Category Archives: Cryptocurrency

A crypto influencer, Alfonso Peccatiello, expressed his thoughts as regards the recent cryptocurrency rally. He stated that the current crypto rally is not a yardstick for investors to raise their hopes too high. This was revealed following the increase in certain digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum in the last 24 hours.

A recent crypto market watch showed a 24-hour price appreciation of Bitcoin of more than 9%. Currently, BTC trades at a price of over $23,000.

Meanwhile, Ethereum, the second largest digital currency, has also experienced a rise in its price. Its 24 hours price increase got over 13%. Presently, the token trades at a price above $1,600.

The surge in the prices of these cryptocurrencies followed the Feds decision to hike its interest rate by about 75 bps.

A renowned crypto expert and author of The Macro Compass, Alfonso Peccatiello, gave his thoughts concerning the current crypto rally. According to Peccatiello, the recent digital currency surge should not be a reason for investors to be excited. He stated this, backing it up with an explanation.

Related Reading:Bitcoin Makes Surprise Climb As Fed Discloses 0.75 Point Rate Bump

Peccatiello first admitted that the speech of the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, triggered the rise in the prices of cryptocurrencies. But, there is a need for his speech to be guided. He added that if his speech lacks a backup, it will be a cause for alarm in the crypto market.

Furthermore, he uncovered his portfolio, stating that he has little interest in risky assets. One of such risky assets is digital currencies.

Drawing from Peccatiellos speech, the increase in the prices of these digital tokens commenced after Powells statement. He added that Powell stated a relationship between inflation and neutral interest rates.

Powell also cited that the Feds operations will base more on data. This results from the recent hikes of about 75 basis points.

According to Peccatiello, the Federal Reserve would be a dreadful zone if it repeats its interest rate hike over time.

Then, Powell made another statement, which happens to be a good cause for concern. He cited that there is another alarming increase that could be the trigger for the next meeting of the FOMC, scheduled for September.

Related Reading |Why Cardano (ADA) May Breakout In A Bull Run To $1

His final statement pointed to the fate of digital currencies and their yields. He revealed that there is a need for the Fed to carry out an aggressive tightening. Peccatiello stated that this action is necessary to prevent the decline of actual yields.

Moreover, with reduced yields comes low performance in the crypto market and other risk-driven assets.

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Expert Tells Investors To Be Careful In The Cryptocurrency Rally, Whys That? - NewsBTC

The collapse in cryptocurrencies is easing supply of the most sought after watches on the second-hand market, depressing prices for hard-to-get Patek Philippe and Rolex models.

The supply of trophy watches such as the Rolex Daytona or Patek Nautilus 5711A is now much larger, online-watch trading platform Chrono24 said in an emailed statement.

The recent swoon in cryptocurrency valuations has directly impacted pricing of luxury watches from brands like Rolex and Patek Philippe, said the company, which is based in Karlsruhe, Germany, and has more than half a million watches listed for sale on its website.

The price decline for the most sought after models is the latest indication that the once soaring second-hand luxury watch market is starting to lose pace.

Surging valuations for crypto currencies had minted a new class of luxury buyers, leading to an unprecedented price increase for models particularly from brands like Rolex, and Audemars Piguet.

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Cryptocurrency slump has flooded the market with Rolex and Patek - Business Standard

The Future of Financial Services Summit brings together fintech experts and thought leaders to share the latest insights on career opportunities, decentralized finance, and investment strategies.

NEW YORK, July 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- BLACK ENTERPRISE will present its first Future of Financial Services Summit: Fintech, Cryptocurrency and Black Wealth beginning at 6:00 p.m. EST on July 28. With Black Americans more focused than ever on wealth creation, opportunities to build wealth have never been greater. The Black Enterprise Future of Financial Services Summit will inform and inspire attendees to become fully engaged participants in the latest in investment opportunities with cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance (DeFi), and more. The latest in a series of virtual events produced by BLACK ENTERPRISEto address the demand for diversity, equity, inclusion, and economic justice for Black Americans, the 2022 Wealth Building & Real Estate Summit is presented by Prudential.

