📔 Weekly Journal: Quantum Leap ⚛️🖥⚛️
[7 min read] Your guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier (& the weekend!). Today, the usual market news & treats as well as news on quantum computers that will bring the true Metaverse closer
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 34 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: A (mostly) win for Ripple & altcoins, and Vanguard loads up on BTC mining stocks
🗞️ Interesting news: Microsoft Acvitivison merger, Web3 music platform raises $20M, and a brain-computer interface helps a paralysed man walk.
👓 Read of the week: Quantum Computers - Google's new one completes a task in 6 seconds that would take traditional computers 47 years
🎥 Video of the week: Learn about what makes a quantum computer “quantum”, and what differentiates it from a regular computer
🤖 This week’s AI showcase: Meet an AI that can instantly translate 5,000-year-old cuneiform tablets.
✅ 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 📈
🥝 On Wednesday, the NZRB Monetary Policy Committee today agreed to leave the Official Cash Rate (OCR) at 5.50%, the first pause in almost 2 years. This should mean that mortgage rates don’t get any higher, but if could be a while before they start to go down. The next update is on 16 August.
🦅 The Ripple case has achieved a significant win for XRP and other altcoins. The judge determined that institutional sales/fundraising were securities, but programmatic sales on exchanges did not meet certain criteria. Bounties, investments, grants, and transfers using XRP were not considered securities. This outcome has implications for the broader crypto market, suggesting that BTC and ETH may not be securities either. The verdict favors selling via exchanges and distributing tokens through native protocols. The summary judgment is a substantial victory, although the case may continue to trial and appeal.
₿ Vanguard now owns $560M worth of Bitcoin mining stocks. Vanguard Group, managing $7.2 trillion in assets, has increased its investment in Bitcoin mining companies. It raised its stake in Marathon Digital by 60% and in Riot Blockchain by nearly 18%, totaling a $560 million investment. Institutional interest in Bitcoin is growing, with BlackRock and other fund managers applying for Bitcoin ETFs. Bitcoin mining involves using powerful computers to verify transactions and earn new Bitcoins.
🔥🗺️ The 7-day heatmap shows another solid week, good to see Eth catching up. BTC dominance is still high at 48% (size of the blocks are market share, colour & % show the change over the last week)
🎭 Sentiment levels are still in mild greed, overall the market seems to be expecting a bull market in the near(ish) future.
Interesting news
💽 Judge Approves Microsoft-Activision Merger. A federal judge in California rejected the Federal Trade Commission's bid to halt Microsoft's monumental $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The court's decision marks a significant setback for FTC chair Lina Khan and paves the way for the largest merger in tech industry history to proceed. Along with Mesh (virtual meetings) and AI investments (OpenAI), this rounds out their Metaverse preparation toolbox.
🪆Russia's State Duma passed legislation approving the introduction of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital ruble. The Bank of Russia plans to conduct live pilots with financial institutions later this month after delays due to the lack of necessary legislation. The digital ruble is intended for domestic retail payments and transfers, but there is also interest in its cross-border applications as an alternative to SWIFT. Could this be part of a new BRICS currency?
🎵 Web3 music platform Sound raised $20 million in funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and with participation from Snoop Dogg, Ryan Tedder, Ashton Kutcher's Sound Ventures, and others. Sound disrupts Web2 streaming services like Spotify by allowing artists to sell songs directly to fans as NFTs. Since its beta launch in 2022, Sound has helped artists generate $5.5 million in music sales. Inspired by Radiohead, the platform aims to empower artists and give them control over their revenue. With the funding, Sound plans to expand its teams and open its platform to the public, continuing to transform the music industry.
🧠🔗🖥️ Elon Musk’s Neuralink is not the only brain-computer interface making progress. See below for a lifechanging example:
👓Read of the Week
Google's new Quantum Computer completes a task in 6 seconds that would take traditional computers 47 years. Quantum computers have the potential to change what we can build and how we understand the world, traditional computers don’t have the ability to provide what we need for a true realisation of the metaverse (see more on this is a dedicated article here). The race to build quantum technology is intensifying among big tech companies globally. This breakthrough could revolutionize various fields, including drug discovery, climate modelling, finance, and AI. Whats a bit concerning is that The National Security Agency warns that a large quantum computer could undermine widely-deployed public key algorithms - would seed phrases be secure? 🔐
This weeks read is “Quantum Computers Could Be Truly Useful in Just Two Years” in Popular Mechanics.
Video of the week 🎥
In this video, Marissa Giustina addresses some basic questions about quantum computing. You’ll learn about what makes a quantum computer “quantum”, and what differentiates it from a regular computer. In addition, you’ll get to see what Google’s current quantum processors look like, and see the stack of hardware infrastructure needed to run the full system.
This week’s AI showcase🎨🤖🎵✍🏼
AI is disruptive, challenging industries and driving innovation. Each week I showcase something amazing generated by AI-based tool. My vision of the emerging Metaverse predicts the use of many AI tools to enhance how we work, learn, play and socialise.
A multidisciplinary team of archaeologists and computer scientists has developed an AI that can instantly translate 5,000-year-old cuneiform tablets. Translating ancient languages is a challenging and time-consuming task, but this AI model, trained on cuneiform texts, achieved high-quality translations. The AI can handle both transliterations and cuneiform symbols, scoring well in tests. While improvements are needed for longer and more complex sentences, the AI shows promise in aiding scholars as a virtual assistant. Another example of AI amplifying productivity, this breakthrough enables the preservation and accessibility of ancient Mesopotamia's cultural heritage.
Indiana Jones is going to need better Wi-Fi 🧑🏻💻
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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