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Doomed To Repeat It? – The Free Weekly

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

The Interrogator, the next installment in TheatreSquareds virtual 2020 Arkansas New Play Festival, is set in World War II. But it might not always feel like it. The playwright, Russell Leigh Sharman, says whole sections of the transcripts [on which it is based] could be lifted out of context, and you might think they were recorded just yesterday. I began work on the story in 2015, but I returned to it as a play late last year. I was surprised, and honestly a bit disheartened, at how much more resonant the material had become in those four to five years.

The story is set at Fort Hunt, a top-secret prisoner of war camp built in the suburbs of Alexandria, Va., code-named PO BOX 1142.

It is a scary time in this country and around the world, says New York actor Joe Chisholm, pictured here in rehearsal for The Interrogator with Steven Marzolf and Matt Boston. I think until a few years ago, most people would look at the megalomania that was Hitlers rise and see it as a fluke in fabric of human history. But political division and dangerous rhetoric in todays world have seen the embers of nativism sparked and flamed in a frighteningly reminiscent fashion. It adds a heavy layer of djvu to see some similarities in how the world was back then compared to where we are now, and just how much we failed to learn last time. It makes the immediacy and need within the play that much easier to hook into as an actor, and I hope as an audience member.(Courtesy Photo/T2)

I first heard about PO BOX 1142 on the radio on a drive back from the Tulsa airport in 2015, Sharman explains. NPR did a story on how the park rangers at Fort Hunt, now a national park in Alexandria, uncovered the secret history of the location: How it was used as an interrogation center by the U.S. Army and Navy during the war and immediately after. How thousands of Nazi officers and U-boat commanders passed through on their way to more permanent camps. And how the only interrogators they could find who knew the language and the culture well enough were recent immigrants, most of them German and Austrian Jews.

The kicker was that there was no torture or physical duress of any kind permitted, he adds. The interrogators had to use psychology, build rapport, establish trust. They basically hung out with these guys played cards, chess, table tennis. Sometimes even took them out to dinner. And then these men, and they were all men, stayed quiet about their service for more than 60 years. Never told a soul. I was floored.

Sharman was a successful Hollywood screenwriter, so of course his first thought was that PO BOX 1142 would make a great movie. But he also knew it was going to be a hard sell in Hollywood a period film, mostly in German, and mostly in a windowless room with two men talking. Still, I couldnt shake the story. So I dove in. I spent the next few years pouring over every shred of documentation I could find. And there wasnt a whole lot. I finished the screenplay version a couple of years ago, and as I suspected, it got a lot of compliments but not a lot of traction in Hollywood. It was then that I realized this story needed to live in the theater. All of the elements that made it a hard sell in Hollywood were what would make it compelling on the stage.

I am amazed there has been no other formal account of PO BOX 1142 by now, no book, no documentary, Sharman adds. It is such a rich and fascinating story, and I am beyond excited to get to tell it in this form.

Sharman says the moral that a group of young men could offer grace to their enemies resonates as strongly today as it did in 1944.

The greatest triumph for these men was not the military intelligence they discovered, it was the ability to look their enemy in the eye whether thats a living breathing person or some past or present trauma and show beyond a shadow of a doubt they have not been broken, that they have not only survived, they have overcome. That is a truth that we can all aspire to.

But the transcripts of the interrogations also revealed some truly frightening parallels between the rise of National Socialism in Germany and our current political reality, the rise of the alt-right and the deep cultural divisions in the United States.

Sharman

I began to see the interrogations in a new light, beyond their historical context, Sharman says. There is always the temptation to hear a story like this one and think, Thank goodness all of that is in the past. But that would be a perilous mistake. I hope these resonances with our current experience will give us all pause, that they will remind us to be vigilant, ruthlessly self-critical, and, ultimately, full of grace for each other.

One reason we go to plays is to feel something, discover something, that puts our world, our troubles, in perspective and reminds us that were not alone, says director Amy Herzberg, one of the founders of TheatreSquared. This profoundly difficult, and I think hopeful, period of change were experiencing wound up underscoring several aspects of the play that we otherwise might have taken for granted.

This play takes this massive wrong from history and transforms it from the abstract into the profoundly personal. It helps us feel the meaning of that wrong by identifying with individual people. And then of course it leaves us with a hard-won sense of hope.

FAQ

The Interrogator

WHEN 7 p.m. Aug. 7

WHERE Streaming at playarkansas.com

COST By donation

INFO theatre2.org

BONUS The reading will be followed by a conversation with the creative team. Encore streaming is available through Aug. 10.

FYI

Arkansas New Play Festival

Upcoming Productions

Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy by Sara Gancher, directed by Jared Mezzochi

Weightless a genre-bending musical event by The Kilbanes (the theatrical songwriting duo Kate Kilbane and Dan Moses), directed by Tamilla Woodard

Heroes & Monsters by the LatinX Theatre Project

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Doomed To Repeat It? - The Free Weekly

Young men are turning on feminism it’s what the far-right wants – Metro.co.uk

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

In a recent report for HOPE not hate, when it came to gender equality, there was a huge gulf between young men and women (Picture: WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The far-right has often been a breeding ground for toxic masculinity, but there is a new active and dangerous anti-women ideology slowly seeping into the movement.

Todays far-right supporters aim to establish the logic of supremacy by posing as the protectors of male identity, wielding free speech rhetoric, pseudo-science and a reassuring set of certainties in a rapidly changing world.

And in a climate where men feel more uncertain of their place in society, there is considerable worry that this way of thinking could occupy a place in the mainstream.

In a recent report for HOPE not hate, I polled over 2,000 16-24-year-olds across the UK, and found that while the vast majority of young people are open-minded on issues of immigration, race and LGBTQ+ rights, when it came to gender equality, there was a huge gulf between young men and women.

Half of young men thought feminism has gone too far and makes it harder for men to succeed, more than twice the proportion of young women who felt the same.

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Almost aquarter dismissed the idea that it was more dangerous to be a woman than a man in todays society, 18 per cent held a negative view of feminists,16 per cent believed that feminism had no role to play todayand14 per cent see anti-abortion activists positively.

These sentiments were most profound among young men who felt a loss of control over their own lives, who didnt feel represented or listened to.

These narratives fed into broader resentments about a perceived lack of opportunity, including issues like the availability and quality of work, good education and affordable housing.But young women are equally, if not more, subjected to these social challenges.

In fact, our polling revealed that over lockdown, young women were more likely to have lost their job, to have been furloughed, or to have struggled financially. Young women were also more likely to feel ignored by the political system and more pessimistic about the future.

Boys will be boys though, right?What we are seeing is young men pushing back against a drop in the status of the one asset they feel entitled to be secure in their male identity.

Hateful narratives take root where people feel voiceless, a sense of loss or dwindling hope.

The move of far-right ideas from the recesses into the fore is a process that has been taking place for a long time, threading new stands into the narrative to rebrand the same zero-sum game of power and privilege

In our poll, younger people overwhelmingly rejected anti-immigrant or racist views that have successfully drawn insomepeople from older generations looking for a scapegoaton which to pinresentmentand hurt caused by a loss of statusin a changing world.

White identityis no longer a socially acceptable refuge forthoseyoung people who feel that things are working against them,and who seek an escape from feelings ofvictimhoodand inadequacy.

This is what makes the manosphere male online subcultures linked to the alt-right, focused on grievances around sex, popularity and personal suppression and mens rights movement so dangerous.

It has the potential to penetrate into the mainstream with greater force than the far-rights traditional message.

As Western societies have gradually become more diverse, and anti-racist campaigners have pushed back against biological and cultural racism, outright white supremacist narratives have became too unpalatable to gain new recruits, particularly the young.

Instead,this movementhas crept beyondtheanonymous, dark and strange corners of the internet,with a mixture of free speech, race and gender science,misogyny and anti-feminismserving asan effective platform for recruitmentand its young male following is growing.

A third of young men reported consuming content from Tommy Robinson, while one in five had watched or read something on Brietbart or Infowars. Those who held anti-feminist views were even more likely to be viewing this content, and were more than twice as likely to buy into Antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Of those in our study who felt feminism was suppressing men,a majority offered qualified support for violence as a mechanism for change, believing thatpolitical violence can be necessary to defend something you believe in extreme circumstances.

They reassert a hierarchy, where white men remain at the top, and women are targets to either be subordinated to male priorities and harassed into silence with hate and abuse, especially women of colour.

The overlay between male supremacy and hidden white supremacy, and its pervasiveness among young people should come as a great concern.

As society heads into a looming economic crisis, we must ensure young men understand that accepting their place in an equal society is not just a benefit for everyone else a just and fair society will benefit them, too.

The full report Young People in a Time of Covid-19: A Fear and Hope Study of 16-24 Year Olds can be downloadedon HOPE not hates website.

Do you have a story youd like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.

Share your views in the comments below.

MORE: I have been assaulted, my team attacked but I will never be silenced

MORE: When mothers have to choose between food and childcare, women are not being paid enough

MORE: How the far-right are using coronavirus to stir up hatred

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Young men are turning on feminism it's what the far-right wants - Metro.co.uk

The Singular Courage of Tucker Carlson – Merion West

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In the United States today, this is the language of the revolutions media advance team. They want to silence one of our most prominent voices of opposition

We have reached the point in the United States where publicly stating ones political opinion is physically dangerous and often socially and professionally suicidal. Bernell Trammell, a 60-year-old black man, was shot to death on July 23rd at approximately 12:30 in the afternoon in front of his Milwaukee store, where he displayed handmade Re-elect Trump 2020 posters. Recently, he had walked through his neighborhood advocating for various Christian teachings and proclaiming his support for President Donald Trump. Local resident Adebisi Agoro said, He had a lot of different views, but it was his last view that made people be outrageous with him.

Trammell was also the target of angry posts on neighborhood Facebook pages, Agoro said. In a recently posted video Trammell himself noted the local attitude toward him that forced him to find a different location to speak openly about his beliefs:I moved over here because over there, theyre just about ready to kill me.

Bernell Trammell was correct. In spite of the fact that he was a Black Lives Matter supporter, there was no mention of his brazen daylight murder by Black Lives Matter or their supporters in the media including CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, or The New York Times.

In their own versions of murder by media, several of the companies above brazenly attacked 16-year-old Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann for his offense of wearing a red MAGA hat while smiling at a Native American rights aggressor. In the now typical big lie style of journalism, Sandmann was falsely accused, vilified, and threatened for attacking the man who confronted him. As final proof of their character assassination slander, CNN and The Washington Post have now settled Sandmanns defamation lawsuits against them. The other media companies are expected to follow suit.

The physical and media attacks against those thought to be insufficiently woke like Sandmann are increasing in number and violence as liberal politicians, civic leaders, and celebrities continue to condone the violent, political extremism of left-wing activist groups. As the United States philosophy, history, and culture suffer from these Marxist-inspired and anarchist-executed attacks, leading public figures who stand for the United States, such as Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson have become prime targets. Carlsons brand of deeply incisive journalism is now highly dangerous work if we examine the fates of his colleagues in the Marxist cultural revolutions of Cuba and Venezuela. As Victor Davis Hanson writes,

Cultural revolutions are insidious and not just because they seek to change the way people think, write, speak, and act. They are also dangerous because they are fueled by self-righteous sanctimoniousness, expressed in seemingly innocuous terms such as social activism, equality, and fairness.Cubans and Venezuelans got poor and killed; woke Chavezes and Castros got rich and murderous.'

On his July 20, 2020 broadcast, Carlson reported that The New York Times was apparently keen to dox him and his family. In a strategic parry of pre-emptive doxxing, Carlson exposed the political operative, Murray Carpenter, writing the story for The New York Times. In the same stroke, he admonished the newspapers editors for having no journalistic reason to publish his home address, other than attempting to intimidate and shut me up.

This effort to silence a leading American journalist by The New York Times is the now-silent canary in our coal mine. This is the language of blood politics. This is the language of every third-world despot. This is the language of Marxist revolutionaries around the world for the last 100 years. In the United States today, this is the language of the revolutions media advance team. They want to silence one of our most prominent voices of opposition on their way to a coronation of their stuttering puppet, former Vice President Joe Biden.

When I say doxxing a prominent journalist is the language of blood politics, please consider this 2019 statement by the secretary-general Christophe Deloire of Reporters Without Borders, an organization that monitors the safety of reporters around the world:

We welcome the unprecedented fall in the number of journalists killed in war zones but, at the same time, more and more journalists are being deliberately murdered in connection with their work in democratic countries, which poses a real challenge for the democracies where these journalists live and work.