The Future of Financial Services Summit will feature candid, engaging conversations with leading experts on cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, investing, and fintech careers. The one-day virtual event will provide attendees with actionable solutions and key resources to leverage opportunities presented by a financial services industry being transformed by fintech and the rising demand for cryptocurrency and digital tokens as an emerging asset class, especially among African Americans.

"We know that Black people are excited about the potential of cryptocurrency, NFTs, and blockchain to open up new avenues of Black wealth creation," says BLACK ENTERPRISECEO Earl "Butch" Graves Jr. "According to the most recent Ariel Schwab Black Investor Survey, of six financial productsbank savings account, individual stocks, stock mutual funds, cryptocurrency, individual bonds, bond mutual fundscryptocurrency is the only one owned by a higher proportion of Black people than of white people. About 38% of Black investors under 40 own digital tokens, compared with 29% of their white counterparts. Overall, twice as many Black respondents than those who are white ranked crypto as the best investment choice overall."

Confirmed speakers for the Black Enterprise Future of Financial ServicesSummit include Larry Wade Sr. Director, Blockchain, Crypto & Digital Currencies, RLCO BP, PayPal; Imari Oliver, Founder & CEO, Bond & Play; Michael Grove, CFA, Financial Planner, Greater Metro Financial Group, Prudential Advisors; Deidra Ramsey-McIntyre, Founder, Black People & Cryptocurrency; Derek Jones, Founder & CEO, UnitedCoin Inc.; Matt Mitchell, Hacker & Founder, CryptoHarlem; LaMont Connie, Sr. Vice President & Sr Relationship Manager Fintech Division, Bank of America; and Kenneth Johnson, President, East Coast Executives.

Attendees of the 2022 Black Enterprise Future of Financial Services Virtual Summit will gain insights on:

The Black Enterprise Wealth Building & Real Estate Summit takes place from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, July 28, 2022. Prudential is the presenting sponsor for this event. For complimentary registration and more information about sessions and speakers, visit financial.blackenterprise.com/.

EDITOR'S NOTE:Interested press should contact Alfred Edmond Jr. at 201-243-8269 or via e-mail at [emailprotected].

BLACK ENTERPRISEis the No.1 Black media brand, with more than 10 million monthly unique visitors.Since 1970,BLACK ENTERPRISEhas been the premier business, career, investing, and wealth-building resource for African Americans.BLACK ENTERPRISEproduces video and podcast programming, virtual and in-person business and lifestyle events, and other digital media. Visitwww.blackenterprise.comfor more information.

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BLACK ENTERPRISE TO PRESENT VIRTUAL SUMMIT FOCUSED ON CRYPTOCURRENCY, BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY, FINTECH CAREERS, AND BLACK WEALTH, JULY 28 - PR Newswire

In a recent announcement dated 29 July, co-founders of CoinFLEX, Sudhu Arumugam and Mark Lamb, provided an important update. The updated surrounded what the cryptocurrency exchange had been up to manage its current liquidity crisis in the last week. This update came a month following the suspension of withdrawal on the exchange as a result of a liquidity crisis. The organization cited extreme market conditions and continued uncertainty involving a counterparty.

In the new announcement, CoinFLEX provided an update on its staff reduction. It also mentioned intentions to launch new products and the distribution of the CoinFLEX composite.

According to the blog post, CoinFLEX informed users that in the last week that the exchange went through the arduous process of letting some of its staff members go.

The staff cuts and non-staff costs that we have made will reduce our cost base by approximately 50-60%, the exchange noted.

Hinting at a possibility of a future acquisition, Arumugam and Lamb stated that,

We will monitor costs to ensure we operate as efficiently as possible and scale as volumes come back. The intention is to remain right-sized for any entity considering a potential acquisition of or partnership opportunity with CoinFLEX.

