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What was Eduardo Bolsonaro doing in Washington during the January 6 coup? – WSWS

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

New information has emerged in recent weeks about the broad involvement of former President Donald Trump and his close political circle, broad sectors of the Republican Party and the military in the attempted fascist coup launched at the US Capitol on January 6. These facts vindicate the seriousness with which the World Socialist Web Site has dealt with this event and its international political significance.

This significance, on the other hand, has been totally underestimated by the Brazilian corporate media and pseudo-left publications, despite the profound implications of the coup for Brazils own political situation. This has been underscored by the fascistic President Jair Bolsonaros threats to repeat in Brazil the same coup methods employed by Trump.

In particular, no Brazilian media or political force has questioned the motives of Eduardo BolsonaroPresident Bolsonaros son, federal congressman, and chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committeefor being present in the United States during the events of January 6. The fact that Eduardo traveled during his parliamentary vacation has been cynically used as an argument to treat the trip by this fascistic conspirator as a personal affair.

Eduardos Bolsonaros arrival in the United States on January 4 was first reported by Globo as a surprise visit to the White House at the invitation of Ivanka Trump, daughter of the former US president. The next day, Zero Three, as the Brazilian president calls his third son, published on social media a photo of Ivanka holding his newborn daughter in her arms.

Nothing was reported in the media about the Brazilian congressmans activities on January 5, the day before the Capitol invasion. His wife, Helosa Bolsonaro, however, posted that day on her social media that now that he [Eduardo] is in a meeting, I could be walking, but the city of Washington is very much closed. No information came out about who he met, or what this meeting was about.

Amidst Helosa Bolsonaros platitudes about this being her daughters first international trip and her meeting with Aunt Ivanka, there is still further revealing information about the circumstances surrounding her husbands visit to Washington: This trip was recently confirmed, at the last minute. We were in the middle of summer, I had to think about winter clothes.

On the evening of January 6, before Congress had finally completed the certification of Joe Bidens election as US president, Eduardo Bolsonaro posted a photo of himself beside Trump supporter Michael Lindell, saying: Pleased to meet Michael Lindell, a former junkie and now a successful businessman in the US. He mentioned no reason for this meeting.

Lindell is not just any businessman. He played a central role in the planning of Trumps coup. At the end of January, as reported by the WSWS, information emerged about a meeting held on January 5 between the former US president and his supporters at Trump International Hotel to discuss the following days events. Among the 15 people present at this meeting, besides the organizers of the next days rally and march to the Capitol, was MyPillows CEO, Michael Lindell.

On January 15, Lindell made a brief visit to Donald Trump at the White House. A Washington Post photographer was able to partially photograph a document in Lindells hands, apparently outlining proposals for the former presidents final days in office. The note suggested invoking the Insurrection Act, allowing the deployment of the US Armed Forces in the streets, and a declaration of martial law if necessary.

The document appeared to also include a proposal to claim that China and Iran were behind the alleged election fraud as the pretext for the invocation of emergency powers, and called for the installation of Trump loyalist Kash Patel at the head of the CIA.

Even after these revelations, the only mention in the Brazilian media about the meeting between Lindell and Bolsonaro has been a brief report in poca magazine, still on January 6.

Instead of exposing the ominous presence of the fascistic congressman and son of the president in the US during the January 6 events, which was a political statement in itself, the Brazilian press did just the opposite. Folha de So Paulo, the newspaper with the largest circulation in Brazil, highlighted Eduardo Bolsonaros silence about the siege of the US Capitol. The right-wing Veja, the magazine with the largest national circulation in Brazil, stated that the coup had been forgotten by Eduardo.

But Eduardo Bolsonaro did not keep silent about the coup. On the next day, he shared a tweet by Brazils far-right Foreign Minister Ernesto Arajo, stating: I make my own the words of Chancellor Ernesto Arajo. This is also my vision about what happened in the USA yesterday. Arajo, repeating the arguments of Trumps inner circle, cynically regretted the storming of the Capitol, while declaring:

One must recognize that a large part of the American people feel assaulted and betrayed by their political class and distrust the electoral process.

One has to distinguish between electoral process and democracy. Doubting the suitability of an electoral process does NOT mean rejecting democracy

One must stop calling decent citizens fascists when they demonstrate against elements of the political system or members of institutions

Nothing justifies an invasion like the one that occurred yesterday. But at the same time nothing justifies, in a democracy, the disrespect of the people by the institutions or those who control them.

The right of the people to demand the proper functioning of their institutions is sacred. May yesterdays events in Washington not serve as a pretext, in the USA or in any country, to place any institution above popular scrutiny.

These words, signed onto by Zero Three, are an unequivocal declaration of support for the fascist conspiracy in the US. Along with the coup-mongering statements of President Jair Bolsonaro himself, they should be taken with the utmost seriousness by the Brazilian working class.

Eduardo Bolsonaro is a particularly nefarious and dangerous figure. A federal policeman, his political activities in Brazil are directly connected to the mobilization of police forces as the basis for a fascistic movement. As a congressman, he is a vocal supporter of weapons manufacturing and unrestricted gun rights in Brazil, along with the criminalization of communism. Like his father, he is an avid defender of the bloody military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for 21 years.

In the first year of his administration, Bolsonaro appointed his son Eduardo as Brazils ambassador to the US, allegedly because he is a friend of Donald Trumps children and has a very great global experience. This plan ultimately failed. The global experience mentioned by Bolsonaro includes having been nominated by Steve Bannon as the South American leader of his fascistic front, The Movement.

Eduardo did not go to the United States as a tourist. He was effectively summoned as an international observer of Trumps coup on behalf of Brazilian fascists. If Trump tweeted his supporters that January 6 will be wild, one has only to imagine what Eduardo Bolsonaro was told.

It is extremely revealing of the character of organizations like the Workers Party (PT), the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), and the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), the so-called opposition to the Bolsonaros administration, that they did not even challenge Eduardo Bolsonaros explanations to the House of Representatives about the reasons for his trip to the United States.

The turn of the ruling class to dictatorial forms of rule, whether in Brazil, the US or anywhere else in the world, will find no serious barrier in the parties based on the bourgeois state and the defense of capitalist property relations, regardless of the left varnish with which they attempt to cover themselves. Only the independent political mobilization of the international working class, oriented by the socialist perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International, can seriously confront this threat.

Red and green: Research explores the Soviet Unions environmental legacy – Binghamton University

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

By Jennifer Micale

February 05, 2021

Siberia swings between extremes: bitter winters and scorching summers. Vast landscapes virtually untouched by human hands, and others profoundly changed by the extraction of natural resources. Natural beauty that inspires poetry, and some of the worst air pollution in the world.

The Soviet Union focused its attention on the development of Siberia starting in the 1950s in an effort to bolster a lagging economy. Mariia Koskina, a doctoral candidate in history at Binghamton University, researches that tension between economic development and nature preservation, and how the Soviet legacy continues to shape the Eurasian and global environment to this day.

Koskina recently received a Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum (SURF) fellowship, joining a cohort of 51 scholars from 11 countries exploring issues of mutual interest to the United States and Russia. Due to the pandemic, in-person conferences will be replaced by virtual roundtables and seminars with leaders across business, government and academia from both countries.

Shes part of SURFs Climate and Environment working group, which is focusing on wildfires in Siberia and Alaska.

It is a fantastic opportunity for me to build connections in and outside of my field, to do policy-relevant research and, generally, to expand my knowledge of U.S.Russian relations and cooperation in various areas, she said.

A native of Tula in Russia, Koskina holds a masters degree in linguistics from the Higher School of Economics in Nizhny Novgorod. She came to Binghamton in 2015 on a Fulbright scholarship, earned a masters degree in American history, and interned at the United Nations Department of Public Information as a multimedia archivist and at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as a Russian language specialist working on the International Cold War History Project.

Now in the fourth year of her PhD program, her doctoral research investigates Soviet environmental policies and popular attitudes toward nature practices in Siberias Yenisei basin from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Mariia Koskina, a doctoral candidate in history at Binghamton University Image Credit: provided photo.

Mariia is pursuing a theoretically important and yet also playful project. In it, a Siberian landscape that was, in Soviet understanding, to be a passive recipient of human care and development becomes the agent of a new Soviet environmental subjectivity, DeHaan said. In other words, the expectations of Soviet administrators and of us as historians get flipped on their head, and the mighty waters of the Yenisei River suddenly assume an important role as agents of historical change. There are delightful and eye-opening ironies in the material she has uncovered.

Siberia is a huge landmass a third larger than the United States with natural resources ranging from water and timber to gold, diamonds, gas and more. A new technology in the post-war period, hydroelectric dams sprang up on Siberian rivers, sparking the growth of cities, factories and the local population.

Koskina specifically looks at the city of Krasnoyarsk and its dam on the Yenisei River, one of the most powerful hydroelectric generators of its time. The dam enabled a local industrial revolution, including a massive aluminum factory.

It also changed the landscape beyond recognition. The river no longer freezes during the bitter Siberian winter, and an icy fog now shrouds the city. Sometimes its a choking, chemical-laden smog, described by locals as black sky.

Industrial development, however, isnt the whole story; the Soviet Union also had its own home-grown environmentalism. Nature reserves, known as zapovedniki, emerged in pre-Soviet times; they were modeled somewhat after the American national park system, but with a focus on scientific research. In 1951, the Soviet Union had 128 such reserves, but the number dipped as more land was harnessed for economic use; some of these reserves were recovered in the 1960s.

One of these nature reserves was established in Krasnoyarsk between the dam and the city. The dam site also included a green zone that prohibited hunting and fishing.

While the Soviet Union had no private or non-governmental environmental organizations, it did have the All-Russian Society for Nature Protection, founded in 1924. Green and blue patrols at schools organized cleanups of forests and local water bodies, and city planning efforts attempted to preserve native vegetation.

In the early 1970s, the USSR and the USA squared off in a green race, trying to demonstrate whether socialism or capitalism better protected the environment. The USSR showcased its ideas on environmental protection during the 1974 Worlds Fair in Spokane, and in 1978 published a comprehensive list of endangered animal and plant species.

In 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev signed an agreement calling for environmental cooperation. Russia and the United States dont often take bilateral action to address the climate or the environment today, underscored by President Donald Trumps withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Koskina reflected.

The history says that our leaders can and the state of our environment says that they should work together better; after all, the U.S. and Russia are some of the worlds major polluters, she said.

While the Soviet Unions conquest of nature storyline is common in scholarship, Koskinas work also considers the everyday encounters of Soviet newcomers with Siberias landscape. They built factories, but they also wrote poems about the regions beauty, hiked the nature reserve, tended city greenery and prosecuted poachers.

In 2019, she received the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Dissertation Research Grant, which funded the first round of her fieldwork. In addition to Moscow, she paid a visit to Divnogorsk, the closest city to the Krasnoyarsk dam, and saw firsthand why its name means marvelous mountains.

A visit to the Stolby nature reserve was the highlight; Siberian nature and landscapes are stunning and very different from central Russia, she said.