The phrase blood politics is not a euphemism.

During Carlsons broadcast accusing The New York Times of threatening him, Carlson also made it clear that the newspaper was well aware of what happens when blood politics is practiced. Carlson had been doxxed before, with the instances widely reported. In November of 2018, Antifa local chapter Smash Racism DC rallied outside Carlsons Washington, D.C. home promising violence and hoping to intimidate him and his family. They chanted through bullhorns, Tucker Carlson, we will fight. We know where you sleep at night!

The Antifa group then attacked his home while Carlson was at work doing his nightly broadcast. As they attempted to breach his front door, a security camera picked up one of the attackers mentioning a pipe bomb. His wife was home alone and hid in a closet while she called the police. By the time police arrived, the mob had broken Carlsons front door and vandalized his car. Soon after the attack, with four children at risk, the family decided to move from their home and out of the neighborhood where they had raised their children and away from the neighbors they loved.

Then in June of 2019, another Antifa group, All Out DC, plastered posters around Washington, D.C. showing Carlsons face under the superimposed Antifa three-arrow symbol. His new home address was printed underneath his face with the indictment:Block the Alt-Right. Racist with a huge following and platform, uses it to promote racist dogwhistles.

For now, private security is maintaining the defensive line at Carlsons home while a demoralized Metropolitan Police Department contends with a $15 million dollar defunding. Police patrolling will likely decrease dramatically. After a drop in the murder rate in April of this year, it has steadily increased, compared to the same months last year, every month since rioting began in May.

As happened in Venezuela, American cities have been burning, and our culture is being vandalized by Marxists, anarchists, socialist Democratic mayors, governors, senators, and a presidential candidate. We have been sleeping.

If Vice President Biden succeeds in his march to the White House, those of us who think and speak like Carlson will suffer the certain retribution of the candidates supporters. We must put out their fires now by increasing police strength, prosecuting all rioters and their leaders, and re-casting our city, state, and federal governments with effective, pro-American civil servants. As we re-build our cities, we must re-imagine not the police but our schools and universities to include pro-American curricula and spirit to prevent a left-wing insurrection from ever happening here again.

For those of us who stand as first-responders to our First Amendment and against the United States political and intellectual enemies, like Tucker Carlson, we should acknowledge their courage, zealously protect them, and actively, vocally join their lonely voices.

Jim Proser is the author of Savage Messiah: How Dr. Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization and No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy: The Life of General James Mattis.

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The Singular Courage of Tucker Carlson - Merion West

First Sessions, Now Kobach: ‘America First’ Candidates are Flopping at the Voting Booth – Right Wing Watch

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Far-rightanti-immigration hardlinerKris Kobachlost the Kansas Republican Senate primary to Rep. Roger Marshall by more than 50,000 votes, marking the latest defeat for far-right America First candidates at the ballot box.

In 2020, several high-profile Republican candidates championed by far-right and white nationalist political activists have been rejected by their constituencies. Right Wing Watch reported in January thatwhite nationalists were excited by the prospect of Kobach, the former secretary of state of Kansas,serving in the Senate. White nationalist podcaster James Allsup told listeners at the time that having somebody like Kobach in the upper house, in a position of power, as an anti-immigration, as an immigration restrictionist leader, that would be immensely powerful going forward.

On Tuesday night the race was called, and the far-right activists who had supported Kobachs bid mourned his electoral loss online. Many America First white nationalist movement figures blamed the GOP for Kobachs defeat.

Back to the hills. Of course, weve been there before, Peter Brimelow, editor of the anti-immigrant,white nationalistpublication VDARE,said. He added that it was annoying that far-right commentator Ann Coulter was right about President Donald Trump. Coulter, once an avid supporter of Trump, hasattackedthe president in recent years and called Trump the most disloyal actual retard after he endorsed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions Republican primary opponent Tommy Tubervillein Alabama.

Fuck the weak Kansas Republicans who are looking at this primary as a victory.No matter what youre electing a member of the monoparty in November who hates you and will continue to sell you out to our globalist elites,far-right Kansas State studentJaden McNeilsaid. Enjoy your states continued degradation.

Scott Greer, a former editor at The Daily Caller who was revealed to be writing alt-right columns under a pseudonym, only offered one commenton Kobachs loss: Damn.

White nationalist and alt-right poster boy Richard Spencer theorized that Kobachs loss reflected the unpopularity of conservative nationalism. Spencer has been vocal in his disdain for the elements of the far-right that overtook him in popularity and the flaws he sees in those ranks.

Steve King . . . Jeff Sessions . . . Kris Kobach . . . then Donald Trump in November . . . TheAmerica First conservatives and supposed immigration hawks are falling like dominos, Spencertweeted. He later added, You can blame Trumps tactical failuresand there are manyyou can blame Jared and Ivanka, etc. At some point you must conclude that conservative nationalism isnt going anywhere, and its simply not very popular.

Joshua Foxworth, a Republican America First candidate in Texas who was trumped by incumbent Rep. Randy Weber ina blow-out loss in March, blamed Kobachs loss on the media.

The loss of Kobach in Kansas is upsetting but not surprising, Foxworthsaid. Almost no one can overcome a media that constantly promotes or opposes a candidate. Deplatforming of supporters doesnt help. The GOP is in danger of becoming a party without core issues and without a base.

But Kobachs loss does not exist in a vacuum. Other far-right supported candidates, like Sessions, Iowa Rep. Steve King, and Arizona former sheriff Joe Arpaio have seen their hopes for high office dashed.

Sessions campaign attempted to earn the support of far-right and anti-immigration voters, going so far as to tap far-right columnist Michelle Malkin to author a fundraising letterin May. Malkin made the play obvious, opening the letter by calling Sessions an old friend of the America First movement.But President Donald Trump, nursing a grudge against Sessions for recusing himself from the probe of Russian influence in the 2016 election, urged Republican voters to reject Sessions.Last month, Sessionslost Alabamas Republican runoff electionto Tuberville by more than 100,000 votes.

King, who has a sordid history of racist remarks during his nine terms serving in the U.S. House,lost the Iowa Republican primaryto Randy Feenstra by nearly 10 percentage points.

Andin Arizona, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is facing a close contest against challenger Jerry Sheridan in a race to get his old job back afterreceiving a pardon from Trumpin 2017.(Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt in going after undocumented immigrants.)With 90 of 99 vote centers counted at the time of publication, Sheridan is shownslightly ahead. Arpaio has not yet conceded the race.

William Gheen, president of theanti-immigrant Americans for Legal Immigration PAC mourned the loss of Sessions, Arpaio, Kobach, and King.

All four of Americas top illegal immigration fighters have fallen.Farewell Joe Arpaio, Kris Kobach, Jeff Sessions, and Rep. Steve King, Gheen said. Who would have ever guessed after four years of Trump our top voices against illegal immigration would [be] gone.

America First is inevitable, white nationalist and anti-Semitic podcaster Nick Fuentesdeclaredon July 7.

It would seem that its actually anything but.

However, these far-right losses at the ballot box are not indicators that extremism in the Republican Party is retreating, ratherthe opposite appears to be true. For certain far-right causeslike the America First movementthe defeats may prompt an exploration of options beyond electoral politics. And while extremists gaining legislative power can have disastrous consequences for a democracy, history has shown that extremists seeking solutions outside of the political system can alsoprove to be dangerous.

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First Sessions, Now Kobach: 'America First' Candidates are Flopping at the Voting Booth - Right Wing Watch

Lost Bitcoin: 3.7 million Bitcoin are probably gone forever – Decrypt

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

The Bitcoin supply is capped at 21 million. This means that unless there are drastic changes to Bitcoin's supply mechanism, there will never be more than 21 million BTC in circulation.

Due to Bitcoin's controlled supply mechanism, only around 18.5 million Bitcoin have already been minted (or 88.1% of the max supply). Despite this, because a good chunk of the Bitcoin supply has been lost beyond recovery, the actual amount of BTC available to use or trade is much lower than the circulating supply suggests.

Overall, one-fifth of Bitcoin hasn't been moved for half a decade, and there are three main reasons why.

Bitcoin's mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto may have mined around 1.1 million BTC in the first few months of its existence. Since then, it appears that Satoshi hasn't touched his stash, indicating he, or she (they? it?), cannot or will not move these coins into the circulating supply.

Because of this, the general consensus is that Satoshi's Bitcoin holdings are out of circulationthereby reducing the available supply by around 5.9%.

On those occasions when some Bitcoin is moved from a wallet that hasn't been touched since the cryptocurrency's early days, it frequently prompts (misinformed) speculation that Satoshi has returned. It's been known to cause fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin, since it opens up the possibility that the market could be flooded by large amounts of Bitcoin that was previously thought to be locked away forever.

One of the main ways Bitcoin is removed from circulation is by simply being lost. Since Bitcoin owners need access to their private keys or recovery phrase to transfer their Bitcoin, anybody that loses access to these will also lose the ability to spend their funds.

Though most of the time this only results in the loss of a small sum, there have been several examples where thousands of bitcoin were lost in a single sweepincluding one unfortunate accident which saw a man discard a hard drive containing 7,500 BTC.

Bitcoin owners who've passed away account for some of the inaccessible Bitcoin. When the 30-year old founder of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX died, he also took with him the private keys to around $190 million worth of various cryptocurrencies, including close to 1,000 BTC. One Reddit user recently found an old computer belonging to his late brother, who owned 533 Bitcoinbut the device's hard drive was missing.

Although it's impossible to say exactly how much Bitcoin has been directly lost as a result of negligence or plain misfortune, it is likely to be in the tens of thousands at the very least.

If you take a more relaxed approach and consider any Bitcoin that hasn't moved for more than five years to be lost, then around 20% of all Bitcoin fits into this category. According to a recent report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, around 3.7 million BTC hasn't been touched for at least half a decadethat's around $40.6 billion worth of Bitcoin that might never be moved again.

A large chunk of Bitcoin has also been intentionally sent to one of various 'burn addresses'. These are essentially Bitcoin vanity addresses with no known private key, which means that any BTC sent to the address is likely gone forever.

Over the years, a number of burn addresses have been used for a variety of purposes, including the 1CounterParty address which was used as part of Counterparty's 2014 Proof-of-Burn event. So far, well over 2,700 BTC have been sent to the more than 100 suspected burn addresses, removing around $30 million worth of Bitcoin from circulation.

The Nitty Gritty of Bitcoin Trading | Invision Game Community – Invision Game Community

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Bitcoin is a digital currency, that is used, traded, and distributed electronically, without the involvement of any moderator. Bitcoin is a well-spread peer-to-peer web. No single institution or person regulates it. Bitcoins cant be published, and their amount is very restricted, just about only 21 mln Bitcoins can ever be formed.

The Origin and History

One of the most prominent financial stories of the earlier year has been the implausible emergence of Bitcoin. The cybernetic currency was intended to reform peer-to-peer dealings; it doesnt require a medium in between like just like a bank or credit card web, any kind of exchange of private and confidential information, or any kind of transaction charges. Bitcoin was first announced as an open-source software program by a not so renowned programmer, or a team of programmers, under the code-named Satoshi Nakamoto, way back in 2009. There has been a lot of rumors about the real individuality and profile of Bitcoins creator. However, all of the people cited in those false stories have overtly refused to be Nakamoto. Nakamoto himself once claimed to be a 37-year-old man living in Japan. However, because of his flawless English accent and his software manuals not being translated in Japanese, there are fair qualms about his origin. Around mid-2010, Nakamoto moved on to other things, keeping Bitcoin in the hands of a few budding members of the Bitcoin team such as Satoshi and Gavin Andresen. It has been projected that Nakamoto possesses around one mln Bitcoins, which quantifies to roughly about $3.6 bln as of September 2017.

The Working Principle of Bitcoin

The main supporting pillar of Bitcoin is the blockchain technology. It is used to document the transactions on the network. A blockchain is fundamentally a publicly dispersed ledger; it archives every Bitcoin business ever made on a block. It allows Bitcoin digital wallets to estimate and gauge their balance that has been disbursed till now so that new businesses can be corroborated, thereby assuring the fact that they are controlled by the spender. The frankness and the successive order of the blockchain are executed with cryptography. When that blocks memory is jam-packed, it is added in chronological order to the chain of blocks. This ledger -is freely accessible on any computer in the Bitcoin grid and authenticates all bitcoin transactions, keeps the blockchain, and communicates dealings to other network computers. These processers are called nodes. As the database is stowed on a network of computers, rather than on an exclusive server, hacking or theft of Bitcoin data is practically impossible for budding and new cybercriminals. A hacker would have to breakdown into the mainstream of nodes instantaneously, a practical and nearly undoable task. There is also only a prearranged number of Bitcoins that can ever be generated, meaning that the currency cannot be undervalued in the forthcoming years by a central bank supplying more of these cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin Trading: The Important Aspects

There are quite a few reliable and competent online trading software likebitcoinsystem.app that enables the user to trade Bitcoins without any hassle and challenge.