The exchange also noted stated plans to resuscitate its dying business and regain customer trust. It further intends to distribute rvUSD, equity, and FLEX Coin referred to as CoinFLEX Composite to depositors who have assets in the exchange

According to the exchange:

We continue working with lawyers and the significant creditor group on the details around the distribution of the CoinFLEX Composite (inclusive of rvUSD, equity, and FLEX Coin) and expect to have numbers around this next week so that we can put this to a vote from all depositors as soon as possible thereafter.

In addition, CoinFlex informed aggrieved depositors that in the next week, it plans to offer the trading of locked balances versus against unlocked balances. According to the announcement, with an understanding of the range of CoinFLEX Composite distributions a depositor is entitled to, they can decide if they desire to place orders of unlocked assets against locked assets.

To be aware of all, or as accurate a range, of the CoinFLEX Composite you are likely to receive. Everyone needs to know the range of their CoinFLEX Composite distributions to have all the necessary information to decide if you want to place orders of unlocked versus locked assets. The estimated range of any further normal distribution that will be made available alongside the issuance of the CoinFLEX Composite, CoinFLEX informed its depositors.

A month after withdrawal was suspended on the exchange, CoinFLEXs FLEX logged a 96% decline in price. At press time, the token exchanged hands at $0.162868 at a 63% loss in the last 24 hours.

Read more from the original source:
CoinFLEX: Amid liquidity crisis, the cryptocurrency exchange had this to say - AMBCrypto News

Vidente, the owner of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb, said on Tuesday it has held discussions about a possible sale of its stake to FTX. Talks of another acquisition are part of FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried's (above) aggressive acquisition approach amid a major downturn in the cryptocurrency market.

Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Vidente, the owner of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb, said on Tuesday it has held discussions about a possible sale of its stake to FTX.

The company said it is reviewing all possible options, including a full acquisition of Bithumb or joint management of the exchange.

However, no specific course of action has been decided on, Vidente said.

Talks of another acquisition are part of FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried's aggressive acquisition approach amid a major downturn in the cryptocurrency market, which has seen billions of dollars in value eviscerated in the last few months.

Last month, FTX signed a deal giving it the option to buy crypto lending company BlockFi at a maximum price of $240 million, significantly lower than the firm's previous $4.8 billion valuation.

Earlier this year, FTX entered into an agreement to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Liquid. If the deal with Bithumb goes through, FTX will gain further foothold in Asia and in particular South Korea, where crypto trading is very popular.

Bithumb is one of South Korea's largest exchanges. At its peak in the last 24 hours, it processed just over $500 million of trades, according to data from CoinGecko.

More:
Sam Bankman-Frieds FTX is in talks to buy crypto exchange Bithumb, continuing its acquisition spree - CNBC

The value of NFTs revolves around the nonfungible nature of digital assets which is the feature that sets them apart from cryptocurrencies, as NFTs and cryptocurrencies are not the same things. NFT has its own unique set of attributes including creator, size, and scarcity, among others, and therefore can not be interchanged with another asset. Bitcoin (BTC) is a fungible asset, on the other hand. The French startup Sorare, which sells NFTs of football trading cards, has raised $680 million (498 million), as reported by Cointelegraph.

What are NFTs used for?

Art

Programmable art, which uniquely combines creativity and technology, is the most common NFT crypto application. There are currently a number of limited edition works of art in existence. Surprisingly, they make it possible for programmability to alter behaviour in many circumstances. For instance, using oracles and smart contracts, designers may produce artwork that responds to changes in the value of digital assets based on blockchain technology.

Fashion

Blockchain has seamlessly merged into the world of fashion with the promise of advantages for all supply chain participants. The risk of counterfeiting is eliminated since consumers can easily check the ownership information of their goods and accessories online. Users might, for instance, just scan an NFT QR code on a price tag for clothing or accessories.

Gaming

In 2017, CryptoKitties was the first company to release virtual cats on the blockchain and allow users to communicate and conduct transactions with them. The model was so effective that it briefly overloaded the Ethereum network with a large number of transactions.

Sports

The counterfeiting of goods and tickets is among the most important issues affecting the sports sector. Blockchain is the best option for efficiently addressing such issues. The immutability of blockchain technology helps to prohibit the sale of fake tickets and memorabilia.

