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Dot Net Developer (Azure)
Digital Biz Solutions Pty Ltd Australia Permanent Full-time Location: Australia – Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth Description Digital Biz Solutions Pty Ltd are looking for Dot Net Developer (Azure) to work on some major client projects in Australia. The position will be full time. Job Description: We are seeking a .NET developer with Azure having 1-3 years of…
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Dot Net Developer (Azure)
Digital Biz Solutions Pty Ltd Australia Permanent Full-time Location: Australia – Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth Description Digital Biz Solutions Pty Ltd are looking for Dot Net Developer (Azure) to work on some major client projects in Australia. The position will be full time. Job Description: We are seeking a .NET developer with Azure having 1-3 years of…
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What's New in .NET 6: A Comprehensive Guide to the Latest Features and Improvements
Dot net 6 is here with some interesting and modern features that ensures smoother and easier web application development for dot net developers. Here’s the comprehensive guide to the latest features and improvements in dot net 6 that you need to know.
.NET 6 is the latest release of the popular open-source development platform from Microsoft. It comes with a number of new features and improvements that make it easier and more efficient for dot net developers to build modern applications. In this comprehensive guide, we will take a closer look at what's new in .NET 6.
Single file apps
One of the most exciting new features in .NET 6 is the ability to create single file applications. This allows developers to package their applications into a single executable file, making it easier to distribute and run the application on different platforms.
.NET MAUI
.NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) is a new cross-platform UI framework that allows developers to create native mobile, desktop, and web applications using a single codebase. It is an evolution of Xamarin.Forms, which allows developers to create mobile applications using a shared codebase. .NET MAUI builds on top of Xamarin.Forms and extends it to support a wider range of platforms. This means that developers can create a single codebase that targets iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and the web, reducing development time and costs. .NET MAUI also comes with a range of new features and improvements, including better performance, improved debugging tools, and support for new UI controls. Overall, .NET MAUI is an exciting new feature in .NET 6 that is sure to make cross-platform development easier and more efficient.
Blazor improvements
Blazor is a popular web framework that allows developers to build interactive web applications using C# and Razor syntax. In .NET 6, Blazor has received significant improvements, making it an even more powerful tool for web development. One of the major improvements in Blazor is improved performance, achieved through a new component model and better handling of JavaScript interop. This results in faster initial load times, faster updates, and a smoother user experience overall. Additionally, Blazor now has better debugging tools, including support for browser-based debugging, which makes it easier for developers to find and fix issues. Finally, .NET 6 also includes support for Blazor WebAssembly, which allows developers to run Blazor applications in the browser without requiring a server. These improvements to Blazor in .NET 6 make it a more powerful and efficient tool for building modern web applications.
Improved performance
Performance improvements are a major focus of .NET 6, with significant improvements made to the runtime, just-in-time (JIT) compiler, and garbage collection. This has resulted in faster application startup times and improved runtime performance, making .NET 6 a more efficient platform for developers. The JIT compiler has been improved to provide better performance by reducing memory overhead, improving code quality, and increasing the number of supported CPU architectures. Additionally, garbage collection has been optimized to reduce memory usage and improve scalability. Finally, .NET 6 also includes a new HTTP/3 implementation that is designed to provide better performance and security over the internet. Overall, the performance improvements in .NET 6 make it a more efficient platform for developers and help to ensure that applications built on the platform are fast and responsive.
Better developer experience
.NET 6 comes with a number of improvements that make it easier and more efficient for developers to write code. These improvements include better IDE support, improved IntelliSense, and better debugging tools.
ASP.NET Core improvements
ASP.NET Core is a popular web framework that allows developers to build modern web applications. In .NET 6, ASP.NET Core has been improved with new features like support for HTTP/3, improved performance, and support for Blazor WebAssembly.
Support for ARM processors
One of the key features of .NET 6 is its improved support for ARM processors. This means that developers can now build and deploy .NET applications on a wider range of devices, including ARM-based devices such as the Raspberry Pi and other IoT devices. This is particularly important for developers who are building applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) or other embedded systems, as these devices often run on ARM processors. Additionally, .NET 6 also includes support for the new ARM64 architecture, which provides even better performance and compatibility with ARM-based devices. Overall, the improved support for ARM processors in .NET 6 makes it easier for developers to build and deploy applications on a wider range of devices, opening up new possibilities for IoT and embedded systems development.
C# 10
C# 10 is the latest version of the C# programming language. It includes new features like global using directives, interpolated strings as format strings, and file-scoped namespaces.
NET Hot Reload
.NET Hot Reload is a new feature that allows developers to make changes to their code while the application is running, without needing to restart the application. This makes the development process faster and more efficient.
Open-source
Finally, it's worth noting that .NET 6 is completely open-source. This means that developers have access to the source code and can contribute to the development of the platform.
In conclusion, .NET 6 is a major release of the popular development platform from Microsoft. It comes with a number of new features and improvements that make it easier and more efficient for developers to build modern applications. Whether you are a seasoned .NET developer or just starting out, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about .NET 6.
Rob Stephen is a certified and experienced dot net developer associated with one of the best dot net development companies in Australia, GetAProgrammer. The author has shared the complete guide of the latest features and improvements in dot net 6 in this article.
#dot net developer#hire dot net developer#dot net developer sydney#dot net development#dot net development company
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Reading Junker lore as an Australian is like, hilarious because it's a wild ride of being so clearly not knowing what the frick it was saying THAT MADE IT CYCLE ALL THE WAY BACK INTO MAKING SENSE AGAIN. But also, that literally, whether it's Overwatch or Other Global Forces, is to blame for the Junkers being what they are, because wow.
But to start with, the problem is essentially this: Blizzard just don't know what the frick the Outback is.
SO BUCKLE UP KIDS THIS IS A LONG-ASS POST, I GOT SOME SHIT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT HOW THE JUNKERS CAME ABOUT. But there are pictures I promise. I also wanna say that I am not here to say that the Omnic war, the discussions of human-omnic relationships is like X real-world thing, I'm here to look at how the world is and how they've said it develops in Overwatch, and what that implies for the world development, that's all. I was just real excited at how averagely aussie Leah is in her portrayal of Junker Queen is and it made me want to ground it more in my home okok and I thought other people might want to understand that too.
CW: for talking about war tactics, statistics and wide-scale loss of life.
TL;DR for my post on Aussie Shit: the Outback is not a defined location. You will never be able to stick it into a GPS and find it. It is a conceptual area that can be defined as 'semi-rural to rural'. But also it's an almost folklorish concept of the Australian 'heart' that can extend over what can be seen in the below map. I will advise this is actually a map of bushland types, which is why it doesn't include Tasmania, but just to be clear, Tasmania AS WELL has Outback regions, and also, this can extend further East fairly comfortably depending on who you talk to. For instance, this map doesn't reach Tamworth OR Dubbo, buuuuuut most people would consider it as being on the edge of the Outback, for instance.
Oh, you might now be saying, that's most of the country, isn't it?
YEAH.
And as you'd expect for a piece of land THE SIZE OF FUCKING EUROPE, it's hugely broad in its landscape, too. You will find everything in the concept of the "Outback" depending, again, on who you talk to. From the Daintree Rainforest (left pic) (around Cairns to Cooktown) to the Great Australian Bite (middle pic) (the bottom C curve between Adelaide to Perth) to the central Australian town with a population of 26,000+ people, Alice Springs (right pic).
