📔 Weekly Journal: The Report Is In 📨🔎🌐💸💡
[8 min read] Your guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier (& the weekend!). Today, the usual market news & treats as well the new NZ Parliamentary report examining the impact of Digital Assets.
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 41 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: Another volatile week with plenty of FUD.
🗞️ Interesting news: NZ Parliamentary report examining the impact of Digital Assets, Hong Kong’s retail BTC and Eth offering, and BRICS expands.
👓 Read of the week: AI-generated deepfake content is impacting businesses says a new KPMG report.
🎥 Video of the week: Dr. Michio Kaku discusses the profound impact quantum computers will have on our society.
🤖 This week’s AI showcase: How a brain implant and AI gave a woman with paralysis her voice back
✅ 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
🔥🗺️ It has been a rocky week with BTC bouncing between $25600 and $26600. The 7-day heatmap below:
🎭 Sentiment levels are still in Fear zone, a lot of uncertainty at the moment
Interesting news 🗞️
Digital Assets News 🌐💱
🥝 Huge news this week for Digital Assets in NZ! A New Zealand Parliamentary report has been released examining the present and future impact of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. The report recommends a cautious regulatory approach due to the evolving nature of the digital asset landscape. It suggests creating consistent guidance on how current laws apply to digital assets, adopting a technology-neutral regulatory stance, and establishing a formal sandbox for testing digital asset innovations. The Reserve Bank is advised to develop a scheme for banks to conduct due diligence on digital asset-related organizations, ensuring their access to banking services. The report reflects New Zealand's interest in supporting the digital asset industry's growth and improving regulators' understanding of this evolving field. Read the full report here.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong's HashKey plans to launch Bitcoin and Ether retail trading on August 28. The platform, with an upgraded license, will allow investors to use up to 30% of their net worth for crypto trading. HashKey became Hong Kong's first crypto exchange with regulatory clearance for retail crypto trading. The regulatory changes aim to make Hong Kong a crypto-friendly hub, with several firms expressing interest in opening offices. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority also called on banks to serve crypto companies. The new framework intends to offer investor protection while promoting crypto trading in the country.
🌎 The BRICS block is expanding. The emerging market nations alliance invited Saudi Arabia, along with Iran, Egypt, Argentina, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, to join BRICS in an ambitious push to expand global influence. The new BRICS members bring together several of the largest energy producers with the developing world’s biggest consumers, suddenly giving the bloc outsized economic clout. It’s likely that they will move away from using USD and use their own BRICS currency (a digital one/CBDC?) which could be the beginning of the end of USD global dominance.
XR & Virtual Worlds News
👓 3 reasons to be excited about Mixed Reality (MR). Unlike virtual reality, MR integrates digital elements smoothly into our daily lives. The technology's potential expands as it understands and interacts with physical spaces, leading to new experiences. Mixed reality transforms the world into a canvas, where reality and perception can be creatively controlled. Read more about some examples (The Hauntify one is not for the feint-hearted 👻)
🥨 Siemens is investing billions in Europe and the U.S. to establish a German hub for the industrial metaverse. The plan includes around €1 billion investment in Germany, with €500 million for a tech campus to focus on the Industrial Metaverse, part of Siemens' global investment strategy totaling €2 billion across regions. The company views the metaverse as vital for efficient, sustainable future production. The campus will advance research, development, and high-tech production, utilising AI and sustainable practices.
🍹 By royal degree, Spain has established its own agency, the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA), to regulate AI. This move aligns with Spain's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy to ensure inclusive, sustainable, and citizen-centred AI development. The AESIA, formed by the Ministry of Finance and Civil Service and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, positions Spain as a pioneering European country in AI regulation. This initiative follows the European Union's AI Act, which governs AI use and requires member states to establish national AI oversight agencies.
👓Read of the Week
AI-generated deepfake content is impacting businesses, posing risks of fraud, scams, and reputational damage, says a new KPMG report. Scammers employ deepfakes for extortion, misleading representations, and cyberattacks, exploiting advancements in generative AI tools. Such content can be used in social engineering attacks and compromise company reputations. The report highlights a case where an AI-cloned voice led to a $35 million fund transfer. KPMG recommends clear guidance on current law's application to digital assets, a technologically neutral regulatory approach, and the establishment of a sandbox for testing digital asset innovations. Overall a good read!
Video of the week
Get ready for a mind-blowing watch 🤯. Dr. Michio Kaku discusses the profound impact of quantum computers on various aspects of life, comparing their potential revolution to that of digital computers. Quantum computers compute on atoms, offering immense computational power. Their ability to exist in multiple states simultaneously, harnessing parallel universes, makes them exponentially faster than digital computers. Despite challenges like decoherence, he makes the case that quantum computers hold the key to advancements in food, energy, medicine, and even a unified theory of the Universe.
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.
At the age of 30, Ann suffered a brainstem stroke that left her severely paralyzed. She lost control of all the muscles in her body and was unable even to breathe. It came on suddenly one afternoon, for reasons that are still mysterious. Now she is aiding researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley in developing brain-computer technology for natural communication. Using a brain-computer interface and AI, her brain signals are decoded into speech and facial expressions, enabling a digital avatar to mirror her. This pioneering breakthrough, decoding speech and facial expressions from brain signals, is a step towards FDA-approved speech restoration systems to empower those with speech impairments to communicate more naturally improving their quality of life.
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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