Original post:
How is NFT different from cryptocurrency and fiat currencies - The Financial Express

Photo (c) Busakorn Pongparnit - Getty ImagesPoliticians say theyve had enough of all the cryptocurrency scams that have robbed American investors of billions of dollars over the past few years. This week, theyve decided to scrutinizeApple and Google because they feel those companies arent doing enough to rein in fraudulent cryptocurrency apps.

After the FBI issued a warning about fraudulent cryptocurrency apps stealing more than $30 million from investors over the course of a year, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and his Senate Banking Committee questioned Apple and Google officials to find out why those apps ever made it to market.

In letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Brown asked them to explain how their companies review and approve cryptocurrency trading and wallet apps that they offer on their app stores.

While firms that offer crypto investment and other related services should take the necessary steps to prevent fraudulent activity, including warning investors about the uptick in scams, it is likewise imperative that app stores have the proper safeguards in place to prevent against fraudulent mobile application activity, Brown wrote.

In particular, Brown pointed to one situation in which cyber criminals defrauded at least two dozen investors by creating a mobile app that used the name and logo of a real trading platform. After 28 investors downloaded the app and deposited some $3.7 million in cryptocurrency into digital wallets, they couldn't withdraw the funds from their accounts and essentially kissed their deposit goodbye.

Brown and Senate Banking Committee asked the two tech CEOs to provide answers to the following points:

1. Describe the review process your company takes before approving crypto apps to operate in each companys app store.

2. Describe the steps the app stores take to prevent cryptocurrency apps from circumventing app store policies by transforming into phishing apps.

3. Describe all the systems and processes each company has in place for people to report fraudulent apps.

4. Describe all actions each companys app store has taken to alert people about actual or potentially fraudulent activity associated with cryptocurrency investment apps.

5. Since January 2020, have either app stores coordinated or shared any actions or activities with other app stores related to the suspension or removal of fraudulent cryptocurrency apps? If so, please explain.

Apple and Google have until August 10th to get Brown their answers.

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Apple and Google grilled by legislators over recent cryptocurrency app-driven thefts - ConsumerAffairs

A recent analysis by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has forecast that by 2030, there could be as many as one billion Bitcoin users worldwide. The crypto business is still in the early stages of the adoption curve though, the joint report by BCG, Bitget, and Foresight Ventures, said.

According to the report, a mere 0.3 per cent of personal wealth is invested in cryptocurrencies, as opposed to 25 per cent in stocks. It did, however, mention that the comparatively low penetration simply shows that there is an opportunity for expansion. This is in line with the findings of a study released by the US-based bank, Wells Fargo.

The banks Global Investment Strategy Team had stated in its research titled Understanding Cryptocurrency that the sector was in its hyper-adoption period, and compared the current stage of cryptocurrency to that of the Internet in the mid-to-late 1990s.

The BCG analysis extended the Wells Fargo papers comparison of cryptocurrency to the earlier Internet stages as well as the impending digital revolution, known as Web 3.0. There is still a lot of room for development, the report said.

If we use the number of cryptocurrency holders as a proxy for Web 3 users, and compare it against the adoption rate of Internet users in the 1990s, the overall number of crypto users is projected to exceed 1 billion by 2030, the report said, however, adding that it is challenging to estimate whether the trend of cryptocurrency acceptance will continue.

Crypto Native Funds are growing rapidly.

The BCG analysis said that individual investors are still the main holders of Bitcoin, while hedge funds and venture capitalists are among the institutional crypto investors, adding that these participants nearly doubled their exposure to $70 billion from Q4 2020 to the end of 2021.

The research further indicated that allocations will continue to climb. In addition, the paper mentioned an emerging class of crypto native funds that are gathering financial pace, such as Paradigm and Hashed.

These VCs, however, were the ones that took the brunt of the Terra-Luna debacle, it added.