Yet the wiki lists it as "The Outback omnium and its Omnics were given the Australian omnium and its surrounding land after the Omnic Crisis."
UHM. BLIZZARD. 1) WHERE IS IT, AGAIN??? MEEKATHARRA IS A PRETTY DIFFERENT PLACE TO THE MOUNT ISA and 2) THAT'S A LOT OF "SURROUNDING LAND". THAT'S IN FACT, MOST OF THE COUNTRY, IF I WAS TO COUNT IT AS BROADLY AS YOU SEEM TO BE THROWING IT AROUND? IT'S A LOT OF LAND.
It takes 4 days of STRAIGHT DRIVING, NO BREAKS, to cross from Sydney to Perth. The entirety of Europe fits inside of Australia, the main block of the united states, bar Alaska, is basically comparable in scale from Washington to San Fransico. Or the furthest East Coast of Brazil to the West Coast of Peru. YOU GET IT.
This then leads to the second problem, Blizzard keeps saying that the only people out there were "a few solar farmers and people who wanted to be left alone".
WITH A POPULATION TOTAL OF 600,000 - 700,000 THOUSAND PEOPLE IN JUST REGIONAL TOWNS, NO, THE OUTBACK REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION IS NOT "JUST A FEW PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BE ALONE AND A COUPLE OF FARMERS IG".
NOT TO MENTION DARWIN. It's the little dot at the top of the Northern Territory and is a Capital City of the region. Sometimes called Australia's "Outback City", HAS A POPULATION OF 130,000 ALONE. Across it all, this map barely scratches the surface, there are over 60 Outback Towns or Settlements in total. We only have a total net population of 27 million. THAT'S ACTUALLY A WHOLE ASS 2-3% OF OUR WHOLE POPULATION.
This comes to the second point and often the hardest for people to get their heads around: whilst our population is not as high, THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE AREN'T USING THAT LAND AND IT'S NOT CULTURALLY AND ECONOMICALLY IMPORTANT TO US. No, we don't have massive inland lakes and rivers the way other places do, to have huge cities out there, but WE STILL HAVE TO SUPPORT OUR AGRICULTURAL AND MINING SECTOR THAT DOES USE THAT LAND. AND IT'S ACTUALLY. VERY. EXTENSIVE.
How extensive? Man, our largest by-land Cattle Station is Anna Creek Station, coming in at a cool 2 million acres (which is as big as the whole of Israel apparently???), or the most densely populated-by-cow one currently, Brunette Downs, which at present has 110,000 head of cattle. Don't care about cows? are you a monster cows are just slow puppos who want love omfrg WELL I BET YOU CARE ABOUT IRON, AND GUESS WHAT, WHATEVER IRON YOU HAVE IN YOUR HOUSE RN PROBABLY CAME FROM AUSTRALIA, GIVEN WE PROVIDE 90% OF THE WORLD'S IRON. Oh, also we have a shitton of uranium as well, btw. just. putting that out there.
Here is JUST PASTORAL STATIONS, you'll notice HOW MANY ARE ACTUALLY IN THE SAME AREA I JUST SHOWED:
AND HERE ARE OUR MINES, this is not just iron, we also dig many other minerals, and including the world's largest opal mine:
These cattle stations and mines stretch across the inland regions for miles upon miles, fuelling our jobs and our place in the world economy. Which I ask you this: If you're Cattle Hand Tinny Rogers from central Queensland who's gotta take care of Jenny the Cow whose due to give birth soon, you aren't driving 13 fucking hours to Brisbane City to get a pack of smokes, are you? No. Tinny Rogers just goes to the Longreach general store only 1-2 hours away, doesn't he? Then goes back to his property and tells Jenny it's going to be ok, sits his ass down with his smokes for the night, relieved he only had to go a little while.
And all those people were actually the first wiped out.
This is where this gets real freaking awful. AGAIN, CW: for talking about war tactics, statistics and wide-scale loss of life.
Now the only battle in Australia we are shown, is Sydney and that initially also made me go 'huh?' Because if the Omnic Core is in the Outback, wherever that might be, this is an overland invasion, internal to external, as opposed to an external invasion aka coming from the sea, why would you attack Sydney?
Don't get me wrong, Sydney is important. To our international position most especially. It's a financial centre, like New York is to America, it controls a great deal of our actual "economy" in the like, perception of 'if it falls, our economy tanks' kinda sense. It's also a manufacturing centre, meaning that raw goods from the rest of the country are turned into other goods there, and then shipping it out, Tactically, if you are trying to park ships, Darling Habour is ideal, as it's one of two 'natural' harbours in the world (the other being in Hong Kong), meaning its VERY DEEP even close to the land which makes it ideal for ships to come close. So someone attacking from the sea wants it. Lastly - probs why Blizzard picked it, is it is the identifiably 'Australian City'.
But it's not our capital city, that's Canberra, which is where our House of Parliament is. It's not where our military is, no, 40% of the Australian Army is based in Brisbane, and the largest naval base is in Perth. Darwin and Cairns are actually the biggest ports that are more directly connected to Asia in trade given it's a hop, skip and a jump from there to Papa New Guinea, which are actually our closest neighbour and with it, connects us to the whole of South East Asia. The very tip of QLD, to the bottom of PNG is more like the space of the English Channel, btw, for how close they are.
In the Omnic Crisis, the economy has ALREADY collapsed. It did the minute the Omnics attack, basically lmao. Then secondly, this ISN'T EXTERNAL, this is internal. Whether the Outback Omnium is in Kalgoorlie or Birdsville, it is in the middle of the country, and it is sending its forces from a regional location. They aren't attacking by sea, so they don't have to care about a landing bay.
AND HERE IS THE LAST IMPORTANT PART, OUR ARMY IS SMALL. It's only like 80,000 armed personnel, compared to the US and it's insanity of 1mill+, but we're bigger than uh,,, New Zealand I guess? Uh,,, yeah our numbers don't even rank in the big three armies of the world, or like, beyond our little bubble of Oceania. We also do have a pretty good navy but if you've been following along so far, uh, yeah, THAT'S going to do fuck all for Alice Springs, isn't it? Don't get me wrong, our forces are all well trained and highly specialised because of it but like, we don't have the numbers to be splitting up over many fronts, lmao.
By virtue of it all, they are in the middle of the country and will have STEAM ROLLED across these regional areas because some are big, sure but they are just towns with no defences against a rampaging robot army, are you kidding? Let alone if Anubis is suddenly using every robot, I can't imagine how many different kinds are incorporated in all the different mining regions and digging sights?! Some of them were clearly as big as the Titan Bots we see, judging by this shit still being left around years later -
Rolling into somewhere like poor fucking Meekatharra?!
also, seriously: what is the ever loving fuck is that thing on the left why are its arms made out of the BODIES OF OTHER OMNICS JFC WHO LET THE OMNICS PLAY BLOODBORNE OR SOMETHING, I S2G.
THESE POOR BASTARDS ALREADY HAVE TO LIVE IN MEEKATHARRA, THAT'S HARD ENOUGH, LET ALONE WHEN SKYSCRAPER-BOT THE MIGHTY ROLLED IN FROM THE DESERT.
