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Monthly Archives: July 2021
Celsius and Horizen Release zkAudit – the First and Only Fully Decentralized and Privacy-Preserving Audit Blockchain – PRNewswire
Posted: July 18, 2021 at 5:31 pm
LONDON, July 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Celsius, the leading global cryptocurrency yield-earning platform and the blockchain building technology company HorizenLabs have launched zkAudit, a fully decentralized and independent proof-of-reserve blockchain built on the Horizenplatform. This is the first and only privacy-preserving automated blockchain-based audit system on the market that doesn't require any third-party validators.
zkAudit is built to solve the inefficiency and lack of transparency in traditional auditing processes. By leveraging Horizen's scalability and sidechain protocol, Zendoo, with zk-SNARK privacy technologies, zkAudit can secure, verify, and validate proof of community assets in the Celsius network in near-real-time without relying on third-party validators. Sensitive data will be encrypted by Horizen Labs' zero-knowledge toolkit, making use of transaction data without revealing the underlying data itself. This provides transparency while preserving the privacy of Celsius' customers.
"Traditional double entry auditing processes are slow and lack transparency. The process of auditing happens at the end of the year and can take months from inception to completion and rely on one to two auditing firms and trusting their information is accurate," said Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network. "zkAudit enables triple entry audit by using the blockchain and making auditing transparent and removes the need for the slow antiquated process of traditional auditing. We're thrilled to collaborate with Horizen Labs in this endeavor to bring Proof of Community to life and set the standard for transparency in blockchain finance."
zkAudit is the first major milestone in the Horizen and Celsius partnership announced in November 2020. During the initial phase of the partnership, the two projects introduced the proof of concept of building Celsius' own entirely decentralized environment and enabling the existing functionality available on the network through Horizen's scaling and sidechain solution, Zendoo.
"This is a major milestone for both Horizen and Celsius," stated Rob Viglione, Horizen co-founder and CEO of Horizen Labs. "We are thrilled to work together to disrupt traditional audit by leveraging zero-knowledge proofs and Horizen's Zendoo. I'm confident that zkAudit is going to change how the world does auditing."
This proof of reserve blockchain is offered by Horizen Labs as an integration-ready blockchain that can be utilized by any company.
"zkAudit is a perfect example of how other projects can utilize the open ledger technology with zero knowledge privacy technology to verify information without relying on any third parties while preserving privacy," said Alberto Garoffolo, Engineering Director of Horizen and CTO of Horizen Labs. "We built zkAudit to be fully programmable and flexible for seamless integration into existing systems."
About Horizen
Launched in 2017, Horizenis the most secure and scalable interoperable blockchain platform that enables the deployment of their own public or private blockchains on the largest multi-tiered node network. With its unique scaling and sidechain solution, Zendoo, Horizen provides all necessary components for an easy and fast deployment of a fully programmable blockchain. For more information, visit horizen.io.
About Horizen Labs
Founded in 2019, Horizen Labs provides the most efficient and cost-effective ways to create blockchain solutions for real-world usage while ensuring information integrity and data privacy, without compromising both scalability or security.Horizen Labs' proprietary blockchain deployment tools allow users to create blockchain solutions leveraging Horizen's robust and secure public blockchain platform with enhanced privacy features, low transaction fees, and configurable revenue models. For more information, visit horizenlabs.io
About Celsius
Celsius helps hundreds of thousands of consumers worldwide to find the path towards financial independence through a compounding yield service and instant low-cost loans accessible via a web and mobile app. Built on the belief that financial services should only do what is in the best interest of the customers and community, Celsius is a blockchain-based fee-free platform where membership provides access to curated financial services that are not available through traditional financial institutions. For additional information please visitwww.celsius.network.
CONTACT: Brianna Herlihy, [emailprotected]
SOURCE Celsius Network
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Why it’s incredibly rare for women-led companies to IPO – Fast Company
Posted: at 5:31 pm
Earlier this year, Whitney Wolfe Herd made history when she became the youngest female founder to take her company public. She rang the Nasdaq bell dressed in a bright yellow power suit, a hat tip to Bumbles signature colorwhile holding her toddler son, a hat tip to the millions of women who have been working from home with kids crawling all over them during the pandemic. Women like me.
This image stands out not just because of the bright yellow suit and the baby in hand, but also because of how extremely rare someone like Wolfe Herd is. More than 2,000 companies went public in the U.S. between 2013 and 2020. But only 18 of them were led by a female founder and CEO.
This stark statistic is itself a consequence of who gets funded. Venture capital provides the dollars that fuel companies from two guys (yes, guys) in a basement to ringing the stock exchange opening bell. And while billions of dollars are invested in the space every year, just over 2% of those go to female-founded companies.
This shocking number is also a consequence of who does the funding. According to data from Women in VC, only 4.9% of U.S.-based VC partners are women, and fewer than half (2.4% of the total) are founding partners who control an outsize proportion of a firms investment decisions. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently reported that across all asset classes less than 1% of $70 trillion in global financial assets are managed by minority-owned or women-owned firms.