Every time Bitcoins price upsurges, new stockholders and speculators desire their segment of profits. It is enormously simple for anyone to trade Bitcoin as the barricade for entry is so low and accessible. The primary reason why one should invest in Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in a universal platform, is that because it is unparalleled in terms of the seamless transaction, safety, and pace. Several aspects make Bitcoin trading not only exhilarating and but also one of its kind. Moreover, Bitcoin is not fiat currency; i.e., it is not under the regulation of one single government. So, as an alternative to one single economy having dominion over the value of the asset, Bitcoins price has responded to a wide choice of events. Bitcoin operates round the clock. Dissimilar to stock markets, Bitcoin is open throughout. The reason being stock markets are definite to the country they work in and typically reflect the business hours of that countrys timeline. There are hundreds of exchanges around the world that operate round the clock, and anyone can acquire the Bitcoin on most of the global exchanges.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, in general, are ill-reputed for its fast and recurrent price oscillations. This instability, non-protection to buyers, and risk of unprecedented technical flaws still place Bitcoin trading at a doubtful place.

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The Nitty Gritty of Bitcoin Trading | Invision Game Community - Invision Game Community

Crypto Twitter hackers busted after currency sent to verified accounts – CalvinAyre.com

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

By now, almost everyone has heard of the massive Twitter hack that was perpetrated a couple of weeks ago, and the ease with which the scammers were able to access the giant social media platform. As the criminals sought to collect as much cryptocurrency as they could, they were stopped relatively quickly, but not before being able to pick up around $144,000. In the end, the criminals were found to be three teenagers, and their own actions led to their undoing. With more cryptocurrency companies following established financial regulations, tracing the crypto transactions to their roots was extremely easy.

The three perpetrators 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark and 22-year-old Nima Fazeli of Florida, and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard from the U.K. led a spear-phishing campaign that allowed them to convince a Twitter employee into giving up his access to the network. That allowed them to create posts through legitimate accounts, such as those owned by Elon Musk, former U.S. President Obama and others. What they didnt count on is the advanced nature of current blockchain analysis tools, which are now sophisticated enough to almost immediately be able to trace movements on any blockchain.

Although the scammers tried to move some of their ill-gotten funds through online gambling sites, nothing they did escaped the tracking mechanisms. These also were able to follow the trails to at least one account created on the Coinbase exchange, which had been registered using the criminals legitimate personal data. After that, putting all the pieces of the puzzle together was childs play.

The belief that the digital currency ecosystem is completely private and anonymous is a fallacy that continues to be perpetrated by those who havent bothered to actually educate themselves on how Bitcoin works. Across the globe, countries have taken initiatives to ensure better transparency on blockchains, as well as to adhere to established financial regulations that govern the fiat segment. Granted, fiat had a huge head start in being better managed, but the crypto space has rapidly caught up over the past couple of years.

There have been plenty of instances where would-be criminals thought they would be safe by operating through a blockchain, only to find out that law enforcement is now smarter and better equipped to unravel the mysteries. This is precisely what Satoshi Nakamoto had hoped for when he first presented Bitcoin, positioning it as a legitimate alternative to fiat that would work within the same regulatory and legal boundaries as traditional currencies. His vision is proving to be not only possible, but viable and functional.

Bitcoin SV (BSV) has long held the belief that Bitcoin, as it had originally been presented, didnt need to be completely rewritten, as has been seen with projects like Bitcoin (BTC) and others. Those alternatives have completely ignored the essence of Bitcoin, which is why BSV can, and always has been, considered the only true BSV. The swiftness with which the Twitter scammers were brought to justice shows that everything Satoshi laid out in the Bitcoin white paper is possible, and BSV is ensuring that his vision continues.

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Crypto Twitter hackers busted after currency sent to verified accounts - CalvinAyre.com

George Gilder talks Bitcoin and ‘Who is Satoshi Nakamoto’ on London Real TV – CoinGeek

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Acclaimed economist, writer, book author, investor and technology visionary George Gilder was interviewed by Brian Rose and it was aired on London Real TV recently.

Gilder is one of the leading economic and technological thinkers of the past 40 years, even touted as a technology prophet for this predictions that have eventuated many years later.

The topics discussed ranged from economics, artificial intelligence, geopolitics, global issues, big tech, Bitcoin to who he believes is behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Brian Rose brought up the reason why George Gilder managed to find himself in London.

Youre in London to talk at CoinGeek, host Brian Rose said.

CoinGeek! CoinGeek 2020! Gilder responds.

Gilder certainly made his presence felt at the bi-annual event giving a magnificent presentation, participated in a fireside chat with Dr. Craig S. Wright and was also an avid learner in the front row.

Two significant problems that Bitcoin solves

Gilder highlights the two significant problems the world economy faces which is the collapse of internet security and the scandal of money.

Regarding the collapse of internet security, he envisions a singular blockchain to act as a new security layer for the internet where personal identities can be immutability anchored into this structure.

Regarding the scandal of money, he highlights statistics that currency trading equates to US$5.1 trillion a day amounting to 25 times all global GDP and 75 times all global trade of goods and services. The result which has only led to more trade wars, waste of computational power and entrepreneur skills.

With global money working then there would be less conflict by default, solving the central banks hacking of world money and stealing from the future. This in turn will offer reliable and offer more dependable information to entrepreneurs.

He believes a single blockchain technology can solve both of these problems which is the underlying technology that underpins the economic system of Bitcoin.

Who does Gilder believe is the creator of Bitcoin?

Brian initiated the discussion to Gilder as to who he believes is the inventor and the creator of Bitcoin behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Youre meeting to talk with the man who you think is the real Satoshi Nakamoto, Rose stated.

Satoshi Nakamoto, probably, Craig Wright this Australian rogue really invented blockchain [Bitcoin]. It is pseudonymous this Satoshi Nakamoto, people dont know quite who he is, but it seems at least Craig Wright was central to this whole development, Gilder answered.

Gilder has publicly stated his opinion on this several times in the past.

Having had the personal honour of being at the CoinGeek Conference in London, my favourite moment was seeing Gilder sit in the front row with his pen and notepad taking notes throughout Dr. Craig S. Wrights presentation and proceeded to follow with a standing ovation.

The mutual respect between the two men cannot be denied.

How do we transition to this world of a singular blockchain?

Gilder believes the transition to a single global blockchain is already underway, and once will eventually be a standard that resembles gold. A world where money around the world is measured by the same measuring stick, without the idea of money being a feature of sovereignty and a property of nation states similar to the gold standard up until 1971.

As long as people imagine that money is a measuring stick. It is not a speculative asset, as long people think that they get rich by HODL they are going to fail.

Touted as a technology futurist who has an impeccable track record, he placed his bet on who he thinks has the best chance of success.

Many of them have failed, more than half of them have failed. Ultimately, one of them is going to get it right, maybe Satoshi [Craig] is going to get it right, Gilder concluded.

Hear what George Gilder has to say about Bitcoin when he speaks at CoinGeek Live this fall. Free registration is available at CoinGeekConference.com.

The original Bitcoin created by Dr. Craig S. Wright under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto can be found under the ticker BSV.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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George Gilder talks Bitcoin and 'Who is Satoshi Nakamoto' on London Real TV - CoinGeek

Covid-19 Created an Elective Surgery Backlog. How Can Hospitals Get Back on Track? – Harvard Business Review

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Covid-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in health care systems across the United States and world. To reduce infectious risk to patients and providers, and conserve critical resources such as personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and intensive care (ICU) beds most states in the U.S. enacted a temporary ban on elective surgery from March through May 2020.

The ban has resulted in a backlog of uncompleted procedures that had been scheduled over this three-month period, as well as a dynamic backlog of surgeries that continue to be delayed as the health system experiences diminished capacity. The problem is that the elective in elective surgery is largely a misnomer, serving only to distinguish between emergent care and non-emergent care. While elective implies optional, most elective surgical cases fall somewhere between vital preventative measures (e.g. screening colonoscopy) and essential surgery (e.g. cataract removal). Ample literature across surgical specialties demonstrates worse patient outcomes and higher costs when these treatments are delayed.

Together, these factors have resulted in an astounding number of patients failing to receive the medical attention they need. (One recent study predicts that the post-pandemic backlog will exceed one million cases for spinal fusions and joint replacements in the field of orthopaedic surgery alone.) This anticipated demand in combination with health providers decreased capacity will likely result in creation of wait lists and potentially worsened health impacts on patients.

Now that most states have lifted restrictions on elective surgery, hospital leaders across the country have been rushing to implement ramp up strategies. Covid-19 exposed that healthcare systems have been largely unprepared to deal with this shut down and ramp-up. In addition to addressing the growing patient backlog, the motivation to restart elective surgery includes tempering revenue shock from decreased surgical volume, a substantial contributor to the margin of hospitals and medical centers. In fact, deferment of medical care has a broader impact on the national economy, as approximately half of the annualized 4.8% U.S. GDP decline in the first quarter of 2020 is attributed to health care services, especially delayed elective procedures.

While there are many good reasons to ramp back up quickly, it is important that speed does not overtake strategy. Restarting elective surgery haphazardly may result in unintended consequences. Ambiguous policies and procedures for scheduling and distributing resources across elective surgical cases can create bottlenecks that impede overall hospital operations. Ramp up strategies that do not prioritize equitable access to care may inadvertently favor patients with socioeconomic privilege, reinforcing existing disparities in access and quality. For example, racial and ethnic minority patients have historically had lower rates of elective operations such as knee replacement and the Covid-19 pandemic may result in further reduction in access to health care for minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.

As clinicians and health care leaders work to address the backlog and treat new patients in ways that are consistent with the clinical, financial, and ethical goals of their organizations, they need a more systematic approach. Developing this approach now is beneficial for the current state of health care and may be beneficial in potential future surgical suspensions as well.

Here we suggest five strategies that health care leaders can employ today to meet their clinical objectives, while aiming for better operational efficiency and equity in access to care:

Develop consistent, transparent, and bias-aware algorithms for surgical prioritization.Since elective surgeries were given the green light to proceed in May of this year (though some states are reversing course on this decision), most health systems have introduced broad, rudimentary guidelines for surgical prioritization. However, the prioritization decision in many cases is left to individual surgeons or a small group of health leaders who use their personal heuristics or preferences for decision making. A consistent and transparent prioritization framework has generally been missing from these efforts.

To address their growing backlog, a gold-rush mentality has emerged among surgeons and surgical groups who are vying for operating room (OR) blocks based on first-come, first-served and loudest voice wins methods. This mentality can unfortunately lead to tribalism among different surgical specialties, with each group trying to expand their footprint and claim more surgical resources (e.g., OR time, surgical beds, and ICU beds). This local-optimization approach is not in the best interests of the health systems and may put patients of less vocal surgeons at risk.

A prioritization framework that is ethics-driven and takes into account the values of multiple stakeholders is necessary to maximize patient benefit and minimize Covid-19 exposure. One potential silver lining of Covid-19 has been a growing acceptance among clinicians and health care leaders of digital transformation. This change in attitude may help facilitate algorithmic approaches to surgical prioritization.

There are already algorithms being developed to auto-prioritize patients in real-time. For example, one such prioritization algorithm, being developed through work at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative, is inspired by multi-criterion decision analysis and considers three types of factors: surgical risk factors (e.g., patient age, surgical urgency), capacity requirement factors (e.g., OR time, PPE consumption, ICU bed requirements), and Covid-19 risk factors (e.g., Covid-19 status, case transmission risk, and Covid-19-specific comorbidities), in order to provide consistent, systematic prioritization decisions among the population of patients in need of elective surgery.

Of course, such algorithms must be keenly aware of potential biases to ensure they narrow, rather than widen, existing disparities in access to care across patient groups. Regardless of the specific algorithm adopted, these tools will need to be transparent, consistent, and bias-aware.

Expand surgical capacity by transitioning to outpatient care.Transitioning care from historically inpatient to outpatient settings may aid in expanding surgical capacity through decentralization of care from hospitals to less-intensive care centers or physician office settings. These lower-acuity outpatient settings may increase patient throughput and result in streamlined and focused care given the capacity-constrained, resource-intensive hospital setting.

