Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: finance

by Tatiana Moroz

The most moving thing to me about music is it’s ability to change. It changes the mood, the atmosphere, and it fills us with emotion. It can unify mankind in the power of good and triumph over evil regimes. What most struck me was when we saw this in the 60’s and 70’s folk songs that became anthems for the civil rights, equality, and antiwar movements. Even as a little girl, I knew that this core drive and expression for freedom was critical to the success of humanity as we marched ever closer to the nightmarish visions painted in 1984 and Brave New World.

This is a heavy and serious purpose, but one I took to heart as I created songs of hope, sadness, life, beauty and love. I noticed that the music industry seemed averse to this type of meaning based songwriting, and the radio waves were filling with more vapid nonsense by the minute. However, I kept my head down and tried to educate myself on the ways we could organize society for the better.

I joined the Ron Paul movement in late 2011 after I learned about the Federal Reserve system of central banking. I saw that it was one of the biggest obstacles to true liberty. I used storytelling in my music to illustrate the solutions I was finding, but I think we all hit a wall with politics at one point (which is probably how we all know each other in a way as seekers of the truth).

If you told me 6 years ago that I would be involved with “fintech” or technology in general, I would have laughed you out of the room. As soon as I start reading a manual, I disengage, my eyes glaze over, and within 6–8 words, I am daydreaming about something else. Even though my friends teaching me about Bitcoin were able to illustrate the benefits, something didn’t click. I gave them $500 anyway (which was a lot of money to me!) and they bought me some Bitcoins at $11. Eventually as the price went up and I learned more, I became enthusiastic about the possibilities. If my goal was to help “save the world” (for lack of a better term), then there were few inventions in the history of man that could compete with Bitcoin and blockchain technology.

I created the Bitcoin Jingle and became immersed in the community. I soon befriended Adam B. Levine of Let’s Talk Bitcoin, one of the most popular Bitcoin podcasts that also acted as a network home to over a dozen other shows. As content creators, we were the first to experiment with artist tokens and markets based around music, podcasts, and other media that removed the middleman and were secured through the power of the blockchain. In 2014 we created TATIANACOIN, the 1st ever artist cryptocurrency, but creating the coin was just the beginning. Upon launch, we soon realized we had to build the ecosystem for the coin to thrive.

Think of artist coins as a type of token that you can hold in a digital wallet, like store credit. These coins can be sold to your fans that want to support your work, similar to a crowdfund or patronage type platform, but they get back TATIANACOIN that they can spend however they want. It can be redeemed for backstage access, music, merchandise, held onto for future rewards, and the coins can even be traded or sold with other music fans. They allow an artist to gather support from their community through long-term fundraising that gives back real value and engagement. Imagine, as a fan, becoming that much more entwined with the careers of your favorite musicians, visual artists, and other content creators! Artist coins also allow for direct messaging, streaming, and support functions between artists and fans. We see this as a more enriching experience than just your average social media platform.

But so what? We built a platform. What does this have to do with artists and a message? Well, currently artists are paid very little. If your song is played on a streaming platform a million times, you are then paid a measly $1000. When you get a record deal, you are getting, in essence, a bad loan from the record company. Most likely, you have to pay it back over the course of your entire career and you have given control over your music to the record company. There is no transparency, it is inefficient, and rife with human error that slows things down dramatically.

But that’s just one side of the problem. The more glaringly wrong side is the homogenous nature of music we now encounter. Corporations want profit and since the repeat of the same old party music can be more secure and lucrative than an edgy performance, that’s what gets made. But humanity and culture suffer, while a select few accumulate more power over our minds and bodies.

To highlight this, I decided to use a drawing of me made by political prisoner Ross Ulbricht of the Silk Road as my album cover. The drug war is an abysmal failure, and the precedent set by this case effects us all. If I was on a major label, I wouldn’t be able to side with Ross and bring attention to the devastation being wrought worldwide by the US governments overzealous prosecution of non-violent offenders. It’s immoral and as an artist, I have an obligation to stand up and say no more.

Artist coins at their core are about the same thing Bitcoin is about: autonomy and freedom. If we do not have control over our money (in the arts and otherwise), we will have a harder time moving toward more prosperity and enlightenment. We now have the tools to take back our most precious means of communication and create communities based around cryptocurrency and P2P. I believe artistic creativity is essential to mankind’s progress, and I hope others will join me in this pursuit to free the art.