This means that they now control all regional supplies anyway to go and target those places because they say one consistent thing about Anubis' attacks: they were efficient and direct.
"The Omnics Advance" is what they call this so from the wiki as to the state of places the Omnics leave behind, uh, yeah, BYE MEEKATHARRA, MY MUM'S STORIES ABOUT YOU WERE NICE IG?
o ok,,,,, sure, what does all this have to do with Sydney then? Where does it fit in?
I don't want you to think Sydney wouldn't be attacked. Of course it would be, eventually.
Because it's the last populated place in Australia. They can just leave Sydney because it is somewhat tactically the hardest to attack, overall, if it has support from the others, so you leave it till last where you've cut off the support, wiped out supply lines and it is now flooded with refugees from the rest of the country.
They call it the Battle of Sydney but that's not actually what you do to cities?? You siege them, because they take time, and they're certainly implying that yes, it would have taken time. Yeah no, I am not making that up, the Battle of Stalingrad for instance took five months. I make the distinction because sieges aren't about individual aspects in conflict, it's a game of chicken between the two sides of who can hold out longest. Who can sustain the constant chipping away? Sometimes it's a matter of just starving each other out, but in others, it's a constant bombardment.
With everything I just laid out, you can probably have worked it out: Australia can't sustain itself, at this point. We are cut off from our supplies, and we are unable to get actual international support because they're all, ALSO, dealing with this, and now are flooded with escaping refugees. Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, and Brisbane are gone. Which Australia's population of 27 million, is now down to, if I'm being kind, to 10-11 million (5 million in Sydney + then escapees from Melbourne, Canberra, and maybe some from Tasmania too if they could manage it, I can't say I would have much hope for those poor buggers in Perth). Sydney could not feed all the refugees because again, it does not produce raw supplies itself, and it now no longer has the numbers to keep up the fight.
It'd be incredible if they could keep it going for a month because by then, we're not facing 'this is war and people will die', Australia is now at 'we will be annihilated and there will BE no Australian people'. 60-70% of our population is dead to the war, and the rest are getting killed every day from THE TITANS LITERALLY JUST STOMPING THEIR WAY THROUGH, starving or getting sick from bad food and water.
And Australia never had a very big population, to begin with, our army isn't big if it even really exists anymore. We cannot sustain those losses. What the Omnics were hanging over Sydney at this moment is so much worse than just 'we screwed your economy for the foreseeable future'.
They are leveraging 'there will be no Australians left.' Whether the slow eradication from disease and hunger that a siege does, or in immediate and sudden violence?
So I have no doubt, even though Blizzard had no idea what they said, that it's actually entirely possible the Omnics said "idk we want the outback" and the Australian Government went YEAH, SURE, ANYTHING NOT TO GET OBLITERATED, IG?
And what's more, afterwards, whatever chance there might have been to take some of those places back - no one, NO ONE, was going to do more than rebuild the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne strip on the outside to allow for better distribution. But who knows Anubis might have been a dick and said YOU ONLY GET SYDNEY. For one thing, taking back even something like Adelaide requires re-engaging, and on the other.......... they have this, now, that's alright, isn't it? It's the most modern part of Australia, it certainly seems like plenty, right? Other COUNTRIES exist with LESS and THRIVE!
I can't say I necessarily blame them, at that point it has to be a pure numbers game: Mexico City, which has also been destroyed, and it has almost as many people in JUST Mexico City as we have in total population. Sydney must have seemed, well, close enough. We're rebuilding this bit which will roughly sustain you (it won't, actually), but then we gotta take the resources to other devastated places that don't need FOUR CAPITAL CITIES, 10 OTHER IMPORTANT CITIES, A MINIMUM OF 30 REGIONAL TOWNS AND A FULL RECONSTRUCTION OF A INLAND NETWORK SPANNING THE ENTIRETY OF THE UNITED STATES IN SHEER SCALE. Things as they were, at the time, it must have seemed.... well yeah. Not worth it.
Which now - hey that's pretty intense, actually that's horrific for the sheer loss of life, how can you be sure the devastation is that severe? And that in turn everyone just did what SEEMED enough with little to no consideration of its long term impact and if it had any sustainability to us? That's extreme to insinuate?
Well if not the direct implication of '30 million orphans worldwide' that means for every orphan, there are two dead parents, and then the two families next door that DIDN'T survive, to tell you the average statistics of the war casualties......
The other is simple: Junkertown exists.
Junkertown cannot exist, if there was anything left of those cities or those 60+ regional towns, pre or post-explosion of the core. Because here is the thing, if there was a chance, a single chance, we could take back that important space of the Outback, we would. In a heartbeat. I think that's why the Australian Government allowed the ALF to exist in the first place and did not stop them when they most definitely could have.
I can explain the economics of what being an island nation at the ass end of the world means as to how we are so completely fucked economically at this point, but this part is more important, even if it's often the hardest for non-Australians to wrap their heads around because they squeal about 'how scary' it is all the time is this:
We love that land. That land is our home. Yes, even with its spiders and snakes, not in spite of, but all of it, good and bad. In one sense that yes, that literally hundreds of thousands of people lived dispersed across it, but culturally it goes beyond just that direct 'my house is there'. One of our most successful ad campaigns by a freaking flight company exists on a simple premise: 'no matter how far, and how wide I go, I still call Australia home'. (The first version of it aired in the 90s, for reference, also yes, Junkrat actually has a line that echos the sentiments of this song 'I've been all around the world, but there's nowhere that compares to home' Not sure if it was on purpose but I smiled a little to myself when I first heard it). Yeah. That's it. Not fighting or glory or power. The rest of the world is beautiful, but this one is ours, and we love it for what it is. Something that is personified in that image of red sand dunes and scrub, in the arid flatness, the wattle and the gum, even to the kid that grew up in the middle of the Sydney suburbs, as his childhood home, that tugs in his heart as much as his childhood toys.
Even though I know a bunch of Aussies just read this and were like GROAN, SHUT UP, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, QUOTE BANJO PATTERSON, CAN'T CATCH ME WITH THAT SHIT,,,,
I fucking see you, I fucking know you. I only gotta say one fucking thing to you pretending you're above it:
RED DOG JUST WANTS TO KNOW, HAVE YOU SEEN JOHN? HE'S LOOKING YOU IN THE EYES, HAVE YOU SEEN JOHN?
Yeah, that's what I goddamn thought.
That we'd lose all reason to do some stupid shit like the ALF attempted to recover it? Uh, yeah. We just lost most of our population, we can't bury them, and how quickly would that landscape of our home carry that memory of them, and yet, we are cut from even that.
But to reclaim all that land you need supply chains, rebuilding as you go, AN ARMY ABLE TO HOLDING THAT SPACE AGAINST WHATEVER THE FUCK A "FERAL OMNIC" IS??? SERIOUSLY, AGAIN, DID THEY DOWNLOAD THE 'FROM SOFTWARE CREATIVE SUITE' ON THAT OMNIC??? And with that in mind, and how everyone and everything is gone for us, that would require HUGE international backing.
