📔 Weekly Journal: Construction Robots 🏗🤖🦾
[6 min read] Your guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier (& the weekend!). Today, the usual market news as well as how robots are solving problems in the construction industry
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 60 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: Bitcoin ETF fund flows over 9 days (spoiler alert - is mind-blowing.)
🗞️ Interesting news: WIFI hotspots powered by the Helium 5G network & Solana, Microsoft Teams now supports 3D and VR meetings, The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) launches a tokenisation project, and an invitation to my upcoming webinar
👓 Read of the week: Torbjørn Bull Jenssen’s excellent OpEd “My Long-Term Investment Case for Bitcoin”
🎥 Video of the week: Meet Dusty the construction robot that prints floorplans right onto the ground
🤖 AI: Some use cases for ReplaceAnything - ultra-high-quality content replacement
🤑 DCA with me: Follow my regular $50 weekly investing in an emerging asset class.
Market Update
Bitcoin ETF fund flows over 9 days showed:
Blackrock holds 45,668.08 BTC, closely followed by Fidelity with 45,354 BTC, currently outpacing Blackrock in inflows
ETFs absorbed 130K BTC in 9 days, while Grayscale shed 109,793. ETFs alone are attracting 16 times the daily Bitcoin supply, and in less than 80 days, they are expected to attract 32 times the daily volume. 🤯
Additionally, FTX's bankruptcy estate has reportedly sold around $1 billion USD worth of GBTC, adding to selling pressure on Bitcoin.
Overall all signs point to Bitcoin’s price exceeding $100,000 USD in the near future 📈
🔥🗺️ 7-day heatmap below, relatively flat week on week. BTC did dip below $40k for a day or two but has popped back up.
🎭 Crypto Fear and Greed Index is based on volatility, social media sentiments, surveys, market momentum, and a few other bits and pieces. Obviously BTC dipping below $40k was a fear trigger for many.
Interesting news from this week🗞️
📶 Telefónica has partnered with Nova Labs to launch Helium Mobile hotspots in Mexico City and Oaxaca. These hotspots, powered by the Helium 5G network & Solana, aim to offload mobile data traffic and extend Telefónica's coverage in Mexico. Utilizing Nova Labs' decentralised wireless network, Helium Mobile allows users to earn crypto tokens on Solana for participating.
🧩 The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub unveiled its 2024 program, highlighting six projects addressing cybersecurity, financial crime, CBDCs, and green finance. Notably, the second phase of CBDC privacy testing and the launch of a tokenisation project, Promissa, were announced. Promissa, a collaboration with the Swiss National Bank and the World Bank, aims to create a proof-of-concept platform for digital tokenised promissory notes. The BIS continues its commitment to CBDCs, much to the ire of pro-freedom critics.
👓 Microsoft is officially launching 3D meetings through its mixed reality platform, Microsoft Mesh, integrated into Microsoft Teams. Accessible with or without VR headsets, spatial audio enhances virtual conversations, and customizable 3D environments offer interactive elements. Meta's Quest devices are currently supported.
Invitation to my upcoming Webinar
Who is this session for? This session is designed for investors eyeing new opportunities, companies or fund managers on the lookout for different venture capital channels, and projects exploring the tokenisation of real world assets (including tokenised financial products).
Location: Online Zoom meeting
When: Thursday 22 February 10:00-11:30 am (NZ standard time)
Format: Presentation + Q&A
Presenters: Ryan Johnson-Hunt, Tracey McDonald, Graeme Leversha, Bryan Ventura
👓Read of the Week
Torbjørn Bull Jenssen wrote an excellent OpEd “My Long-Term Investment Case for Bitcoin”
Torbjørn predicts Bitcoin's appreciation in the future, citing two main reasons:
The potential for Bitcoin to become a global reserve currency, offering a borderless and neutral alternative to national currencies.
The expected fall in the value of the U.S. dollar due to high debt levels.
He suggests buying Bitcoin under two circumstances:
If you anticipate its value to increase over time.
If you foresee a need for its unique capabilities in the future, acknowledging the risk of limited availability when needed.
🎥 Watch of the week
I love it when robotics solves real-world problems, this one comes from the construction world. Bonus points for making it look cute.
Dusty enables the construction industry to build more with less, increasing construction efficiency while making job sites safer. Their new flagship product, the FieldPrinter 2, automates the printing of the layout on the ground. Only offered in the US currently, the platform has already printed over 91 million square feet of layout!
AI 🎨🤖🎵✍🏼
People have been talking a lot about ReplaceAnything – an “advanced framework for ultra-high-quality content replacement”. Amidst the growing interest in AI generated content techniques, particularly in image editing and generation, there is a the demand for generating new content while preserving the identity of user-specified objects. Rising to the challenge, ReplaceAnything has emerged as a versatile solution with all kinds of use cases, including human replacement, clothing replacement, background replacement, and more. Staged product photo shoots have an expiry date!
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 cycle. 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:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Metaverse Field Guide to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.