📔 Weekly Journal: Record Investing 🥝🤑
[7 min read] Your guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier (& the weekend!). Today, the usual market news & treats as well the Reserve Bank of NZ record breaking A.U.M data
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 43 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: Kiwis have more invested than ever before, crypto markets flat
🗞️ Interesting news: Elon backing Dogecoin, Visa uses Solana, MakerDAO considering tokenized U.S. Treasury Bills, and Meta’s new headset tech.
👓 Read of the week: Why Does Bitcoin Have Value?
🎥 Video of the week: The "light field pass-through" tech from Meta’s new headset
🤖 This week’s AI showcase: Warner Music signs record deal with Noonoouri, the first AI virtual pop singer and Instagram influencer
✅ 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
Assets under management (AUM) represents the total market value of assets, typically financial investments, that a financial institution or manager oversees on behalf of clients or funds. Some interesting news from the Reserve Bank of NZ released data:
The total value of funds under management increased to $267.9B, breaking the record high of $264.3B in December 2021.
KiwiSaver showed quarterly and annual growth, going up 3.7% and 15.4% respectively. (More KiwiSaver stats here)
🔥🗺️ 7-day heatmap below:
🎭 Sentiment levels have raisen from a low of 39 last week to 46 now, still in the Fear zone
Interesting news 🗞️
Digital Assets News 🌐💱
🐕 Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire known for his influence in the cryptocurrency market, has been quietly funding the development of Dogecoin, a fork of Bitcoin and originally a meme-based cryptocurrency. Despite Dogecoin's value dropping significantly from its all-time high, Musk remains interested in its development. He once considered creating a blockchain-based social media platform with Dogecoin as its payment system. Musk has also been making moves in the cryptocurrency space, acquiring licenses and reportedly aiming to transform Twitter into a "new PayPal."
💳 Visa has expanded its stablecoin settlement capabilities to include the Solana blockchain, alongside Ethereum. In partnership with Worldpay and Nuvei, Visa conducted live pilots, moving millions of USDC between partners to settle fiat-denominated payments on VisaNet. This move aims to accelerate cross-border settlements and offer stablecoin payment options. Visa's inclusion of Solana marks it as one of the first major payment companies to support this blockchain for settlements, enabling merchants to receive payments in stablecoins like USDC, boosting efficiency in the payment ecosystem.
🏦 A financial advisory firm has proposed that MakerDAO allocate up to $100 million from its reserves for investing in tokenized U.S. Treasury Bills (T-Bills). The proposal aims to explore benefits like transparency, simplicity, and quicker redeemability while noting potential counterparty risks. MakerDAO, known for issuing DAI stablecoin, has previously invested in traditional assets for its balance sheet.
XR and Virtual Worlds News
Meta has a mixed-reality headset called Flamera, which tackles the challenge of "passthrough" by using "Light Field Passthrough" technology. Flamera's grid of apertures captures light optimally, replicating surroundings accurately. This innovation, though yielding a bug-eye appearance, enhances mixed reality experiences. Flamera's debut at Siggraph 2023 received positive feedback but critics noted a limited field of view. This development hints at significant advancements in mixed reality, with competing releases, like Apple's Vision Pro, on the horizon. Learn more about this tech in the Watch of the Week below.
👓Read of the Week
The title of this weeks read is a question I get all the time “Why Does Bitcoin Have Value”. Here are the main parts I took away from the article:
Bitcoin's value lies in its unique blockchain technology, which offers decentralization, transparency, and immutability.
Its scarcity, capped at 21 million bitcoins, contrasts with inflationary fiat currencies.
Bitcoin's global acceptance, institutional interest, and digital nature add to its value as a store of value and investment.
Its utility for peer-to-peer payments, remittances, and as a hedge against inflation also contribute to its worth.
Watch of the week
In this video, you can learn more about the virtual reality pass-through technology from the update above. Flamera's innovative optical architecture, known as "light field pass-through," eliminates computational distortions, offering users a natural, high-quality real-world experience in VR. Apple has some serious competition in this exciting new category!
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.
Instead of using AI to generate music for a human popstar, the next story takes this to a new level.
Warner Music has made history by signing an unprecedented record deal with Noonoouri, the first AI virtual pop singer and Instagram influencer. Noonoouri, a digital entity free from human limitations, debuted her single "Dominoes" on September 1, 2023, featuring German DJ Alle Farben. She’s also a fashion sensation with over 200,000 Instagram followers and collaborations with top brands. She also promotes veganism, sustainable fashion, and opposes fur use in the fashion industry. Interesting!
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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