The BCG report further said that South Korean early-stage VC Hashed has earned a position among the worlds most financially-troubled VCs. According to CoinMarketCap statistics from April, the black swan incident cost the Hashed wallet more than $3.5 billion.

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There Will Be 1 Billion Cryptocurrency Users Worldwide By 2030, Says BCG Report - Outlook India

The two of us, along with many other researchers involved in quantum computing, are trying to move definitively beyond these preliminary demos of QEC so that it can be employed to build useful, large-scale quantum computers. But before describing how we think such error correction can be made practical, we need to first review what makes a quantum computer tick.

Information is physical. This was the mantra of the distinguished IBM researcher Rolf Landauer. Abstract though it may seem, information always involves a physical representation, and the physics matters.

Conventional digital information consists of bits, zeros and ones, which can be represented by classical states of matter, that is, states well described by classical physics. Quantum information, by contrast, involves qubitsquantum bitswhose properties follow the peculiar rules of quantum mechanics.

A classical bit has only two possible values: 0 or 1. A qubit, however, can occupy a superposition of these two information states, taking on characteristics of both. Polarized light provides intuitive examples of superpositions. You could use horizontally polarized light to represent 0 and vertically polarized light to represent 1, but light can also be polarized on an angle and then has both horizontal and vertical components at once. Indeed, one way to represent a qubit is by the polarization of a single photon of light.

These ideas generalize to groups of n bits or qubits: n bits can represent any one of 2n possible values at any moment, while n qubits can include components corresponding to all 2n classical states simultaneously in superposition. These superpositions provide a vast range of possible states for a quantum computer to work with, albeit with limitations on how they can be manipulated and accessed. Superposition of information is a central resource used in quantum processing and, along with other quantum rules, enables powerful new ways to compute.

Researchers are experimenting with many different physical systems to hold and process quantum information, including light, trapped atoms and ions, and solid-state devices based on semiconductors or superconductors. For the purpose of realizing qubits, all these systems follow the same underlying mathematical rules of quantum physics, and all of them are highly sensitive to environmental fluctuations that introduce errors. By contrast, the transistors that handle classical information in modern digital electronics can reliably perform a billion operations per second for decades with a vanishingly small chance of a hardware fault.

Of particular concern is the fact that qubit states can roam over a continuous range of superpositions. Polarized light again provides a good analogy: The angle of linear polarization can take any value from 0 to 180 degrees.

Pictorially, a qubits state can be thought of as an arrow pointing to a location on the surface of a sphere. Known as a Bloch sphere, its north and south poles represent the binary states 0 and 1, respectively, and all other locations on its surface represent possible quantum superpositions of those two states. Noise causes the Bloch arrow to drift around the sphere over time. A conventional computer represents 0 and 1 with physical quantities, such as capacitor voltages, that can be locked near the correct values to suppress this kind of continuous wandering and unwanted bit flips. There is no comparable way to lock the qubits arrow to its correct location on the Bloch sphere.

Early in the 1990s, Landauer and others argued that this difficulty presented a fundamental obstacle to building useful quantum computers. The issue is known as scalability: Although a simple quantum processor performing a few operations on a handful of qubits might be possible, could you scale up the technology to systems that could run lengthy computations on large arrays of qubits? A type of classical computation called analog computing also uses continuous quantities and is suitable for some tasks, but the problem of continuous errors prevents the complexity of such systems from being scaled up. Continuous errors with qubits seemed to doom quantum computers to the same fate.

We now know better. Theoreticians have successfully adapted the theory of error correction for classical digital data to quantum settings. QEC makes scalable quantum processing possible in a way that is impossible for analog computers. To get a sense of how it works, its worthwhile to review how error correction is performed in classical settings.

Simple schemes can deal with errors in classical information. For instance, in the 19th century, ships routinely carried clocks for determining the ships longitude during voyages. A good clock that could keep track of the time in Greenwich, in combination with the suns position in the sky, provided the necessary data. A mistimed clock could lead to dangerous navigational errors, though, so ships often carried at least three of them. Two clocks reading different times could detect when one was at fault, but three were needed to identify which timepiece was faulty and correct it through a majority vote.