But she also experienced the downsides of Siberian development: bad air and frigid temperatures caused a painful bout with bronchitis.

She knows that tension between the economy and nature from her own childhood in Tula. Her father worked at a metallurgical plant for more than 50 years, but the industry that provided her family with financial security also created the soot they breathed, and which coated the fruit and vegetables they grew. But the love for the land rooted deep in Koskina; when she moved to the United States, she planted blackcurrants to give her a literal taste of home.

Long-term, she hopes to continue her career in Western academia writing about Russia and the Soviet Union in English.

America for Russia, just like Russia for America, has been a real mystery and a myth; both countries have gotten used to defining themselves through what they believe to be their differences, Koskina said. I think that we can get closer to the truth regarding both nations while looking at their commonalities, of which there are more than you would think.

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Red and green: Research explores the Soviet Unions environmental legacy - Binghamton University

Letter: Need to return to united, not divided states – Whidbey News-Times

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

Editor,

In response to Al Williams letter to the editor regarding the natural, human state of tribalism, I would like to offer a quote or two from one or two men who might be regarded as patriots:

Ulysses S. Grant, speaking to Civil War vets in 1875, speculated that if ever the nation were torn apart again, it would not be split North versus South along the infamous Mason-Dixon Line, the geographic boundary that separated free and slave states. He surmised that in the future the dividing line would be reason itself, with intelligence on one side and ignorance on the other.

Austrian philosopher Karl Popper wrote, The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism, a horrible degeneration that begins with the push of a domino the suppression of reason and truth.

I quote these entries from A Warning, by Anonymous.

Another one is: Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

That was James Madison, April 20, 1795 in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. 4, p. 491 (1865)

Instead of focusing on how we are different, perhaps it is time for us to think about what we have in common as Americans and how we got to this state.

George Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address said, The unity of government is a main pillar in the edifice or your real independence.

From different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth, as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively directed.

The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

In earlier times our rallying cry was, United we stand; divided we fall.

In my view, it needs to be again.

Marcia Nelson

Oak Harbor

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Letter: Need to return to united, not divided states - Whidbey News-Times

Letter to Editor | Letters to the Editor – Hermann Advertiser Courier

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

Can we risk exterminating the human race.

What if the cure is worse than the disease, what if a hastily created vaccine is rapidly injected into every person on the planet and we find out there is a glitch, a side effect we didn't know about, most vaccines take 10 to 20 years to meet FDA approval, weather intentionally or unintentionally can we risk exterminating all human beings from the Earth.

This is a very complicated vaccine it affects a lot of things in the body, should we just take this pill no questions asked because covid is bad? Germ warfare is all too real, some people say that covid itself is a created warfare disease, escaped or actually dispersed but what if that was just a precursor to a planned chain of events leading up to actually getting people to willingly have something squirted directly into their bodies, what a great way to make sure nobody is missed than actually documenting every person as they get it.

It's not that hard to get a shot, these shots are being specially documented to every person's name. This could be a whole new game.

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Letter to Editor | Letters to the Editor - Hermann Advertiser Courier

1887: The invasion of the rabbit – Stuff.co.nz

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

THE PRESS 160 YEARS is a series marking the launch of The Press newspaper in Christchurch on May 25, 1861. Between now and the anniversary, The Press will revisit stories from every year of publication.

Canterbury was preoccupied with an infestation of rabbits in the late 1880s. They were to the north of us and heading south. They were crossing the border from Otago.

It was even a talking point during an otherwise dry pre-election address by Premier Julius Vogel when he spoke at the Theatre Royal on July 19, 1887.

Stacy Squires/Stuff

This rabbit in north Canterbury is probably the distant descendant of those that preoccupied 19th century politicians.

He had been looking into this question lately, and it seemed to him that Canterbury was threatened with an invasion of rabbits which would reduce by one half the carrying capacity of the land, The Press reported.

He need only point to the examples of Southland and Otago to show the evil effects of the pest. Some years back these districts exported 46 per cent of the total value of wool for the colony. Now it had fallen to 25 per cent, and all this was due to the incursion of the rabbits which had taken place there.

READ MORE:* 1886: 'The weather here is fearful'* 1885: Temperance and the vote * New strain of virus welcomed in South Canterbury

In view of the importance of dealing with the matter without any of the delay which had taken place elsewhere, and which was to some extent responsible for the damage done, the Government had taken the responsibility of ordering netting to be brought out in anticipation of Parliament dealing with the question on an ample scale. He could only hope that they would not allow such desolation on the Canterbury Plains as had occurred in Otago and Southland.

Another idea had been floated at a Canterbury Chamber of Commerce meeting in May. How about using stoats and weasels to combat the rabbits? While some objection has been taken the evidence of a most reliable authority on the subject proves clearly that the nature and instinct of the animals will prevent them from ever becoming a nuisance in the colony.

As for germ warfare promoted by the celebrated inoculator Louis Pasteur and others, The Press urged caution in an editorial published on December 3, 1887: It is to be remembered that many diseases fatal to mankind have arisen from cognate forms in the lower animals. It is necessary to repel the invasion of the rabbit, but if the war is to be waged with microbes and sarcoptes cuniculi, the matter should be cautiously undertaken.

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1887: The invasion of the rabbit - Stuff.co.nz

Whats Keeping the Vaccine From Getting to Those Who Need it Most? – The Nation

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

Stanford University medical residents protest the inequitable distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine in December. (Angela Primbas)

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The week before Christmas, hundreds of medical residents at Stanford University Hospital joined an emergency Zoom call. They had been brought together by shared outrage at their administrations allocation plans for its first 5,000 doses of the newly authorized vaccine for Covid-19, the pandemic that had defined their past year. Only seven of those shots were reserved for residents, the lowest-ranking physicians, even though theyre more often exposed to patients infected with the coronavirus than other employees whose work had been almost entirely remote. But some of those employeesincluding hospital executives and dermatologists whod only seen patients virtuallywere nonetheless ahead of them in line.

For Angela Primbas, an internal medicine resident at Stanford, it was the last straw. She and her colleagues had been putting in 80-hour weeks caring for Covid patients, often missing out on their programs educational curricula to pitch in and staff wards instead. Theyd also recently gotten word that a shipment of the N95 masks theyd been using had been defective, leaving the young doctors vulnerable to exposure. They were more anxious than ever to get the vaccine, only to discover theyd been left out.

There was just a lot of emotional and physical stress that had been piling up over the course of many months, and then to be just completely excluded from participating in the one bright spotthe light at the end of the tunnelwas so upsetting, Primbas recounted by phone. She and the other residents decided to take action. The hospital wanted to kick off its vaccine rollout with a public-facing photo op, and they were going to get one.

The following morning, hundreds of residents, physicians, nurses, and other supporters staged a major protest at Stanford Medical Center, demanding that workers with the most contact with patients be first in line. Spokespeople told multiple media outlets that they took full responsibility for the problem and would right it immediately, blaming the error on a flawed algorithm for determining whod get vaccinated first.the greater good

Residents have indeed been vaccinated since their headline-grabbing demonstration, but not before hearing from friends in programs elsewhere whose experiences paralleled their own. In hospitals like University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins, physicians told me, work-from-home PhD students in their 20s were routinely offered vaccines they believed would be better off given to patients.

Snafus across the country have gone well beyond snubbed hospital residents. Since vaccines were sent rapidly out to states, high-profile screwups have dominated media coverage of the effort. Federal contracts with CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate nursing homes dragged well behind schedule. Spanish-language sections on enrollment websites spouted misinformation. Hundreds of hopeful recipients camped out at rumored distribution sites only to leave without jabs. Untold numbers of unused doses wound up in dumpsters, while vaccine targets nationwide fell millions short.

Such disasters reflect the immense challenges of implementing the largest mass vaccination program in US history, which until recently was helmed by a federal government actively hostile to it. As the Biden administration settles in and vows to ramp up coordination of and financial support, state and local efforts will scramble to make up for lost time. Their ability to do so will depend on their willingness to reach the patients that the 21st century has left behind.Current Issue

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From the early days of the global coronavirus pandemic, societies have, to varying degrees, adhered to measures like social distancing and school and business closures. The goal was to flatten the curveto slow the viruss spread to avoid overwhelming hospitals intensive care unitsin hopes that a vaccine would soon be available. And not long after, it was: largely thanks to investments of billions of dollars from the US and German governments, pharmaceutical giants Pflizer and Moderna both produced vaccines that boasted around 95 percent efficacy in clinical trials, greatly reducing symptom severity in vaccinated patients. These results clinched emergency use authorizations from the Food and Drug Administration, and the vaccines began making their way into arms less than one year after the novel pathogen arrived on American soilan absolutely astonishing timeline.

After nearly a year of incalculable losstopping 400,000 American deaths, not to mention countless hours with friends and family deferredthe vaccine is a ticket back toward normalcy. But that normalcy may elude us until upwards of 90 percent of people develop antibodies against the virus, either through vaccination or infection. Given the unknowns about how long protection from infection lasts, reaching so-called herd immunity will require getting shots into nearly everyone in the country.

Theres really no precedent for that. While mass vaccinations have played a key role in United States public health policy, theyve tended to be somewhat targeted by geography or age: Specific neighborhoods or cities were vaccinated against smallpox in response to outbreaks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a few million doses of polio vaccine were administered to grade schoolers in the 1950s and 60s, and a slate of childhood immunizations are still delivered on a routine basis today. But rolling out a vaccine to hundreds of millions of adults in a relatively short time is an entirely different situation: while children almost always have institutional relationships with schools and pediatricians, their ties to potential service providers can loosen with age and allow them to fall through the cracks. Getting adults to the right place at the right time, despite varying schedules, care responsibilities, access to healthcare, relationships with the state and levels of trust in medicine, is a formidable project.

I asked Jason Schwartz, assistant professor of health policy at the Yale University School of Public Healthan expert in vaccine policy who spends every day of his life thinking about this stuffif hed ever imagined what exactly a nationwide mass vaccination program would be like. He told me he hadnt. This is so far beyond our vaccination playbook that it explains why so much of this work is being envisioned, imagined, and implemented in real time, he said. We have so few lessons to draw on, other than imperfect analogies to other aspects of vaccination.

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Public health departments across the country have had hypothetical plans for mass vaccinations on the books for yearsa tendency that ramped up in the 21st century in response to concerns about germ warfare in the aftermath of post-9/11 anthrax attacks. But since those were written, public health department funding has been gutted; as Kaiser Health News reports, Great Recessionera austerity measures still havent been fully reversed over a decade later. Todays state and local health department budgets are 16 percent and 18 percent smaller than they were in 2008, and employ nearly 40,000 fewer people. Further compounding the problem is that these plans have rested on a reasonable assumption that simply isnt true of the Covid-19 pandemic. The plans that were developed prior to 2020 pretty much all assumed we would have federal leadership and federal financing, said Lindsay Wiley, director of health law and policy at the American University Washington School of Law. There wasnt really a plan in place where the idea was what free commercial event planning software can we use if we get zero federal leadership and support?