And if they had all of that, with all that effort, like HELL are they letting a SEPERATE SOVERIGN NATION JUST SPRING UP IN THE MIDDLE OF IT, BEING A BUNCH OF VIOLENT ASSHOLES, MAKING IT HARDER by STEALING SHIT ALL THE TIME on top of BLOCKING ACCESS TOO SOME OF OUR MOST RESOURCE RICH LAND. I know this might be a struggle, but on top of loving that space, we also enjoy idk, stability? Not dying? Junkertown would compromise that, completely. Especially the dying bit, I feel. Speaking as an Aussie, I, like many Australians, do appreciate that they will in fact die one day, and hopefully, doing so by driving a ride-on mower around hills hoist chasing a goon sack as god intended for this beautiful country, but overall, just randomly dying in a Wolf Creek-like situation because you were trying to build a fuckin road, isn't how most of wanted it to go down. Some might, I will not shame my fantasy countrymen in the post-apocalypse world of Overwatch-Australia, times seem tough for Tinny Rogers and Jenny out there, and they have a right to pick how they get by.
SO YEAH, THE FUCK NOT, MY GUYS. THEY'D SQUISH THAT SHIT LIKE A BUG.
But if they are recovering from near annihilation, unsupported, told to just deal with it because they got what they got - Junkertown can do what we see, and in its strange way: flourish.
Then it comes to how it's being handled by the rest of the in-game world as to how it's just been allowed to let slide by everyone fucking else even if clearly every time one of these desert-fuckers gets out, it's a DAMN NIGHTMARE FOR WORLDWIDE SECURITY.
You hear Zarya call it "the mistakes of this country", which given how people treat the Junkers as a whole in game, seems to be a commonly held sentiment. A mistake. There is little to no comprehension of them, or what they have been victim to. Again probably because Blizzard itself has no idea what it just accidentally implied. We don't have enough lore to really say how many countries share this fate of losing 80% of their entire nation and people, and with it, almost their whole selves? Of them, how many got complete reconstruction? Given their common theme of corporate greed, developments in post-war society and their subsequent inequality, I'd say some people get reconstruction support and others don't (the interactions of Lucio and Symmetra for instance) based on convenience, and the sentiment from many powers in history has often been 'Australia is very far away, and I don't care'.
To call it 'a mistake' then, redirects blame from those inequalities and the present-day situation having beyond anyone's possible conception.
If it's 'a mistake', it's not a self-destructive spiral of suffering people who have been pushed beyond even common sense anymore. That lash out in desperation over a loss that cannot be quantified to any sum, yet were told that a price had actually been put on it, and no one was interested in paying it, and they had to live with what they got now. Then with no other output for the misery, in some desperate bid to reclaim even a SHRED of a memory, just vent their pain for a damn second, damned themselves and their home. Everyone who was in power and authority to have stepped in at any time to give the support needed and direct it more meaningfully before this, but never did, everyone who made those choices, is now complicit in the rise of Junkertown and the Junkers due to their basic lack or inability to understand what had been lost and have empathy, has led to a situation where now there is an entirely separate type of threat in 'feral omnics' and a bunch of insane radioactive people.
Or just say it was 'a mistake'. Then it's just their fault, isn't it? It's just a small, negligible little choice that WE won't make. We can all pat ourselves on the back and say that at least because Australia is so far away, whatever is happening there, is now just isolated to them, and you can't expect help NOW that the desert is irradiated, it was ALREADY unfeasible, it's SO expensive, WHOSE going to fund that, for what gain, especially now you made this silly little 'choice'.
Acknowledging, even to stop the Junkers, means bringing their own failings to the spotlight when rightfully it comes back to 'why the fuck did these bastards exist in the first place? What made them so fucking stupidly, mindlessly, suicidally angry as to lash out like this? Why weren't they thinking, then, and why do they stay, even now? .... and why do all of them appear to be goddamn giants?'
So easier to just... let the Junkers do their thing, out in the desert. Make them the scapegoat for the tensions, a fixing point for even the Omnics (rightfully, obviously in their case) to hate, blame and fear, over more active, influential systems that have far more ability to affect the world. Especially when compared too: the bunch of crazy people in the fucking desert, who probably all die at 50 from that ambient radiation everywhere, getting new types of diseases that no one has ever HEARD of before and are apparently are like barely connected on networks to the rest of the world. WHAT KIND OF POWER TO AFFECT WORLD CHANGE DO YOU THINK THEY ACTUALLY HAVE?
Rather than acknowledge that people like Odessa Stone got their hatred probably from watching half her under 12 siblings die to omnics, and the other half to the situation in the Wasteland created by others' indifference. (And the reminder that, Odessa's mum in the first shot, is holding an infant, and the second moment of her flashback, Odessa is still roughly the same but all the kids left are too big for a 1 to 2-year-old, and Mama Stone isn't holding an infant anymore.) They do what often happens and put all the responsibility of moving on, ON the people who are literally in the middle of dying in a now 30-year war, that everyone ELSE keeps trying to desperately pretend it's over and stick their head in the sand. Thus just invalidating their pain and making them even MORE resistant. Especially when you contrast the rest of the world is getting influential people like Mondatta and Zen making changes, real strides forward, and they get......... lbr, just more graves while they're just being called crazy.
Akande says 'the world is designed to be this way', and I think part of the reason Odessa doesn't mind him, is that yeah, yeah she probably knows after she's seen other parts of the world now and its reconstruction efforts, compared to theirs, found them pretty wanting, and it's nice to hear someone else say it for once.
No WONDER Roadie says 'this isn't a city' about Junkertown, when he remembers when Australia had more than three cities total, it must seem like a mockery. But why people like Junker Queen and Junkrat have pride in it, inversely. They were children when the apocalypse came to Australia or were born in Junkertown itself, they live in the memory that must now only feel dead and impossible to recapture the life of. In many ways, their bookends to Ramattra, their first moments were taken into a life of roaring violence the world wants to pretend isn't happening, but this is all they ARE now. So they have done their best with it, even if no one wants to be reminded of what their sheer existence represents.
Yeah. 'Mistake' is much easier to swallow, isn't it?
So yeah, given ODESSA STONE IS OUT THERE IN THE WASTELAND BECOMING FUCKING GENGHIS KHAN OR SOMETHING, UNITING ALL THE WASTELAND FACTIONS, AND NO ONE IS NOTICING OR EVEN SLIGHTLY TAKING IT SERIOUSLY, whenever that blows up in their face and they cry HOW DID THIS GET SO BAD, WHAT HAPPENED, AUSTRALIA?!
Yeah. Ain't that the fucking question.
Or maybe all of this is complete nonsense and everything I just said will one day be shown to be entirely wrong as often happens because ultimately again, I don't think they MEANT MOST OF THIS LMAO, BECAUSE ONE MORE TIME: STOP SAYING 'OUTBACK'.
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Creative Journal
Potential Idea -
Boat Museum keeping with nortical theme
Aboriginal History Museum that would allow the traditional owners to share and teach their knowledge
Each would have inclusive and hands on activity’s
Similar to GOMA and Museum - New Activities every season potentially which would be good for children and parents during the week looking for activities.
Response to the Site and Client Brief:
My overall idea would be for this to be a day activity for families to participate in within the day and weekends. This would mean the activities within the site are going to aim to appeal to all different ages.
Public Transport
- Future building of apartments will increase activity on the south side directly across from the river, however current ferry stop closest to these apartments is currently very unknown. Propaganda of sorts could be included at the ferry stations, such as signs or billboards so that people know of Northshore and the entertainment it could provide.