So if less than 0.01% of all U.S. IPOs are led by female founders, and this is partly because only 2.3% of VC dollars go to female founders, which itself is partly because only 2.4% of VC founding partners are women, it begs the question:
Why arent more women starting VC funds?
If you go by what you read, by and large they are. Hundreds of new microfunds, many of them led by women and underrepresented investors, are popping up and making waves. But the noise is not yet the signal: The Women in VC report from 2020 found that only 5.6% of U.S. venture funds had at least one female founding partner. Jessica Peltz-Zatulove, cofounder of Women in VC, estimates that there are fewer than 1,000 women in the entire world who are founding VC partners. Thats half as much as the number of people who get killed by lightning in the world every year.
Raising a VC fund is hard for most people. You need grit, business and financial acumen, specialized knowledge of the space, access to dealflow, excellent storytelling skills, and the ability to negotiate and close deals over time without pissing people off. Most important, raising a VC fund requires money and access.
The traditional route to starting a venture fund requires a certain level of financial independence and an extensive network of prospective investors, says Martina Welkhoff, managing partner at WXR Fund.
Mainstream VC funds are funded by limited partners (LPs), typically large institutions and ultrahigh net worth individuals, each of whom invests up to hundreds of millions of dollars at a time. But these institutions want to see a funds trajectory before they invest, so the bulk of these dollars are not available to new fund managers. Whats more, these investors are not easily discoverable. You have to have an in.
Weve been friends with a few incredible women emerging managers who had impressive returns, several exits, and some top Silicon Valley founders in their portfoliosand still were facing challenges while pitching to LPs, says Sophia Platt, founding partner at the Bridge, a conference that connects emerging managers with potential investors. Some of these women take 60-plus meetings a week but still struggle to close small proof-of-concept funds.
Emerging funds are more likely raised from individual investors each contributing a relatively small amount. You need dozens, if not hundreds, of wealthy individuals willing to take a chance on you when nobody else is. For people who are not already well connected and wealthy, this exercise is daunting.
For underrepresented funders, it is the convergence of unconscious/conscious bias and a perceived lack of relevant experience which makes breaking into VC and raising a fund from the ground up difficult, says Cat Hernandez, partner at the Venture Collective (TVC) and general partner at TVC Momentum Fund. The biggest challenge, by far, is deeply integrating yourself into networks of high net worth individuals and family offices.
A number of initiatives have sprung up to address this gap. For instance, tech executive and Community Fund general partner Lolita Taub launched a matchmaking tool to help other emerging managers connect with like-minded LPs. If GPs meet with the right-fit LPs, magical things can happen like launching a fund, she says.
Platt and her cofounder, Emna Ghariani, are attempting to connect the dots at scale through the Bridge. Our mission is to create the worlds largest ecosystem for women fund managers and prospective investors in their funds, says Ghariani. The two Bridge conferences so far have resulted in more than 400 fund-investor matches and nine successful investments. The cofounders are aiming to double those numbers with the next Bridge conference this summer.
The goal is to get these women fundedto put them in front of prospective investors who they could never access otherwise, Platt says. We give opportunity to anybody who has the ambition, the skill, and the track record to raise a VC fund.
Leslie Feinzaig is the founder and CEO of the Female Founders Alliance.
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Why it's incredibly rare for women-led companies to IPO - Fast Company
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Mycorrhizal fungi helped plants make the transition from water to land Read now – Massive Science
Posted: at 5:30 pm
What would an RNA molecule today have to say about the origins of life? We live in a world where cellular life is dominated by DNA, but this wasnt always the case. The Origins of LifeAgain is a speculative look at the future from the perspective of an RNA molecule if she was able to take agency for her own destiny. Instigated by an NSF funded project that is using synthetic biology to investigate the origins of life RNA imagines a future based on the past, one that leads to insight on RNA-based viruses, the limits of fully synthetic genomes, and potential extraterrestrial life.
We have synthesized functional genomes of viruses, bacteria and simple celled organisms, but are we able to replicate life that no longer exists on this planet? Before DNA became indispensable to cellular life, there was an RNA world in which RNA performed all the functions, produced all the proteins necessary for transmission, replication, and evolution, aka life. RNA can even do the work of proteins...without proteins. Creating an RNA-based organism in the lab that self-replicates would shed light on how we transitioned into our DNA-based world.
This is exactly what our RNA character is investigating as she shuns her repetitive messenger job within the DNA factory to engineer her own likeness. RNA is inspired by the past - a rollercoaster world full of possibilities as a way to build a new future. Can RNA create an entirely new form of life using new rules, and what does that mean for biology?