Fields such as ophthalmology and dermatological surgery have long embraced this strategy and done so successfully. For instance, dermatologists treating skin cancer are able to perform Mohs micrographic surgery whichcombines tumor removal, complete margin evaluation using frozen section histopathology, and advance reconstruction techniques all in one visitusing local anesthesia in an outpatient office suite. Covid-19 has illustrated the value for more traditionally hospital-anchored surgical specialties to venture into these spaces for lower-acuity cases.

Accomplishing this shift would require lobbying state legislators to waive certificate-of-need requirements that have been historical roadblocks in the use of ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). Further, health systems are frequently reimbursed by insurance companies at higher rates for the same patient care delivered in a hospital vs. in an ASC. Renegotiating contracts to achieve better rates in the ASC setting may both boost the health systems financial viability and provide improved access for patients.

Form dedicated teams to improve operating room efficiency. A patient does not expect to have their hernia repair performed by their orthopaedic surgeon. Yet, when it comes to the surgical staff, specifically OR nurses and surgical technicians, the same care team members often work on cases covering a variety of surgical specialties. Frequently, the expectation from the hospital and surgical leadership is that staff should cross-train to work interchangeably with a diverse range of surgical teams. Though intended to pool limited resources and ease staffing constraints, these traditional models can generate significant inefficiency within the OR. A particular surgical technician may not be as familiar with a given surgery and thus hinder surgical efficiency compared to a seasoned technician who is experienced in the same type of surgery. This lack of familiarity and pressure to master-it-all may also increase the risk of error.

In response to revenue losses from Covid-19, hospitals leaders may be tempted to cut their workforce and focus on cross-training and deploying a smaller pool of staff more broadly. Yet, in light of the operational challenges post-pandemic, doing so may prove self-handicapping as hospitals move forward. Substantial research shows dedicated OR teams helps increase throughput, lower error rates, reduce waste, and improve satisfaction among team members. Strengthening dedicated teams can help hospitals achieve a speedy recovery to pre-pandemic efficiency levels.

Think beyond the traditional five-day work week. Disease progression does not pause on the weekends. Yet, most hospitals run ORs only from Monday through Friday, reserving weekends slots for emergencies. The obvious rationale for this is workforce scheduling. However, expanding scheduling can improve equitable access for patients, especially those struggling to take time off work for their elective surgery, and flexibility for staff who may be facing challenges with childcare or other responsibilities at home.

As surgery restarts in the wake of Covid-19, it is clear that OR slots are a major bottleneck. A quick win for many hospitals working through their elective surgical backlog would be to expand access to OR time on the weekends. Expansion does not mean that any given surgeon or perioperative team member works seven days a week, but that providers and patients are allowed the flexibility of performing surgical cases on the weekends. In addition to immediately expanding operating room capacity and increasing equity in access to care, this solution will decompress the weekday schedule and allow for better social distancing.

Focus on simplifying patients surgical care experience. Ultimately, the prime focus of healthcare ought to be improving patients quality of life. Unfortunately, the pandemic has resulted in significant fear of catching the virus by going to the hospital, leading many patients to avoid seeking health care. Health care leaders ought to design strategies that make patients lives easier such that seeking care does not feel like an undue burden. For instance, telemedicine has expanded substantially in response to the pandemic and has proven to be a powerful means to connect with patients and families. Even as clinics start to reopen, we should continue to leverage telemedicine for preoperative counseling and clearance to continue to offer the incredible convenience it entails.

At the same time, an unfortunate consequence of the pandemic has been increased unemployment amid the economic downturn. Historically, a major problem in health care has been price opacity. Patients frequently have to jump through multiple hoops to get an estimate of out-of-pocket cost. While not all aspects of cost are predictable, simplifying this process to provide median expected out-of-pocket costs with confidence intervals may instill confidence and allow for better planning for patients and families.

One strategy that may improve patient experience is to deploy dedicated surgical navigators employed by the health system who help patients with logistical planning and provide critical financial and clinical information. This individual could assist with preoperative appointments and requisite workup including Covid-19 testing, telemedicine logistics, day-of-surgery arrival and drop-off details, and postoperative care coordination. Thinking carefully about the patient experience and designing strategies to ease some of these challenges can go a long way in increasing patient care outcomes and satisfaction.

The disruptions due to Covid-19 provide an opportunity to rethink many aspects of health care. To avoid a haphazard ramp-up and address the large surgical backlog, it is important to adopt strategies that are operationally efficient and ethically sound. Certainly, these issues are multifaceted, and require solutions that draw from multiple stakeholder communities and disciplines. We are optimistic that a dedicated community of professionals can come together to address these challenges and restore high-quality surgical care to those in need.

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Covid-19 Created an Elective Surgery Backlog. How Can Hospitals Get Back on Track? - Harvard Business Review

AHIP’s John Mathewson is shaping the association’s strategic planning, focus on equity – FierceHealthcare

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

John Mathewson, Chief Operating Officer, Americas Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)

Age:61

Education: He earned a masters in health services administration fromGeorge Washington University with a concentration in policy, planning and marketing. He has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Howard University.

About him:Mathewson serves as chief of staff, head of business operations, and helps to drive AHIPs strategic planning. Before joining the association in 2018, he held several leadership roles for a variety of healthcare groups including health insurance providers, hospital and home care companies. He also served as executive vice president of strategy and operation for the HSC Foundation & Health Care System, an integrated health system and health plan for young people with disabilities. In addition, he had roles at Cigna and Kaiser Permanente in commercial markets and national accounts.

Today, hes shaping AHIPs focus on equity and diversity, impacting the nearly 1 million employees and millions of patientsserved by AHIP members.Forget incrementalism and try to go legendary by putting on your cape, turning on your superpowers, and those of others, he said.

In the last year, he helped lead AHIPs Project Link, a social determinants of health program that outlines best practices for the health insurance industry. In addition, he expedited turning the annual AHIP Institute & Expo 2020 into a full virtual format due to COVID-19 and expanded association webinar offerings.

First job:After college, I worked in the clinical laboratory as a medical technologist before moving into marketing, and, later,management. I had a great boss and many others who sponsored me along the way.

Accomplishment hes most proud of:First and foremost, being a husband, and the dad of an awesome daughter who is a scholar athlete. Also, he said, he's groomed multiple direct report leaders that later ascended to the C-suite and top leadership roles.

Problem hes most passionate about trying to solve: Generating a vibrant economy based on the social determinants of health in the midst of COVID and major unemployment across the nation. Also, ensuring that there is diverse leadership in healthcare across boards, C-suites, the larger workforce, and suppliers to help create a more equitable healthcare system.

Book he recommends: Authentic Leadershipby Bill George. This book is one of many a leader needs and its even more relevant now as leaders must rely on their deep, personal resolve to successfully address COVID-19 and pervasive health inequities," he said.

Advice he would you give his younger self:Dream bigger. Dreams are 100% free and you can never fail. Find your lifes work and learn to laugh a lot. Try to do something legendary, at least once," he said.

What hed do with his career if it wasnt this:He said hecant imagine a career that didnt follow his desire to impact millions of people in a positive way. Hed like to serve as a venture capitalist that does something industry changing, such as creating a new category or sector that further helps stimulate and grow the social determinants of health economy.Its inclusive and equitable throughout its infrastructure and redefines health as a better resource for living. It reaches urban streets, main streets, cul de sacs, and dirt roads.

Advice hed give to healthcare leaders seeking to make a real impact on the systemic problems of racism:Start with personal courage and resolve. Its impossible to emphasize enough how deeply strong leadership matters for this work. Find your greatest authenticity and use your courage to hear, learn and act decisively. Be brutally honest and act boldly, overcoming your fears.

He also emphasizes that the journey takes everyone in the room, so make allies from every spectrum.We all know its a marathon and wont be fixed today or tomorrow, but start anyway and find the fuel to not stop.

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AHIP's John Mathewson is shaping the association's strategic planning, focus on equity - FierceHealthcare

Canada should support Taiwan’s admission to the CPTPP – iPolitics.ca

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

The COVID-19 pandemic has uprooted much of the globalized system of trade and has challenged the viability of key international institutions. At this uncertain time, what is needed now, more than ever, is co-operation between like-minded countries with shared values and priorities to rebuild better systems of trade and international governance.

In this context, its in Canadas interest to support Taiwans efforts to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

As the COVID-19 crisis has proven, many countries are very dependent on trade to secure crucial medical supplies, such as personal protective equipment (PPE). However, with much of the worlds PPE manufactured in China, importing countries were plagued with quality control issues, lack of access, threats of restricted access, and other concerns.

OPINION: Lessons on handling the COVID-19 outbreak from Taiwan

Clearly, the health and well-being of all people, including Canadians, requires a better system of trade that is less dependent on bad actors. Rather than turn to isolationism or inefficient self-reliance, democracies must find better solutions to work more closely with one another on trade so as to satisfy shared needs.

Enter Taiwan.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Taiwan has ramped up its production of PPE and other medical supplies quickly, placing it in the fortunate enough position to act as a significant provider of the crucial material. This includes the donation of 1.7 million masks and other PPE items to Canada, as well as direct support from Taiwan to help develop Canadas domestic mask-manufacturing capacity.

By integrating Taiwan into agreements like the CPTPP, Canada could stand to reduce its trade reliance on countries that do not share the same values, instead placing its trust in a like-minded partner with a proven track record on trade. Such a move would further strengthen the rules-based, free, open, and multilateral trading system that is the basis for the global economy.

Moreover, the benefits of Taiwans ascension to the CPTPP go beyond the immediate crisis. Indeed, even if the world were not subject to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fundamental logic of including Taiwan in this important international partnership remains the same.

Compared to current CPTPP members, Taiwan has the fifth-largest economy. Adjusted for purchasing-power parity, Taiwans GDP per capita would be the third-largest of this group. Consistently, Taiwan ranks as among the best countries in the world in trade, investment, ease of doing business, economic freedom, and more. This means that Taiwans ascension to the trade partnership would be of significant multilateral benefit to all members.

Particularly for Canada, Taiwan makes sense as a trading partner. Taiwan manufactures precisely the kinds of high-tech products that Canada imports, and Taiwan imports precisely the kinds of high-quality commodities and natural resource-based products that Canada exports. From both import and export perspectives, strengthening this trading relationship would be of significant mutual benefit to both countries.

If Ottawa were to support Taiwans ascension to the CPTPP, it would hardly be acting alone. Japan and other major players have already indicated that expanding the pact to more Asian economies remains a priority. It is a sensible move with broad support within existing CPTPP members.

While the CPTPP ministerial meeting would touch on the issue of new members, Canada can help strengthen this important international trade partnership. In so doing, Canada could bolster economic diversification, reinforce access to key goods, and, ultimately, hasten the post-COVID economic recovery through the well-established economic benefits of free trade between free nations.

Supporting Taiwans ascension to the CPTPP is a win-win at a time when closer co-operation between democracies with shared values is desperately needed. It is our hope that we can count on Canadas support.

Winston Wen-yi Chen is the Representative at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the authors alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

The long-awaited IEEE standard that paves the way for more energy storage on a smarter grid – Energy Storage News

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

A newly released standard - IEEE 1547.1-2020 -creates nationally applicable guidance for distributed energy resource (DER) manufacturers on how grid support functions in their products will be tested. This paves the way for U.S. states to adopt more modern interconnection requirements for DERs on the grid, contributing to the grid modernisation that will be needed to support high levels of renewable energy and energy storage.

Brian Lydic ischief regulatory engineer at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), a US-based organisation which aims tobuildthe foundation for rapid adoption of clean energy and energy efficiency to benefit people, the economy and our planet.

As the grid evolves and more distributed energy resources (DERs), like solar and energy storage, are added, the dynamics of the grid are becoming more complex. As we look towards a future where renewable energy supplies a large proportion of electricity, new grid support functionality in DERs (including inverters) will be important to help ensure that the grid functions reliably.

In recent years, some U.S. states have begun to require that inverters with these functions (smart inverters) be used when connecting DERs to the grid (interconnection). Smart inverters can see information about the grid at their location (i.e. voltage and frequency) and can respond autonomously in ways that help maintain grid stability. However, to date there have been no test procedures that hardware manufacturers could look to for guidance on how smart inverters could comply with a national standard, complicating the process of bringing compliant products to market.

A newly released, but long-awaited, standard from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)Standard 1547.1-2020establishes these testing procedures. This gives much needed certainty to manufacturers so they can create products they know will be compliant with requirements that are now being put in place by leading states adopting new national standards.