Time Date: 9th of March 2021

Apollo Road Ferry Terminal & Toilet Block | Heritage Places. (2021). Retrieved 17 March 2021, from https://heritage.brisbane.qld.gov.au/heritage-places/445

Bulimba CityCat stop - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). (2021). Retrieved 17 March 2021, from https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-01/bulimba-citycat-stop/7547390?pfm=sm&nw=0
Current Ferry Stops that are closest to North Shore could be a potential ‘advertisement’ opportunity as the residents within the area are very close to North Shore and have ease of access. New apartment blocks are also proposed to be built beside an old army barracks close to the Apollo Road Ferry Stop which would increase activity within the area. Capitalising on this new development will increase stable and frequent activity and engagement within the site.
- Could approach Council on whether putting up a sign could be viable.
Time Date: 16th of March 2021
North shore - Very urban area with concrete and limited greenery

I would like to aim to bring more colour and life to the area. Paintings on the silo - preferably dreamtime art that could relate to the museum and interactive activities within the site. North Shore is including greenery and trees through the building of the park at the river front; refer to map. Leave this park free for people to sit down on - this could be cohesive for eat street as people may choose to sit on the grass. Previously Eat Street was included a open green area where people could sit, however whenever I have visited Eat Street since then I have found it difficult to find a seat, as well as very crowded. I don’t want to build anything on the park land as this could detract from the site.

Silo - Potentially could make it a “theatre inside”. I hope for this to be one of the most ‘known’ features of the site. Due to the feature being located inside the silo and unable to be seen from the outside, people will be curious to see what is inside. Change the activities every few weeks/months to generate more activity and to bring back others to the site. Silo has great acoustics as well, so sound will be an element as well.

Cruz, X. (2021). Spectacular Circular 3D Projection Mapping Campaign. Retrieved 24 March 2021, from http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/projection-mapping/eat-my-dear-direct-spectacular-circular-3d-projection/
Aim for the Silo is to be a relaxing place where people can go to feel connected to the land and to also learn of Dream Time stories, and making connections to the Traditional Owners of both Northshore and Brisbane. People can come here to when they need to relax and to also find meaning through how this land was created through the eyes of Indigenous Australians. Could also potentially have a link to one’s spirituality.
Aboriginal Art will also be projected on to the side of Silo so that during the night people can see the Silo and the art surrounding it. Potential for the Silo to remain open during the night however the museum aspect and activities will have to close during the night. My hope is that it will be a similar idea to when the Sydney Opera House displayed Aboriginal Art. This is a focal piece in Sydney, and I hope for this project to be a similar focal point in Brisbane, however it be solely focused on the Traditional Owners as currently Brisbane does not have a site solely dedicated to this.
Currently Brisbane lacks interactive learning activities in relation to the traditional owners of the land and the culture and practices that took place here. The idea of an interactive and informative museum to teach about the culture is something that Brisbane needs and North Shore has the potential to give.

Leanne Mirandilla, C. (2021). Indigenous art lights up the Sydney Opera House. Retrieved 24 March 2021, from https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/sydney-opera-house-indigenous-art/index.html
Current Progress on Idea:
- Two warehouses next to the Silo; one that showcases
I will be looking at public transport as the main way to go into North Shore and capitalise on this through advertising as well.
Potential advertising opportunity on City Cats as this is the most accessible public transport option to North Shore.
Current Advertising company is RedTv, which allows for advertisements to be on screen. Has an outreach of over 4 million passengers with 92% of these passenger being 18-55.
Case Study Review and how we can relate this to the current site.
Time Date: 17th March
Updated Idea:
Using Shipping Containers instead of Warehouses; this would also link into eat street and make the site look more cohesive and as one site, implementing the core ideas of placemaking of introducing an idea that belongs and works within the current site.
This is taking inspiration and the idea came to me whilst looking at the Barangaroo Case Study.
Aboriginal History of the site:
- Traditional owners of the land --> Turrbal people
- Several camping sites throughout the area and surrounding areas including Bulimba and Hawthorne. This area was considered as the Heart, which could be in relation to a now lost dreamtime story. Previously, you could have walked across the River to either side --> potential to include this in a lifelike, smaller version, of this section of River.
Stakeholders:
This will include
- Community
- Owners of the site
- Businesses associated
- Northshore - Government
- Media; Social Media Presence; Triple Z
Mangroves on the site and link to indigenous people
Case Study Bangaroo project
- Can relate to the use of shipping containers and projections to my creative concept
- Showcases a “Symbitoic” relationships with market stalls
- Develops on the idea of looking at the history of the site

A particular focus on Dream Time Stories:
Dream Time stories are unique stories of how ancestor spirits created the land and everything on it along with the ideas they held about the Aboriginal world and how this is expressed through art ("Aboriginal Dreamtime Stories - Japingka Aboriginal Art Gallery", 2021).
Videos could potentially take inspiration from dreamtime story children books.
This includes
Girawe the Goanna,
How the Birds got their colour
The Echidna and the Shade tree.
Rainbow Serpant.
Artwork of Dreamtime stories that are are similar to what I’d like the videos to take inspiration from.


The images above showcase how the videos of Dreamtime stories would be shown within the shipping container, vibrant and easy to follow. However my vision for the video within the Silo is a little bit different to this as I would like to generate a different mood.
I would like the main video to be like a snippet of a large sum of Dream Time stories and the creatures within them flowing and entwining them, to showcase how they all come together to create this land. My main objective is for the Silo to be a place of solitude where one can feel connected and find peace. My vision is that there will be pillows or chairs on the floor and people can lay down and let nature float around them, due to the circular shape of the room.
I’d like to imagine it would look something like this. With the video image flowing around the room and the people within, being able to stand still and view the images come to life.
Hermione Harry Potter GIF - Hermione HarryPotter Patronus - Discover & Share GIFs. (2021). Retrieved 31 March 2021, from https://tenor.com/view/hermione-harry-potter-patronus-gif-16365164
Activities within the Shipping Containers:
Tow Fishing Baskets, made using reeds and branches. Could provide resources and diagrams so that kids could build them. Could also potentially use them as ‘bags’ to collect shells and things however have to look into whether this would be considered culturally insensitive to use the traditional fishing nets as ‘bags’.
Other activities could include making Australian native animals that are featured in the dreamtime stories using clay or paper for this. Dot painting and painting of boomerangs and or constructing smaller scale versions of traditional canoes that could potentially tie into the connection the site has with the river.
Costing/Budget:
Similar to GOMA --> Annual financial report listed that for the activities and services it would cost around $18, 533. This will most likely include all resources needed for the activities as well. I took inspiration from GOMA’s activities so I will assume that this will be a similar cost for this project.
NAVA suggests that an artists commission on a 2 year contract will cost $10,000 a year on a 2 year contract.
EXPENSE, EXPLANATION + COMPARISON, TOTAL
Silo
Approximately $15,000
- Including landscaping…
$15,000
Shipping Containers
Estimated around $3000 for one
6 proposed, therefore an estimated cost of $18, 0000
$18,000
Project Mapping
2D custom projecting mapping on large scale curved surface (Silo) and on a smaller scale (within shipping containers) is estimated to cost $5,000-$10,000 (“The Cost of Projection Mapping | ON Services”, 2021). This will include video, and instaling the projectors and necessary lighting.