If successful, this will (hypothetically?) be the first time in billions of years that cellular life with an RNA chromosome will grace the surface of the Earth. Fully synthetic genomes, including artificial genomes that go beyond what could evolve in known life, will enable us to answer questions about lifes origins and to extend the rules that set lifes limitations.
To animate is to bring to life and animation is a lot like synthetic biology both have near infinite creative capacity under the guidance of a few rules and certain tools. To match the transformative potential of the research, we took a meta angle and wondered what life itself would think of the origins of life. In creating a figurative universe its possible to envision new hypotheses and subvert traditional metaphors within synthetic biology. Metaphors always break down at some point, and the more radical a proposal, the quicker they crumble.
The original research project delves into the cultural aspect of science from the outset and includes an ethics and rhetoric component, pieces to be explored in future animations.
Presented by The Johns Hopkins University.
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Mycorrhizal fungi helped plants make the transition from water to land Read now - Massive Science
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Who Were the First People to Live in the Bay Area? – KQED
Posted: at 5:30 pm
Most of what we now know as the Bay Area was Ohlone territory, from Vallejo down to Monterey, including San Francisco and the Peninsula. "Now within that, there's at least 54 independent nations," Medina says. While these groups share some things in common, they speak many different languages; Medina speaks one called Chochenyo.
Other groups around the Bay Area include the Miwok Coast Miwok people along the shoreline of Marin County, and Bay and Plains Miwok further up the Delta as well as Patwin and Wappo.
As for where the term Ohlone comes from, Medina says there are a few explanations:
"Sometimes people will say that it comes from the name of one of those smaller nations I was describing on the San Francisco Peninsula, but we have another explanation for that in our family here in the East Bay. We believe it comes from the Miwok term which means 'people of the west.' "
The record is spotty, but humans were definitely here before the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago and back then the place was not a windswept tundra. The weather was mild, and the low sea level meant the coast was miles further west than today. Whats now the bay was more like a lush river valley.
The first people we know of living here probably enjoyed abundant seafood, says Kent Lightfoot, an anthropology professor at UC Berkeley with expertise in California archaeology.
"The earliest people we have really good archaeological records of," Lightfoot says, "were maritime peoples, seafaring peoples who had boats and who had come down the coast."
It's possible another wave of migrants came in to hunt the mammoths and mastodons that roamed the Bay Area around this time. While Lightfoot says there's not great evidence of this, it wouldn't surprise him.
Over the next several thousand years, sea levels rose. The ice age megafauna vanished, but a tremendous array of wildlife remained including the now-extinct California grizzly bear.
During this period, the people here came to use bows and arrows rather than spears to hunt animals like elk. And they learned to process acorns into a kind of porridge. They also used grass-like tule reeds for everything from building structures and boats to crafting baskets and nets for fish.
Malcolm Margolin, an author and publisher who has written extensively about the native peoples of California, says the shellmounds that can still be found in the region are a hallmark from this age.
"By the time the first Europeans came, the bay had about 400 shellmounds around it. These shellmounds were accumulations of earth, of shells, of ashes from fires, of refuse and burials," Margolin says. Some were around 300 feet in diameter and three stories high and would've taken generations to build up long enough for their use to gradually shift with time. Perhaps some generations used them as ritual places, others for dwelling, he says.
Today, many shellmounds have become the sites of shopping centers and parking lots. And there are ongoing legal disputes and protests over this type of development. Perhaps the best surviving example of a shellmound is in Coyote Hills Regional Park, but that one is only open to the public on certain occasions.
It's a sad but familiar story: Waves of colonizers came to the Bay Area and killed nearly all the native people living here. Survivors had to give up their land and their way of life.
Margolin calls the genocide "an attempt to erase people," saying, "I think Europeans had no use for Indians. I think they had a sense of them as inferior beings. What they saw were people that didn't have the right clothes, that didn't have the right manners. They didn't have the right religion."
Bay Curious is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, NPR One or your favorite podcast platform.
The devastation came in three waves, starting about 250 years ago with the Spanish.
"The conquest was as cruel as it could be. Indians were drawn into the missions and many of them died either from disease or were killed outright," Margolin says.
Then, during the era of Mexican control that followed, native people were cut loose from the missions. With nowhere to return to, many were forced to work on ranches.
Mexico gave up rights to California at the end of the Mexican-American War. A few months after California became a state in 1850, the first governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, said to expect a "war of extermination" against native people.
"Our family experienced a lot of hardships that came with colonization too many hardships to ever really list," Vincent Medina says.
Through it all, Indigenous people like Medinas great-grandmother quietly preserved and passed on the traditions of their ancestors.
"When not everything could be carried on, one way that our family found to keep these things alive was through documenting them," Medina said. His great-grandmother and other elders wrote thousands of pages on history, language, religion and foods.
"My great-grandmother survived that time," Medina said. She got through it, and she still kept our culture close, passing on as much as she could to everybody in our family around her. And through those efforts that's how so many of us, including myself, grew up empowered with our culture."
