A library of snippets
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El Salvador expects to reach agreement with the IMF in the next two to three weeks on a $1.3bn loan programme in return for changes to its pioneering use of bitcoin as legal tender and reductions in government deficits, according to two people close to the talks.
From: El Salvador to scale back bitcoin dreams to seal $1.3bn IMF deal.
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Gold reserves, on the other hand, no longer serve to settle international accounts. Yet they make up roughly 15 percent of global reserve assets. The main reason for this is that gold is a good hedge against exchange-rate or “currency” risk, meaning the risk monetary authorities incur by holding reserves of foreign exchange. But as we’ll see, a big chunk of the world’s official gold reserves is held for no better reason than sheer inertia.
From: The “Digital Gold” Fallacy, or, Why Bitcoin Can’t Save the U.S. Dollar.
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Animals get their own bank accounts
What if animals had their own pots of money, and could spend it in ways to promote conservation and biodiversity, increasing their chances of survival? That is the idea behind “interspecies money”, a concept being developed by Tehanu, a technology outfit. It has already launched a trial involving a family of 19 mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and in 2025 it hopes to extend this scheme to cover all gorillas in the country. In the coming year it also hopes to launch a separate project to help protect the straw-coloured fruit bat, which is found across central Africa and plays a valuable role in seed dispersal.illustration: leon edler
Tehanu’s system uses sensors and artificial intelligence to determine the needs of the animals—for example, that a poacher’s snare needs to be removed, or that an individual gorilla requires veterinary treatment. It then recruits a nearby human to do this work, via an online services platform that the company calls “the gig economy for nature”, and issues a payment once it is complete. In this way, animals can direct their funds to local workers in accordance with their needs and those of the ecosystem they inhabit. Tehanu’s aim is to show that distributing conservation funding in this way is transparent, produces verifiable results and creates sustainable jobs—as well as protecting the animals, their habitats and the ecosystem services they provide. Humans can make digital payments verified by facial recognition, so why shouldn’t gorillas?
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Examining these ai victims suggests three lessons for businesses. The first is that the threat to incumbents from the technology is greater in industries where the potential damage done by ai hogwash (known as hallucinations) is low. Error-strewn code is a worry for developers, but problems are typically easy to spot before the software is deployed. Flawed translations can be easily corrected. If an ai tool makes up facts when writing an undergraduate’s history essay, the ramifications are small (though perhaps less so for the student if they are caught using an ai tool). Errors when writing up a legal contract or a medical prescription, by contrast, are more costly. ai services will take longer to gain ground in industries that are more sensitive to made-up nonsense.
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Adam Biesk concedes to a limited understanding of crypto. But he sees little distinction between what his son did and, say, playing the stock market or winning at a casino. Though under California law someone must be at least 18 years old to gamble or invest in stocks, the unregulated memecoin market, which has been compared to a “casino” in risk profile, had given Biesk’s teenage son early access to a similar arena, in which some must lose for others to profit. “The way I understand it is he made money and he cashed out, which to me seems like that’s what anybody would’ve done,”
From: A Kid Made $50,000 Dumping Crypto He’d Created. Then Came the Backlash | WIRED.
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he sees little distinction between what his son did and, say, playing the stock market or winning at a casino
From: A Kid Made $50,000 Dumping Crypto He’d Created. Then Came the Backlash | WIRED.
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The physical artwork itself rots, and is replaced by a grocery-store banana. So it’s really not a banana that’s being sold—it’s an idea.
From: The Weekender: Banana discourse, texting anxiety, and the great audiobook debate.
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CBDCs and FPS both allow for fast instant payments, and there is ongoing tension regarding which solution is better.
From: Part 2: CBDC and FPS Aren’t Rivals But Partners in Better Payments.
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In a briefing with reporters about the breach of no fewer than eight phone companies by the Chinese state-sponsored espionage hackers known as Salt Typhoon, officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI both said that amid the still-uncontrolled infiltration of US telecoms that have exposed calls and texts, Americans should use encryption apps to safeguard their privacy. “Encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication,” said Jeff Greene, CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity. (Signal and WhatsApp, for instance, end-to-end encrypt calls and texts, though the officials didn’t name any particular apps.)
The recommendation amid what one senator has called “the worst telecom hack in our nation’s history” represents a stunning reversal from previous US officials’ rhetoric on encryption, and in particular the FBI’s repeated calls for access to backdoors in encryption. In fact, it was exactly this sort of government-approved wiretap capability requirement for US telecoms that the Salt Typhoon hackers in some cases exploited to access Americans communications.
From: US Officials Recommend Encryption Apps Amid Chinese Telecom Hacking | WIRED.
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Research has found if you start an account as a twelve-year-old boy on TikTik, you will be recommended Andrew Tate content within two and a half minutes.
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