$5,000-$10,000
Activities
Under the Queensland Art Gallery Board of Trustee’s Financial statement for GOMA, it states that for supplies and services in relation to activities, cost a total of $18, 533 in 2018. As the activates planned for my creative concept are similar to ones at GOMA we can estimate it will be a similar cost(Qagoma, 2018).
Based on the NAVA Code of Practise it will cost $600 for a half day workshop (NAVA, 2020)
$19, 000
Advertisement
$250 per fortnight for 15 seconds every 30 minutes on a 12 month contract (RedTv, 2010)
$6, 500
Artwork
My idea would be to hopefully commission an artist to paint on the side of the shipping containers. Based on the Arts Acumen website ("ARTS ACUMEN", 2021).
$7,000
TOTAL:
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Web Development Specialized Skills and Interacts With the Customer at All Stages
Information technology (IT) is one of the most booming sectors of the world economy. Indeed, the well-being of this sector is crucial to the performance of the economy as a whole, with swings in the sector greatly affecting the economic well-being all over the world. IT-related services can be broadly divided into different, specific disciplines. One of the most important of such IT service is web development.
Web development service can be defined as any activity undertaken by professional web designers, in order to create a web page. The web page is meant for publication on the World Wide Web (i.e., the Internet). However, there is a technical difference between web development and web designing services. While the latter involves all the design and layout aspects of a web page, writing codes and generating markups form important tasks under web development.
Website development services are required for a wide range of IT-relate services. Some of the important fields that involve web development include e-commerce, business development, generation of content for the web, web server configuration and client-side (or, server-side) scripting.
While the web development teams of large companies can comprise of a large number of developers, it is not uncommon for smaller business to have a single contracting webmaster. It should also be understood that, although web development requires specialised skills, it is usually a collaborative effort of the different departments of a company that make it a success.
The web development process is a comprehensive one, and can be broadly divided into different, smaller sections. In order to understand the mechanism of web development, one needs to look at the hierarchy of a typical such system. In general, any web development process can comprise of the following sections:
a) Client Side Coding -- This component of web development includes the usage of various computer languages. Such languages include:
i) AJAX -- involving an up-gradation of Javascript or PHP (or, any similar languages). The focus is on enhancement of the end-user experience. ii) CSS -- involving usage of stylesheets, iii) Flash -- Commonly used as the Adobe Flash Player, this provides a platform on the client side, iv) JavaScript -- The programming language and different forms of coding, v) Microsoft SilverLight -- This, however, works only with the latest win9x versions, vi) XHTML -- This is used as a substitute for HTML 4. With the acceptance of HTML 5 by the international browser community, this would gain more in popularity.
b) Server Side Coding -- A wide range of computer languages can be used in the server side coding component of a website developer process. Some of them are:
i) ASP -- this is proprietary product from Microsoft, ii) Coldfusion -- also known as Macromedia (its formal official name), iii) Perl and/or CGI -- an open source programming language, iv) Java -- including J2EE and/or WebObjects, v) PHP -- another open source language, vi) Lotus Domino, vii) Dot Net ( .NET) -- a proprietary language from Microsoft, viii) Websphere -- owned by IBM, ix) SSJS (a server-side JavaScript) -- including Aptana Jaxer and Mozilla Rhino, x) Smalltalk -- including Seaside and AIDA/Web, xi) Ruby -- comprising of Ruby on Rails, xii) Python -- this has web framework called Django.
The client side coding is mainly related to the layout and designing of web pages. On the other hand, server side coding ensures that that all back end systems work properly, and the functionality of the website is correct. These two areas of coding need to be combined in a professional, expert manner in order to make web development an effective process.
Website development is rapidly gaining in popularity all over the world, in the IT sector. In this context, Australia, and in particular, Sydney, deserves a special mention. There are quite a number of Sydney web development companies. Web development in Sydney is an extremely well-known service and the developers from this area are thorough experts in this field.
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Committing to a fully zero-emission fleet by 2040, Uber is dedicating $800 million to electrifying its drivers
Ride hailing giant Uber is committing to become a fully zero-emission platform by 2040 and setting aside $800 million to help get its drivers using electric vehicles by 2025.
The company said that it would invest further in its micro-mobility options as well with the goal of having 100 percent of its rides take place on electric vehicles in the US, Canada, and European cities in which the company operates. Uber also said it would commit to reaching net-zero emissions from its own corporate operations by 2030.
If the company can hit its timeline, Uber would achieve necessary milestones in its operations a decade ahead of the Paris Climate Agreement targets set for 2050.
The keys to the company’s efforts are four new and expanding initiatives, according to a statement.
The first is the launch of Uber Green in 15 US and Canadian cities. For customers willing to spend an extra dollar, they can request an EV or hybrid electric vehicle to pick them up. By the end of the year, Uber Green will be available in over 65 cities around the world. Riders who choose the green option will also receive three times the Uber Rewards points they would have received for a typical UberX ride, the company said.
Uber’s second step toward making the world a greener place is to commit $800 million to transition its fleet to electric vehicles. Part of that transition is being subsidized by the $1 surcharge for riders who choose to go green and from fees that the company collects under its London and French Clean Air Plans. Those are 15 cent (or pence) surcharges that Uber has been collecting since January of last year to pay for the electrification of its drivers’ cars in European cities.
Dara Kowsrowshahi, chief executive officer of Uber Technologies Inc., speaks during an event in New Delhi, India, on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018. During his Japan trip, Khosrowshahi has made it clear the ride-hailing company isnt scaling back its ambitions in certain Asian markets, despite speculation of a retreat. Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg via Getty Images
To incentivize drivers to go green, Uber’s doling out an extra 50 cents per trip in the US and Canada for every “Uber Green” trip completed to be paid out by riders. Drivers using EVs will also get another dollar from Uber itself, amounting to $1.50 more per trip for each EV ride completed.
Other enticements include partnerships with GM in the US and Canada and Renault -Nissan in Europe to offer discounts on electric vehicles to Uber drivers. Working with Avis, Uber is planning to offer more electric vehicles for rental to US drivers. Meanwhile, the company said it would also expand electric vehicle charging by working to develop new charging stations in conjunction with companies like BP, EVgo, Enel X, Izivia by EDF, and Power Dot.
Uber’s also working to revive the vision of robotic battery swapping to enable customers to forget about their concerns when it comes to charging a new vehicle. It’s working with the San Francisco-based startup, Ample, as the young company develops its battery-swapping tech — and Lithium Urban Technologies, an electric fleet operator out of India.
Building on its existing micro-mobility network, the company is going to integrate bikes and scooters from Lime even closer into its networks and expanding its shared ride programs as soon as its safe to do it. The company is also intent on expanding its Journey Planning feature to enable users to see pricing options, schedules, and directions to and from transit stations. Uber also now offers in-app ticketing in more than ten cities, so people can buy public transit passes in the app itself. As a coup de grace, Uber’s also unveiling a new feature that allows users to plan their trips in Chicago and Sydney using cars and public transit to get where they need to go.
Finally, the company has released its first Climate Assessment and Performance Report analyzing emissions from the company’s operations in the United States and Canada from 2017 through 2019. Unsurprisingly, Uber found that it was more efficient than single-occupant driving, but the company did reveal that its carbon intensity is higher than that of average-occupancy personal cars. Meaning when there’re two people using a personal car, their footprint is lower than that of an Uber driver looking for passengers.