Medina says at one point not a single person he knew spoke Chochenyo. But over the past several years, he and others have worked to resuscitate the language, using the documentation their elders left behind as a guide. Now a whole community is conversant.
That shows healing right there in action, Medina says. That shows how we can be able to have things back again that we might have not had a short time ago, but that we were always meant to have.
Medina works to make Indigenous culture more visible in other ways, too. He runs Cafe Ohlone recently relocated to UC Berkeley's Hearst Museum of Anthropology where the menu features shellfish, acorn soup and even acorn-flour brownies a hit with kids.
He's one person among many working to revive traditional dance, basketry and even making boats of tule reeds. He sees this as carrying forward a story that began a very, very long time ago.
"Knowing that were Indigenous here, that we were created here, it gives us that responsibility and that obligation to keep these teachings close with a lot of integrity and a lot of deep care and love," Medina says.
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Who Were the First People to Live in the Bay Area? - KQED
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Universal basic income would be ‘great opportunity’ for independence – The National
Posted: at 5:30 pm
THE introduction of a universal basic income (UBI) and freeing Scotland from a crazy system of welfare which generates poverty is one of the great opportunities forindependence, according to a leading campaigner.
Dr Simon Duffy, founder and director of The Centre for Welfare Reform, said political momentum was building internationally behind the idea of government guaranteeing a regular minimum income to every citizen and it was no longer considered weird.
Scotland has looked at the feasibility of piloting Citizens Basic Income, concluding it would be desirable but the powers to run such a scheme lie with Westminster.
The SNPs manifesto for the election this year pledged to work towards providing a minimum income guarantee so that everyone in Scotland has enough money to live a dignified life.
In May, Wales announced it would conduct an experiment to test the concept and success of UBI.
Duffy, who will speak at an event on UBI on Thursday organised by Voices for Scotland, said: Obviously Scotland has already showed great leadership in this field, but there is also a lot going on internationally.
Scotland is not alone, this is not very weird now. Mark Drakeford has committed to a pilot of basic income in Wales and all the political parties now in Northern Ireland either back basic income in full or the piloting of basic income.
It is quite exciting to see all of the places suddenly lift their head up and go we can imagine a better future, with all the wealth we have we dont need to leave people in poverty, we do not need to create this false sense of abject insecurity.
Duffy said the pandemic was a major factor in sparking interest in UBI, as well as longer-term issues such as vanishing job security.
It reveals how fundamentally insecure peoples basic economic position is, how most of us are only a few weeks from poverty, he said.
We just blithely carry on assuming everything is going to stay the same. Of course these kind of moments reveal that actually, very big shocks are possible.
He added: The longer term discussions which have ramped up over the last five to 10 years have been around automation, but in particular digitalisation.
Whats really under threat and I think this is why basic income is going to succeed is because it is going to threaten middle-class jobs, white collar jobs.
In August, international experts will virtually attend the Basic Income Earth Networks annual congress which is being organised from Glasgow.
Duffy said introducing UBI would be a huge opportunity for an independent Scotland.
He said: You end up with the opportunity to say this is what we are going to make sure everyone gets effectively the government will put this into your bank account and when you earn over and above that you will be taxed at a fair rate. That is the essence of what basic income delivers.
The Scottish Government is right to say it is very difficult to do it at the moment, other than in pilots, but we shouldnt confuse the trickiness in the current settlement with whats possible with independence or a radically different kind of Union.
Freeing Scotland from this kind of crazy Whitehall system which has been generating poverty for decades is one of the great opportunities for independence.
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Universal basic income would be 'great opportunity' for independence - The National
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Why the Anthony Bourdain voice cloning creeps people out – Associated Press
Posted: at 5:29 pm
The revelation that a documentary filmmaker used voice-cloning software to make the late chef Anthony Bourdain say words he never spoke has drawn criticism amid ethical concerns about use of the powerful technology.
The movie Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain appeared in cinemas Friday and mostly features real footage of the beloved celebrity chef and globe-trotting television host before he died in 2018. But its director, Morgan Neville, told The New Yorker that a snippet of dialogue was created using artificial intelligence technology.
Thats renewed a debate about the future of voice-cloning technology, not just in the entertainment world but in politics and a fast-growing commercial sector dedicated to transforming text into realistic-sounding human speech.
Unapproved voice cloning is a slippery slope, said Andrew Mason, the founder and CEO of voice generator Descript, in a blog post Friday. As soon as you get into a world where youre making subjective judgment calls about whether specific cases can be ethical, it wont be long before anything goes.
Before this week, most of the public controversy around such technologies focused on the creation of hard-to-detect deepfakes using simulated audio and/or video and their potential to fuel misinformation and political conflict.
But Mason, who previously founded and led Groupon, said in an interview that Descript has repeatedly rejected requests to bring back a voice, including from people who have lost someone and are grieving.