Wileys framing is hardly an exaggeration: Mere days after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, reports began to circulate that there was no existing federal Covid-19 vaccine distribution plan for the new administration to inherit. This punted responsibility to state and local health departments, whose long-awaited funding for vaccine distribution, passed through Congresss December stimulus bill, only just began to trickle to recipients in mid-Januarymonths after it would have been most useful. Weve been calling for fundingscreaming for fundingfor months, Claire Hannon from the Association of Immunization Managers told me by phone. Obviously, its better late than never, but its difficult to only get funding after the vaccine has been rolled out.

When I asked Hannon about how the delayed federal cash will affect the overall rollout, she said shed always been much less worried about the first stage of vaccinations than she was about the waves that come next. Phase 1amade up of the highest-priority vaccine recipients, according to the CDCwas arguably the easiest part. As states move on to Phases 1b and 1c, debates have raged over who should get shots first and why. But as it turns out, vaccine prioritization is less a philosophical question than a logistical one.

Even as the Trump administration left public health departments adrift, with no federal support or coordination for months on end, it had little hesitation about funneling resources into the private sector. Multimillion-dollar contracts were awarded to Walgreens and CVS to administer doses to the countrys 3 million nursing home residents, who along with 20 million health care workers comprised Phase 1a of vaccine allocation. But the drugstore giants lagged weeks behind schedule in state after state, with Oklahoma, Michigan, and Mississippi going so far as to beg the federal government to allow them to reassign nursing home vaccinations to other pharmacies or public health officials. Aharon Adler, a nursing home manager in Chicago, struggled to get information from CVS before they arrived to vaccinate workers and residents. Hed been prepared so inadequately for the big day that he hadnt even been told that shot recipients had to stay for observation in a socially distanced room, and the only space hed designated was too small, slowing down the process by several hours. When we talked by phone, Adler still hadnt been able to confirm with CVS when exactly theyd return for the second dose. Notably, the only state that didnt work with CVS or WalgreensWest Virginiaalso became the first to successfully vaccinate all of their nursing homes.

While CVS and Walgreens were woefully botching the nursing home rollout, high-profile incidents like Stanfords allocation algorithm began stoking outrage on social media. New Yorks Governor Cuomo endeavored to combat such unfairness by threatening stiff penalties for institutions that vaccinated anyone out of order, which reportedly spooked some hospitals into throwing unused doses in the trash instead. Meanwhile, relatively substantial numbers of people included in Phase 1a reportedly declined the vaccine, or preferred to take it later once theyd seen others do so safely.

The combined impact of these mishaps was that the early stage of the rollout underperformed projections by several million doses. Those meager numbersas well as anecdotes about undeserving recipients and overemphasized but rage-inducing images of shots piled up in garbage cansbegan fueling a backlash against what was by January being widely characterized as a disaster.

At this point, a growing chorus began chucking the baby out with the bath water. People were right to be angry at how the first month of the rollout had gone. But instead of blaming players like a callous federal government and drugstore giants whod failed to deliver on promises, many onlookers ascribed the mess to the concept of vaccine prioritization itself. Dictating what groups get the shot first, they argued, straitjackets the process, when we really need to just get shots in arms. As Phase 1a finally drew to a close, the far harder work loomed. And for Phases 1b and beyond, the argument went, public health departments ought to broaden eligibility beyond vulnerable subgroups and focus simply on speedy injections at a massive scale.

The title of an essay from bioethics think tank The Hastings Center put it succinctly: Ethics Supports Seeking Population Immunity, Not Immunizing Priority Groups. Just before Trump left office, his administration endorsed this view, stipulating that anyone over age 65 should now be eligible to receive a vaccine. Were telling states today that they should open vaccinations to all of their most vulnerable people, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on January 12. That is the most effective way to save lives now. Several states, including Florida and Louisiana, have followed this directive. In Texas, state health officials went so far as to spike a Dallas plan to start vaccinating high-risk communities of color in favor of a broader, non prioritized program.

That shift may make intuitive sense, but it doesnt hold up to scrutiny. While its good to allow some flexibility in vaccine distribution guidelines to avoid unforced waste, prioritization schemes are far less of a limitation than the fact that states are still struggling to build up supportive infrastructure to do thisnot to mention the scarcity of doses in the first place. Adding tens of millions of people to the list of now eligible recipients doesnt make that any easierit would be like addressing long waits at the grocery checkout by doubling the number of people in line, instead of opening up more cash registers.

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After all, prioritization isnt just a matter of making a list with the power to magically summon arms in a particular orderit requires an active outreach strategy. Given how long the largest mass vaccination program in American history will takeperhaps nearly a year, per conservative estimatesit makes sense to strategize how to target both those patients most likely to die from the virus and those most likely to transmit it. Counterintuitively, doing away with prioritization in favor of speed and efficiency will actually do less to save lives, because the people most able to navigate the process of accessing the vaccine are overwhelmingly the least at risk. Figuring out how to enroll through a website or care provider, being able to take off work, and traveling to a vaccine site for two different doses are all rendered easier by class privilege.

This dynamic has already borne out starkly: in Washington, D.C., the number of early vaccine signups in a given neighborhood is directly correlated with how wealthy its residents are. In Chicago, race has proven a predictive factor. Unsurprisingly, wealth and race also correlates to employment in high-risk frontline jobs, affliction from debilitating comorbidities and residence in overcrowded housing most likely to drive infections. In other words, a passive approach of first come, first serve practically guarantees that the people who are safest from the virusricher, whiter, more connected people who work from home or can otherwise afford to hide therewill comprise the early wave of vaccination, as the people most likely to die or spread it remain unprotected. Beyond being unjust, that ensures the societal benefits of vaccination will be as minimal as possible.

But what exactly does effective outreach strategy look like? When I asked experts whos doing it right, I kept hearing the same surprising answer: Perhaps the best model for vaccine distribution in the country right now is happening in Central Falls, R.I.

Home to around 20,000 people, Central Falls is a city of superlatives: Its the most densely populated city in the state, the poorest, and the only one with a majority of residents of color. It was also the most affected by the coronavirus epidemic, with case rates per capita doubling those in hard-hit areas of New York.

Overwhelmed by his duties as the public health commissioner of Central Falls, Dr. Michael Fine began researching other countries coronavirus mitigation strategies last spring, as infections surged in his own community. When you look around the world, Fine told me by phone, its very clear that the places that have done best with coronavirus have been places that put people to work and invest in a lot more public health presence than the United States does. He set out to apply those insights, using money distributed to the city to hire 15 so-called health ambassadors from both Spanish and English-speaking communities within Central Falls to implement the citys pandemic response measures.

Since the spring, Fine told me, the health ambassadors have donned bright orange uniforms and maintained a presence at busy spots in town, like outside the Dollar Tree and City Hall. They handed out masks and talked to passers-by about why they were important, eventually driving local mask usage rates from less than 50 percent to over 90 percent. Later, they helped remind locals to get their flu shots, and helped enroll eligible participants in early vaccine trials. As Fine tells it, the health ambassadors became well-known and credible conduits for critical health information, relaying messaging within their own communities in ways officials could not.

And now, as the city rolls out the vaccine, the health ambassadors role is more important than ever. As part of a pilot program to stress test vaccine distribution, the State of Rhode Island opted to focus first on Central Fallszeroing in on a highly distressed ZIP code, and affording local officials latitude within it. To kick off the program, Fine and the vaccination teamcomplete with health ambassadors whod already been stationed thereset up a clinic at the public housing authority, knocking on doors and vaccinating everyone who accepted a shot. Both Fine and Central Falls Mayor James Diossa both got their first shots on-site, to demonstrate the vaccines safety. But Fine believes the health ambassadors helped things go as smoothly as possible: The ambassadors were there with the teams interpreting, and because of their very local presence, I think it was more comfortable for people.

Once the vaccination teams had worked through the public housing buildings, the ambassadors resumed their stations around townthis time, enrolling and teaching residents about vaccines and when and how to get one, like on one Saturday morning at the Kiwanis Club parking lot. And each morning before the start of their shifts, they have a bilingual Zoom meeting to discuss what theyre hearing about the vaccines, how to get people excited for them, how to assuage anxiety or quell rumors swirling about them. Fine encourages them to discuss their own experiences getting vaccinated to reassure their neighbors. In one meeting I was invited to, one health ambassador described how he was running into fewer and fewer people who had misgivings about the vaccine, and more and more people excited to get theirs.

The Central Falls model offers an effective strategy not only for prioritizing vulnerable people but actually reaching them. Thats whats missing from discussions about vaccine distributionas it turns out, the biggest logistical challenge of turning vaccines into vaccinations isnt maintaining extremely cold storage or even reaching consensus on who gets it first, but how to connect and coordinate with patients who are often by definition among societys hardest to reach.

Models like that used in Central Fallsactually going out into communities, and knocking on doors or setting up tables and clinicshave been successfully deployed by public health departments for diseases like tuberculosis, another deadly respiratory disease that shares Covid-19s predilection for the poor and vulnerable. For example, I once wrote about an outbreak among undocumented Chinese immigrants in 2013 and 2014. NYC public health officials were able to trace several cases to an Internet caf and karaoke bar in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and sent workers there to test regulars on site, identifying and treating several additional cases. TB caseworkers also routinely bring medicines or administer antibiotic injections to patients in their homes and workplaces, saving them the burden of traveling to the clinic and making the sometimes lengthy treatments easier to adhere to.

Devising ways of reaching people less institutionally connected to the healthcare system has been central to many public health initiatives, Nabila El-Bassel, director of the Social Intervention Group at the Columbia University School of Social Work, told me. Mass vaccination teams should draw on those lessons, she says: Im thinking about people who use drugs, people in homeless shelters, in soup kitchens, in domestic violence shelters, or in community supervision programs. If we want to get into these populations, weve got to think about nontraditional sites and strategies. We cant just wait for them to come to us.

Experts have long debated how to handle the so-called last mile problem, or the logistics of getting a vaccine from the warehouse or hospital into the arm of a patient. Sometimes, the best option is to travel the last mile for them.

After all, vaccines may be the single most life-saving invention in the history of medicine, but no disease has ever been beaten by science. Turning vaccines into vaccinations requires vast amounts of resources and labor: investment in transformative pharmaceutical research, manufacturing operations, shipping and storage, administrative coordination, public messaging, pharmacists and health care workers, clinic supplies and planning, community outreach and ways to keep them all on the same page. How those elements are marshaled, and on whose behalf, arent questions that science can answer.

Those fights happen squarely in the realm of politics: As President Bidens administration sets to work building a federal distribution plan from scratch, and the deposits from the second stimulus bill finally hit state and local health departments accounts, were finally in place to start catching up to make mass vaccination work. If we do things right, and implement strategies for meeting the most vulnerable people where they are, the amount of sorrow wrought by the coronavirus will be all but stamped out by the time we pass 300 million vaccinations. Should we fail, the outcomes will look more or less like the past yearwith sorrow and death doled out to people who deserved shots instead.

