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Archive for the ‘finance’ category: Page 151

Feb 12, 2015

Platforms, not products, are the way to bring financial services to the poor

Posted by in category: finance

Leo Mirani — Quartz

In recent years, the banking and finance industries have not done a lot to earn the trust of consumers in the West. But in poor countries, basic financial services can be transformative.

Even in today’s wired world, many people still stash cash under the mattress, where inflation erodes it away. When they want to send money, they have to find a way to physically transport it. Loans are doled out in bundles or envelopes from moneylenders, at exorbitant rates. Emergencies or unforeseen circumstances can drive a family into penury.
The financial services these people need may come via mobile banking, as Bill and Melinda Gates wrote recently in their annual letter. Basic banking services—from simple payments and transfers to insurance, savings, and loans—are now possible on the simplest of mobile phones, as Quartz has reported.

Feb 9, 2015

Bitcoin’s Unique Features Lighten Up its Ambiguous Future

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, computing, cryptocurrencies, economics, finance

Where will Bitcoin be a few years from now?
The recently concluded Bitcoin & the Blockchain Summit in San Francisco on January 27 came up as a vivid source of both anxiety and inspiration. As speakers tackled Bitcoin’s technological limits and possible drawbacks that can be caused by impending regulations, Bitcoin advocate Andreas Antonopoulos lifted up everyone’s hope by discussing how bitcoins will eventually survive and flourish. He managed to do so with no graphics or presentations to prove his claim, just his utmost confidence and conviction that it really will no matter what.

On the currency being weak

There have been statements about Bitcoin’s technology surviving, but not the currency itself. Antonopoulos, however, argues that Bitcoin’s technology, network, and currency are interdependent with each other, which means that one element won’t work without the other. He said: “A consensus network that bases its value on the currency does not work without the currency.”

On why Bitcoin works

Continue reading “Bitcoin’s Unique Features Lighten Up its Ambiguous Future” »

Feb 2, 2015

The Mathematical Wonders behind Bitcoin

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, education, encryption, finance, hacking, hardware, information science, innovation, privacy

Vires in Bitcoin
Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency has had its moments of strength and weakness. The technology behind bitcoins, however, is a different story. While skeptics don’t expect a lot from Bitcoin as an alternative currency because of its volatility, they do have high hopes for the technological innovation that powers it, believing that it can be further developed to create something much powerful than Bitcoin itself.

To those who know Bitcoin as a great way of transacting online, but don’t completely understand its dynamics, it’s time to get acquainted with the cryptocurrency’s mathematical wonders that make anonymous, faster, and cheaper transactions of moving funds on the internet possible.

Most of us know that Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hashing algorithm, but hashing serves a different function and purpose from that of digital signatures. Hashing actually provides proof that a message has not been changed because running the same hash always generates similar result.

Any message, regardless of the size can go into a hash function where the algorithm breaks it down, combines the parts, and “digests” it until it makes a fixed-length outcome called “digest”. However, a good hashing algorithm possesses some critical characteristics, in which the same message always produces the same result, as mentioned above, and it only works in one direction.

Continue reading “The Mathematical Wonders behind Bitcoin” »

Jan 22, 2015

How Technology Behind Bitcoin Could Transform Accounting As We Know It

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, complex systems, computing, cryptocurrencies, disruptive technology, economics, finance, governance

Quoted: “We’re not there yet, but in less than 10 years, I believe that the technology behind bitcoin will transform the accounting profession entirely. What is this technology? The blockchain. Let me set the scene by going over a few bitcoin related concepts before explaining why I think that the accounting profession will undergo a major disruption in the coming years.”

Read the article here > http://www.techvibes.com/blog/how-technology-behind-bitcoin-…;01-22

Jan 9, 2015

Internet of Coins Releases Whitepaper For Infrastructure To Connect Entire Bitcoin And Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

Posted by in categories: complex systems, computing, cryptocurrencies, disruptive technology, economics, finance, internet

Quote: ” Internet of Coins strives to create a decentralized, self-sustaining economy by implementing intersystemic connectivity sustained by a hybrid P2P meta-network. The system will help to leverage each of its participant’s strength in numbers hence supporting both the stability of alt coins and the cryptocurrency community as a whole. Internet of Coins had an official Whitepaper launch party on the 3rd of January at the Bitcoin Embassy Amsterdam. The Whitepaper is available for download on http://internetofcoins.org. Internet of Coins has partnered-up with security oriented cryptoexchange and service provider Bitalo since November of last year for continuous development and funding of the project. The open source system will soon be released for non-commercial purposes and be easily accessible to the public; supporting continuous decentralization and empowering the cryptocurrency ecosystem to evolve.”

Read the article here > http://www.baystreet.ca/viewarticle.aspx?id=424703

Jan 7, 2015

GM Overcoming Toyota & Ford Surmounting Honda, Unfailingly, For Life! By Mr. Andres Agostini

Posted by in categories: business, complex systems, driverless cars, economics, education, energy, engineering, finance, futurism, hardware, innovation, military, physics, science, singularity, strategy

GM Overcoming Toyota & Ford Surmounting Honda, Unfailingly, For Life!