To find out more about Tatiana Coin and to support my new album Keep the Faith out March 31, 2017, please go to www.TatianaMoroz.com

As I’m sure many in the technology industry have thought today, there should have been a way to avoid the Oscars Envelopegate. But, is artificial intelligence the answer to all of our human error problems? A recent Accenture report found that the introduction and further development of AI could boost labor productivity by 40% by 2035. It seems as if banks have already picked up on this, as was seen last year with RBS’ replacement of human employees with automated services. News announced this week also suggests that artificial intelligence will become a central part of anything a technology organisation will do in the future. Will we see the same in the financial technology sector?

The relationship between man and machine is expected to be the naissance of a type of work that could potentially double annual economic growth, according to Accenture. Chief technology officer Paul Daugherty highlighted that “AI is poised to transform business in ways we’ve not seen since the impact of computer technology in the late 20th century.” He went on to explain in the report that artificial intelligence, with the help of cloud computing and analytics, is already starting to change the way that people work.

The weekend saw the UK government announce that they are planning to launch a review into the value of robotics in the country’s aim to become world technology leader. £17.3 million would be invested into university research of AI technologies such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and driverless cars, as reported by The Independent. The article also drew from the Accenture report and said that artificial intelligence could add around £654 billion to the UK economy.

Read more

The workplace is going to look drastically different ten years from now. The coming of the Second Machine Age is quickly bringing massive changes along with it. Manual jobs, such as lorry driving or house building are being replaced by robotic automation, and accountants, lawyers, doctors and financial advisers are being supplemented and replaced by high level artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

So what do we need to learn today about the jobs of tomorrow? Two things are clear. The robots and computers of the future will be based on a degree of complexity that will be impossible to teach to the general population in a few short years of compulsory education. And some of the most important skills people will need to work with robots will not be the things they learn in computing class.

There is little doubt that the workforce of tomorrow will need a different set of skills in order to know how to navigate a new world of work. Current approaches for preparing young people for the digital economy are based on teaching programming and computational thinking. However, it looks like human workers will not be replaced by automation, but rather workers will work alongside robots. If this is the case, it will be essential that human/robot teams draw on each other’s strengths.

Read more

Biometrics – technology that can recognise individuals based on physical and behavioural traits such as their faces, voices or fingerprints – are becoming increasingly important to combat financial fraud and security threats. This is because traditional approaches, such as those based on PIN numbers or passwords, are proving too easily compromised. For example, Barclays has introduced TouchID, whereby customers can log onto internet banking using fingerprint scanners on mobile phones.

However, this is not foolproof either – it is possible to forge such biometrics. Fingers can after all be chopped off and placed by impostors to gain fraudulent access. It has also been shown that prints lifted from glass using cellophane tape can be used with gelatine to create fake prints. So there is a real need to come up with more advanced biometrics that are difficult or impossible to forge. And a promising alternative is the brain.

Emerging biometric technology based on the electrical activity of the brain have indeed shown potential to be fraud resistant. Over the years, a number of research studies have found that “brainprints” (readings of how the brain reacts to certain words or tasks) are unique to individuals as each person’s brain is wired to think differently. In fact, the brain can be used to identify someone from a pool of 102 users with more than 98% accuracy at the moment, which is very close to that of fingerprints (99.8% accuracy).

Read more

For United Shore CEO Mat Ishbia, it’s not about what you know.

Ishbia says that specific skills, such as salesmanship, graphic design, or programming, can be taught. Those don’t guarantee whether or not a candidate will succeed at the Troy, Michigan-based financial services business.

“I don’t care about your résumé,” Ishbia says. “I don’t care about what school you went to. I don’t care about what you did at your last company.”

Read more

Forty per cent of Australia’s jobs will disappear in 10 years but the head of CSIRO’s data research unit has delivered an action plan for how they can be replaced.

“The fourth industrial revolution is under way and the winners will be so far ahead of the losers, Australia has no choice but to pivot to the new industries that will emerge,” Data61 chief executive Adrian Turner told The Australian Financial Review Business Summit on Wednesday.

Australia was already feeling the consequences of an economy whose greatest disruptors, such as Uber and Amazon, were mostly coming from elsewhere, Mr Turner said. He noted that GDP growth rates were below historic averages, government debt to GDP ratios were rising, wage growth was slowing and productivity plateauing.

Read more

If you follow Bitcoin at all, then you know that its value is spiking. It has already surpassed a massive spike on Thanksgiving night 2013, and it has just surpassed the cost of an ounce of gold. [continue below image]

Like any commodity, the exchange value of Bitcoin is driven by supply and demand. But, unlike most commodities, including the US Dollar, the Euro or even gold, the eventual supply is capped. It is a mathematical certainty. Yet, demand is affected by many factors: Adoption as a payment instrument, early signs that it is being considered as a reserve currency, fascination by Geeks and early adopters and its use as a preferred tool by some criminals.