It also paves the way for more states to require grid support functionality for DERs connecting to the grid, because they can be confident that compliant products will soon be readily available. In this way, the release of IEEE 1547.1-2020, will contribute to progress on the grid modernisation efforts needed to support high levels of DERs including energy storage.

In this article, I explore the significance of the IEEE 1547.1-2020, the timeline for its implementation, and the status of state-level adoption of modern DER interconnection requirements enabled by this new development.

In April 2018, IEEE published base standard IEEE Standard 1547-2018, which laid out many sweeping changes to the technical rules of interconnection for DERs, compared to the previous version from 2003. The capabilities of modern equipment connecting to the grid had advanced substantially, especially for smart inverters which were adapting to higher penetration around the world, and IEEE 1547-2018 modernised interconnection requirements to reflect the need for these capabilities.

However, the test procedures for dealing with those new capabilities needed major revision before any equipment could be certified for the new standard. Product engineers typically rely to a large extent on the test procedures during the design phase to ensure the product they are building will pass the tests once the design is finalized.

On May 21, 2020, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published IEEE Standard 1547.1-2020, IEEE Standard Conformance Test Procedures for Equipment Interconnecting Distributed Energy Resources with Electric Power Systems and Associated Interfaces. This is the test standard for grid interaction for solar PV and battery storage inverters, as well as other DERs, based on the requirements of IEEE 1547-2018. That day had been long anticipated by states and utilities preparing to implement advanced or smart inverters (or doing so already).

Now that IEEE 1547.1-2020 is published, inverter and other equipment manufacturers can re-engineer existing products as needed, or design new ones to meet the requirements of IEEE 1547-2018. There is also now greater certainty for states and utilities working to adopt IEEE 1547-2018 because they have a clearer timeline for when they can expect certified products on the market.

Today, most U.S. states and utilities have yet to adopt DER interconnection requirements based on IEEE 1547-2018; most continue to use requirements based on the 2003 version. One reason for this is that it would be challenging to implement the new standard without certified compliant products (e.g. PV or storage inverters) on the market. Now, with the publication of IEEE 1547.1-2020, states and other stakeholders have a clearer picture of when they are likely to be available. This will help those working to adopt the new standard understand when it can actually be implemented.

PV and storage inverters and some other products are listed to the safety standard UL 1741, which requires grid interactive equipment to pass the tests in IEEE 1547.1. UL is preparing to publish updates to this standard in early August to reference the new tests in the 2020 version. After that, manufacturers will be able to certify inverters to the requirements of IEEE 1547-2018.

Note that in the past, updates to UL 1741 (the Standard for Inverters, Converters, Controllers and Interconnection System Equipment for Use with Distributed Energy Resources) have been given a grandfather period, typically 18 months, during which either the older or newer requirements may be used for product certification. This gives the manufacturers time to develop the products to meet the new requirements. However, this is the first time IEEE Standard 1547 has been revised, and with such major changes it is unclear how it will be adopted throughout the nation. For the time being, UL 1741 will leave the grandfather period open-ended and allow the manufacturer to certify to either the 2003 or 2018 requirements. Over time, once it is clear that most jurisdictions require the 2018 version of the standard, UL 1741 will be updated again to remove any reference to the old standard and manufacturers will have to meet the requirements of IEEE 1547-2018 moving forward.

Although UL will provide a grandfather period in which manufacturers may continue to use the older testing requirements for product certification, we may see products certified to the new standard before the end of 2020, with more coming to market in 2021 to meet requirements already in place in leading states.

It should be noted that UL has a supplement (UL 1741 Supplement SA) that defines some test procedures for advanced inverter functions similar to those now required by IEEE 1547-2018. These test procedures have been used by California, Hawaii and some other locations for certification of inverters since September 2017, in advance of IEEEs new standards being developed. IEEE 1547.1-2020 supplants most of the tests in Supplement SA, so inverters will not need to be tested to both sets of procedures. Most or all of the supplement will be removed from UL 1741 after the grandfather period has closed.

As the grid evolves and more distributed energy resources (DERs), like solar and energy storage, are added, the dynamics of the grid are becoming more complex. Image: 8minute Solar Energy.

Maryland updated its interconnection rules (Code of Maryland Regulations 20.50.09) this year with a requirement that DER systems must utilise inverters certified to IEEE 1547-2018 in order to be approved for interconnection to the grid starting January 1, 2022.

The Hawaiian utility Hawaiian Electric already required advanced inverters tested to UL 1741 Supplement SA, and has been working to harmonise its interconnection (Rule 14H) requirements with the new IEEE standard. They recently released inverter capability requirements, noting those which differ from IEEE 1547-2018 for frequency support due to the island nature of Hawaiis electric system (Source Requirements Document Version 2.0). Those requirements, in addition to the rest of IEEE 1547-2018, must be met for interconnections beginning January 1, 2022 as well. 3

This gives manufacturers about 19 months from the publication of IEEE 1547.1-2020 to be certified for those markets. This may be just enough time for many products to be certified.

Minnesota was the first state to undertake the significant lift of modernising its technical interconnection rules to reflect advanced grid support functionality now reflected in IEEE 1547-2018, helping to ensure that high levels of DERs can be integrated without adverse effects on the grid. Minnesota both created technical interconnection rules from scratch and adopted IEEE 1547-2018 in the process (State of Minnesota Technical Interconnection and Interoperability Requirements, or TIIR).

However, the state opted to wait to order implementation of elements of the TIIR that require IEEE 1547-2018 certified equipment until a later date when it is clear that such equipment is readily available on the market. This perfectly illustrates the significance of IEEE 1547.1-2020 in enabling states to move forward with modernising their interconnection requirements to enable a smarter grid with more renewables and energy storage.

Massachusetts utilities are currently at work developing proposals for adopting the interconnection requirements established in IEEE 1547-2018. This work is being led by a task force as part of their Technical Standards Review Group (TSRG). It is envisioned that the proposals will develop into revisions to the TSRGs Common Technical Standards Manual, but no specific date is yet targeted for implementation.

California is just beginning its efforts to harmonise its interconnection requirements (Rule 21) with IEEE 1547-2018. Since Rule 21 already contains advanced inverter requirements, Californias Smart Inverter Working Group (which helped create the requirements) will convene to determine how to revise Rule 21 and transition to utilizing IEEE 1547-2018. It is anticipated that revisions to Rule 21 will be submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission in February 2021. Determining the implementation date for the new requirements will be part of that process.

Now that a fully developed national standard exists (IEEE 1547-2018, paired with the testing procedures in IEEE 1547.1-2020), there is a standard that all states can adopt. This means that individual states will no longer have to undertake the arduous process of developing their own requirements, as California did. The national standard has caught up to where forward-looking states were heading on their own.

Now that equipment certification for IEEE 1547-2018 requirements is available through IEEE 1547.1-2020, the stage is set for more states and utilities to adopt these modernised interconnection requirements that will enable greater DER deployment in the long term. The publication of IEEE 1547.1-2020 provides greater clarity on the realistic timeline for implementation. Over the next year or so we will get a better picture of the developing market for products certified to the new standard.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners adopted a resolution [2]recommending that states adopt the current IEEE 1547; and align implementation of the standard with the availability of certified equipment. If states were waiting for a starting gun for beginning the adoption and implementation of the new standard, the publication of IEEE 1547.1-2020 is exactly that.

Notes: [1]More information about Hawaiis implementation of IEEE 1547-2018 can be found on Hawaiian Electrics Customer Energy Resource (CER) Equipment page.

[2] Resolution recommending state commissions act to adopt and implement DER standard IEEE 1547-2018

Cover Image Credit: GlidePath.

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The long-awaited IEEE standard that paves the way for more energy storage on a smarter grid - Energy Storage News

Tawazun to create satellite assembly, integration and testing center – SpaceWatch.Global

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

The Center will be based at the NSSTC facilities in Al Ain, with Airbus supporting NSSTC during the design, outfitting and commissioning of the facility. Airbus will also manage the procurement, installation and operational qualification required for the equipment. The collaboration was established and facilitated by Tawazun as part of its important role as an industry enabler dedicated to driving a collaborative defense and security ecosystem, securing and progressing technology development, and building national competencies and skills within the UAE.

This is our second project after Yahsat, and there are many more projects to come, as Tawazun works to further develop the UAE space sector, said Matar Ali Al Romaithi, Chief Economic Development Officer of Tawazun. The UAE is building and acquiring the knowledge required to become a regional hub for space activities and advanced research and development. This Center is an integral part of those plans and consequently Tawazun has worked to make sure that it operates as a sustainable resource for the next five to seven years with a view to becoming permanent.

We also value the significant contribution that Airbus is making to the Centers sustainability, as well as to the increase and development of our Emirati resource and expertise. NSSTC will accumulate critical knowledge from Airbus through this project, and our national competencies and skills will increase significantly, added Al Romaithi.

The space industry is an important and strategic sector for the UAE, as it enables the development of high-level skills and drives innovation, said Mikail Houari, President Africa and Middle East, Airbus.

Airbus remains committed to supporting the advancement of all key elements of the UAEs aerospace industry. For many years, we have worked closely in partnership with the nations leading industrial entities to help create new technological solutions and provide global expertise and experience to local talent. This new collaboration will support the future growth of the UAEs space and satellite sector, contributing to the countrys economic diversification strategy. It will also support the continued efforts around Emiratisation, which will be vital for ensuring long-term sustainable development of the sector, added Houari.

Currently the UAE space sector has provided 3,000 jobs at 50 space related entities, five space research and development centers and three universities offering space degrees. This new project will create 32 new jobs (at least 22 of whom will be UAE nationals) with significant know-how transfer and training being conducted at Airbus facilities in France as well as locally.

Saeed Ahmed Ghobash Chancellor of the United Arab Emirates University emphasised the importance of the scientific research collaboration with Tawazun, which he says is aligned to the vision and strategic direction of the University. The NSSTC is an entity created by the UAE University alongside the UAE Space Agency, and Chancellor Ghobash said that UAEU has established a credible standing and reputation among national, regional and international institutes because of its continued strive for excellence.

This is in line with the vision of the UAE government, achieving the goals of the national agenda through the implementation of contemporary, sustainable developmental projects, said Ghobash, UAEU possesses distinctive scientific and technical capabilities that enable it to keep abreast of global trends in applied scientific research, the fourth industrial revolution, the requirements of artificial intelligence, and space science and technology. The universitys work contributes to the development of a knowledge and digital based economy.

Part of the mandate for NSSTC was to develop satellite AIT capability, and it is a pleasure to form this partnership with Tawazun and Airbus to achieve that very objective, said Dr Khaled Al Hashmi, Director of NSSTC. The UAE will soon have a fully autonomous AIT satellite capability, and this will benefit the countrys satellite programs as well as further enhancing space-related skills within the country. The NSSTC will become the center where the knowledge that Airbus has imparted will come together to support the UAE space sector.

The UAE Space Agency is funding the first two projects that will be completed under the management and operation of NSSTC. The first project will be a satellite that will augment navigational capabilities for the UAE and the second will be the Arab 813 Satellite; a project announced by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai. Both projects are currently underway with the support of Airbus and will be completed at the new facilities.

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Tawazun to create satellite assembly, integration and testing center - SpaceWatch.Global

[What’s Next in Communications Technology?] Defining the Boundaries of Communications – Samsung Newsroom India

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Communication is about sharing information with others. The evolutions of communications technology has enabled us to be more connected than ever before, meaning that information can be shared anytime and anywhere.

In mobile communication, a business with a well-established global ecosystem, from equipment manufacturers to telecommunications operators, common rule is essential to keeping the ecosystem moving forward collaboratively. This is where the process of standardization comes in, which sets internationally agreed-upon standards to give users access to better products and services at lower prices. A representative example demonstrating the benefits of international standardization is the global roaming service, which allows users travelling to foreign countries to use their mobile devices as they are.

Standardization is one of main driving forces behind the growth of the mobile communication industry since a new generation has been introduced once every decade. Large-scale investments into mobile communication have been triggered when each new generation of communications is commercialized, explained Dr. Han. When certain countries or companies run their businesses with proprietary solutions, the risk of failure increases. This means that the chance of success can increase only when the stakeholders of the mobile communication ecosystem come together to define the most relevant technologies and discuss aspects like implementation early enough. Determining communications standards and developing products following these standards is an equitable process, noted Dr. Han. These standards are crucial.

