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Category: finance – Page 75

A Facebook robot that wraps fiber-optic cable around existing power lines could help bridge the digital divide by bringing internet access to some of the billions of people who currently lack it.

Why it matters: The 60% of the world population with internet access has social, economic, financial, and educational advantages over the other 40%, most of whom live in developing nations or rural areas.

The cost of expanding internet networks is a major barrier to bringing internet access to those people — if the Facebook robot can cut that cost, it could help close this “digital divide” and make the world a more equitable place.

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The second phase of the CBDC pilot would test real-world functionalities such as cross-border remittance, retail payments and offline payments. The bank stated:

“We will confirm the possibility of operating various functions, such as offline settlements, and the application of new technologies, such as one intended to strengthen privacy protection during the second phase of the test.”

Bank of Korea (BOK) is also looking to onboard financial institutions for the second phase, quite similar to what China is currently doing with its digital yuan. However, unlike China, BOK-issued digital currency would also focus on user privacy.

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Another major player in the cryptocurrency world is forecasting a dismal year for Bitcoin (BTC) in 2022. Following the United States Federal Reserve’s and other central banks’ tightening of liquidity measures, Huobi Research believes that BTC will enter a bear market. On the brighter side, decentralized finance (DeFi) will continue to expand and adapt, with decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance eventually becoming a major driver of activity on the chain.

Following the Federal Reserve’s and other central banks’ tightening of liquidity measures, Huobi Research believes that Bitcoin will enter a bear market.

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It is clear to see that the variety of businesses, individuals, and entities that could potentially operate in the metaverse is vast. The widespread use and acceptance of decentralization through the growth of crypto, NFTs, and DeFi point to a fully-realized future operating outside of the parameters of today’s established markets.

Evidently, therefore, the metaverse is not a sci-fi fantasy conjured up in a dystopian novel, but a more tangible and natural progression for the current structuring of the internet. The founding principles of the metaverse have already been introduced in many ways. Now its development centers on blockchain technology and DeFi to propel it from the conceptual stage towards the implementation phase. This development will allow us to firmly realize the true extent that the metaverse will impact our lives.

The gaming industry is one such sector that stands to benefit greatly from developments arising in the metaverse. Gaming skins, which are in-game avatar outfits, are expected to trade at a level of $40 billion every year. Eighty-one percent of players aware of these skins want to trade them for real-world money, according to a report from DMarket. Currently, there is no method of transferring skins across gaming universes or trading them for currency. In the metaverse, however, as every separate gaming universe is connected through a decentralized economy, this would be possible. The use of metaverse-based banks would also enable transactions like these.

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The Federal Reserve took its first step toward more seriously examining issuing a central bank digital currency, releasing a report on Thursday that examines the idea’s potential costs and benefits and opening the door for public comment.

In a long-awaited report, the Fed avoided taking sides and set out a list of arguments for and against a digital currency, and posed questions that will shape the debate.

“We look forward to engaging with the public, elected representatives and a broad range of stakeholders as we examine the positives and negatives of a central bank digital currency in the United States,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said in a statement. Mr. Powell had previewed that a report would be forthcoming in May 2021.

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Russia’s central bank on Thursday proposed banning the use and mining of cryptocurrencies on Russian territory, citing threats to financial stability, citizens’ wellbeing and its monetary policy sovereignty.

The move is the latest in a global cryptocurrency crackdown as governments from Asia to the United States worry that privately operated and highly volatile digital currencies could undermine their control of financial and monetary systems.

Russia has argued for years against cryptocurrencies, saying they could be used in money laundering or to finance terrorism. It eventually gave them legal status in 2020 but banned their use as a means of payment.

