📔 Weekly Journal: Hype Cycle 🔁👍🏻👎🏻
[7 min read] Your guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier (& the weekend!). Today, the usual market news & treats as well the new 2023 edition of the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Tech
Welcome to this week’s Weekly Journal 📔, your guide to the latest news & innovation in emerging technology, digital assets, and our exciting path to the Metaverse. This is week 42 of the 520 weeks of newsletters I have committed to, a decade of documenting our physical and digital lives converge.
New subscribers are encouraged to check out the history & purpose of this newsletter as well as the archive.
Enjoy your weekend! 😎
Ryan
Here’s what you’re getting today:
📈 Market update: The reasons for Bitcoin's price rollercoaster this past week
🗞️ Interesting news: A New York City NFT scavenger hunt, Maker Protocol’s new standalone blockchain, and a revised model estimates Bitcoin's electricity consumption
👓 Read of the week: The “hype cycle report” that tracks the maturity and potential impact of various innovative technologies, from conception to mainstream adoption.
🎥 Video of the week: Daniel Batten, the Kiwi co-founder of CH4 Capital and an ESG analyst, discusses an innovative concept: converting landfill waste into energy and conducting Bitcoin mining on-site.
🤖 This week’s AI showcase: How AI is helping us get to the holy grail of energy production - Fusion
✅ Weekly poll: Help choose the emerging tech topic for Wednesday’s showcase.
🤑 DCA with me: Follow my regular $50 weekly investing in an emerging asset class.
Market Update
Bitcoin's price rollercoaster continues as it surged and then retreated over the past days. Initially boosted by Grayscale's legal victory against the SEC, it jumped to a two-week high. However, a subsequent SEC decision to delay seven spot Bitcoin ETF applications led to a nearly 5% price drop. The SEC now has 45 more days to approve, deny, or delay these applications, with the next decision deadlines set for October. Analysts believe the probability of SEC approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF this year has increased to 75% due to Grayscale's recent legal success.
🔥🗺️ 7-day heatmap below:
🎭 Sentiment levels are still firmly in the Fear zone
Interesting news 🗞️
Digital Assets News 🌐💱
🗽 A New York City scavenger hunt in the Seaport neighborhood is using NFTs and QR codes to engage participants. Organized by MoonPay and Howard Hughes Corporation, it runs through October and offers the chance to find purple "pearls" that yield NFTs and weekly prizes. The event aims to introduce people to crypto and NFTs, making it accessible for non-experts. However, technical issues initially hindered the experience, but organizers have resolved them. This scavenger hunt illustrates the potential for location-based NFT experiences and how they can bridge the gap between the digital and real worlds.
🗺 MakerDAO is unveiling the final phase of its "Endgame" plan, aiming to create independent subDAOs within its ecosystem. This phase involves completely reimplementing the Maker Protocol on a new, standalone blockchain called NewChain. MakerDAO's objective is to grow the supply of its Ethereum-based stablecoin, dai, to over $100 billion in three years, though it currently stands at $3.9 billion. Additionally, MakerDAO's co-founder has suggested using Solana's codebase as the foundation for NewChain, citing it as the most promising option. This marks a significant step in MakerDAO's pursuit of a more secure and efficient ecosystem.
⚡ The University of Cambridge has updated its Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) after three years, revealing previous power estimates were greatly overestimated. The revised model estimates Bitcoin's electricity consumption in 2021 at 89.0 TWh, down from 104 TWh, making it more energy-efficient than previously thought (about the same as U.S. tumble dryers that year). Cambridge’s findings were also supported by Kiwi CH4 Capital founder Daniel Batten, whose fund invests in companies using Bitcoin mining to clean up the environment - watch him in the Watch of the Week video below. While the Cambridge model is a significant improvement, some experts believe it still overestimates energy consumption, particularly during bullish market periods.
XR and Virtual Worlds News
✊🏿 Walmart is set to honour Hip-Hop and Black culture in the metaverse with 'Cultureverse,' an immersive virtual experience. Partnering with People of Crypto Lab (POClab), it celebrates Hip-Hop's history and impact on art, music, and fashion. The launch will debut on the Spatial Metaverse, emphasizing inclusivity and cultural heritage. Walmart's involvement supports the Black & Unlimited platform, aiming to empower Black creators and entrepreneurs. The move follows Walmart's prior ventures into the metaverse through Roblox experiences and collaborations with Web3 startups.
👓Read of the Week
The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is an annual report that tracks the maturity and potential impact of various innovative technologies, providing insights into their journey from conception to mainstream adoption. The 2023 version was just released, and it identifies 25 must-know emerging technologies, which can be divided into 4 categories
Emergent AI: AI technologies like generative AI are revolutionizing industries by enhancing digital customer experiences, enabling better business decisions, and automating tasks.
Developer Experience (DevX): Improving the experience of software developers is crucial. Technologies in this theme, such as value stream management platforms, aim to optimize product delivery.
Pervasive Cloud: Cloud computing is evolving, focusing on edge computing, vertical integration, and industry-specific solutions. Industry cloud platforms are a prime example.
Human-centric Security and Privacy: These technologies emphasize building resilient organizations by implementing security and privacy programs that foster trust and awareness among teams. AI trust, risk, and security management (AI TRiSM) is a notable example. Other critical technologies include cybersecurity mesh architecture, generative cybersecurity AI, homomorphic encryption, and postquantum cryptography.
Read the whole thing here.
Watch of the week
Daniel Batten, the Kiwi co-founder of CH4 Capital and an ESG analyst, discusses an innovative concept: converting landfill waste into energy and conducting bitcoin mining on-site. This approach combines cost-effective bitcoin mining with the opportunity to capture methane emissions that would otherwise be released into the environment, potentially making bitcoin mining a process with a net-negative impact on methane emissions. Fascinating!
This week’s AI showcase🎨🤖🎵✍🏼
AI is disruptive, challenging industries and driving innovation. Each week I showcase something amazing generated by AI-based tools. My vision of the emerging Metaverse predicts the use of many AI tools to enhance how we work, learn, play and socialise.
With the increasing impact of climate change, there is a growing focus on fusion's promise as a clean energy solution. Although fusion research dates back to the 1930s, there remain vital unanswered questions to make fusion power viable. Aiming for a goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is funding a three-year project led by MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) to advance fusion energy using AI.
Cristina Rea, a PSFC research scientist, will lead the effort to integrate fusion data into AI tools, aiming to enhance accessibility for researchers, particularly underrepresented students, and promote diversity in fusion and data science. The project will develop a fusion data platform that adheres to UNESCO’s Open Science principles, making data more Findable, Interoperable, Accessible, and Reusable.
Weekly Poll ✅
Help choose what you would like to learn about on Wednesday for my weekly emerging tech showcase:
That’s all for the free version this week! If you have any organisations in mind that could benefit from learning about emerging technology, be sure to reach out. Educational workshops are one of many consulting services I offer.
DCA With Me 🤑
Dollar Cost Averaging is an investment strategy in which an investor regularly invests a fixed amount of money into a particular asset/asset class at regular intervals, regardless of its current market price. By doing so, the investor can reduce the impact of market volatility and potentially earn a better return over time. Motto = time IN the market beats trying to time the market
To experiment with this, I invest $50 NZD into a Digital Asset every week. Each week I will choose an asset that seems underpriced in the short term and has positive long-term potential. My timeframe is 3-5 years. I don’t give financial advice but if you want to follow along with me you can use my easycrypto.co.nz referral link to support this newsletter. Let’s dive into this week’s pick:
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