Its not even so much that we want to pass judgment, he said. Were just saying you have to have some bright lines in whats OK and whats not.
Angry and uncomfortable reactions to the voice cloning in the Bourdain case reflect expectations and issues of disclosure and consent, said Sam Gregory, program director at Witness, a nonprofit working on using video technology for human rights. Obtaining consent and disclosing the technowizardry at work would have been appropriate, he said. Instead, viewers were stunned first by the fact of the audio fakery, then by the directors seeming dismissal of any ethical questions and expressed their displeasure online.
It touches also on our fears of death and ideas about the way people could take control of our digital likeness and make us say or do things without any way to stop it, Gregory said.
Neville hasnt identified what tool he used to recreate Bourdains voice but said he used it for a few sentences that Bourdain wrote but never said aloud.
With the blessing of his estate and literary agent we used AI technology, Neville said in a written statement. It was a modern storytelling technique that I used in a few places where I thought it was important to make Tonys words come alive.
Neville also told GQ magazine that he got the approval of Bourdains widow and literary executor. The chefs wife, Ottavia Busia, responded by tweet: I certainly was NOT the one who said Tony would have been cool with that.
Although tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon have dominated text-to-speech research, there are now also a number of startups like Descript that offer voice-cloning software. The uses range from talking customer service chatbots to video games and podcasting.
Many of these voice cloning companies prominently feature an ethics policy on their website that explains the terms of use. Of nearly a dozen firms contacted by The Associated Press, many said they didnt recreate Bourdains voice and wouldnt have if asked. Others didnt respond.
We have pretty strong polices around what can be done on our platform, said Zohaib Ahmed, founder and CEO of Resemble AI, a Toronto company that sells a custom AI voice generator service. When youre creating a voice clone, it requires consent from whoevers voice it is.
Ahmed said the rare occasions where hes allowed some posthumous voice cloning were for academic research, including a project working with the voice of Winston Churchill, who died in 1965.
Ahmed said a more common commercial use is to edit a TV ad recorded by real voice actors and then customize it to a region by adding a local reference. Its also used to dub anime movies and other videos, by taking a voice in one language and making it speak a different language, he said.
He compared it to past innovations in the entertainment industry, from stunt actors to greenscreen technology.
Just seconds or minutes of recorded human speech can help teach an AI system to generate its own synthetic speech, though getting it to capture the clarity and rhythm of Anthony Bourdains voice probably took a lot more training, said Rupal Patel, a professor at Northeastern University who runs another voice-generating company, VocaliD, that focuses on customer service chatbots.
If you wanted it to speak really like him, youd need a lot, maybe 90 minutes of good, clean data, she said. Youre building an algorithm that learns to speak like Bourdain spoke.
Neville is an acclaimed documentarian who also directed the Fred Rogers portrait Wont You Be My Neighbor? and the Oscar-winning 20 Feet From Stardom. He began making his latest movie in 2019, more than a year after Bourdains death by suicide in June 2018.
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How much of a cut to social security benefits can you expect based on your age? – Yahoo Finance
Posted: at 5:29 pm
Come 2034, incoming revenues will be enough to pay about 76% of scheduled Social Security benefits, a 2020 Social Security Administration trustees report predicts.
Given that, how might different generations plan for this? Should they plan for a 24% decline in their scheduled benefit? Should they not factor Social Security benefits into their retirement income plan at all? Or might they do something else.
Though I think it far more likely that some combination of reforms will eliminate the need for cuts of the magnitude the trustees report suggests, people should be aware of the impact a cut would have on their overall financial situation, says Joe Elsasser, a certified financial planner and president of Covisum.
Contact your Congressional representatives and make sure they hear your concern that Social Security needs a solution. Use every tax-advantaged vehicle available to you. Learn to be a better investor so the savings you do have delivers more in the long run.
What are some of those reforms? Tax increases, benefit cuts or a combination of both are the oft-mentioned reforms. But to date, there seems little to no interest on the part of lawmakers to tackle the coming shortfall between incoming revenue and scheduled benefits.
What to do then? The implications with Social Securitys solvency tend to fall on generational lines, explains Marcia Mantell, a principal with Mantell Retirement Consulting.
She agrees with Elsasser that Social Security beneficiaries and would-be beneficiaries ought to consider the following actions:
Social Security benefit estimates for those born 1946 through 1964 should be on target and will be unlikely to be reduced if Congress fails to put a solution in place to shore up the reserve account within the overall trust fund, or fails to increase payroll taxes to support the commitments made to these retirees, says Mantell.
Elsasser agrees but suggest taking some precautionary measures. Baby boomers should plan for benefits as they are projected, but stress test for a benefit cut, he says. Historically benefit cuts have been phased in over time.
For instance, the last solvency crisis of this magnitude occurred in 1983. And some of the reforms that were put in place are still being phased in today, such as the increase in full retirement age from 65 to 67, Elsasser notes.