Whats Keeping the Vaccine From Getting to Those Who Need it Most? - The Nation

Blockchain Bites: The Weird and Wonderful in Crypto This Week – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

Three stories

The big news of today, in context.

1. The crypto-bank connection is strengthening. Seattle-based Protego Trust Bank has received conditional approval for a trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to custody digital assets.

2. Ethereum is pumping. The crypto surged past $1,700, notching gains of at least 30% this week. Analysts are pointing to ETHs coming futures listing on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, due to start Feb. 8.

3. In a reminder of the power regulators can wield, Nigerias central bank has ordered banks to close any accounts found to have a history of dealing in cryptocurrencies or facilitating payments for cryptocurrency exchanges.

At stake

The weird and wonderful in crypto today

Heres a roundup of all the stories from the strange world of crypto and blockchain that didnt find a home in Blockchain Bites this week.

Bitcoin billionaire and former presidential candidate Brock Pierce is looking to convert a defunct New York City church into a 21st-century rental residence. The New York Post reports Pierce is also transforming a 17th-century former Puerto Rican monastery into a private club.

Its the oldest monastery in the Americas, Pierce reportedly said.

German authorities seized a wallet containing over 1,700 bitcoin (~$64.7 million), but cant access it. The funds came from a convicted hacker who refuses to share the password.

We asked him but he didnt say, prosecutor Sebastian Murer told Reuters. Perhaps he doesnt know.

Maybe they should call Dave Bitcoin, a modern-day repair man who helps people access password-protected wallets when they have forgotten the password. Wallet Recovery Services, Daves business, is booming in the bull run.

These days, because of the price rise and just the increased interest, we get around 50 to 70 requests daily, he told CoinDesks Ben Powers. (The decoders take 20% off the top, if resuscitation is possible.)

With all that bitcoin trapped in unmovable addresses and garbage pits, Coin Metrics finally offers a new accounting of the real circulating BTC supply. TL;DR: A good estimate for bitcoin float is 14.5 million, (meaning about 4 million BTC have been lost to the sands of time.)

All this for what Australias central bank said is not even really money. Speaking to a legislative committee, Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor Michelle Bullock mocked the fuss made around bitcoin (and stablecoins) as an asset.

[Bitcoin] is a risk to investors but its not a financial stability risk, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe echoed.

The risks are real enough for a Malaysian pair of alleged scammers, who might be canned under state law, for reportedly defrauding three women of more than 150,000 Malaysian ringgits (around $37,000). They also face fines and jail time, if convicted.

Its not just novel punishments, but the scams themselves that are evolving in this bull market. Industry publication Protos notes that were once scammers would pretend to be Elon Musk, they are now impersonating Social Capitals Chamath Palihapitiya, among other tech influencers.

One Palihapitiya scam raised approximately $60,000 in 16 transactions, when they went to press. It looks like the scam is still up.

In the worst segue in this series yet, Vanity Fair profiled BitMEX founder and outspoken bitcoin bull Arthur Hayes, who remains at large after the U.S. government levied crimes against him for well its a little complicated, but it involves something that looks like fraud. The more you dig in, the odder the story appears.

You can look at the history of anti-money-laundering prosecutions over the last 10 years, and you just arent going to see very many individual defendants named, attorney and crypto expert [Laurel Loomis Rimon] expounded. Certainly not when youre talking about program violations as opposed to evidence of actual money laundering. So that is unusual.

Hayes is known for his expensive tastes. And now, thanks to Swiss-regulated digital asset firm Sygnum, he can be sure hes popping the right cork. Sygnum Bank teamed up with Fine Wine Capital AG to tokenize a range of investible fine wines, issuing tokens representing the alcoholic assets on a distributed ledger.

Elsewhere in the world of tokens, Jehan Chu, a Hong Kong-based crypto investor, reportedly bought .nft (a top level domain, like .com or .xyz) from decentralized naming service Handshake for the low, low price of 680,000 HNS tokens (about $84,000), Decrypt covered. Handshake lets anyone auction essentially any domain, including those made out of emojis.

Memes mean money, Michael Casey once wrote. Indeed, a demonic digital artwork on the Ethereum blockchain sold for 420 ETH on Wednesday. The digital painting which the buyer compared to a Basquiat was part of the Hashmask collection of 16,384 non-fungible tokens created by about 70 artists.

Knowing that Im an early investor while also providing liquidity to artists and projects is incredibly rewarding, the buyer told CoinDesks Sebastian Sinclair.

One dogecoin address apparently holds 27% of the entire coins entire supply, Decrypt reports.With about 34.9 billion DOGE, this unknown person/persons crossed into billionaire territory in the latest pump. (Though perhaps, as Decrypt considers, perhaps the owner was already a well-known, meme-loving billionaire.) Hot dog!

One of DeFi Summers first memetic fascinations, Yearn, was exploited yesterday, draining some $11 million worth of tokens from one of the projects vaults. The v1 DAI vault, a smart contract that performs an investment strategy for investors, was hit with whats becoming a classic flash loan attack.

Thats a well-known issue (one could have it with Uniswap, too, however, Uniswap is not so popular for yield farming), Curve CEO Michael Egorov told CoinDesks Ethereum whisperers Brady Dale and Will Foxley. Ive expressed my thoughts to Yearn team how this could have been prevented (and similar vulnerabilities, too). But honestly, didnt expect them to have such a mistake in the code, that was a surprise to me.

Obviously its not just crypto thats susceptible to meme-driven mania. After whatever happened with GameStop, anything seems possible. Though, a GameStop-style, Reddit-driven anti-Wall Street rally is unlikely to happen in China, any time soon, CoinDesks David Pan reports.

The Chinese financial regulators are closely monitoring who are trading what in the Chinese stock market. Retail investors involved in large-scale malicious shorting could be put in jail, said Jason Wu, CEO of crypto-lending firm DeFiner.

Yes, regulators have a long tail of influence. Protos reports a cannabis stablecoin pilot has been blessed by the U.S. state of Nevada but is unlikely to fly high. Multichain Ventures pitched a Solana-based tokenized dollars scheme, with deposits reportedly sitting in a federal bank, finally allowing the cannabis industry to transact electronically. (Banks have been unwilling to touch the industry, meaning Navadans are strictly buying weed with cash.)

Seems like a libertarian fever dream, which as CoinDesks Brady Dale notes is the true foundation for what some see as a larger decentralization revolution. According to Dales sources, the state is still the final boss in terms of achieving freedom, with crypto serving as a convenient cheat code. A picture of the sovereign individual, according to author Robert Heinlein:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Finally, Jack Dorsey has set up his own node. Thats right, the bearded executive of two publicly traded companies playing a hand in remaking media and finance has downloaded the open-source bitcoin codebase and hit play. Sovereignty in action.

Alright, thanks for reading. See ya next week.

Feel free to reach out with the weird and wonderful things in crypto at daniel@coindesk.com.

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Blockchain Bites: The Weird and Wonderful in Crypto This Week - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Blockchain Innovation Done the Polkadot Way According to Gavin Wood Altcoins Bitcoin News – Bitcoin News

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

In a recent Realvision interview, the developer Gavin Wood explains how Polkadot reimagines the innovation ecosystem from the ground up. Wood also discusses how the Polkadot protocol is both similar but also different than Ethereum, the second-largest crypto asset by market valuation.

Innovation involves the pioneering and actualization of a creative new way of doing something. For famed blockchain programmer Gavin Wood, Polkadot is the platform that unlocks the potential of swifter blockchain innovation.

By building a platform of platforms, or 0-layer technology, Polkadot is attempting to push the boundaries of efficiency with a more flexible and more abstract environment.

Here are some highlights from the lengthy interview Wood gave to Sebastian Moonjava of Real Vision (link to the full interview below).

For Wood, one of the primary hurdles of the existing framework is the resource-intensive tasks involved with launching a new blockchain. In this frame, he views Polkadot as multiple forms of shortcuts:

What Polkadot does is it allows you to shortcut on an awful lot of that work, it allows you to shortcut on an awful lot of stuff that you have to do to build your own blockchain. It also allows you to shortcut on things like building your own community, it allows you to shortcut on stuff like being able to utilize all of the various other bits that are going on in other blockchains. It does this by connecting, allowing to connect to those other chains. It also very crucially allows you to avoid having to build your own base, your own security base.

Security is a recurrent theme in blockchain, given that so much power, capital, and resources go towards addressing this basic need. By virtue of its design, Polkadot works to remove this impediment from the development process of new layers and applications.

Bitcoin famously has the mining algorithm. I dont know, it uses up the equivalent of, I dont know, some small countrys energy simply in securing itself. Of course, the newer chains tend not to be proof of work, they tend to be proof of stake so theyre not using much energy, but they are using a lot of capitalthats really one of the key problems that Polkadot solves, it allows the same capital base to secure many different domain-specific blockchains.

Securing the ecosystem more efficiently is only one of many value-oriented measures that helps this new model stand out from the crowd. A thorny issue some users are encountering amid the recent rally in cryptocurrency prices is higher transaction costs. Ethereum recently topped $6 per transaction. From Woods point of view, the idea of gas ranks among the inefficiencies Polkadot seeks to address.

Within Polkadot, we dont have the notion of gas, we dont have the notion of accounts or account balancesThe team behind the program uploads that program. They do it as a blockchain. The program is actually a very large program that contains all of the various business logic for an application or potentially many different applications. They upload this into Polkadot, and then they pay for that blockchain, that parachain to be there by virtue of this deposit of a leasing system. Once its paid, its done. At that point, the users of this computer program never even have to know about Polkadot, they never have to know about the DOT token or anything to do with that stuff. All they care about is basically what is the business logic of this chain.

Another unique area where this concept strays from the mainstream is in the area of consensus. Unlike other methodologies that have occasionally resulted in hard forks, like Ethereum Classic, Polkadot is designed to be forkless,

Schisms in a community are, as weve seen in the past, theyre toxic. They ultimately lead to negativity on every side, and that is generally against the happy innovation that we see in a well-functioning community. We can actually do the best things that are caused by hard forks, which is to say, policy or protocol experiments, but we can do them at the level of parachains, and we can run them all in parallel, one in each parachain, and the ones that tend to work, we can elevate into Polkadot, the ones that dont work so well, we can just leave these parachains or drop altogether.

This sense of experimentation to identify the best option is present in much of the logic underpinning Polkadot, including something as necessary as the rulesets that govern the system.

There is definitely that thing that we dont know what the best one [ruleset] is. This idea that has been sold that theres one blockchain for every application has been pushed certainly by elements of the Ethereum community. I dont think it exists. I think Ethereum is a great chain for prototyping blockchain experiments on, but I definitely if I were doing, for example, a supply chain infrastructure, then why would I build it in smart contracts that have to be metered, that have this really inefficient metering system?