Although arguably, Uber shouldn’t be having its customers foot so much of the bill for its electric transition, these are all positive steps from a company that still has a long road ahead of it if it’s looking to reduce its carbon footprint.
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Agilenano - News: Perfect Concept Parakeet Nesting Box


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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Text
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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10 Unmissable Art Exhibitions of 2018
10 Unmissable Art Exhibitions of 2018
Roundup
by Elle Murrell
teamLabs’ interactive digital projection, ‘Moving creates vortices and vortices create movement’ at NGV Triennial. Photo – courtesy of NGV.
Nendo’s ”Manga Chairs’; Pae White’s ‘Untitled’ illusionary opt art and textile installation at NGV Triennial. Photos – courtesy of NGV.
NGV Triennial
Until April 15th National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) International, Melbourne Free
If you’re yet to go, make it happen. Visiting NGV International’s most ambitious and varied offering to date is, at the least, a tri-weekly to-do for me – it’s that good!
Displayed on all four levels of the St. Kilda Road gallery, you’ll discover the work of over 100 artists and designers from 32 countries, spanning cutting-edge technologies, architecture, animation, performance, film, painting, drawing, fashion design, tapestry and sculpture.
Upon entering prepare to be stopped in your tracks by Xu Zhen’s 18-metre long, ‘Eternity-Buddha in Nirvana’, the largest work in his ‘Eternal’ series and one of 20 large-scale artworks commissioned by NGV. From the playful to the haunting, other highlights include: teamLabs’ interactive digital projection, ‘Moving creates vortices and vortices create movement’; giant skulls by local artist Ron Mueck in his largest work to date, ‘Mass’; Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Flower Obsession’; Nendo’s ”Manga Chairs’; Pae White’s ‘Untitled’ illusionary opt art and textile installation; and the quirky replica Moroccan tea house, designed by Hassan Hajjaj.
There’s more; until January 28th, Triennial EXTRA adds a host of DJs, dancers, bars, talks to the mix, as well as Supernormal’s pop-up restaurant Natsu!
Installation views: ‘Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of the Rainbow’ at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2017. Photos – Natasha Harth, QAGOMA.
Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow
Until February 11th Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane Free
Australia is being graced with two exhibitions by phenomenal Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama at the moment – Brisbanites and Melbournians it’s a quick trip for you, everyone else in-between, it’s surely worth the travel.
This epic GOMA exhibition focuses on Kusama’s vast body of beguiling creations from the 1950s to present, exploring key motifs – yes, that includes polka dots, but deeper themes explore her engagement with the body, and her conception of space.
There’s early painterly experiments, celebrated ‘net’ paintings, performance art, soft-sculpture, assemblage, iconic ‘infinity rooms’ and large-scale installations of her later career, before a presentation of most recent paintings from her arresting ‘My Eternal Soul’ series (2009 – ongoing).
It’s also one for the kids, with the Children’s Art Centre at GOMA hosting the immersive interactive ‘The obliteration room (2002 – ongoing)’, a collaboration between the artist and QAGOMA, which debuted at ‘The 4th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ and has since been experienced by more than five million people around the world.
Visit soon before the show wraps up in mid-February.
Marimekko: Design Icon 1951 to 2018 is coming to Bendigo Art Gallery. Photos – courtesy Courtesy of the Design Museum, Helsinki.
Marimekko: Design Icon 1951 to 2018
March 3rd to June 11th Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo Ticketed
I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the Bendigo Gallery of Art on several occasions over the last couple of years – who could forget their Marilyn Monroe showcase, complete with eight-metre high sculpture! Their attention to detail never disappoints.
Though that Hollywood trailblazer has long since departed, a duo of wonderful Finnish women is about to step into the spotlight. Armi Ratia and Riitta Immonen founded Marimekko during the golden age of post-war modernism, and their textile and fashion company went on to garner widespread international fame for its bold pop-art prints throughout the 1960s and 70s.
At the same time, the women’s lib movement was making leaps and bounds, and Marimekko’s loud patterns and unconventional ready-to-wear outfits which, ‘brought colour and informality to an otherwise self-conscious fashion world’.
This vibrant exhibition will trace the rise of Marimekko and explore its defining aesthetic, through more than 60 outfits, metres of original fabrics, homewares, sketches and other archival treasures.
The gallery’s cafe is well worth a stop in while you’re there, and consider making a weekend away of it, so you have more time to explore this gem of a goldrush city!
The Biennale of Sydney is back in 2018, and its 45th anniversary promises something pretty special! Pictured here: Semiconductor’s ‘Earthworks 2016’ and Ai Wei Wei’s ‘Law of the Journey 2017’. Photos – courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales.
21st Biennale of Sydney
March 16th to June 11th Art Gallery of New South Wales and various venues citywide, Sydney Free and Ticketed
Held every two years, the Biennale of Sydney is back in 2018, and its 45th anniversary promises something pretty special! The city-wide contemporary art event will roll out across seven participating venues, including Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Bringing exceptional new projects by a diverse field of celebrated international artists, the 21st edition Biennale is curated by Mami Kataoka. Under the theme ‘Superposition: equilibrium and engagement’ (a quantum mechanical term), the showcase will examine how this principle might operate in the world today.
‘The participating artists in the 21st Biennale of Sydney have been chosen to offer a panoramic view of how opposing understandings and interpretations can come together in a state of ‘equilibrium.’ Mami explains.
Fittingly, artist Ai Weiwei will be back in Australia, to deliver the keynote address alongside Mami at the Sydney Opera House. For a comprehensive list of other creatives involved and associated events visit the website here.
Artworks and installation view of the 2017 Telstra NATSIAA, including vessel byPepai Jangala Carroll and painting by Nyunmiti Bruton. Photos – courtesy of Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.
National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA)
From August 10th Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory (MAGNT), Darwin Free
Founded in 1984, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award celebrates the validity and cultural diversity of contemporary Indigenous artistic expression, and has come to be regarded as one of the premier national events on the Australian Indigenous art calendar. The finalists of these coveted and lucrative (thanks to long-running sponsor Telstra) awards are exhibited at the Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory following the announcement in early August.
Late last year I was so excited to spend an eye-opening afternoon at MAGNT during a stop-over in Darwin. There, I got to view some captivating large-scale artworks in real life (rather than on my monitor, where I’d been first introduced to several artists via our Indigenous Art column).
From works on canvas to immersive audio-visual pieces, and disarmingly conceptual installations, the 34th Telstra NATSIAA exhibition was unforgettable! I expect the 35th to be nothing short of this too.
‘Since its inception, NATSIAA has profiled the immense changes and trends within Indigenous art that emerged from almost invisibility to become a significant force in contemporary fine art. An obvious change has been in the growing range of techniques used by entrants, now reflected in the five subsidiary media awards for bark painting, general painting, works on paper, three dimensional work and in multimedia’ explains Margie West, Emeritus Curator of Aboriginal Art and NATSIAA Founder, MAGNT. ‘NATSIAA remains true to its initial objective by providing unknown, emerging, and established artists from around the country the opportunity to be seen.’
A sneak peek on’s ‘Drowin what’s coming to NGV as part of their Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition: MoMa at NGV., Including Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Drowning Girl 1963’ and Piet Mondrian’s ‘Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow 1937-42’ Photos – courtesy of NGV.