Story continues
According to Elsasser, stress testing allows you to practice what you would change in your plan if the full cut materializes. If the cuts to your plan are too painful to bear if they do materialize, then make smaller changes now and monitor the situation, he says. Smaller cuts to your lifestyle sooner will hurt less than larger ones later.
Covisum has a benefit cut calculator that allows consumers to identify how benefit cuts would impact their break-even ages.
Social security quirks: Your birthday determines what day you get your check
Social Security: Why you should starting collecting benefits before 70
If you were born 1965 through 1980, planning for your retirement income becomes more important than ever, warns Mantell.
Elsasser recommends planning on a 10% reduction in your Social Security benefits and doing retirement projection that includes a reduced Social Security amount to balance your lifestyle today with the lifestyle youd like to live in retirement.
The good news about this bad news? For the 65 million of you who are between the ages of 41 and 56, you are in your peak earnings years, says Mantell. And that means you can and will need to ramp up your personal savings.
Youll be well-served to rethink, rebudget and redesign your spending and your savings strategy in case Social Security delivers less in income than currently projected, she cautions. You have time on your side, and every $1,000 or $2,000 or $5,000 you can sock away now will increase your income for retirement and balance out the trade-offs that you may have to make.
And whats the worst-scenario if you ramp up your savings and theres cut in Social Security benefits? You end up with more than you need, says Elsasser.
Experts say its too early for millennials and Gen Zers to worry about Social Security cutting benefits.
You are too young to confidently guess how Social Security will pay benefits, notes Mantell. Half of you dont even yet have your 40 credits for eligibility. So, your focus will be well-served to be on you.
Elsasser shares that point of view: Though its important for everyone, particularly if you are under 40, your focus should continue to be on improving your skills, education and training in order to maximize your earnings potential through your peak earnings years, he advises. Saving consistently in vehicles you wont touch until retirement is important as well. At minimum, be sure to take advantage of any company matches or incentives.
All this planning for a potential cut in benefits might be much ado about nothing, according to Michael Finke, a professor at the American College of Financial Services.
I dont know any expert in Social Security who believes that Congress will allow a significant cut to beneficiaries, he says. Politicians face a no-win situation where making changes today to shore up Social Security is painful, because it will either mean higher taxes or lower benefits, but the alternative to making no changes is worse having a big block of voters see a cut in their retirement income.
And this, he predicts, will motivate Congress to increase payroll taxes, increase the claiming age or change the inflation adjustment.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Social security cuts: What can you expect to get based on your age?
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What are base effects and how do they distort inflation?: Yahoo U – Yahoo Finance
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Higher demand and reduced supply could be drivers for higher reads on inflation. Another reason? Simple math.
Consider, for example, if prices increase by 30%. But what if prices fell by 30% before? Would that mean prices are back up to where they were?
Percentages dont tell the whole story, which is why looking at price levels can be just as important as looking at inflation rates.
Economists refer to the distortions in relative price changes as base effects.
Within the context of inflation, base effects refer to the impact of comparing current price levels in a given month against price levels in the same month a year ago.
These types of year-over-year comparisons are the most commonly cited measures of inflation, and are often the figures cited in major media reports covering new inflation data.
But 3% year-over-year increase in May doesnt provide enough context.
For example, a 3% year-over-year increase in May after an already elevated price level in May of last year would imply higher price levels than a 3% year-over-year increase after a depressed price level in May of last year.
The difference between those two scenarios illustrates the base effects that can come with year-over-year measures of inflation.
Yes. Thats because price levels cratered in the spring months of 2020, when a collapse in demand led to falling prices.
The Consumer Price Index is a major measure of inflation (the other being Personal Consumption Expenditures). Price levels as measured in the CPI declined in the early months of the pandemic. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
That means year-over-year measures of inflation through the spring months of 2021 saw base effects that may have contributed to the high inflation prints.
Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, estimated that about 40% of the Consumer Price Index inflation reading in June could be due to base effects.
Oxford Economics estimated the impact of base effects on CPI inflation by looking at what the price level change would be when compared to the pre-pandemic price levels of January 2021 (effectively stripping out the base effects of pandemic declines in prices). Source: Oxford Economics
Base effects should fall out as year-over-year figures start to compare against year ago months in which the economy began to re-open.
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Beyond GameStop: Reddits WallStreetBets is Now Targeting These 10 Stocks – Yahoo Finance
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In this article, we discuss the 10 stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting. If you want to skip our detailed analysis of these stocks, go directly to Beyond GameStop: Reddit's WallStreetBets is Now Targeting These 5 Stocks.
Retail investors have been exercising ever greater influence on the overall market dynamics the past few months, as the record stock rallies of GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AMC) have demonstrated. However, as their influence increases, so does the list of stocks that gain from this influence. The most popular platform where these retail investors exchange ideas is the Reddit forum WallStreetBets. The forum has more than 10.6 million members and is one of the hottest online places in finance.