Unlike Ethereum in the above example, Polkadot doesnt have the same metered rigidity, which allows it to perform routine calculations and repetitive measures much more affordably. Beyond the greater flexibility, new utilities within the ecosystem will be launched throughout 2021, giving creators and developers a new form of clay to mold future blockchain applications.

Our job here is to develop Polkadot and deliver parachains and make it as efficient and stable as possible. It might be that when thats done that we will start playing around with developing a few parachains of our own, and maybe developing some of the core technology on parachains, but basically, our job is to deliver Polkadot as an application platform.

Woods outlook about the ecosystems potential is potently enthusiastic, with his hope of boldly repositioning the blockchain innovation landscape.

Its a wonderful ecosystem ofabout 340 projects and counting that are developing the layer-ones, these platforms. Polkadot is a platform of platform, or platforms themselves that are providing the infrastructure for doing things like decentralized finance and supply chain and registry tracking, NFTs and all this crazy unimaginable stuff.

You can watch the full interview here

Have you had the opportunity to develop on Polkadot? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, parity.io

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Blockchain Innovation Done the Polkadot Way According to Gavin Wood Altcoins Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

Learn the Fundamentals of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency for $25 – PCMag.com

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

Even if you never touch a cryptocurrency, the technology that underpins themblockchainis silently becoming part of the world around us. Yet most explanations are long on hype and buzzwords when you need a concise, clear summary.

The Fundamentals of Blockchain, Bitcoin & Crypto lays out what you need to understand to get started tapping into the power of blockchain or trading crypto.

Taught by IT security instructor Gabriel Avramescu, 28 step-by-step lessons guide you through every aspect of blockchain, from how it functions to how it enables new types of fintech. Learn about hash functions, block hashes, and how the network interacts to mine and sell currencyparticularly important considering the long-term implications of this technology are broadening beyond the financial into areas as diverse as document control, shipping and logistics, health care, and more.

Anywhere you need a clear understanding of who has interacted with something, and the data that comes with that interaction, blockchain is likely going to be part of it in some way going forward.

The course concludes by exploring the day-to-day of Bitcoin as an example case of blockchain principles: How to build a Bitcoin wallet, how it's traded, how it's converted to other currencies, and how Bitcoin is "mined" using on-site hardware and cloud-based methods.

As blockchain becomes more accepted and accessible, understanding how it works and its applications will increasingly become part of your day-to-day life at work and home. PCMag readers can start learning with The Fundamentals of Blockchain, Bitcoin & Crypto, on sale for $24.9987 percent off the MSRP.

Prices subject to change.

BitBoss announces integration with DotWallet to offer native iGaming experience using Bitcoin SV blockchain – PRNewswire

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

DENVER, Feb. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BitBoss, the Denver-based iGaming technology developer, today announces that it has completed an integration for its market-leading blockchain-based casino application with DotWallet, the popular China-based Bitcoin SV-powered digital currency wallet and application ecosystem. As a result of the integration, the more than 1 million-strong userbase of DotWallet will gain native access to the BitBoss iGaming platform, which is now available for download from the DotWallet App Centre.

BitBoss have established themselves as a market-leading developer in the iGaming space, leveraging blockchain technology to bring innovative new products to market that facilitate provably fair gaming, coupled with the ease and transparency of a public digital ledger. The gaming technology company has created the first provably fair Bitcoin SV-based iGaming platform, which includes slot machines, poker, blackjack, roulette and baccarat.

All games offered by BitBoss are powered by Bitcoin SV, with every bet, decision and result including all associated payments intertwined and recorded as a series of transactions on its blockchain. All game data is uploaded in real-time to blockchain tracking service whatsonchain.com, enabling players at any time to verify on the public Bitcoin SV blockchain that the game was conducted fairly and under the agreed terms establishing trust between player and operator.

The iGaming experience for DotWallet users on the BitBoss platform is completely integrated, with players wagering funds and receiving pay-outs directly to-and-from their DotWallet, embedding an additional layer of trust by eliminating the need to deposit funds onto a third-party platform. Winnings are distributed immediately after each game, a unique feature enabled by the speed and efficiency of Bitcoin SV.

DotWallet users can log in to the BitBoss game platform automatically - without the need to register - and are able to start playing after activating automatic payments. Transaction flows and order details, as well as features such as automatic payment limits, are all provided natively within DotWallet, which, together with the security technology integrated with the BitBoss platform, ensures a secure and transparent experience for players at all times.

The BitBoss platform is powered by Bitcoin SV, the only blockchain with the scaling capacity, data functionalities and low transaction costs (sending a payment transaction on the Bitcoin SV network generally costs less than 1/100 of a U.S. cent) required to support a sophisticated iGaming infrastructure. Only the Bitcoin SV network can provide the unbounded scaling necessary to enable the massive amounts of concurrent transactions required to offer a real-time iGaming experience and underpin the suite of games offered by BitBoss - which includes simple single-turn casino games right through to more complex, multi-turn and logic-based games.

Speaking on today's announcement, BitBoss CEO Matthew Dickson commented:

'Today's news marks the culmination of a months-long process between the BitBoss and DotWallet teams to integrate our leading iGaming technology with their successful digital currency platform. We are excited to be able to offer DotWallet's substantial userbase an iGaming experience which puts fairness first and look forward to working with their team further as we continue to innovate with BitBoss.'

Also commenting, DotWallet CEO Lin Zheming said:

'At DotWallet, we believe that there is a bright future for Bitcoin SV-based iGaming applications such as BitBoss, that ensure fairness and honesty for all players. We are delighted to see the combined efforts of our two teams go live today and demonstrate the benefits of a more efficient and transparent digital ledger with Bitcoin SV.'

About BitBoss

Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, BitBossis an international team of gaming experts, blockchain innovators and technologists building technology to power the future of gaming and the new internet. They offer a suite of gaming products that leverage the unique qualities of the Bitcoin SV blockchain, combining innovative software and hardware solutions for both land-based and online gaming operators.

About DotWallet

DotWalletis a lightweight non-custodial wallet built on the Bitcoin SV protocol. It provides quick registration and login using mobile phone numbers, email, and third-party providers like Google, Facebook and WeChat. It supports the sending, receiving, and storage of multiple digital currencies. Powered by Bitcoin SV's tokenization technology, users can send and receive transactions across several digital currencies instantly using 0 confirmation transactions.

SOURCE BitBoss

https://bitboss.io

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BitBoss announces integration with DotWallet to offer native iGaming experience using Bitcoin SV blockchain - PRNewswire

Ethereum Blockchain Records 1 Billion Transactions – Decrypt

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

On its way to another all-time high for price, Ethereum hit another milestone.

According to data from blockchain explorer Etherscan, the Ethereum network reached 1 billion transactions today.

The Ethereum blockchain went live in 2015. In May 2017, it broke 100,000 daily transaction for the first timethen 1 million in January 2018 as the price rose to then-record highs above $1,000.

After the bull market gave way to a bearish one, daily transactions cooled, averaging between 500,000 and 1 million per day. But since June 2020, transactions have consistently peaked above the 1 million daily mark, driven upward by the use of decentralized finance applications built atop the blockchain.

DeFi apps such as Aave and Uniswap allow traders to earn interest on their holdings and swap assets without going through a centralized bank or exchange.

Instead, they rely on Ethereum's infrastructure. And there are many transactions occurring via such protocols. There's now over $35 billion in value locked up in DeFi protocols tracked by DeFi Pulse.

Increased use of the blockchain put strain on the network; it pushed up gas fees on an increasingly congested blockchain. The proof-of-stake Ethereum 2.0 network, which went live last year but is not yet fully functional, is designed to process a larger amount of transactionsand quickly.

If daily transaction rates stay steady, the Ethereum blockchain would hit 2 billion transactions in a little over two years. Users are hoping Eth2 is ready to go before ETH hits that milestone.

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Ethereum Blockchain Records 1 Billion Transactions - Decrypt

Insights on the Blockchain in Manufacturing Global Market to 2026 – Asia-Pacific is Expected to Dominate the Market – ResearchAndMarkets.com – Yahoo…

