projects solving real-world problems”
As if professional mutual fund managers didn’t have it hard enough.
Not only do they have to contend with the growing popularity of low-cost index funds, which simply buy and hold the entire market, but now here comes another threat: robot stock pickers.
That’s right.
The San Francisco firm EquBot has launched the first retail ETF to be managed using IBM’s Watson supercomputing artificial intelligence technology.
The use of computers to buy stocks isn’t new. So-called “quant funds” (short for quantitative analysis) have been around for years, relying on computer algorithms to identify short-term trading patterns and opportunities in the market.
Continue reading… “The first ever fund managed by a robot is here. So far it’s beating the market”
Petal, the startup credit card company that’s offering a no-fee credit line to people without a credit history, is now publicly available.
Launched earlier this year by co-founders Jason Gross, Andrew Endicott, David Ehrich, and Jack Arenas, Petal has received a $34 million credit facility from Jeffries and Silicon Valley Bank to bring its consumer lending product to the masses.
That money will take Petal beyond the few thousand customers that have trialed the company’s credit card in a pre-release to broad distribution for applicants.
Blockchain is touted as a technology that will revolutionize the finance sector.
Slow transaction speeds and a lack of standardization threaten to restrict growth.
Deloitte has highlighted five hurdles that the technology must overcome to hasten widespread adoption.
On Sept. 15, 2008, a credit crunch turned into a full-blown crisis when New York-based investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed. The global recession that followed is still too fresh in many people’s memories to be considered history. But 10 years on, the state of the financial system suggests that the crisis has been relegated to the history books for many in the industry.
In 2018, Wall Street is enjoying another heyday. Bonuses for bankers have returned to pre-crisis levels, profits for commercial banks are at a record high, the stock market is in its longest bull run in history, the US economy is humming, and deregulation and tax cuts rule the day in Donald Trump’s administration.
Continue reading… “Ten years after Lehman’s collapse, these ten risks could cause the next crisis”
New Bankrate research shows that Actuarial Science is “the most valuable” major you can study in college out of 162 total, with a whopping average income of $108,658 to go along with an unemployment rate of only 2.3%.
Wondering how the site arrived at these results? The methodology was multi-layered, but the company evaluated the latest information featured in the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, among other points. The majors had “labor forces of at least 15,000 people,” and the number of grads with “a higher degree” was also considered.
Continue reading… “Survey: These college majors were just named most and least valuable”
Internet search giant Google has added ethereum to its big data analytics platform BigQuery.
Making the announcement in a blog post on Saturday, the company said that, while an API exists for commonly used functions such as checking transaction status or wallet balances, it’s not so easy to access all of the data stored on the ethereum blockchain.
The post continues to say that “perhaps more importantly,” the API doesn’t allow for viewing blockchain data “in aggregate.”
Continue reading… “Google now provides a big data view of Etherium blockchain”
Wrapping one’s head around the craze that is, cryptocurrency can often be downright confusing.
However, despite the influx of uncertainty, the digital commerce could become the global finance standard in the near future.
For starters, cryptocurrency is any form of currency that only exists digitally or virtually, and “usually has no central issuing or regulating authority,” according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. Based on blockchain technology, the digital currency market determines the value due to supply (amount in circulation) and demand (volume of buyers and sellers).
Continue reading… “Will cryptocurrency replace national currency in the future?”
Do you know what you’d do with a trillion dollars? Would you buy a fleet of private jets or dune buggies or maybe dine on gold-plated chicken wings ? Or would you just withdraw a huge pile of cash and burn it for fun ?
Some sums of money are so large, they defy imagination: a trillion dollars is just shy of Mexico’s gross domestic product. So, for some perspective: to accrue a billion dollars on the median US household income of just under $60,000 would take more than 16,000 years, assuming you spent none of it. To make a trillion would take you over 16 million years.
Apple recently became the first US-listed company with a market value of $1 trillion . So how long will it be before an individual passes the same milestone, and what will they have to do to get so filthy rich?
Continue reading… “Will we ever have trillionaires?”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.