Some of the stocks presently popular on WallStreetBets include Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA), Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE), and MicroVision, Inc. (NASDAQ: MVIS). Interestingly, the theory that stocks increase in value along with the number of mentions on this forum has been steadily gaining traction. In June, Financial Times reported that hedge funds were keeping track of stock mentions on Reddit after record losses in the GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AMC) short squeeze.
One reason why institutional investors are monitoring these forums is the meme stocks - firms with little to offer in terms of earnings or growth but rally on the back of retail investor interest - that are often the subject of short-selling attempts. As retail investors initiate short squeezes, there is a danger of repeating the mistakes made during the GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AMC) saga in January that led to billions of dollars in losses to big finance and even led to the closure of some hedge funds.
Even though retail investors have had the upper hand in this meme stock battle with hedge funds, there are early signs of these meme stocks running out of steam. News agency Reuters reports that GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AMC) have both fallen to half their peak value reached early last month. Both stocks have registered four straight days of losses. GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) is now trading at $167 while AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AMC) was around $33, compared to June highs of $344 and $72.
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In recent weeks, there has also been increased interest around other internet platforms where retail investors gather to exchange ideas, like StockTwits and Robinhood. The former is a social media platform for stock traders and the latter is a trading application that is poised to go public at a $40 billion valuation soon. Adding fuel to this drop in popularity of WallStreetBets forum is that it has gone private, with moderators now in charge of approving access to new users after the forum came under heavy fire from institutional investors for promoting meme stocks.
However, the forum still exercises great influence in retail investor circles that is not going to be easy to diminish. The entire hedge fund industry is feeling the reverberations of the changing financial landscape. Its reputation has been tarnished in the last decade, during which its hedged returns couldnt keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. On the other hand, Insider Monkeys research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 124 percentage points since March 2017. Between March 2017 and February 26th 2021 our monthly newsletters stock picks returned 197.2%, vs. 72.4% for the SPY. Our stock picks outperformed the market by more than 124 percentage points (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that significantly underperformed the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 13% through November 16th. Thats why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to. You can subscribe to our free newsletter on our homepage to receive our stories in your inbox.
Reddit's WallStreetBets is Now Targeting These 5 Stocks
Photo by Adam Nowakowski on Unsplash
With this context in mind, here is our list of the 10 stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting. These were ranked keeping in mind the number of mentions on Reddit, basic business fundamentals, and hedge fund sentiment around each.
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: N/A
SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFI) is placed tenth on our list of 10 stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting. The stock has returned 22% to investors over the past year. The company markets digital financial services. On June 1, the stock was initiated at Outperform by Oppenheimer, which noted the uniqueness of the consumer focused fintech platform of the firm. The share price of the firm has been soaring as interest in fintech continues to grow, with investment bank JP Morgan signing its third fintech deal in a year in June.
On June 28, investment advisory Rosenblatt maintained a Buy rating on SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFI) stock with a price target of $30. Sean Horgan, an analyst at the firm, told investors that it was a unique opportunity to buy the stock at the present price.
SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFI) debuted on the stock last month through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. The company has a market capitalization of over $12 billion, making it one of the most lucrative fintech firms in the US.
Just like Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA), Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE), and MicroVision, Inc. (NASDAQ: MVIS), SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFI) is one of the stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting.
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: N/A
Newegg Commerce, Inc. (NASDAQ: NEGG) is an online retailer based in California. It is ranked ninth on our list of 10 stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting. The companys shares have returned 547% to investors over the past twelve months. On July 6, after the online platform of the company displayed four hard-to-get NVIDIA units, the share price jumped more than 38%, largely driven by chatter around the topic on internet forums like Reddit. NVIDIA GPUs are hard to find these days amid a boom in crypto mining and gaming stocks.
On July 12, investment advice company Fintel identified Newegg Commerce, Inc. (NASDAQ: NEGG) stock as a notable short squeeze. The share price of the firm has soared by over 300% in the past seven days amid interest on Reddit forums.
Newegg Commerce, Inc. (NASDAQ: NEGG) is also one of the most volatile on the market, with the share price rising and falling in tandem with interest on social platforms, with little in terms of business fundamentals guiding this process.
Newegg Commerce, Inc. (NASDAQ: NEGG) is now a top stock on WallStreetBets, just like Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA), Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE), and MicroVision, Inc. (NASDAQ: MVIS).
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: N/A
DiDi Global Inc. (NYSE: DIDI) is a Chinese mobility technology platform. It is placed eighth on our list of 10 stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting. The company only recently debuted on the stock market in the United States. The firm raised more than $4.4 billion from the initial offering, fetching a valuation of close to $73 billion on a fully diluted basis. The company has since come under regulatory pressure from authorities in China that are cracking down on dual listed firms.
DiDi Global Inc. (NYSE: DIDI), often called the Uber of China, has not had a good week. On July 16, the Chinese government announced it was conducting cybersecurity reviews at the offices of the firm. However, Reddit mentions have helped the stock manage this bad news.