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

TipRanks

Weve got a full month of 2021 behind us now, and a few trends are coming clearer. The coronavirus crisis may still be with us, but as vaccination programs expand, the end is in sight. With President Trump out of the picture, and the Democrats holding both Houses of Congress and the White House, politics is looking more predictable. And both of those developments bode well for an economic recovery this year. Looking back, at the year that was, we can also see some trends that stayed firm despite the pandemic, the shutdowns, and the supercharged election season. One of the most important is the ongoing rollout of 5G networking technology. These new networks bring with them a fuller realization of the promises inherent in the digital world. Faster connections, lower latency, higher online capacity, clearer signals all will strongly enhance the capabilities of the networked world. And it wont just be mundane things like telecommuting or remote offices that will benefit 5G will allow Internet of Things and autonomous vehicles to further develop their potential. There is even talk of medical applications, of remotely located doctors performing surgery via digitally controlled microsurgical tools. And these are just the possibilities that we can see from now. Who know what the future will really bring? To this end, we pulled up TipRanks database to learn more about three exciting plays in the 5G space. According to the Street, we are likely to see further interesting developments in the next few years as this technology takes over. Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) The first 5G name were looking at, Skyworks, is a semiconductor chip manufacturer that brought in $3.4 billion in total revenues for FY2020. Skyworks, which is a prime supplier of chips for Apples iPhone series, saw a massive 68% year-over-year increase in 1QFY21 revenues the top line reached $1.51 billion, a company record, and also much higher than analysts had forecast. Much of Skyworks fiscal Q1 sales success came after Apple launched the 5G-capable iPhone 12 line. Strong sales in the popular handset device meant that profits trickled down the supply line and Skyworks channels a disproportionate share of its business to Apple. In fact, Apple orders accounted for 70% of Skyworks revenue in the recent quarter. iPhone wasnt the only 5G handset on the receiving end of Skyworks chips, however the company is also an important supplier to Koreas Samsung and Chinas Xiaomi, and has seen demand rise as these companies also launch 5G-capable smartphones. Finally, Skyworks supplies semiconductor chip components to the wireless infrastructure sector, specifically to the small cell transmission units which are important in the propagation network of wireless signals. As the wireless providers switch to 5G transmission, Skyworks has seen orders for its products increase. In his note on Skyworks for Benchmark, 5-star analyst Ruben Roy writes: SWKS significantly beat consensus estimates and provided March quarter guidance that is also well ahead of consensus estimates as 5G related mobile revenue and broad-based segment revenue continued to accelerate In addition to continued strength of design win momentum and customer activity, we are encouraged with SWKS confident tone relative to the overall demand environment and content increase opportunities. In line with his comments, Roy rates SWKS a Buy along with a $215 price target. At current levels, this implies an upside of 20% for the coming year. (To watch Roys track record, click here) Roy is broadly in line with the rest of Wall Street, which has assigned SWKS 13 Buy ratings and 7 Holds over the past three month -- and sees the stock growing about 15% over the next 12 months, to a target price of $205.69.(See SWKS stock analysis on TipRanks) Qorvo, Inc. (QRVO) Qorvos chief products are chipsets used in the construction of radio frequency transmission systems that power wifi and broadband communication networks. The connection of this niche to 5G is clear as network providers upgrade their RF hardware to 5G, they also upgrade the semiconductor chips that control the systems. This chip maker has a solid niche, but it is not resting on its laurels. Qorvo is actively developing a range of new products specifically for 5G systems and deployment. This 5G radio frequency product portfolio includes phase shifters, switches, and integrated modules, and contains both infrastructure and mobile products. Qorvo posted $3.24 billion in total revenues for fiscal 2020. That revenue represents a 4.8% year-over-year increase and the companys sales have been accelerating in fiscal 2021. The most recent quarterly report, for the second fiscal quarter, showed $1.06 billion in revenues, a 31% yoy increase. Rajvindra Gill, 5-star analyst with Needham, is bullish on Qorvos prospects, noting: Qorvo reported strong sales and gross margins as 5G momentum rolls into CY21 on atypical seasonality... The company is planning for 500M 5G handsets to be manufactured in 2021, with an incremental $5-7 of content/unit from 4G to 5G. Management believes that ultra-wideband adoption will be a key growth driver in for smartphones going forward..." To this end, Gill puts a $220 price target on QRVO shares, suggesting room for 31% upside in 2021. Accordingly, he rates the stock a Buy. (To watch Gills track record, click here) What do other analysts have to say? 13 Buys and and 6 Holds add up to a Moderate Buy analyst consensus. Given the $192.28 average price target, shares could climb ~15% from current levels. (See QRVO stock analysis on TipRanks) Telefonakiebolaget LM Ericsson (ERIC) From chipsets, well move on to handsets. Ericsson, the Swedish telecom giant has long been a leader in mobile tech, and is well known for its infrastructure and software that make possible IP networking, broadband, cable TV, and other telecom services. Ericsson is the largest European telecom company, and the largest 2G/3G/4G infrastructure provider outside of China. But that is all in the background. Ericsson is also a leader in the rollout of Europes growing 5G networks. Ericsson is involved in 5G rollout in 17 countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and its product line includes infrastructure base units and handsets, giving the company an interest in all aspects of the new 5G networks. Ericssons revenue performance in 2020 was not notably distressed by the corona crisis. Yes, the top line dipped in Q1, but that was in line with the companys historical pattern of rising revenue from Q1 through Q4. While the companys 1H20 revenues showed small yoy declines, the 2H20 gains were higher. In Q3, the $6.48 billion top line was up 8.7% yoy, and Q4s $8.08 billion revenue was up 17% from the prior year. The companys shares have also performed well during the corona year, and show a 12 month gain of 64%. Raymond James 5-star analyst Simon Leopold bluntly assigns Ericssons recent gains to its participation in 5G rollouts. Japan's awaited 5G roll-out has started. Share gains continue as Ericsson benefits from challenges facing its biggest competitors and more operators embrace 5G it seems obvious that Ericsson should be gaining market share... Competitor Nokia shunned the Chinese 5G projects, citing profitability challenges, yet Ericsson appears to be profiting in the challenging region. Leopold rates this stock an Outperform (i.e. Buy), and his $15 price target implies an upside potential of ~14% for the year ahead. (To watch Leopolds track record, click here) The Raymond James analyst, while bullish on ERIC, is actually less so than the Wall Street consensus. The stock has a Strong Buy consensus rating, based on a unanimous 5 reviews, and the $16.50 average price target indicates 25% growth potential from the share price of $13.19. (See ERIC stock analysis on TipRanks) To find good ideas for 5G stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

Insights on the Blockchain in Manufacturing Global Market to 2026 - Asia-Pacific is Expected to Dominate the Market - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Yahoo...

Blockchain Technology and Internet of Things in Business Automation Markets, 2020-2025: Blockchain Technology and IoT Authentication, Authorization,…

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

Dublin, Feb. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Blockchain Technology and Internet of Things in Business Automation: Blockchain Technology and IoT Authentication, Authorization, Accounting, Billing, and Settlement 2020 - 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This research evaluates the technology, leading companies, and solutions in the evolving blockchain ecosystem. The report evaluates current and anticipated use cases for blockchain and assesses the market potential globally, regionally, and segmented by deployment type and industry vertical for the period 2020 to 2025.

The research also evaluates key players, solutions, and use cases. It also assesses the prospect of integrating blockchain with other technologies including IoT and artificial intelligence. The report includes detailed forecasts by use case, application, and industry verticals. This includes blockchain applications and solutions for both financial and non-financial markets.

This research also assesses the market for IoT authentication and authorization by technology, solutions, and industry verticals with forecasts from 2020 to 2025. The report analyzes IoT authentication and authorization market drivers and opportunities. The report also assesses IoT authentication and authorization infrastructure requirements.

Target Audience:

Key Topics Covered:

Blockchain Technology Market by Service Type, Applications, Solutions, Industry Verticals 2020 - 2025

1 Executive Summary

2 Introduction2.1 Evolution of Payment Industry2.2 Payments Value Chain and Blockchain2.3 Blockchain Technology2.4 Early Blockchain Implementations2.5 Blockchain Technology SWOT Analysis

3 Blockchain Ecosystem and Marketplace3.1 Blockchain Types and Stakeholders3.2 Blockchain Applications3.3 Blockchain Application in Industry Verticals3.4 Blockchain in the Internet of Things3.5 Blockchain as a Service (BaaS)3.6 Blockchain Stakeholders in ICT3.7 Blockchain to Improve Cybersecurity3.8 Blockchain Investment Analysis3.9 Important Blockchain Consortia and Associations3.10 Blockchain Solutions in Industry Verticals

4 Blockchain Market Outlook and Forecasts 2020 - 20254.1 Global Market Forecast 2020 - 20254.2 Blockchain Markets by Solution

5 Blockchain Vendors5.1 21, Inc.5.2 Accenture5.3 Abra, Inc.5.4 Alphapoint Corporation5.5 Amazon5.6 Baidu5.7 Bitfury Group5.8 Blockchain Global Limited5.9 BlockCypher, Inc.5.10 Bloq5.11 BTL Group (Blockchain Tech Ltd.)5.12 Chain, Inc.5.13 Circle Internet Financial Limited5.14 Coinbase5.15 Coinfirm Ltd.5.16 ConsenSys Systems (ConsenSys)5.17 Credits5.18 Dell Technologies5.19 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu5.20 Digital Asset Holdings5.21 Digitalx Ltd. (Digital Cc Ltd.)5.22 DMG Blockchain Solutions5.23 Earthport5.24 Factom Inc.5.25 Fidelity Investments5.26 Global Arena Holding, Inc. (GAHC)5.27 HP5.28 Holo5.29 HyperLedger5.30 IBM Corporation5.31 Intelygenz5.32 IOTA5.33 Libra Services, Inc.5.34 Linux Foundation5.35 Microsoft Corporation5.36 Monax5.37 NASDAQ5.38 Overstock5.39 R35.40 Ripple5.41 ShoCard5.42 Tecent

6 Conclusions and Recommendations

IoT Authentication and Authorization by Technology, Solutions, and Industry Verticals 2020 - 2025

1 Executive Summary

2 Introduction2.1 IoT Data2.2 IoT Devices2.3 IoT Identity Management2.4 IoT Trust Environment

3 IoT Authentication and Authorization Market Drivers3.1 Machine Transactions3.2 Edge Computing3.3 Device Management3.4 Data Management3.5 Service Level Agreements

4 IoT Authentication and Authorization Market Opportunities4.1 Support of IoT Data as a Service4.2 IoT Identity Management and AAA as a Service4.3 IoT Mediation and Orchestration

5 IoT Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure5.1 IoT Database Infrastructure5.2 DB Support of IoT Orchestration and Mediation5.3 DB Support of IoT AAA Services5.4 IoT DB Support of IoT Identity Management5.5 IoT DB Support of IoT Data Management and Analytics5.6 IoT DB Registry and Transaction Services

6 IoT Authentication and Authorization Market Analysis and Forecasts 2020 - 20256.1 Global IoT Authentication and Authorization Market Forecast 2020 - 20256.2 Global AI Market Forecast in IoT Authentication and Authorization 2020 - 20256.3 Global IoT Authentication and Authorization Market in 5G Network 2020 - 20256.4 Global IoT Authentication and Authorization Market in Edge Network 2020 - 20256.5 Regional IoT Authentication and Authorization Market Forecasts 2020 - 20256.5.1 IoT Authentication and Authorization Market by Region

7 Conclusions and Recommendations

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/p6vo63

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

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Blockchain Technology and Internet of Things in Business Automation Markets, 2020-2025: Blockchain Technology and IoT Authentication, Authorization,...

The blockchain-based virtual world that can help usher in the metaverse – VentureBeat

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

One of the essential features of a working metaverse will be the ability to move your avatar and assets seamlessly and instantaneously from world to world. Blockchain may be the thing that makes that possible. And The Sandbox, a world based on the Etherium cryptocurrency, has an approach to perpetual, player-owned tokens that could point the way forward.

The idea of blockchain in the metaverse is to build a new kind of digital asset, to create based on ownership and governance, said Arthur Madrid, CEO and co-founder of The Sandbox, in a conversation with Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer at GamesBeat. The panel, dubbed Blockchain and the Metaverse, was part of the recent GamesBeat event, Into the Metaverse.

The current manifestation of The Sandbox, a virtual world where players can build, own, and monetize their own voxel gaming experiences on the Ethereum blockchain, has just those kinds of assets. Users gain ownership of their creations as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which means the number of items and the history of their ownership can be tracked, and items can be verified as one-of-a-kind. The value of each individual NFT is also defined by the community. Under the ownership of Animoca Brands, the teams vision is to offer a deeply immersive metaverse in which virtual worlds and games will be created collaboratively and without centralized authority.

The Sandbox features three main components: the VoxEdit NFT builder for building what they call ASSETs, the marketplace for buying and selling ASSETs, and the game maker tool where interactive games can be constructed and shared. These components are intended to allow players to create voxel worlds and game experiences, and the ability to safely store, trade, and monetize their creations through blockchain, allowing creators to benefit from their creations and evolving how digital assets in games are understood, at a fundamental level.

I think people are truly blown away by the amount of money that players spend in digital assets hundreds, thousands, and probably millions of dollars spent on digital assets, he said. I think making those assets NFTs, building an NFT economy, is going to add a new layer on top of the existing digital economy.

Madrid believes that games and worlds built on this style of gameplay will eventually move from a revenue sharing model, where the game company essentially gets a kickback from player creativity, to one where 100% of the revenue will belong to the players. At that point, the value of the metaverse will come from the service you provide players and in return, word of mouth from players will bring new users into the fold.

Plus, for an avatar-centric metaverse, in which people want to create an identity to travel from one virtual world to the next, making that avatar an NFT could be key, Madrid said, pointing at how you could use ERC-1155 to easily import the assets of a player on your metaverse. Because its decentralized, he explained, you could potentially use an API to call any of the items a player used in their gaming session.