Standardization is two-fold: the de jure standards obligated by regulators and the de facto standards established by the global communications industry which, while not compulsory, specify unified ways of operation for stakeholders around the world to follow. The Standards Research team of Samsungs Advanced Communications Research Center oversees both standards.

For example, in order to utilize the extremely high frequency band (mmWave) for 5G, de jure standardization is a prerequisite for the commercialization of any device using the band, which includes assigning a set of frequency bands to mobile communication, setting regulated conditions such as maximum transmission power and out-of-band emission, and ensuring its safety for the human body and existing devices, explained Dr. Han. We are also simultaneously developing protocol technologies and working on de facto standardization to include these technologies into the standards by participating in standards developing organizations such as 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). Dr. Han emphasized that both de jure and de facto standards are equally important.

Frequency bands are a limited resource. It is inevitable that different parties will clash over acquiring such an in-demand resource, which is why each frequency band is already allocated to a specific purpose, e.g. fixed communications, mobile communication, broadcasting, satellite, or other uses. The extremely high frequency band adopted for 5G was an unexplored territory from the perspective of mobile communication. When Samsung initially proposed it, there was pushback at first.

Standards experts are supposed to take the initiative of reserving such new spectrums for the mobile communication industry. By stressing mobile communications contribution to the economy, we managed to persuade the governments of each country, and attracted more supporters by showing them the feasibility of applying this extremely high frequency band to mobile communication, recalled Dr. Han. We actively presented many details to justify our claim, including the simulation results of a coexistence study. As a result, we were able to have this extremely high frequency band assigned to 5G.

There is no almighty judge when it comes to fairly determining which technology among many candidates should be selected as a part of the standard. Moreover, any technology has its own pros and cons, said Dr. Han. There is a decision-making process inherent to standardization. Proposals are first made by companies, intensive and technical debate on each proposal then follows, and participants finally build a consensus to reach a conclusion. We have to avoid sticking to our own interests. Instead, we are trying to communicate with other stakeholders to find the best way forward based on an understanding of the industry as a whole. When we take care of the ecosystem, proposals that we develop to make it healthy and sustainable will be supported by the majority as a result.

Similar to the role of the diplomat, standardization experts participate in global standardization conferences and will there represent their company or their country. They are expected to be the best in their own field. As we are contending at the forefront of these international discussions, technical competitiveness is the key requirement for Samsung delegates, explained Dr. Han. Therefore, in our projects, anyone who is most competitive in a certain area is designated as the champion of the area, regardless which team he or she belongs to.

4G is a communications technology designed to enable the wireless broadband service for smartphones. In particular, 4G as a universal communications platform aggressively adopted the Internet protocol that was popularly used in past wired packet communications. Therefore, many Internet-based services could easily migrate to cellular systems. 5G, then, is designed to expand its territory from the broadband service for smartphone users to vertical markets including the smart factory, automobile, healthcare, private network, smart city, and more. 4G as a universal solution led to a huge growth of the communications market. On the other hand, 5G aims to create new markets based on its new design principle of customizable networks to fulfill the specific requirements of a particular industry sector.

To realize the innovations that 5G has promised, Dr. Han and his team have been working on Rel-16, the second version of 5G. Rel-15, the first version of 5G, laid a new framework for the technology and focused on how to provide differentiated experiences to conventional customers, i.e. smartphone users, noted Dr. Han. We joined the global collaboration to develop Rel-16 in order to realize the 5G vision. Rel-16 introduces and enhances 5Gs features for vertical markets. For example, V2X1 is for connected cars, industrial IoT communications is for smart factories and the data analytics function has been improved for network AI.

Even though 5G has been commercialized, the standardization of 5G for further enhancements will never stop. Until the launch of 6G, the 5G standard will continuously evolve in order to improve and expand 5G. As soon as we concluded the development of 5Gs second version, we immediately began work on the third version, Rel-17, commented Dr. Han. We have discovered some areas to improve commercial 5G networks with, including coverage expansion and NR-MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output). These will be amended and enhanced in the upcoming versions. Furthermore, we will continue to discover new features to add in order to enable new 5G applications. Innovations we are looking at include media delivery for AR glasses-type devices and edge computing enablers for low latency services from cloud servers close to users.

Samsung is constantly pushing the boundaries of 5G in order to bring its unique experiences to users. One key characteristic of 5G is its ultra-low latency, brought about by its nine-tenths latency reduction in the radio access link between terminal and base station as compared to the previous generation. In order for users to experience the quality of ultra-low latency services, the end-to-end latency between the user terminal and the cloud server should be reduced. Samsung believes that edge computing will solve the rest of this puzzle, this being latency reduction in the backbone network, by placing the server closer to users. Thanks to 5G and edge computing, users will finally be able to enjoy 5Gs signature service on their devices.

The link between a device and its server was out of 3GPPs scope, said Dr. Han. But it is also hard for other standards organizations who are not experts in 5G to develop the standard for edge computing without a complete understanding of 5G systems. Due to this difficulty, attempts were made to develop edge computing-enabled communication using proprietary solutions which would lead to serious market fragmentation. Samsung initiated discussions on edge computing inside 3GPP and persuaded other participating companies. We are now leading the standardization effort for enabling edge computing in 5G systems as one of the key items of Rel-17.

In 2009, Samsung began the early stages of 5G research with the question of how can we improve cellular networks to be 10 times better than 4G LTE? Samsung will continue to develop further enhanced technologies for the future of 5G. Samsung plays various key roles in the influential standardization organization for mobile communications and leads those standards and related technologies, explained Dr. Han. Based on our perseverance for over 10 years in this field, we will overcome whatever obstacles we encounter and will make 5G a big success.

Dr. Han began working in this field because when he was a student, he was extremely curious about who made standard specifications, the ground rules that were akin to a communications bible. And today, he is leading the team shaping the future of communications with standards. What resolution has he set?

When we worked on LTE standards, we did not even expect that the term LTE, back then only used by selective standard engineers, would become a common and popular term, noted Dr. Han. This experience reminded me that the technologies we create can change the world and the daily lives of people. We are also aware of high expectation from 5G that we have developed. I firmly believe that our work will benefit the world.

Dr. Han is also working on promoting Samsungs 6G vision to inspire people in this field. In the future, the main customers in the communications market wont just be human, but will include robots and other machines, too, explained Dr. Han. People will start to enjoy hyper-connected experiences and be able to explore reality in a virtual world without temporal or spatial constraints. 6G will present fundamental technologies for such innovations. We will begin communicating with stakeholders as per Samsungs 6G White Paper, published on July 14. Our 5G experience and the insights captured in our 6G vision will help us prepare for the long journey toward another success story with 6G.

Moreover, the sustainable growth of society and the communications industry will be key considerations for shaping 6G.

[What's Next in Communications Technology?] Defining the Boundaries of Communications - Samsung Newsroom India

Government of Canada invests in Saskatchewan Indigenous businesses and communities – Canada NewsWire

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

As we walk the road of reconciliation together, the federal government remains strongly committed to creating economic opportunities for Indigenous businesses and communities.

Government of Canada supports Saskatchewan Indigenous Economic Development

In celebration of this important day, Terry Duguid, Parliamentary Secretary to the Honourable Mlanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages, and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada(WD), today announced $895,000 in funding to support initiatives that aim to bring culturally-relevant programming for Indigenous peoples to fully participate in the economic growth of Saskatchewan.

Delivered by WD, this funding will support two made-in-Saskatchewan projectsled by Indigenous communities, businesses, and organizations in the region. It will create good local jobs and spur entrepreneurship and career development by helping the Ya'thi Nn Land and Resource Office develop training and employment opportunities for residents of northern Saskatchewan affected by the slow-down of uranium mining in the Athabasca Basin. Funding will also support the Gabriel Dumont Institute Training and Employment Inc. to build on a successful entrepreneurship pilot program focused on Mtis entrepreneurs in Saskatchewan.

Quotes

"True reconciliation means supporting Indigenous communities and businesses by providing opportunities for their success. This investment from WD will do just that helping Indigenous business people to seize opportunities, helping Indigenous organizations deliver important local projects and supporting Indigenous communities on their path to self-sufficiency and prosperity. I'm excited to see the difference that this investment will make for Indigenous communities across Western Canada."

-The Honourable Mlanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada

"Our government is making strategic investments to help communities and businesses capitalize on economic development and growth opportunities and kick-start the country's economy. Indigenous small- and medium-sized businesses exemplify the ingenuity and drive that is at the core of the region's entrepreneurial spirit."

-Terry Duguid, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada

Quick Facts

Associated Links

Stay ConnectedFollow the department on Twitter: @WD_Canada

WD Toll-Free Number: 1-888-338-WEST (9378) TTY (telecommunications device for the hearing impaired): 1-877-303-3388

Backgrounder: Western Economic Diversification Canada's investments support Indigenous skills development and jobs in Saskatchewan

As we walk the road of reconciliation together, the Government of Canada remains strongly committed to creating economic opportunities for Indigenous businesses and communities.

The Government of Canada, through Western Economic Diversification Canada (WD), is investing $895,000 to support Saskatchewan Indigenous communities.

Indigenous-focused projects supported by WD

Gabriel Dumont Institute Training and Employment Inc. $745,000Build on a successful entrepreneurship pilot program focused on Mtis entrepreneurs in Saskatchewan. The intent is to train 350 individuals, while creating 20 jobs and completing 13 community-based projects. The funds will also help in the creation or expansion of 100 Mtis-owned businesses.

Ya'thi Nn Land and Resource Office $150,000Create training and employment opportunities for residents of northern Saskatchewan affected by the slow down of uranium mining in the Athabasca Basin. The intent is to train 50 Indigenous participants while creating 25 jobs. Training will be tailored to employment opportunities available in northern Saskatchewan such as health, trades, hospitality and aviation.

SOURCE Western Economic Diversification Canada

For further information: Alexander Cohen, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages, [emailprotected]; Rhonda Laing, Director, Policy, Planning and External Relations, Western Economic Diversification Canada, [emailprotected]

http://www.wd.gc.ca/

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Government of Canada invests in Saskatchewan Indigenous businesses and communities - Canada NewsWire

COVID-19 in Illinois updates: Heres whats happening Monday – Chicago Tribune

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Illinois public health officials on Monday announced 1,319 new confirmed case of COVID-19 and one additional death.

The numbers came after the statewide count surpassed 2,000 in Illinois for two straight days on Friday and Saturday. The state has now reported 195,399 cases overall and 7,637 confirmed deaths.

Starting Monday, Illinois renters who have been unable to pay their rent due to coronavirus-related financial difficulty can apply for one-time grants of $5,000 through a new state program and relief for homeowners is next.

In the last few months, research has evolved from the early days of the coronavirus, when it was shown that wearing masks protected others youre with, Pritzker said. Now, study after study after study has shown us that if you wear a mask, it protects you too.

Heres whats happening Monday with COVID-19 in the Chicago area and Illinois:

3:33 p.m.: CPS will reduce funding for school resource officers by half and wont pay for police while schools are closed for remote learning

With the campaign to end school police only gaining traction since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Chicago Public Schools introduced a budget Monday that would cut in half funding for school-based officers.

CPS had a $33 million contract with the Chicago Police Department for the previous school year. But in the coming year, the school district will no longer pay $7.5 million for 48 officers on mobile school units and will receive at least $10.5 million in credit for remote learning days, when officers arent assigned to schools, according to CPS budget documents.

CPS CEO Janice Jackson said the cost will be pro-rated based on the number of days of in-school instruction. Remote learning will continue in CPS for at least the first quarter of the school year.

(Updated: 1:04 p.m.) 12:08 p.m.: 1,319 new known COVID-19 cases, 1 additional death

The Illinois Department of Public Health on Monday reported 1,319 newly-confirmed cases of coronavirus and one additional death, raising the statewide totals to 195,399 known cases and 7,637 deaths since the pandemic began.

The seven-day statewide positivity rate as of Sunday was 4.1%, and as of Sunday night, 1,481 people in the state with COVID-19 were hospitalized. Of those patients, 352 were in an intensive care unit and 138 were on ventilators.

The daily tally of new cases reported on Sunday was slightly higher 1,382 after two consecutive days of daily case counts that reached past 2,000.

On Monday, the state reported 32,353 tests conducted during a 24-hour period.

Daily test totals were higher over the previous few days the department reported on Sunday more than 41,000 tests conducted over the previous 24 hours.

On Saturday, the state reported 48,016 tests during a 24-hour period, as well as 2,190 newly-confirmed cases that day. And on Friday, the state reported 46,869 tests during a 24-hour period and 2,084 newly-confirmed cases of COVID-19.