DiDi Global Inc. (NYSE: DIDI) has also been hit by the removal of its app from stores in China, as the government pursues an antitrust investigation into the firm. The company has already clarified that revenue may take a hit because of the pressures.
Alongside Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA), Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE), and MicroVision, Inc. (NASDAQ: MVIS), DiDi Global Inc. (NYSE: DIDI) is among stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting.
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 2
Marin Software Incorporated (NASDAQ: MRIN) is ranked seventh on our list of 10 stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting. The companys shares have offered investors returns exceeding 505% over the course of the past year. The firm operates as a digital marketing agency. In earnings results for the first quarter, reported in May, the firm posted a quarterly revenue of around $6.3 million and earnings per share of -$0.45. The firm has a market capitalization of close to $100 million.
Marin Software Incorporated (NASDAQ: MRIN) stock has been soaring amid Reddit interest. On June 29, it surged 55% in a single day of trading after mentions on WallStreetBets. Earlier, on June 24, the stock surged 65% after the firm announced it was integrating the Instacart Ads into the Marine One platform.
At the end of the first quarter of 2021, 2 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $818,000 in Marin Software Incorporated (NASDAQ: MRIN), down from 3 in the previous quarter worth $1.1 million.
Marin Software Incorporated (NASDAQ: MRIN) is gaining traction on WallStreetBets, where stocks like Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA), Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE), and MicroVision, Inc. (NASDAQ: MVIS) are already popular.
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 2
Carver Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: CARV) stock has offered investors returns exceeding 180% over the course of the past twelve months. It is placed sixth on our list of 10 stocks Reddit's WallStreetBets is now targeting. The firm provides banking services and is headquartered in New York. On July 9, the share price of the firm registered a 23% increase in a single day after mentions of the firm on StockTwits, a social media platform where investors and traders exchange ideas on the marketplace.
On July 8, news publication Bloomberg reported that Carver Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: CARV) was a short squeeze opportunity as the stock was soaring amid social media chatter and a high short-interest, revealing that short interest as a percentage of the equity float at the firm had increased to 76% from about 20% in May.
Out of the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, New York-based investment firm Two Sigma Advisors is a leading shareholder in Carver Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: CARV) with 27,769 shares worth around $225,000.
Carver Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: CARV) has become one of the favorite stocks of users on WallStreetBets, who already recommend Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA), Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE), and MicroVision, Inc. (NASDAQ: MVIS).
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When to buy and sell bitcoin? Its exactly the opposite of stocks: DataTrek – Yahoo Finance
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Bitcoin was trading for well over $60,000 in April, after making an astounding run from $11,000 in October. But after a tough first half of May, it's been at about $33,000 as the crypto buzz died down.
The cycles of bitcoins (BTC) popularity are a hallmark of the digital asset, so far at least, and despite its novelty, its old enough (12 years) for some patterns to have emerged.
Though theres no guarantee that what comes next wont be different, hedge fund veteran and co-founder of DataTrek, Nicholas Colas, pointed out an interesting pattern with bitcoin different from what we usually see in stocks.
Bitcoin is best bought when it's "boring" and best sold when it's "moving sharply higher and we feel like geniuses for owning/recommending it," wrote Colas.
It is the classic instead of yellin, you should be sellin trade, he added.
Colas recognizes the HODL crowd of believers and the fact that, for them, its been good (so far). But that even those hardy souls, however, might benefit from considering more auspicious times to lighten up or add to positions.
Using a continuum between "boring" and "spicy," Colas looked at the standard deviation of daily bitcoin prices over the past 100 days and found that buying when volatility is high didnt usually work out well. Buying when volatility was low, on the other hand, yielded better future returns. With the exception of four instances after huge rallies, buying when volatility is low and selling when it's high has worked out well.
"Its worth noting this pattern is exactly the opposite of what we see in equities," Colas added. "Also, as a stocks market cap increases it usually sees less volatility. Thats not the case with [bitcoin]."
Importantly, this analysis is more technical as well as psychological in how people react to the asset, and has nothing to do with fundamentals or investment theses. While this takeaway is useful, it has some obvious limitations: It cant tell you how long to hold necessarily after you buy or what an average return might be. Instead, its more of a directional indicator if you believe, as Colas does, that this pattern is common in digital currencies, you might heed his advice and sell when the volatility starts to creep up again.
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So what does that mean right now for bitcoins volatility should the pattern Colas observes continue? The trailing 100-day volatility is still greater than 3.0%, which means it's not quite boring enough to "create a sensible entry point for a trade or a longer term investment that doesn't yield stomach-churning near term volatility.
The good news from the historical record, Colas continued, is that this day will come.
Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, personal finance, retail, airlines, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.
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When to buy and sell bitcoin? Its exactly the opposite of stocks: DataTrek - Yahoo Finance
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