NFT stock and blockchain can also be used to build a governance system attached to a unique mechanism.

That will probably move the very simple gameplay and gameplay mechanics to much more advanced gameplay mechanics that, in my opinion, match up with the concept of the metaverse, he said. When you join a metaverse you understand that it comes with a certain kind of gameplay that makes you be part of it, and based on your engagement, based on what you create, based on the personality and the actions that youre going to achieve inside the metaverse, makes you able to vote for it.

Blockchain technology isnt mature enough to be used in the creation of the metaverse quite yet; in a world where youre looking for 60 frames per second, taking minutes to update is a no-flier. But Madrid points out that you wouldnt currently add blockchain to a game with 250 million players its better to build a blockchain metaverse from scratch.

We are experimenting with this new way to transact with blockchain and theres a lot to be improved, he said. However, crypto communities always compare the blockchain technology to internet in the very beginning. In 1999, nobody could believe that you could use the internet at such a level of speed. As soon as [a technology] is adopted, there is always a solution to make it efficient.

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The blockchain-based virtual world that can help usher in the metaverse - VentureBeat

Russias regulatory sandbox and the implementation of blockchain tech – Cointelegraph

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

The main challenge companies face when testing and implementing innovative technologies is the need to amend existing legislation. Developing and testing new products based on distributed ledger technology requires special conditions that are often inconsistent with existing regulations.

The solution to this problem would be the introduction of a special regulatory sandbox regime. It means the creation of an ecosystem within which companies and state-owned enterprises can test their developments without legislative obstacles.

Federal law No. 258, On Experimental Legal Regimes in the Field of Digital Innovation in the Russian Federation, came into effect on Jan. 28. It allows new software to be tested to ensure that it is effective and useful, and then, on the basis of the results, to decide whether to change the current legislation to accommodate the innovation. Creating a sandbox in a certain limited area e.g., within one city will allow a certain number of companies to test their digital innovation products.

In addition to DLT, the list includes artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, quantum technologies and others. In doing so, companies will be able to comply with current legislation, with a number of exemptions necessary for them to fully test the new software. In the long term, sandboxes will be an impetus for the creation of new jobs, the emergence of new organizations, and the increased competitiveness of Russian companies in the international market.

The introduction of an experimental legal regime, or ELR, will be possible in the following areas: financial activity, trade, construction, provision of state and municipal services and implementation of state control (supervision) and municipal control, medicine, transport, agriculture, industry, etc. The term of the sandbox is limited to three years and may be extended for another year by decision of the Russian government. It also accepts applications from organizations proposing the introduction of a special legal regime.

Experts acknowledge that the creation of regulatory sandboxes will require an action plan coordinated with the regulator, and ELR participants will have to meet certain requirements. But the new federal law may result in a real opportunity for business representatives to work with innovations and new developments in the digital sphere under a special legal regime. The authorities, in turn, will assess the results and effectiveness of the experiment, deciding on the extension of the sandbox and the need for changes in legislation.

One of the areas where testing in the sandbox can bring notable positive results is the housing and utilities sector. The use of DLT will reduce paperwork, simplify the payment procedure and make billing more transparent. Users will be able to interact directly with suppliers of resources and will know exactly for which services their money has been spent.

According to data provided by the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, eight projects have already been selected in Russia to be included in the regulatory sandboxes. Among them are the initiatives of Mobile TeleSystems, one of the major Russian mobile operators, which include a smart hotel without staff, the possibility of biometric identification when signing contracts for services without a physical presence (by phone), driverless transport and telemedicine. Or it will be able to use CryptoVeche, a blockchain-based voting system, to hold public hearings remotely in St. Petersburg. Then public hearings of local authorities can be moved online, which in turn will make this process more accessible and transparent for residents. Other projects included the nonprofit Big Data Association, the Tomsk Region Administration and the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects.

ELR is a mechanism for testing, and the keyword here is: experimental. This is why the projects are not large, and the spheres are not the most massive, but they are prospective.

In Russia, the central bank was one of the first to evaluate the prospects of creating sandboxes. In 2020, the first project a blockchain platform for the issuance and circulation of digital rights completed its pilot on the basis of the regulatory sandbox it created. The central bank provides opportunities for piloting innovative products in the financial sector; any interested organization can apply to participate in the sandbox.

Regulatory sandboxes are a tool that has been actively used in other countries for a while now. The first sandbox appeared in 2016 in the United Kingdom. It received more than 140 applications, of which 50 were approved by the regulator, and 41 companies successfully completed testing in 2017. However, statistics showed that the majority of applications were in the field of DLT and were presumably used to reduce the costs of existing financial products rather than to create new ones.

Sandboxes have been launched in other countries, and the United States, Australia, Singapore and Thailand have joined the list. As of November 2020, the number of countries is about 50, but some of them have significant differences in their approach to the creation of sandboxes. For example, the Singapore model is quite similar to the British model but involves stricter oversight by the regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore. In Australia, access to the sandbox is granted, among other things, to those companies that do not have a license to carry out a certain type of activity in which they plan to test innovations.

Massive global experience with regulatory sandboxes shows that testing new products under experimental legal regimes helps attract investment, as investors are more willing to invest in companies participating in sandboxes. It also allows the latter to set up internal processes and determine pricing and business models.

In addition to the enactment of federal law No. 258, a number of other bills regulating relationships in the field of digital assets and innovation have appeared in Russian legislation over the past few years. Thus, the federal law On Amendments to Parts One, Two, and Article 1124 of Part Three of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation introduced the concept of digital law and described the nature of transactions conducted through smart contracts and signed using electronic digital signatures. It excluded the concept of digital money and equated digital rights with property rights, which leads to the need for changes in tax legislation.

The federal law On Digital Financial Assets, Digital Currency and Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation consolidated the concepts of digital financial assets, or DFA, and digital currency and defined the rules for attracting investments by organizations and individual entrepreneurs by issuing digital rights. The federal law regulates the issuance, accounting and circulation of DFA, making it transparent and clear to all participants.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Maxim Rukinov is head of the Distributed Ledger Technologies Center at St. Petersburg State University. He has a law degree and a Ph.D. in economic sciences. Maxim specializes in investment portfolio management and financial analysis. His expertise is confirmed by the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has also authored scientific publications on economic security and the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy.

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Russias regulatory sandbox and the implementation of blockchain tech - Cointelegraph

Blockchain start-up Retraced raises another EUR1m in funding – just-style.com

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

The blockchain-based platform helps fashion brands to collect information from their supply chain

The Retraced platform helps brands to collect information from their supply chains on suppliers, working conditions, materials, certifications, and environmental impacts and to share this with their customers. This, in turn, helps them tobetter monitor their impact on their supply chains, become more transparent in their operations, and enables customers to make informed purchasing decisions.

The EUR1m in seed funding comes from European VC firmSamaipata and will be used to fuel its expansion andadd innovative new features.The latest investment round follows a successful pre-seed round from 12 months ago.

Since the pandemic hit the industry last year, Retraced has managed to onboard 40 new brands to the platform in the EU and the US in a move it says underlinesa strong interest in supply chain digitalisation for improved transparency and sustainability management.

"Our clients have clear sustainability targets in mind that they want to achieve. Together with them, we have defined the necessary information that they need to manage their sustainability efforts and to evaluate their progress,"says Philipp Mayer, co-founder and CPO.

"We've benefitted from their input, and continue to improve our efficient tracing and document management tools, supplier sustainability assessments, end-consumer communication widget, and other core functions to help them get the actionable overviews they need to get the most out of their investment in sustainability. We are here to accelerate and guide their sustainability efforts."

The firm says theinvestment deal also signals an important opportunity for fashion during a time where the fallout from the pandemic affects the stability and health of supply chains. The values of transparency, compliance, and social responsibility are becoming more important for helping the industry recover and succeed.

"Covid 19 represents a huge challenge, but at the same time a unique opportunity for fashion to refocus and rebuild," says Lukas Pnder, co-founder and CEO of Retraced. "We are building a platform that will help brands produce better, manage their responsibilities to all of their stakeholders, and stay ready for what's to come."

Jos del Barrio, founding partner at Samaipata, adds:"We truly believe we are entering a new era of enterprise transparency towards the end-consumer, given the growing regulatory pressure on compliance management, and the reputational cost of not facing increasing demands from new consumers. 90% of Generation Z affirms that companies are responsible for dealing with social and environmental issues, and we believe there's an amazing opportunity for a platform play in the space, leveraging on network effects between brands and other stakeholders sharing data and best practices and willing to work together for a fairer supply chain management."

Last summer,US denim brand Boyish Jeans harnessedRetraced's solution tocommunicate the sustainable supply chains behind its products to online consumers.

Original post:

Blockchain start-up Retraced raises another EUR1m in funding - just-style.com

Blockchain Cuties Universe to launch DeFi and NFT tokenomics – Cointelegraph

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

One of the first-ever blockchain games decided that its time for its economy to benefit from what decentralized finance has to offer.

Blockchain Cuties Universe has been around since the very inception of blockchain gaming. During its two and a half years on the blockchain gaming scene, the game launched on five blockchains and developed a great deal of innovative gameplay mechanics.

Blockchain Cuties Universe is a collectible game about the adventures of adorable pets represented by nonfungible tokens on five different blockchains. The game offers vast possibilities to explore, trade and create. Its a very dynamic environment, with regular in-game events and competitions that bring new content and opportunities.

Blockchain Cuties Universe will become the first DeFi game that leverages the power of five blockchains. The games team believes that the synergy of NFT and DeFi technologies will propel the games economy and engagement to new heights.

To achieve the ambitious goal of creating a sustainable, flourishing tokenomics system, Blockchain Cuties Universe will introduce Blockchain Cuties Universe Governance Token (BCUG).

BCUG is a native, digital, cryptographically secured utility token of the Blockchain Cuties Universe ecosystem.

BCUG is a transferable representation of attributed functions specified in the protocol/code of the Blockchain Cuties Universe products, which is intended to be used solely as the primary utility token within the games ecosystem.

BCUG is a non-refundable functional utility token that will be used as the medium of exchange between participants in the games ecosystem. The goal of introducing BCUG is to provide a convenient and secure mode of payment and settlement between players and other economy participants.

BCUG will be supporting various new game mechanics, such as:

The introduction of BCUG and leveraging the power of DeFi will bring a lot of innovation to the game process.

Blockchain Cuties Universe is famous for its community-driven development. The game has a big friendly community of enthusiasts who have been sharing, voting for and lobbying their ideas for years. Their commitment has shaped a lot of gameplay decisions that are present in the game today.

The introduction and further development of BCUG use cases will allow to gamify and support the process of community-driven development in the game.

BCUG holders will be able to vote for, lobby and suggest new game mechanics, updates and in-game aspects. The power of BCUG will make every player with a stake in the game visible and able to influence its future.

BCUG holders will also receive a variety of in-game perks that will give them an advantage in the game.