12:18 a.m.: Big Ten officials are nearing a decision on college football, but no votes have been taken at this time

With the Big Ten football season on life support, some players are speaking out on social media using #WeWantToPlay.

But they face long odds, especially if Dan Patricks reporting is true.

The longtime radio/TV host said Monday that based on information he received, the Big Ten and Pac-12 will cancel their seasons Tuesday. The ACC and the Big 12 are on the fence, and the SEC is trying to buy time to see if it can play.

11:46 a.m.: Wisconsin-based Epic Systems backpedals, makes return to office voluntary amid coronavirus concerns

Epic Systems has told its employees they will not be required to return to in-person work on Monday at the health care records company based in Wisconsin.

11:14 a.m.: Chicago Public Schools proposes $8.4 billon budget for 2021 as it copes with financial impact of COVID-19

Chicago Public Schools is proposing an $8.4 billion budget for the 2021 school year, according to budget documents released Monday.

Despite the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, CPS expects revenues to increase this year, in large part because of substantial levels of federal emergency relief funding to cover emergency expenses and offset previously anticipated revenue increases that will not materialize, the district said.

The greatest funding stream continues to be local property taxes, which are based on the prior years assessments.

Yet that outlook still does not elevate the districts revenue collection enough to provide students with everything they need, and CPS would still require more than $1.9 billion in additional state funding in order to fully fund schools based on the states assessment, according to CPS.

10:27 a.m.: This has been our busiest year: Crowded Lake County beaches struggle to maintain social distancing

Social distancing is becoming a challenge at Lake Countys beaches as crowds are getting larger after a hot July, and beaches are becoming smaller because of rising Lake Michigan water levels.

Lakefront beaches from Illinois Beach State Park, which stretches from the Wisconsin state like to the northern end of Waukegan, to Highland Park are adjusting their regulations to contend with the coronavirus pandemic and visitors from Chicago where beaches remain closed.

Officials at the state beach as well as in Waukegan, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest and Highland Park all said visits to their beaches are more frequent this summer and harder to accommodate because of pandemic-related social distancing.

10:26 a.m.: Around the world, the pandemic is wrecking Class of 2020s hopes for landing a first job

Around the world, young people armed with new degrees, diplomas and professional qualifications are struggling to enter the workforce as the pandemic pushes the global economy into recession. COVID-19 has thwarted hopes of landing first jobs important for jump-starting careers as employers cut back graduate recruiting plans or even revoke job offers.

The latest U.S. job numbers Friday underscored the murky outlook: 1.8 million jobs were added in July, a sharp slowdown in employment growth from the month before. It means the worlds biggest economy has regained just 42% of jobs lost to the coronavirus.

9:45 a.m.: Illinois renters can apply for $5,000 grants to cover unpaid rent due to COVID-19 starting today and homeowners are next

Illinois renters who have been unable to pay their rent due to coronavirus-related financial difficulty can apply for one-time grants of $5,000 through a new state program beginning Monday and relief for homeowners is next.

The state will give $300 million in rent and mortgage grants this fall to people impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, offering one-time grants of $5,000 for tenants and $15,000 for homeowners. The programs, administered by the Illinois Housing Development Authority, are funded through federal money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed earlier this year.

Applications for renters are available until Aug. 21. Homeowners can apply for grants Aug. 24-Sept. 4.

6 a.m.: COVID-19 shutdowns create mad dash for ACT, SAT spots as college application season looms

When it has come to getting a standardized test score during the onslaught of COVID-19, fate has been cruel to Illinois rising high school seniors. They werent able to take the SAT at their schools in April, and many ACT sittings were canceled over the spring and summer after test sites, mostly schools, closed their doors.

That led to a mad dash last week as aspiring test-takers swamped ACTs website trying to reserve a spot this fall. ACT officials wont say how many were left in the cold, but judging by social media chatter, the number could be considerable.

Two hours in queue, one parent wrote on ACTs Facebook page. When (I) got my turn ALL September seats in Illinois and neighboring states are TAKEN. First available date is December!!! Whoever is the genius who came up with this solution should be looking for a new job.

The bedlam is happening even as colleges seek to assure applicants that standardized test scores will be optional this year. About 350 have made that declaration since the start of the pandemic, including big names such as Northwestern, Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

But parents and students interviewed by the Tribune dont buy it. Theyre still convinced the lack of a good score will be a disadvantage at a competitive school.

Stay up to date with the latest information on coronavirus with our breaking news alerts.

Here are three things that happened this weekend related to COVID-19.

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COVID-19 in Illinois updates: Heres whats happening Monday - Chicago Tribune

Ethereum – Wikipedia

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Open source blockchain computing platform

Ethereum Logo

Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency platform by market capitalization, behind Bitcoin.[1][2] It is a decentralized open source blockchain featuring smart contract functionality. Ether is the cryptocurrency generated by Ethereum miners as a reward for computations performed to secure the blockchain.[3] Ethereum serves as the platform for over 260,000 different cryptocurrencies, including 47 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.[4][5]

Ethereum provides a decentralized virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes.[6] The virtual machine's instruction set, in contrast to others like Bitcoin Script, is Turing-complete. "Gas", an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.[6]

Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer. Development was funded by an online crowdsale that took place between July and August 2014.[6] The system then went live on 30 July 2015, with 72 million coins minted.[7][8] This accounts for about 65 percent of the total circulating supply in April 2020.[9][10][non-primary source needed]

In 2016, as a result of an exploitation of a flaw in The DAO project's smart contract software, and subsequent theft of $50 million worth of ether,[11] Ethereum was split into two separate blockchains. The new separate version became Ethereum (ETH) with the theft reversed,[12] and the original chain continued as Ethereum Classic (ETC).[13]

Ethereum is currently developing and planning to implement a series of upgrades called Ethereum 2.0.[14] Current specifications for Ethereum 2.0 include a transition to proof of stake and an increase in transaction throughput using sharding technology.[15][16]

Vitalik Buterin picked the name Ethereum after browsing Wikipedia articles about elements and science fiction, when he found the name, noting, "I immediately realized that I liked it better than all of the other alternatives that I had seen; I suppose it was the fact that [it] sounded nice and it had the word 'ether', referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel."[17]

Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin,[18] a programmer and co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications.[19][20] Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed the development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.[6]:88

Ethereum was announced at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, in January 2014.[17] During the same time as the conference, a group of people rented a house in Miami: Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, and Anthony Di Iorio, a Torontonian who financed the project.[17] Di Iorio invited friend Joseph Lubin, who invited reporter Morgen Peck, to bear witness.[17] Six months later the founders met again in a house in Zug, Switzerland, where Buterin told the founders that the project would proceed as a non-profit. Hoskinson left the project at that time.[17]

Ethereum has an unusually long list of founders. Anthony Di Iorio wrote "Ethereum was founded by Vitalik Buterin, Myself, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, & Amir Chetrit (the initial 5) in December 2013. Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, & Jeffrey Wilke were added in early 2014 as founders." Formal development of the Ethereum software project began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse).[21][22]The basic idea of putting executable smart contracts in the blockchain needed to be specified before the software could be implemented; this work was done by Gavin Wood, then chief technology officer, in the Ethereum Yellow Paper that specified the Ethereum Virtual Machine.[23]Subsequently, a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum), was created as well. Development was funded by an online public crowdsale during JulyAugust 2014, with the participants buying the Ethereum value token (ether) with another digital currency, Bitcoin.

While there was early praise for the technical innovations of Ethereum, questions were also raised about its security and scalability.[19]

In 2019, an Ethereum foundation employee named Virgil Griffith was arrested by the US government for presenting at a blockchain conference in North Korea.[24]

In March 2017, various blockchain start-ups, research groups, and Fortune 500 companies announced the creation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) with 30 founding members.[25] By May, the nonprofit organization had 116 enterprise membersincluding ConsenSys, CME Group, Cornell University's research group, Toyota Research Institute, Samsung SDS, Microsoft, Intel, J. P. Morgan, Cooley LLP, Merck KGaA, DTCC, Deloitte, Accenture, Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, ING, and National Bank of Canada.[26][27][28] By July 2017, there were over 150 members in the alliance, including recent additions MasterCard, Cisco Systems, Sberbank and Scotiabank.[29][30]

Several codenamed prototypes of the Ethereum platform were developed by the Ethereum Foundation, as part of their Proof-of-Concept series, prior to the official launch of the Frontier network. "Olympic" was the last of these prototypes, and public beta pre-release. The Olympic network provided users with a bug bounty of 25,000 Ether for stress testing the limits of the Ethereum blockchain. "Frontier" marked the tentative experimental release of the Ethereum platform in July 2015.[31]

Since the initial launch, Ethereum has undergone several planned protocol upgrades, which are important changes affecting the underlying functionality and/or incentive structures of the platform.[32][non-primary source needed]

Protocol upgrades are accomplished by means of a hard fork.

The Ethereum Difficulty bomb is the difficulty of the blockchain mining algorithm puzzle which began increasing in November 2016, from block 200,000. The onset of the Difficulty Bomb is referred to as Ethereum's Ice Age, as the Ethereum network started the transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). A difficulty bomb was scheduled in February 2019 but was pushed back by developers.[33]

In 2016 a decentralized autonomous organization called The DAO, a set of smart contracts developed on the platform, raised a record US$150 million in a crowdsale to fund the project.[34] The DAO was exploited in June when US$50 million in Ether were taken by an unknown hacker.[35][36] The event sparked a debate in the crypto-community about whether Ethereum should perform a contentious "hard fork" to reappropriate the affected funds.[37] As a result of the dispute, the network split in two. Ethereum (the subject of this article) continued on the forked blockchain, while Ethereum Classic continued on the original blockchain.[38] The hard fork created a rivalry between the two networks.

After the hard fork related to The DAO, Ethereum subsequently forked twice in the fourth quarter of 2016 to deal with other attacks. By the end of November 2016, Ethereum had increased its DDoS protection, de-bloated the blockchain, and thwarted further spam attacks by hackers.[unbalanced opinion?][citation needed]

Development is underway for a major upgrade to the Ethereum platform, known as Ethereum 2.0.

The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade (also known as Serenity) is designed to be launched in three phases:

Ethereum 2.0 has five main design goals:

As with other cryptocurrencies, the validity of each Ether is provided by a blockchain, which is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography.[41][42] By design, the blockchain is inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.[43] Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum operates using accounts and balances in a manner called state transitions. This does not rely upon unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). The state denotes the current balances of all accounts and extra data. The state is not stored on the blockchain, it is stored in a separate Merkle Patricia tree. A cryptocurrency wallet stores the public and private "keys" or "addresses" which can be used to receive or spend ether. These can be generated through BIP 39 style mnemonics for a BIP 32 "HD Wallet". In Ethereum, this is unnecessary as it does not operate in a UTXO scheme. With the private key, it is possible to write in the blockchain, effectively making an Ether transaction.

To send the Ethereum value token Ether to an account, you need the Keccak-256 hash of the public key of that account. Ethereum accounts are pseudonymous in that they are not linked to individual persons, but rather to one or more specific addresses.

Ether is a fundamental token for operation of Ethereum, which thereby provides a public distributed ledger for transactions. It is used to pay for gas, a unit of computation used in transactions and other state transitions. Mistakenly, this currency is also referred to as Ethereum.

It is listed under the ticker symbol ETH and traded on cryptocurrency exchanges, and the Greek uppercase Xi character () is generally used for its currency symbol. It is also used to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the Ethereum network.[44]

Ethereum addresses are composed of the prefix "0x", a common identifier for hexadecimal, concatenated with the rightmost 20 bytes of the Keccak-256 hash (big endian) of the ECDSA public key (the curve used is the so-called secp256k1, the same as Bitcoin). In hexadecimal, 2 digits represent a byte, meaning addresses contain 40 hexadecimal digits. An example of an Ethereum address is 0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce839613fffba74279579268. Contract addresses are in the same format, however, they are determined by sender and creation transaction nonce.[45] User accounts are indistinguishable from contract accounts given only an address for each and no blockchain data. Any valid Keccak-256 hash put into the described format is valid, even if it does not correspond to an account with a private key or a contract. This is unlike Bitcoin, which uses base58check to ensure that addresses are properly typed.

