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“I think in the future, if you don’t have glasses that have AI or some way to interact with AI, I think you’re kind of similarly, probably [going to] be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people and who you’re working with, or competing against,” Zuckerberg said in a 2025 earnings call.

From: Instagram’s Crackdown on AI Glasses Creeps Is Off to a Bumpy Start – Business Insider.

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Singapore will launch an over-the-counter clearing system for gold this year, along with a vault service for central banks, as the city-state attempts to establish itself as a global trading hub for precious metals.

From: Singapore to launch gold clearing system in bid to become precious metals hub.

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Jeff Yass, co-founder of Susquehanna, an investment firm, also used to be a professional poker player in Las Vegas. Whether a bet is made in a casino, on Wall Street, or on prediction markets, Yass sees them as fundamentally similar: “They’re decisions made under uncertainty.” As more money flows through prediction markets, Susquehanna’s interest in the industry is growing. The firm has around 75 staff trading in prediction markets; Yass hopes this figure will soon rise. He is mindful that the platforms still have some growing-up to do, but told me Susquehanna is closely watching top traders. “We’re losing a lot of money to people that are smarter than us”, he said, “and we’d like to hire them.”

From: Rules-based disorder: why prediction markets struggle if reality is contested | The Economist.

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Last October Zambia became the first country on the continent to accept mining royalties and taxes in yuan. This eases capital flows between Zambia and China, the biggest buyer of Zambia’s abundant copper and its biggest creditor. It also reduces Zambian exposure to the dollar. What is more, since December the Bank of Zambia has required domestic transactions to be paid in local currency, boosting demand for the kwacha. Offenders face fines, up to two years in prison or both.

From: African countries are souring on the dollar.

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Getting into the flow gives you the opportunity to price. It does not tell you what to charge for. The processors that are struggling treated the payment event as the product. The processors that are winning treat the payment event as the entry point to something the merchant values more.

From: Processors: Understanding Competitive Dynamics | Noyes Payments Blog.

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Digital identity means a shake-up is coming in payments. As Tom Noyes puts it, with characteristic accuracy, “a very large share of what a processor sells today exists because we cannot reliably establish who is on the other side of a transaction”. Indeed.

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A very large share of what a processor sells today exists because we cannot reliably establish who is on the other side of a transaction.

From: Processors: Understanding Competitive Dynamics | Noyes Payments Blog.

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China released about 128,000 new microdramas in the first quarter of 2026. More than 95 percent of them are AI productions, Caixin, a Chinese financial-news magazine, reported in June.

From: Will Audiences Watch AI Actors? In China, the Answer Is Yes – The Ankler.

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Toppan has developed a contact and contactless smart card that runs NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithms alongside conventional cryptography for government and medical authentication.
PQC CARD Dual supports ML-KEM for establishing shared cryptographic keys and ML-DSA for creating and verifying digital signatures. It also includes RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) to allow issuers to continue working with existing readers and authentication systems.

From: Toppan develops post-quantum smart card for government, healthcare IDs | Biometric Update.

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To that end, Allen writes that “the Panel queried whether the intended concept was really an age verification result. That question matters because one of the principal attractions of digital proof of age is selective disclosure.” The Panel suggested replacing “identification” with “age verification result” – but the Home Office says it’s not necessary, and that, in keeping with established legal language, “identification” should be understood in this context as “identification for a specific purpose: establishing whether the customer has attained the relevant age.”

From: Home Office provides answers on using digital ID to prove age for alcohol sales | Biometric Update.

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