But chief among reasons for acquiring Bitcoin is speculation. Whether it is buy-and-hold or day trading, speculators still outnumber those who use Bitcoin to settle debts or to buy and sell other products and services. (Earlier this week, I argued that speculation is responsible for 85% of demand and of transactions—but that’s another story).

It’s a bit ironic that speculation—in the early days of a new market—retards organic adoption. It contributes to uncertainty and volatility, and it reduces the fraction available to the markets that make it both useful and liquid. Yet, in free markets, speculation is a necessary and critical antecedent to adoption.

This week, short term speculators have an unusually keen opportunity to profit, especially if they know how to buy a ‘put’ or sell a ‘call’ (i.e. to leverage a bet for or against the direction of Bitcoin, without actually acquiring any). For example, you can bet that an exchange-traded stock will fall, because there is a market for puts & calls. But it’s not as easy to bet against commodities that are not yet listed for options trading.

I am not going to give advice in this article. I am not a licensed investment professional and although I am bullish on long term, organic adoption of Bitcoin, I really don’t have an opinion on the current news or the short term prospects for a pull back. But, if you have an opinion on a current news event, then there is an immediate opportunity for you to make (or lose) a significantly leveraged sum in the next few days…

SEC and ETFs (Alphabet soup of investment banks)

Next weekend, on Saturday March 11, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will approve or deny an application for the first regulated, recognized and significantly backed Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). Why is this significant? Because most investments are not hand picked by individual investors. Investors choose the level of risk or diversification that seems reasonable for their life stage and then leave stock-picking decisions to a formula, a market sector basket, or a fund manager. That is, invest or park their money in a fund rather than betting on Space-X, PayPal or the local electric company. [continue below image]

If approved, an ETF potentially adds massive new demand for a commodity, by offering a financial instrument than can be subscribed by the vast fraction of funds, investors, pensioners and speculators who prefer to leave asset management to an organization, outside broker or formula.

The first ETF application is created and backed by the Winkelvoss Twins. They were Olympic rowers, but found fame & fortune by contracting Marc Zuckerberg to create an early design for Facebook. If their application is approved, a dozen more investment banks, brokers and hedge funds are standing by to jump in with both feet.

This morning, Cointelegraph put the odds that the ETF will be approved at 50%. Some analysts place the chances even higher. But consider that Bitcoin has already spiked dramatically in the past few weeks. The excitement is already reflected in the price. So, where is the opportunity?

The opportunity, as with any speculative decision, is in the dissonance between your research and hunch compared with the overall market expectation reflected in the current price. So, for example, if Bitcoin is accepted as the basis for an ETF (and if it continues to grow in more fundamental adoption), the current price is actually remarkably low. Under these assumptions, it hasn’t even begun its period of rapid ascent. Perhaps more obviously (and even more short-term), if you believe that an ETF will be blocked by regulators, then the recent rise is likely to be reversed quickly, at least in the minutes after the March 11 decision is announced.

So how can you profit from your belief that a commodity will drop in value? I leave that to your personal investment knowledge and research or your financial advisor. My purpose is not to advise, nor even to teach about puts and calls. It is to point out that a few people will win or lose a lot of real money this coming weekend—at least on paper. And it all hinges on whether they can correctly predict the outcome of a regulatory decision process.

Again, Bitcoin is a very limited commodity, There are only 15.2 million coins today, and there will never be more than 21 million coins. This does not present an obstacle to adoption, because the coins can be sliced smaller and smaller as needed. In a noteworthy demonstration of ‘good deflation’, there will always be enough units for everyone—even if the entire world adopts it for every transaction under the sun.

Philip Raymond co-chairs Crypsa & Bitcoin Event, columnist & board member at Lifeboat, editor
at WildDuck and will deliver the keynote address at Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.

Great news and a very promising vector for near future innovation!

Inductive radio-frequency heating of magnetic nanoparticles embedded in tissue (red material in container) preserved at very low temperatures restored the tissue without damage (credit: Navid Manuchehrabadi et al./Science Translational Medicine)

A research team led by the University of Minnesota has discovered a way to rewarm large-scale animal heart valves and blood vessels preserved at very low (cryogenic) temperatures without damaging the tissue. The discovery could one day lead to saving millions of human lives by creating cryogenic tissue and organ banks of organs and tissues for transplantation.

The research was published March 1 in an open-access paper in Science Translational Medicine.

Read more