BCUG holders will have several additional benefits in the game, such as giving players a chance to increase the power of their in-game characters and tradable items.

Every advantage in Blockchain Cuties Universe is also a market opportunity supported by the games five blockchains. So, holding BCUG might prove to be a great opportunity for active market players.

BCUG might prove interesting, even to those outside the world of Blockchain Cuties Universe.

Many of Blockchain Cuties Universe NFTs are held by collectors who dont participate in the game but enjoy investing in the project.

BCUG might become an even more interesting asset thanks to its liquidity and ease of use. Apart from trading opportunities, BCUG will also offer liquidity farming for its holders.

BCUG token will be distributed via two different paths:

The token distribution event is scheduled for Q1 2021 and will consist of two main phases:

For more information on Blockchain Cuties Universe and BCUG token visit: https://blockchaincuties.finance and https://blockchaincuties.com.

This is a paid press release Cointelegraph does not endorse and is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy, quality, advertising, products or other materials on this page. Readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company. Cointelegraph is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

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Blockchain Cuties Universe to launch DeFi and NFT tokenomics - Cointelegraph

DAEM Technology Launches ixWallet and the First Bitcoin Red Packet in Hong Kong to Promote Blockchain Payment Education – Business Wire

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DAEM Technology Limited (DAEM Technology), a wholly owned subsidiary of ixFintech Group, announced its new product, the ixWallet. ixWallet is a truly distributed ledger wallet, meaning that all the user savings are on the blockchain. It allows users to send/ receive digital assets, as well as to review the ixCrypto Index. The wallet application is now available on both AppStore (for iOS) and Google Play (for Android).

To facilitate the download and use of the ixWallet, and also to promote education in the area of blockchain, DAEM Technology also launched the first Bitcoin Red Packet campaign in Hong Kong. The campaign is for its research on digital payment evolution, as well as collecting feedback from the customers.

Red Packet, also well known as Lai See, Red Envelope, or Lucky Money, is a monetary gift which is given during holidays such as the Chinese New Year, or special occasions such as weddings in Chinese and other East and Southeast Asian societies.

To create the Bitcoin red packet, customers first need to find our Digital Asset Exchange Machine (DAEM) and insert cash in order to exchange it for bitcoin or ethereum. The whole process is self-explanatory and can be easily followed from the guidance provided on the screen. For those without a digital wallet, a paper wallet containing Bitcoin/ Ethereum will be provided. Customers can then place the paper wallet with the bitcoin into our DAEM Red Packet Envelope together with an ixWallet-downloaded QR code and give it to relatives or friends. Alternatively, they can also download the ixWallet App on Apple and Android store first to store their bitcoin instead of using the paper wallet.

Moreover, after the announcement that the DAEM is landing in Cyberport, Hong Kong, DAEM was awarded the Hong Kong Fintech Impetus Awards 2020 and Start Up of the Year by Metro Radio and KPMG, and the Hong Kong Fintech Awards 2020 by ETNet.

Red Packet is one of the most well-known traditional Chinese elements. The Bitcoin Red Packet is a very cheerful and meaningful campaign for us, giving people the opportunity to experience blockchain payments, stated Irene Wong, the founder and CEO of IX Fintech Group. The awards we won also inspire us to keep moving forward. We welcome everyone to visit our experimental store and bring a Bitcoin Red Packet home.

For more details about the DAEM, ixWallet, and the Bitcoin Red Packet, please refer to our website http://daemtech.com/, or visit our experimental store at No. 2 Catchick Street, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong (Near Bank of China).

About DAEM Technology and ixFintech Group

DAEM Technology Limited (DAEM Technology) is a wholly owned subsidiary of ixFintech Group, striving for the evolution of the digital finance world. Its flagship product is the Digital Asset Exchange Machine (DAEM). The first prototype of the machine was completed in May 2020 and officially landed in Cyberport, Hong Kong in December 2020. The machine was awarded the Hong Kong Fintech Impetus Awards 2020 Basic Technology Blockchain by Metro Radio and KPMG in December 2020, and the Hong Kong Fintech Awards 2020 in Wealth Investment and Management by ETNet in January 2021.

ixFintech announced the establishment of ixFintech Group in August 2020. As a former participant of the Cyberport Hong Kong Incubation Program in 2016, ixFintech graduated by launching the ixOption App in August 2018, which was awarded with the ET Net Fintech Award 2018. It was also awarded with the Top 10 Trading Solution Providers in APAC 2019 by CIO magazine in the USA.

About the DAEM and ixWallet

The Digital Asset Exchange Machine (DAEM) is the first next generation De-Fi ATM installed with post quantum computing security. The machine enables the exchange between cash and digital assets (cryptocurrencies, real asset backed tokens, and security tokens) with 3 levels of security. DAEM Technology aims to build the best next generation digital asset financial framework, working together with its decentralized ixWallet, targeted to facilitate exchange between traditional assets and digital assets. It will also make it easier to transfer payments globally, through the instant conversion of different currencies. The whole system is truly decentralized, meaning the savings of the customers are all on the blockchain but not in the machine. The machine is also prepared with a full set of KYC function for future regulatory adoption. Besides, the machine is equipped with patented technology from a Canadian partner IronCap. Every transaction here is tri-protected by network security, time protected token (example OTP) and cryptography technology which supercomputer cannot hack.

Website: http://daemtech.com/

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DAEM Technology Launches ixWallet and the First Bitcoin Red Packet in Hong Kong to Promote Blockchain Payment Education - Business Wire

The India stack that Bill Gates and Sundar Pichai so love is set to get much bigger thanks to the Indian gov – Business Insider India

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

According to the draft National Strategy on Blockchain, a government-led blockchain infrastructure can become the hub for private developers to build applications.

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, which owns the internet giant Google, in an interview in 2017 had said that UPI and India Stack conversations get him excited. Pichai, who had then said we will see products being built out of India for a global stage, has since then gone on to commit $10 billion into the countrys technology ecosystem.

One of the architects of India Stack Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, had called it the single most important innovation India needs.

Opening up a blockchain infrastructure for similar innovations may lead to bigger advancements in technology than UPI, which is hailed as Indias most successful digital project. We can create our own massive blockchain ledger, say India Ledger, where all researchers and experts come together. The third is that we need to create our own journey with blockchain. Now, is the time to really work on these thoughts, said Prasanna Lohar, head of digital innovations at DCB Bank and a blockchain expert who has been privy to the discussions around blockchain with the government.

Niti Aayog, India's think tank has been working on IndiaChain, India's own ambitious project to develop a nationwide blockchain network, which has revolutionized Indias position as one of the emerging technology players. A few months ago, a blockchain project named Vajra designed by the National Payments Corporation of India for various payment companies providing secured transactions on their online platforms or mobile applications, shows the government is taking proactive initiative to support blockchain, said Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder of cryptocurrency and bitcoin startup CoinDCX.

SEE ALSO:India becomes the first Asian country to allow small investors to directly lend to the government

The top global risks facing the world in 2021 and beyond – Consultancy.uk

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Danzig

Infectious diseases, livelihood crises and extreme weather events are the top clear and present dangers facing the world today. A new World Economic Forum report in collaboration with Marsh McLennan, SK Group and Zurich International explores the worlds risk profile.

The analysis is based on a survey of more than 800 people across the globe, who were asked to pinpoint factors that could become a critical threat now and in the future. The backdrop is Covid-19, and the goal is to take a closer look on how it has rocked the world.

The 2021 report reflects the depth and disparity of the pandemics impact, explores how critical global challenges have been exacerbated and reshaped, and highlights the need to address these risks in a more collaborative way, explained Carolina Flint, Managing Director & Risk Management Leader at Marsh.

For a nuanced overview, the researchers broke the global risk profile down into three distinct timelines. Clear & present dangers refer to threats that could hit home within the next two years. Knock-on effects will ensue in the medium term between three and five years from now. Then there are existential threats fundamental issues that could manifest in the next five to ten years.

The clear & present dangers very much reflect the key events of 2020. For instance, the threat frominfectious disease was font and centre cited by nearly 60% of survey respondents. With job losses abound, livelihood crises were labeled a current threat by 55%, while extreme weather events were the third biggest threat presumably relating to bushfires and floods.

With business IT infrastructure stretched across personal and home networks, cyber security has also made its way up the immediate threat profile. Of note in the top five immediate risks is digital inequality where socio-economic disparities are worsened as expensive technology becomes the key to business and personal survival.

A widening digital gap can worsen societal fractures and undermine prospects for an inclusive recovery, explained Daniel Glaser, President & CEO at Marsh McLennan. Indeed, a bigger socio-economic gap could be a severe threat to social cohesion in the future a top concern for 40% of respondents.

In similar vein, many brows are furrowed by the prospect of youth disillusionment stemming from a lost young generation that has now faced two economic crises and icy job markets as a result. These youth stand to lose out on economic opportunities for one, while also facing mental health challenges. Economic stagnation is also a chief risk, while perennial threats from terrorism and environmental damage persist in the backdrop.

These are near term concerns. In the medium term, the threat profile takes on a more economic and financial avatar. Many are worried about asset bubble bursts, price instability, commodity shocks and debt crises all of which are both products and harbingers of a protracted economic crisis.

Technology is also a medium term worry. Digital adoptionleapfrogged several years in a matter of months during the pandemic, and many are worried that the IT infrastructure is simply not equipped for such a boom in volumes. A breakdown of this infrastructure is a top concern, as is a breakdown of its security.

Outside of these factors, the medium term is rife with concerns about international relations. Inter state conflicts, fractured trade relations and resource geopolitisation all of which were key themes unfolding even before the pandemic are prone to return again amid a weak and internalised global economy.

Geopolitical worries persist through the long term as well. Weapons of mass destruction are the top concern in the next five to ten years, while the collapse of states and multilateralism are also dreaded prospects. Half of the survey respondents also expressed concern around the rapid advancement of technology and its implications over a long term horizon on jobs and security.

Then there are a host of environmental risks, which most expect to manifest over the five to ten year horizon. These include loss of biodiversity, natural resource crises, and the failure of concerted climate action. Some fear that the current trends of health and environmental crises might even spur a backlash against science in the future a pattern that is already emerging in some sections of society.

Climate changeto which no one is immunecontinues to be a catastrophic risk. Although lockdowns worldwide caused global emissions to fall in the first half of 2020, evidence from the 20082009 Financial Crisis warns that emissions could bounce back. A shift towards greener economiescannot be delayed until the shocks of the pandemic subside, noted Glaser.

Indeed, action is the need of the hour to navigate this growing risk landscape, each part of which is real and devastating in its own right. Glaser highlights that collaborative efforts could take the world in the right direction, and mitigate some of these challenges.

With governments still deliberating how to pivot away from emergency to recovery, and with companies anticipating a changed business landscape, there are opportunities to invest in smart, clean and inclusive growth that will improve productivity and delivery of sustainable agendas.

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The top global risks facing the world in 2021 and beyond - Consultancy.uk

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