The use of multiple clocks is an example of a repetition code: Information is redundantly encoded in multiple physical devices such that a disturbance in one can be identified and corrected.

As you might expect, quantum mechanics adds some major complications when dealing with errors. Two problems in particular might seem to dash any hopes of using a quantum repetition code. The first problem is that measurements fundamentally disturb quantum systems. So if you encoded information on three qubits, for instance, observing them directly to check for errors would ruin them. Like Schrdingers cat when its box is opened, their quantum states would be irrevocably changed, spoiling the very quantum features your computer was intended to exploit.

The second issue is a fundamental result in quantum mechanics called the no-cloning theorem, which tells us it is impossible to make a perfect copy of an unknown quantum state. If you know the exact superposition state of your qubit, there is no problem producing any number of other qubits in the same state. But once a computation is running and you no longer know what state a qubit has evolved to, you cannot manufacture faithful copies of that qubit except by duplicating the entire process up to that point.

Fortunately, you can sidestep both of these obstacles. Well first describe how to evade the measurement problem using the example of a classical three-bit repetition code. You dont actually need to know the state of every individual code bit to identify which one, if any, has flipped. Instead, you ask two questions: Are bits 1 and 2 the same? and Are bits 2 and 3 the same? These are called parity-check questions because two identical bits are said to have even parity, and two unequal bits have odd parity.

The two answers to those questions identify which single bit has flipped, and you can then counterflip that bit to correct the error. You can do all this without ever determining what value each code bit holds. A similar strategy works to correct errors in a quantum system.

Learning the values of the parity checks still requires quantum measurement, but importantly, it does not reveal the underlying quantum information. Additional qubits can be used as disposable resources to obtain the parity values without revealing (and thus without disturbing) the encoded information itself.

Like Schrdingers cat when its box is opened, the quantum states of the qubits you measured would be irrevocably changed, spoiling the very quantum features your computer was intended to exploit.

What about no-cloning? It turns out it is possible to take a qubit whose state is unknown and encode that hidden state in a superposition across multiple qubits in a way that does not clone the original information. This process allows you to record what amounts to a single logical qubit of information across three physical qubits, and you can perform parity checks and corrective steps to protect the logical qubit against noise.

Quantum errors consist of more than just bit-flip errors, though, making this simple three-qubit repetition code unsuitable for protecting against all possible quantum errors. True QEC requires something more. That came in the mid-1990s when Peter Shor (then at AT&T Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, N.J.) described an elegant scheme to encode one logical qubit into nine physical qubits by embedding a repetition code inside another code. Shors scheme protects against an arbitrary quantum error on any one of the physical qubits.

Since then, the QEC community has developed many improved encoding schemes, which use fewer physical qubits per logical qubitthe most compact use fiveor enjoy other performance enhancements. Today, the workhorse of large-scale proposals for error correction in quantum computers is called the surface code, developed in the late 1990s by borrowing exotic mathematics from topology and high-energy physics.

It is convenient to think of a quantum computer as being made up of logical qubits and logical gates that sit atop an underlying foundation of physical devices. These physical devices are subject to noise, which creates physical errors that accumulate over time. Periodically, generalized parity measurements (called syndrome measurements) identify the physical errors, and corrections remove them before they cause damage at the logical level.

A quantum computation with QEC then consists of cycles of gates acting on qubits, syndrome measurements, error inference, and corrections. In terms more familiar to engineers, QEC is a form of feedback stabilization that uses indirect measurements to gain just the information needed to correct errors.

QEC is not foolproof, of course. The three-bit repetition code, for example, fails if more than one bit has been flipped. Whats more, the resources and mechanisms that create the encoded quantum states and perform the syndrome measurements are themselves prone to errors. How, then, can a quantum computer perform QEC when all these processes are themselves faulty?

Remarkably, the error-correction cycle can be designed to tolerate errors and faults that occur at every stage, whether in the physical qubits, the physical gates, or even in the very measurements used to infer the existence of errors! Called a fault-tolerant architecture, such a design permits, in principle, error-robust quantum processing even when all the component parts are unreliable.