00000000 400 dpi  LBF

FIRST

The reason why Japanese automotive industry beat the U.S. car-makers is because, to them, it is an outright existential world to win and in the process spread a sense of Japanese exceptionalism.

They are fighting a most-lucrative World War merciless!

Continue reading “GM Overcoming Toyota & Ford Surmounting Honda, Unfailingly, For Life! By Mr. Andres Agostini” »

Jan 7, 2015

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL AWAKEN, YET CONDITIONALIZED CONSCIOUSNESS AS PER NON-GIRLIE U.S. HARD ROCKET SCIENTISTS! By Mr. Andres Agostini

Posted by in categories: business, complex systems, defense, disruptive technology, economics, education, engineering, ethics, existential risks, finance, futurism, innovation, physics, science, security, strategy

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL AWAKEN, YET CONDITIONALIZED CONSCIOUSNESS AS PER NON-GIRLIE U.S. HARD ROCKET SCIENTISTS!

0000  GIRLY SUPER OVERMAN

(Excerpted from the White Swan Book)

Sequential and Progressive Tidbits as Follows:

Continue reading “CROSS-FUNCTIONAL AWAKEN, YET CONDITIONALIZED CONSCIOUSNESS AS PER NON-GIRLIE U.S. HARD ROCKET SCIENTISTS! By Mr. Andres Agostini” »

Jan 6, 2015

Bitcoin’s Plummeting Crash and How it Affects Altcoins

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, cryptocurrencies, economics, finance

Bitcoin Price Crash

The volatile nature of bitcoins took its toll as recent turn of events saw the value plunging down to $274 as of this writing. CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index reported that while it opened to $314.59 last Saturday, it was followed by a staggering $263.63 the next day.

The remarkable price drop got everyone talking and while it instigated worries among market watchers, some focused on its bright side, deeming it the perfect opportunity for buying. However, the question still lies out in the open unanswered. What caused the steep crash?

Theories suggest that it may have something to do with margin calls, which if accurate, already did something of this nature sometime in August last year. The holiday season is another factor that may have had affected the value of bitcoins inadvertently. This was the season where exchanges were few with all the banks closed, disabling traders from filling up their cryptocurrency accounts.

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Jan 4, 2015

New Book: An Irreverent Singularity Funcyclopedia, by Mondo 2000’s R.U. Sirius.

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, alien life, automation, big data, bionic, bioprinting, biotech/medical, complex systems, computing, cosmology, cryptocurrencies, cybercrime/malcode, cyborgs, defense, disruptive technology, DNA, driverless cars, drones, economics, electronics, encryption, energy, engineering, entertainment, environmental, ethics, existential risks, exoskeleton, finance, first contact, food, fun, futurism, general relativity, genetics, hacking, hardware, human trajectories, information science, innovation, internet, life extension, media & arts, military, mobile phones, nanotechnology, neuroscience, nuclear weapons, posthumanism, privacy, quantum physics, robotics/AI, science, security, singularity, software, solar power, space, space travel, supercomputing, time travel, transhumanism

Quoted: “Legendary cyberculture icon (and iconoclast) R.U. Sirius and Jay Cornell have written a delicious funcyclopedia of the Singularity, transhumanism, and radical futurism, just published on January 1.” And: “The book, “Transcendence – The Disinformation Encyclopedia of Transhumanism and the Singularity,” is a collection of alphabetically-ordered short chapters about artificial intelligence, cognitive science, genomics, information technology, nanotechnology, neuroscience, space exploration, synthetic biology, robotics, and virtual worlds. Entries range from Cloning and Cyborg Feminism to Designer Babies and Memory-Editing Drugs.” And: “If you are young and don’t remember the 1980s you should know that, before Wired magazine, the cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000 edited by R.U. Sirius covered dangerous hacking, new media and cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs, with an anarchic and subversive slant. As it often happens the more sedate Wired, a watered-down later version of Mondo 2000, was much more successful and went mainstream.”


Read the article here >https://hacked.com/irreverent-singularity-funcyclopedia-mondo-2000s-r-u-sirius/

Jan 4, 2015

QUESTION: Give Me Egotistical Prima Donnas, Stupid? By Mr. Andres Agostini — Amazon — LinkedIn — Lifeboat Foundation

Posted by in categories: economics, education, engineering, finance, information science, innovation, lifeboat, science, strategy

QUESTION: Give Me Egotistical Prima Donnas, Stupid?

000000000000000000 WALKER

ANSWER: Yes, give me them all. This is forceful and dramatic world in huge need of those loaded and driven with flooded stamina.

And flooded stamina is immeasurable pent-up kinetic energy that well-channelized brings about scientific discoveries and technological breakthrough and thus outright business miracles.

HENCE:

Continue reading “QUESTION: Give Me Egotistical Prima Donnas, Stupid? By Mr. Andres Agostini — Amazon — LinkedIn — Lifeboat Foundation” »