MoMA at NGV
June 9th to October 7th National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) International, Melbourne Ticketed
While it’s hard to get excited about Summer’s end, ‘the greatest modern art museum in the world’ arriving on our doorstep will help. The National Gallery of Victoria, in partnership with The Museum of Modern Art, New York, will present MoMA at NGV as the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition in 2018.
Prepare yourself for a unique survey of the MoMA’s iconic collection – approximately 200 key works, tracing the development of art and design from late-nineteenth-century urban and industrial transformation, through to the digital and global present.
MoMA’s early acquisitions, including masterworks by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne will be on show, as will pieces by pioneering cubist and futurist artists Pablo Picasso and Umberto Boccioni, the radical abstractions of Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, the surreal paintings of Salvador Dalí and Frida Kahlo, and works by Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock…(breathe).
The show will also chronicle art from Minimalism through to Post Modernism c/o Roy Lichtenstein, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Lynda Benglis, Sol LeWitt, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Keith Haring, as well as the likes of the next wave of artists Kara Walker, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky, Olafur Eliasson, Huang Yong Ping, Mona Hatoum, El Anatsui and Camille Henrot.
Objects from MoMA’s Architecture and Design collection will be arriving as well, to the delight of architects, designers and artists alike.
Internationally exclusive to Melbourne, and more then two years in the making, I might be editing my earlier statement about Triennale being NGVs ‘most ambitious exhibition to date’ when MoMA arrives mid-year!
An installation view of The Museum of Everything currently on at MONA, alongside artworks on display. Photos – courtesy of the MONA.
The Museum of Everything
Until April 2nd Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart Ticketed
The onslaught of acronyms and collaborations could have you a little confused at this point, but stay with me.
Next on the list is Museum of Old and New Art, which has invited The Museum of Everything down to Tasmania. For this reason (among others) you should head there too.
Opening in London in 2009, The Museum of Everything is a travelling institution, advocating for ‘the visibility of art that falls outside the confines of the art world proper; the work of ordinary people, working far (literally or otherwise) from the cultural metropolis’. Hence it being a perfect match for Australia’s own boundary-pushing private gallery.
What to expect? The extraordinary… from the passionate fringe! ‘Our museum stretches, I hope, the possibility of who has the right to be considered an artist,’ says The Museum of Everything founder James Brett. His temporarily Tasmania-based showcase is produced by the likes of transcendent scientists, self-taught architects, and citizen inventors, creating their own art/folklore (in some particular examples from the confines of a hospital or prison) to challenge established histories of culture and place.
What you will find when you come, beckons MONA, is ‘a jolly fine collection, cor blimey, of drawings, paintings, sculptures, photography, environments and assemblies. There are wondrous samples of the Art Brut/Outsider Art canon (oh, the irony) as well as the ‘newly discovered’ (as our British imperial overlords would have it), alongside work from studios for artists with disabilities. We’re excited. This stuff matters, in a social-justice sense and in an art-lovers sense.’
A preview of Maison Cartier jewellery that will be showcased as part of the epic Cartier: The Exhibition later this year, including: the Queen’s ‘Halo’ tiara, worn by Kate Middleton at her wedding to Prince William, Duke of Cambridge; and the crocodile necklace worn by actress María Félix among other dazzling designs. Photos – courtesy of National Gallery of Australia.
Cartier: The Exhibition
March 30th to July 22nd National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Ticketed
Two dazzling crocodiles, conjoined to form one of the most covetable necklaces of all time, the same gilded reptiles that femme fatale María Félix once wore, making a fashion statement AND a kick-ass power play – I’ve got to see them!! The preview of this exhibition is etched into my memory; the gems are astounding and the goldsmithing more meticulous than one could imagine, I mean, let’s not forget, this is metal and rock formed so exquisitely as to lay gently on the wearer. Even if you’re not that into jewels, Cartier: The Exhibition is a glimmering window into almost two centuries of design movements and aesthetics du jour.
The showcase will comprise more than 300 spectacular Maison Cartier items, with loans from royal families, celebrities and the astonishing Cartier Collection itself, including wow-factor jewellery, one-of-a-kind timepieces and precious objects.
Highlights will include Dame Nellie Melba’s diamond stomacher brooch, the Queen’s ‘Halo’ tiara, worn by Kate Middleton at her wedding to Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Daisy Fellowes’ Tutti-Frutti Hindu necklace, Barbara Hutton’s imperial jadeite necklace, Princess Grace of Monaco’s 10.48-carat diamond engagement ring, Dame Elizabeth Taylor’s diamond and ruby necklace and a selection from the NGA’s Ballets Russes costumes.
This Canberra exhibition will follow the History of the French house, delving into the incredible lives of glittering international clientele, and those of the master craftspeople who created for them. Also visit for the unprecedented access to a carefully curated selection of original preparatory drawings, portraits, historic photographs, film, advertising material, jewellery-making tools and equipment, as well as talks and events!
The 2017 Archibald Prize exhibition installed at the Art Gallery of NSW, alongside Archibald finalist artworks: Yvette Coppersmith’s ‘Professor Gillian Triggs’ oil on linen (137.5x110cm); and Rowan Robertson’s ‘Sun shines in the rusty morning (Riverina, NSW)’ oil on linen (50x45cm). Photos – courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales and Geelong Gallery.
Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2018
May 12th to September 9th Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Geelong Gallery, Geelong Free
Showcasing the finalists and winners of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes was a highlight of our 2017 art coverage, both according to us and to you (thanks for reading it, lots!). There is no way, then, that we could look past including these exhibitions for ‘Australia’s most important art prizes’ in this must-see list.
Unfortunately, I can’t predict which artists will be included in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman yet, nor who or what they will have painted. What I do know, from the awards’ exemplarily track record, is that these three shows, which debut every year together, in adjacent gallery spaces at the Art Gallery of NSW, are not to be missed.
The good news to this end is that after initially showing at the Art Gallery of NSW (who administers all three prizes) the Archibald exhibition will travel interstate to additional venues, including a showing at Geelong Gallery in Victoria – see you there!
The Lyon Housemuseum in Kew is set to become one of the largest art precincts in Melbourne when it’s expansion opens in November. Photo – Eve Wilson.
Lyon Housemuseum Galleries
From November Lyon Housemuseum Precinct in Kew, Melbourne Ticketed
Early in 2017 we were blown away by a new discovery right on our doorstep, the Lyon Housemuseum. (No, that’s not a typo – for a quick refresher, watch this video before reading on!)
The Lyon Housemuseum is a remarkable Australian home belonging to one very special family: Corbett Lyon, a fourth generation architect, and co-director of Lyons Architecture; his partner Yueji; and their daughters Carlin and Jaqlin. Though it is their functional family home, it is also a truly innovative art museum, open for tours on designated days.
As if its whole existence wasn’t amazing and generous enough, Corbett and his family have been working on the construction of a new public art museum, Housemuseum Galleries, right next door to the original Lyon Housemuseum, which will be run by the not-for-profit Lyon Foundation.
Set to open in November, the new purpose-built Lyon Housemuseum Galleries will launch with a huge new exhibition of all new commissions by Australian contemporary artists.
Lucy, can we book our next TDF team trip?
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