A long quantum computation will require many cycles of quantum error correction (QEC). Each cycle would consist of gates acting on encoded qubits (performing the computation), followed by syndrome measurements from which errors can be inferred, and corrections. The effectiveness of this QEC feedback loop can be greatly enhanced by including quantum-control techniques (represented by the thick blue outline) to stabilize and optimize each of these processes.

Even in a fault-tolerant architecture, the additional complexity introduces new avenues for failure. The effect of errors is therefore reduced at the logical level only if the underlying physical error rate is not too high. The maximum physical error rate that a specific fault-tolerant architecture can reliably handle is known as its break-even error threshold. If error rates are lower than this threshold, the QEC process tends to suppress errors over the entire cycle. But if error rates exceed the threshold, the added machinery just makes things worse overall.

The theory of fault-tolerant QEC is foundational to every effort to build useful quantum computers because it paves the way to building systems of any size. If QEC is implemented effectively on hardware exceeding certain performance requirements, the effect of errors can be reduced to arbitrarily low levels, enabling the execution of arbitrarily long computations.

At this point, you may be wondering how QEC has evaded the problem of continuous errors, which is fatal for scaling up analog computers. The answer lies in the nature of quantum measurements.

In a typical quantum measurement of a superposition, only a few discrete outcomes are possible, and the physical state changes to match the result that the measurement finds. With the parity-check measurements, this change helps.

Imagine you have a code block of three physical qubits, and one of these qubit states has wandered a little from its ideal state. If you perform a parity measurement, just two results are possible: Most often, the measurement will report the parity state that corresponds to no error, and after the measurement, all three qubits will be in the correct state, whatever it is. Occasionally the measurement will instead indicate the odd parity state, which means an errant qubit is now fully flipped. If so, you can flip that qubit back to restore the desired encoded logical state.

In other words, performing QEC transforms small, continuous errors into infrequent but discrete errors, similar to the errors that arise in digital computers.

Researchers have now demonstrated many of the principles of QEC in the laboratoryfrom the basics of the repetition code through to complex encodings, logical operations on code words, and repeated cycles of measurement and correction. Current estimates of the break-even threshold for quantum hardware place it at about 1 error in 1,000 operations. This level of performance hasnt yet been achieved across all the constituent parts of a QEC scheme, but researchers are getting ever closer, achieving multiqubit logic with rates of fewer than about 5 errors per 1,000 operations. Even so, passing that critical milestone will be the beginning of the story, not the end.

On a system with a physical error rate just below the threshold, QEC would require enormous redundancy to push the logical rate down very far. It becomes much less challenging with a physical rate further below the threshold. So just crossing the error threshold is not sufficientwe need to beat it by a wide margin. How can that be done?

If we take a step back, we can see that the challenge of dealing with errors in quantum computers is one of stabilizing a dynamic system against external disturbances. Although the mathematical rules differ for the quantum system, this is a familiar problem in the discipline of control engineering. And just as control theory can help engineers build robots capable of righting themselves when they stumble, quantum-control engineering can suggest the best ways to implement abstract QEC codes on real physical hardware. Quantum control can minimize the effects of noise and make QEC practical.

In essence, quantum control involves optimizing how you implement all the physical processes used in QECfrom individual logic operations to the way measurements are performed. For example, in a system based on superconducting qubits, a qubit is flipped by irradiating it with a microwave pulse. One approach uses a simple type of pulse to move the qubits state from one pole of the Bloch sphere, along the Greenwich meridian, to precisely the other pole. Errors arise if the pulse is distorted by noise. It turns out that a more complicated pulse, one that takes the qubit on a well-chosen meandering route from pole to pole, can result in less error in the qubits final state under the same noise conditions, even when the new pulse is imperfectly implemented.

One facet of quantum-control engineering involves careful analysis and design of the best pulses for such tasks in a particular imperfect instance of a given system. It is a form of open-loop (measurement-free) control, which complements the closed-loop feedback control used in QEC.