Ethereum is different from Bitcoin (the cryptocurrency with the largest market capitalization as of August 2020) in several aspects:

The total supply of Ether was around 110.5 million as of 16 April 2020. In 2017, mining generated 9.2 million new ether, corresponding to a 10% increase in its total supply. Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG), which is a hybrid Proof of Work and Proof of Stake scheme, and Casper Correct-By-Construction (CBC), a separate Proof of Stake design of Casper, are expected to reduce the inflation rate to between 0.5% to 2%.[citation needed] There is no currently implemented hard cap on the total supply of ETH.[46]

Ether can be traded by regular currency brokers, cryptocurrency exchanges, as well as many online cryptocurrency wallets.[47]

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the runtime environment for smart contracts in Ethereum. It is a 256-bit register stack, designed to run the same code exactly as intended. It is the fundamental consensus mechanism for Ethereum. The formal definition of the EVM is specified in the Ethereum Yellow Paper.[45][48] Ethereum Virtual Machines have been implemented in C++, C#, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Rust, Elixir, Erlang, and soon, WebAssembly (currently under development).

Ethereum's smart contracts are based on different computer languages, which developers use to program their own functionalities. Smart contracts are high-level programming abstractions that are compiled down to EVM bytecode and deployed to the Ethereum blockchain for execution. They can be written in Solidity (a language library with similarities to C and JavaScript), Serpent (similar to Python, but deprecated), LLL (a low-level Lisp-like language), and Mutan (Go-based, but deprecated). There is also a research-oriented language under development called Vyper (a strongly-typed Python-derived decidable language).

Smart contracts can be public, which opens up the possibility to prove functionality, e.g. self-contained provably fair casinos.[49]

One issue related to using smart contracts on a public blockchain is that bugs, including security holes, are visible to all but cannot be fixed quickly.[50] One example of this is the 17 June 2016 attack on The DAO, which could not be quickly stopped or reversed.[35]

There is ongoing research on how to use formal verification to express and prove non-trivial properties. A Microsoft Research report noted that writing solid smart contracts can be extremely difficult in practice, using The DAO hack to illustrate this problem. The report discussed tools that Microsoft had developed for verifying contracts, and noted that a large-scale analysis of published contracts is likely to uncover widespread vulnerabilities. The report also stated that it is possible to verify the equivalence of a Solidity program and the EVM code.[51]

Ethereum apps are written in one of seven different Turing-complete languages.[52] Developers use the language to create and publish applications which they know will run inside Ethereum. The stablecoins Tether and DAI [53], and the prediction market Augur are examples of applications that run on Ethereum.[54][55]

Many uses have been proposed for the Ethereum platform, including ones that are impossible or unfeasible.[56][44] Use case proposals have included finance, the internet-of-things, farm-to-table produce, electricity sourcing and pricing, and sports betting. Ethereum is (as of 2017) the leading blockchain platform for initial coin offering projects, with over 50% market share.[57]

Ethereum-based customized software and networks, independent from the public Ethereum chain, are being tested by enterprise software companies.[58] Interested parties include Microsoft, IBM, JPMorgan Chase,[44] Deloitte,[59] R3,[60] Innovate UK (cross-border payments prototype).[61] Barclays, UBS and Credit Suisse are experimenting with Ethereum.

Ethereum-based permissioned blockchain variants are used and being investigated for various projects.

In Ethereum all smart contracts are stored publicly on every node of the blockchain, which has costs.[66] Being a blockchain means it issecure by design[clarification needed]and is an example of a distributed computing system with highByzantine fault tolerance. The downside is that performance issues arise in that every node is calculating all the smart contracts in real time, resulting in lower speeds.[66] As of January 2016, the Ethereum protocol could process about 25 transactions per second.[66] In comparison, the Visa payment platform processes 45,000 payments per second leading some to question the scalability of Ethereum.[67] On 19 December 2016, Ethereum exceeded one million transactions in a single day for the first time.[68]

Ethereum engineers have been working on sharding the calculations, and the next step (called Ethereum 2) was presented at Ethereum's Devcon 3 in November 2017.[69]

Ethereum's blockchain uses Merkle trees, for security reasons, to improve scalability, and to optimize transaction hashing.[70] As with any Merkle tree implementation, it allows for storage savings, set membership proofs (called "Merkle proofs"), and light client synchronization. The Ethereum network has at times faced congestion problems, for example, congestion occurred during late 2017 in relation to Cryptokitties.[71]

Decentralized Finance is a fast growing use case of Ethereum.[72] It offers traditional financial instruments in a decentralized architecture, outside of companies and governments control, such as money market funds which let users earn interest.[73] This economic model is based on supply and demand DeFi assets such as DAI, Compound, WBTC and others. There is still uncertainty of its future because of the lack of regulation.[74]

On social governance

Our governance is inherently social, people who are more connected in the community have more power, a kind of soft power.

Vlad Zamfir, Ethereum core developer, The New Yorker[17]

In October 2015,[75] a development governance was proposed as Ethereum Improvement Proposal, aka EIP, standardized on EIP-1.[76] The core development group and community were to gain consensus by a process regulated EIP.[citation needed]

Izabella Kaminska, the editor of FT Alphaville, pointed out in 2017 that criminals were using Ethereum to run Ponzi schemes and other forms of investment fraud.[77] The article was based on a paper from the University of Cagliari, which placed the number of Ethereum smart contracts which facilitate Ponzi schemes at nearly 10% of 1384 smart contracts examined. However, it also estimated that only 0.05% of the transactions on the network were related to such contracts.[78]

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Ethereum - Wikipedia

Ethereum (ETH) price, charts, market cap, and other …

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

What Is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a smart contract platform that enables developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) on its blockchain. Ether (ETH) is the native digital currency of the Ethereum platform.

Ethereum is supported in part by the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit that is part of the larger Ethereum ecosystem including enterprise Ethereum consortiums like the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance.

Vitalik Buterin first conceptualized Ethereum in 2013 with the idea of developing an open-source blockchain platform different from Bitcoin (BTC), thus pioneering smart contracts. On the Ethereum blockchain, a smart contract behaves like a self-operating computer program that automatically executes when specific conditions are met. Blockchain allows smart contracts code to be run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.

The Ethereum network went live on July 30, 2015, with 73 million Ether pre-mined.

Ethereum mining is currently based on a proof-of-work (PoW) protocol (like Bitcoin), with future plans to switch to proof-of-stake. Ethereum mining works when miners use their computational power to solve a mathematical problem (finding the hash of a blocks unique header metadata). The first miner to successfully solve the problem (find the hash) then broadcasts that the block has been mined to the entire Ethereum network for other nodes to validate and add the block to the blockchain.

The Ethereum blockchain was supposed to migrate from a PoW system to the less energy-investive proof-of-stake system (PoS) system in January 2020, but the deadline was not met. A switch to PoS and the release of Ethereum 2.0 is still expected for later in 2020.

Ethereum mining is based on the Ethash algorithm, and ETH miners originally received a block reward of 5 ETH per block when the network first went live. In the end of 2017, the Byzantine hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain lowered the block rewards from 5 ETH to 3 ETH. In early 2019, the reward was again lowered to 2 ETH in what is known as the thirdening.

The Ethash proof-of-work protocol makes it not profitable to use ASICs to mine (unlike Bitcoin). Each Ethereum block aims to take an average of 12 seconds to be mined, and the level of difficulty of mining is proportional to the total amount of computer power (or networks hashrate) being used to mine Ethereum.

Ethereum transactions are called gas and they are responsible for powering operations on the entire network, meaning you have to spend your gas (Ether) in order to make changes to the blockchain. Ethereum also has a Turing complete internal code.

The Ethereum platform is used by developers to build new kinds of DApps, which can have a variety of uses ranging from the creation of new digital assets and uncensorable web apps to building decentralized autonomous organizations and more. Anyone around the world is able to freely connect to the Ethereum network.

Ether, the native currency of the Ethereum blockchain, is also used as digital money and can be sent to anyone in the world instantly. Ether can be used as a form of payment or a store of value.

If you are not mining the Ethereum blockchain (which can be prohibitively expensive unless you are a professional miner), you can buy Ethereum on a cryptocurrency exchange. For the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our market pairs tab. Make sure to do your own research before choosing an exchange. You can also store your Ether on an exchange or a hot or cold wallet.

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Ethereum (ETH) price, charts, market cap, and other ...

Analyst picks top-5 altcoins, predicts correction for Ethereum and Bitcoin – Crypto News Flash

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Source: Phongphan - Shutterstock

In a new video on the state of the crypto market, trader and analyst Michal van de Poppe shared his possible scenarios for the coming days. The analyst advised his audience not to fall in FOMO (Fear-of-Missing-Out) for altcoins that have moved strongly in the last days.

The trader first concentrated on some tokens from the Ethereum DeFi sector. With exorbitant profits, these tokens can be a huge opportunity for investors but also for a total loss. As an example van de Poppe cited BAND of the Band Protocol. As can be seen in the chart below, BAND has experienced a significant increase in a short time. The trader explained that the chances that BAND and other tokens with similar gains will continue the upward trend are low, at least in the short term:

Bringing a coin into this area is completely idiotic. If you want to take over the trade in this area, better donate the money to a charity and dedicate yourself to something else. (For BAND trading) I am more interested in a longer delay (in price) as we saw in the last price increase.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Gmljp7CQNz0&feature=emb_logo

The analyst stated that he is more interested in other coins such as Celer Networks CELR. He believes that CELRs performance indicates an upcoming rally. Comparing the current state of CELR with the state of BAND before the massive increase shown above, Michal said:

Celer Network is showing a clear volume accumulation, which is showing that people are interested in this asset We see that we are above the 100-day and 200-day (moving average) for the first time since the listing. So were getting into the bull territory for the first time since it has been listed.

Van de Poppe predicts an increase of the price of Celer Networks token in the CELR/BTC pair towards 200 Satoshis which would represent an increase of 140%. Additionally, the analyst believes that Harmonys ONE has similar indicators to CELR. In the ONE/BTC pair, the currency is priced at around 80 Satoshis with the potential for a parabolic increase of 110% towards 180 Satoshis.

The trader also advised investors to keep their eyes on the MANA token of Decentraland and the ALGO token of Algorand. According to Michal, these tokens could have increases close to 100% if they manage to maintain their current support levels.

In a video titled Ethereum And Ripple: Where To Buy The Dip? van de Poppe also states that he expects a setback for ETH and XRP. According to him, ETH will reach 280 dollars while he recommends investors to wait until this level before taking a long position. He also expects that XRP will also go down after reaching $0.32. Van de Poppe determined as possible support level at $0.28 or $0.24 before establishing a long position.

Finally, the van de Poppe referred to the Bitcoin price (BTC) and stated that the cryptocurrency should turn the resistance level of $12,000 into support. Otherwise, he expects a drop to $9,800. Below you can see Crypto Michals full analysis:

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Analyst picks top-5 altcoins, predicts correction for Ethereum and Bitcoin - Crypto News Flash

Ethereum (ETH) is Reestablishing itself as the #1 Dapp Platform – Ethereum World News

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Danzig

Quick take:

The DeFi boom of 2020 has had a positive impact on the Ethereum network in more ways than one. According to the Q2 DeFi 2020 report by DappRadar, the Ethereum ecosystem has been the major beneficiary of the increased interest in Decentralised Finance. The report explains that:

2020 has been the year of DeFi. With the emergence of liquidity mining, the sector has seen a flood of investor and user capital as well as developer interest

TheEthereum ecosystem has been the main beneficiary of the DeFi wave, but key competitors are now looking to replicate its success on their own network.

The team at DappRadar further concludes that due to DeFi, Ethereum has managed to re-establish itself as the number one Dapp platform in the industry. This is despite the fact that ETH2.0 yet to be fully implemented.

The number two blockchain has re-established itself as the number one dapp platform in the industry. Despite concerns surrounding scalability and skyrocketing transaction costs,Ethereum has been at the center of user and developer activity in DeFi.

Further checking the progress of the DeFi industry via DeFiPulse.com, it can be observed that over $4.5 Billion in total value is locked in Decentralized Finance.

Of this amount, 4.3 Million ETH is being utilized on these platforms. The latter figure is up by 800,000 ETH since mid-July indicating the continual use of Ethereum to participate in yield farming that is the centerpiece of DeFi.

Taking a brief look at the market performance of Ethereum, we find that ETH is currently consolidating between the $365 support zone and the $400 resistance level. With Bitcoin struggling to keep its value above $11,700, the fate of Ethereum rests with the ability of BTC to remain bullish or to experience some form of sideways movement.

As with all analyses of Ethereum, traders and investors are advised to have an eye out for any sudden Bitcoin movements that might affect their ETH positions. Additionally, stop losses and the use of low leverage is advised during uncertain times.

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Ethereum (ETH) is Reestablishing itself as the #1 Dapp Platform - Ethereum World News

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