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Agreement will finance sales of Class 8 battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles to customers

PHOENIX 0, Jan. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Nikola Corporation (Nasdaq: NKLA), a global leader in zero-emissions transportation and energy infrastructure solutions, and Corcentric Fleet Funding Solutions, a leading provider of leasing and financing solutions, today announced a signed agreement to facilitate sales of Class 8 Nikola Tre battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and Nikola Tre hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). Pursuant to the agreement, Corcentric will purchase vehicles and related assets (e.g., charging assets) directly from Nikola to offer Nikola customers a bundled lease that provides Nikola trucks and related equipment, as well as fuel and maintenance, in a single agreement.

“We believe this partnership will allow Nikola to reach more customers by offering solutions to those who otherwise may not have access to financing options,” said Nikola Chief Financial Officer, Kim Brady. “The agreement will provide Corcentric a launching point to expand its offerings into the electric vehicle space. Together we expect to provide funding resources, multiple options to tailor leases to customer needs, and best-in-class customer care for fleet customers and owner/operators.”

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CATL warns investors its expansion plans may not keep up with demand and that advanced solid-state batteries won’t be commercially available until 2035 — at the earliest.

The rules that govern stock markets in China are different than they are in other countries. Recently, CATL, the largest battery manufacturer in China, revealed plans to invest enormous amounts of money to increase its production capacity. But first it had to convince the Shenzhen Stock Exchange that its plans were realistic and in line with sound business practices. In response to several questions put to it by the stock exchange, the company said solid-state battery development faces technical difficulties that will prevent mass production from occurring for a long time yet.

According to CnEVPost, CATL was asked to explain the development of technology paths for solid-state batteries, sodium ion batteries, and hydrogen fuel cells, along with the risks that each could pose to its operations and capacity expansion. Solid-state batteries and hydrogen fuel cells have certain technical features and advantages, but there are still unresolved technical problems and barriers to mass production, the company said.

These new technologies are subject to cost economics, performance indicators, and industry chain support constraints, and it will take a long time from technical problem solving and customer certification approval to mass production, CATL said, adding that it is still some distance away from achieving mature commercial applications.

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Originally published on Towards AI the World’s Leading AI and Technology News and Media Company. If you are building an AI-related product or service, we invite you to consider becoming an AI sponsor. At Towards AI, we help scale AI and technology startups. Let us help you unleash your technology to the masses.

We’re in the midst of an NFT boom, but that won’t always be the case. Today, NFTs are being flipped quickly — much like house flipping in the lead up to the 2007-08 financial crisis.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean that NFTs are all driven by speculation, just that we need to be cautious and prudent when evaluating their value. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one tool for helping identify and produce valuable art NFTs. Let’s dive into that more here (but see Christian Jensen’s recent article for a broader background on the investment lingo in NFT land).

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There are widely cited forecasts that project accelerating information and communications technology (ICT) energy consumption increases through the 2020’s with a 2018 Nature article estimating that if current trends continue, this will consume more than 20% of electricity demand by 2030. At several industry events I have heard talks that say one of the important limits of data center performance will be the amount of energy consumed. NVIDIA’s latest GPU solutions use 400+W processors and this energy consumption could more than double in future AI processor chips. Solutions that can accelerate important compute functions while consuming less energy will be important to provide more sustainable and economical data centers.

Lightmatter’s Envise chip (shown below) is a general-purpose machine learning accelerator that combines photonics (PIC) and CMOS transistor-based devices (ASIC) into a single compact module. The device uses silicon photonics for high performance AI inference tasks and consumes much less energy than CMOS only solutions and thus helping to reduce the projected power load from data centers.

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Lightmatter has a roadmap for even faster processing using more colors for parallel processing channels with each color acting as a separate virtual computer.

Nick said that in addition to data center applications for Envise he could see the technology being used to enable autonomous electric vehicles that require high performance AI but are constrained by battery power, making it easier to provide compelling range per vehicle charge. In addition to the Envise module, Lightmatter also offers optical interconnect technology that it calls Passage.

Lightmatter is making optical AI processors that can provide fast results with less power consumption than conventional CMOS products. Their compute module combines CMOS logic and memory with optical analog processing units useful for AI inference, 0, natural language processing, financial modelling and ray tracing.

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