This kind of open-loop control can also change the statistics of the physical-layer errors to better comport with the assumptions of QEC. For example, QEC performance is limited by the worst-case error within a logical block, and individual devices can vary a lot. Reducing that variability is very beneficial. In an experiment our team performed using IBMs publicly accessible machines, we showed that careful pulse optimization reduced the difference between the best-case and worst-case error in a small group of qubits by more than a factor of 10.

Some error processes arise only while carrying out complex algorithms. For instance, crosstalk errors occur on qubits only when their neighbors are being manipulated. Our team has shown that embedding quantum-control techniques into an algorithm can improve its overall success by orders of magnitude. This technique makes QEC protocols much more likely to correctly identify an error in a physical qubit.

For 25 years, QEC researchers have largely focused on mathematical strategies for encoding qubits and efficiently detecting errors in the encoded sets. Only recently have investigators begun to address the thorny question of how best to implement the full QEC feedback loop in real hardware. And while many areas of QEC technology are ripe for improvement, there is also growing awareness in the community that radical new approaches might be possible by marrying QEC and control theory. One way or another, this approach will turn quantum computing into a realityand you can carve that in stone.

This article appears in the July 2022 print issue as Quantum Error Correction at the Threshold.

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Central Banks Join the Cryptocurrency Gold Rush - IEEE Spectrum

Cryptocurrency Price Today: The global cryptocurrency market, despite its overall rally through the week, fell slightly on Saturday, July 18, even as it held its $1 trillion mark. This was due to an overall loss incurred by major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Dogecoin. The crypto market cap was standing at $1.05 trillion on the day, which is a 0.83 per cent decrease over the past 24 hours.

Even though the week started on a bit bearish note, the momentum picked up heavily mid-week, taking most cryptocurrencies up, said Edul Patel, CEO and co founder of Mudrex.

Bitcoin price today fell1.06 per cent over the last 24 hours to stand at $22,896.23 as per data from CoinMarketCap while writing this article, as traders bore the brunt of Tesla selling 75 per cent of its holdings of the crypto coin. However, the sentiment over Bitcoin improved further and reached its highest since April this year, analysts said earlier this week.

Bitcoin has rallied from US$20,000 on Monday to above US$23,000 on Friday. Despite the crypto sliding a bit after Tesla announced it had sold 75 per cent of its BTC holdings, the crypto has tried to keep up with the selling pressure from bears. If bulls can make a move, one can expect BTC to trade at the US$24,000 mark soon, said Patel.

Ethereum dropped on the day too, not being able to hold the $1600 mark it had reached earlier in the week. Ether price today at the time of writing this article was $1,580.16, down by0.63 per cent in the last 24 hours, data from CoinMarketCap showed. However, Ether has gained over 30 per cent in the last seven days, according to the data.

While the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, has outperformed the market by continuously rallying for the past seven days. ETH has gained nearly 34 per cent in the past seven days following the announcement date of the Merge. If the consistency of gains is maintained, we might see ETH regain the US$2,000 level in the coming week, noted Patel.

Here are the top 10 cryptocurrencies and their prices onJuly 23, 2022, Saturday, (According to data from coinmarketcap.com)

Bitcoin $22,896.23 or1.06 per centloss in the last 24 hours

Ethereum $1,580.16 or0.63 per centloss in the last 24 hours

Tether $1.00 or0.00 per centgain in the last 24 hours

USD Coin$1.00 or 0.01 per centgain inthe last 24 hours

BNB $266.64 or0.25 per centloss in the last 24 hours

Binance USD$1.00 or 0.13 per cent gainin the last 24 hours

XRP $0.361 or1.42 per centloss in the last 24 hours

Cardano$0.4933 or1.17 per centloss in the last 24 hours

Solana$41.51 or3.50 per centloss in the last 24 hours

Dogecoin$0.06891 or1.69 per centloss in thelast 24 hours

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Cryptocurrency Price Today: Bitcoin Near $23,000, Ether Flat at $1,580; Full List - News18