📔 Weekly Journal: AI Stock Frenzy 🤖📈
[8min read] Your guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier (& the weekend!). Today, the usual market news & treats as well as how AI is catapulting Nvidia toward the $1 Trillion Club
Welcome to this week’s Weekly Journal 📔, your guide to the latest news & innovation in digital assets, emerging technology, and our exciting path to the Metaverse. This is week 26 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: NZ interest rates go up, Ethereum going from strength to strength
🗞️ Interesting news: Bitcoin pizza day, pro-Bitcoiner enters presidential race, Solana links with ChatGPT
👓 Read of the week: Thinkpiece on AI will transform the field of design
🎥 Video of the week: Microsoft’s chatbot leveraging WhatsApp to provide information access to remote villagers in India
🤖 This week’s AI showcase: More on the above chatbot, Jugalbandi.
✅ Weekly poll: Help chose the emerging tech topic for Wednesday’s showcase
🤑 DCA with me: Follow my regular $50 weekly investing in an emerging asset class.
Market update 📈
🥝 The NZ Reserve Bank has raised the official cash rate by 0.25% to 5.5% and signalled it has likely reached the end of its tightening cycle. It might be 2026 before we see rates under 4%.
🦅 The US is approaching default unless both sides can agree on a solution. Here are 9 questions you many have about the debt ceiling as the deadline looms
🔷Ethereum's staking boom continues, with a large queue for validators and increased ETH locked for staking. Ethereum's burn rate remains high due to meme coin trading activity
7-day Crypto Heatmap below shows another flat week, with volatility very low (size of the blocks are market share, colour & % show the change over the last week)
🎭 Sentiment levels are still hovering at the edge of fear & greed and will likely stay there until volatility increases
Interesting news
🍕Monday was Bitcoin Pizza Day celebrating Bitcoin's first-ever real-world transaction, which took place 13 years ago. A programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz famously purchased two pizzas for 10,000 BTC from another user on the BitcoinTalk forum on May 22, 2010. Scammers exploited the pizza meme token trend on Bitcoin Pizza Day, resulting in rug pulls and honeypots 😖
🦩 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced his presidential candidacy for 2024, pledging to protect Bitcoin and criticizing Washington's desire for control. He believes Bitcoin represents a threat to central planners, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who are trying to regulate it out of existence. DeSantis opposes excessive control and warns that the current regulatory regime could potentially kill Bitcoin. He recently passed a bill in Florida banning the use of central bank digital currencies (All about CBDSs here)
🤖 Nvidia's shares surged as the chipmaker projected a significant revenue increase, driven by the expanding use of artificial intelligence. With quarterly profits exceeding expectations, the company is on track to join the trillion-dollar club. Its forecasted sales for the upcoming quarter, a 64% jump from the previous year, surprised Wall Street analysts, positioning Nvidia as a major player in the AI industry. Just six months after entering the scene, AI is already having a tangible effect on public markets, when will this extend beyond tech?
⛓️ Solana, a Layer 1 blockchain, is embracing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to revitalize its ecosystem and drive adoption. With the launch of its ChatGPT plugin, users can now enjoy seamless NFT purchases, token transfers, and on-chain data analysis. Solana plans to expand the capabilities of the plugin to include smart contract writing and deployment. The increased funding for its AI accelerator grants program demonstrates Solana's commitment to supporting innovative machine learning projects within its thriving ecosystem. These advancements showcase Solana's determination to overcome challenges and create exciting possibilities for its users.
👓Read of the Week
I really enjoyed this Twitter thread (you can read it unrolled into an article here) discussing how AI will transform the field of design by automating interfaces and shifting the focus from visible interfaces to invisible, predictive, and automated interactions.
The author makes the case that designers will play a crucial role in determining what interactions to craft and what to automate, balancing user control, personal data privacy, and diverse user needs.
The future of interfaces lies in anticipating user intent and seamlessly fulfilling their needs, making interactions more intuitive and effortless 🦾
Video of the week 🎥
This video is about a chatbot built on advanced language models that bridges the linguistic divide and provides users with instant, contextual responses to queries about government information. More info below!
Let me know what you think in the comments!
This week’s AI showcase🎨🤖🎵✍🏼
Each week I showcase something amazing generated by an AI-based tool. AI is disruptive, challenging industries and driving innovation. My vision of the emerging Metaverse predicts the use of many AI tools to enhance how we work, learn, play and socialise.
This week’s use case in the video above comes from India 🇮🇳. Microsoft and partners have developed Jugalbandi, a chatbot leveraging WhatsApp to provide information access to villagers in India. It offers insights into government programs in multiple indigenous languages, addressing language barriers and literacy issues.
Microsoft aims to expand its reach and collaborate with Indian enterprises like Gram Vaani to democratize information access for the broader populace, particularly in rural areas. Altruism or growing a new customer segment? 🤔
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. An investor can buy more of the asset when prices are low and fewer when prices are high, which averages out the overall cost of investment (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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