A library of snippets
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A standout achievement made possible by our proprietary speech tech was our recent deployment of AI-powered assistants to make payment reminder calls to customers with loans in early stage delinquency. In 3Q of 2024 they handled over 40% of such loans, delivering efficiency gains while maintaining conversations that most customers couldn’t distinguish from real humans.
From: Interview: TBC Bank’s Oliver Hughes on what makes Uzbekistan an exciting market – GlobalData.
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Tether has made a $775 million “strategic investment” in video platform Rumble which, given the backers of Rumble, might well signal something really new in the media space: stablecoin payments for content. This could create a platform for testing some of those new busines models and contribute to a mindset shift away from “free” media, perhaps even using “smart” “contracts” to automate conditional subscriptions, such as payment only after a certain amount of visits, or automatic membership if other conditions have been fulfilled. We find Noelle Acheson point about content providers paying each other, without going through payment hubs, especially interesting. New types of content bundlign and sharing could be just around the corner. Now put this functionality at the disposal of agents and we could be looking a wholly new business models that have been beyind speculation up until now.
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As more sensors surround us, they will capture and transmit not just more data, but more types of data. While organizations are busy creating and using LLMs, they will soon need to build LAMs: large action models. If LLMs predict what to say next, LAMs predict what should be done next, breaking down complex tasks into smaller pieces.
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Because memecoins defy easy comparison with traditional investment assets, says Le, they are perhaps best regulated by gambling authorities. “It is basically unregulated gambling. It’s going to probably come down to the purview of whoever the regulator of gambling is in each country,” he says. “Through the grapevine, I’m already hearing some state regulators in the US talking about doing some kind of regulation.” Pump.Fun declined to comment.
From: The Memecoin Shenanigans Are Just Getting Started | WIRED.
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for memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency that generally has no utility beyond financial speculation.
Because memecoins do not generate revenue or cash flow, their value is entirely based on the attention they attract, which can fluctuate wildly. In aggregate, the memecoin market is now worth more than $100 billion.
From: The Memecoin Shenanigans Are Just Getting Started | WIRED.
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Why would Tether put so much money into a business model that, 10 years later, has yet to find its footing?
I actually think there’s something more interesting going on.
We could be looking at the beginnings of a new crypto development: media payments.
This isn’t a new idea, several projects have tried this and failed, and others are still pushing on decentralized media adoption. But no-one, yet, has tried to implement it at mainstream scale.
Enabling cryptocurrency transfers could enhance revenue for creators by making payments cheaper – this would especially be noticed by creators outside North America. Also, more frequent payments could attract contributors who rely on platform cash flow.
It could also allow the testing of new types of business models, such as micropayments to reduce dependence on nervous advertisers. This could contribute to a mindset shift away from “free” media, which will be difficult since “free” usually wins.
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“They’re a rail above the payments rails”
I don’t think this is right. I think we are looking at two sets of payments rails that do not overlap (which is good, because we want the flexibility and resilience this affords). There will be transactions that run over the banking network rails and there will transactions that run over the internet. Banks (and customers) will use both of them.
I general, it’snot clear to me that consumers (or businesses) will know or care. You walk about of Waitrose, an R2P pops up on your phone, you OK it and the money vanishes from your bank account. Whether it goes via banking network push (instant payments), banking network pull (cards) or internet push (stablecoins) is of no interest to you, it is something that the banks and the merchants will negotiate and agree between themselves.
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the implications of a Facebook where the majority of the activity is bots bouncing off one another are hard to grasp, even at a moment when artificially gamed exchanges are common on the social network
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The envisioned change also comes at a time when Facebook in particular is dominated by AI-generated spam images commonly referred to as “slop.” These pictures range from visually attractive though nonexistent landscapes and houses to depictions of babies, soldiers, the American flag, and Jesus Christ, presumably meant to evoke a response from older and conservative-leaning audience. This low-effort engagement farming allows the individuals posting the images — many of them in the Global South — to monetize the pages or sell related merchandise. Through payments to content creators who develop large followings for slop, Meta effectively incentivizes the content.
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The banks’ strategic response should be to add value around the transactions, not to try and survive off of shrinking interchange margins in the face of competition from non-card alternatives such as Walmart Pay-By-Bank. In an A2A world those services are safety and security, data and decisioning not only the payments themselves.
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