Snippings

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Meta has unveiled a feature that enables Facebook and Instagram users to connect their accounts with Amazon for a seamless shopping experience.

This move aims to keep users within the apps while making purchases on Amazon, eliminating the need to navigate away from their feeds, CNBC reported Thursday (Nov. 9).

Reached by PYMNTS, an Amazon spokesperson provided an emailed statement: “For the first time, customers will be able to shop Amazon’s Facebook and Instagram ads and check out with Amazon without leaving the social media apps. Customers in the U.S. will see real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, delivery estimates and product details on select Amazon product ads in Facebook and Instagram as part of the new experience. In-app shopping with Amazon is available for select products advertised on Facebook or Instagram and sold by Amazon or by independent sellers in Amazon’s store.”

From: Meta Enables Amazon Shopping Within Facebook and Instagram.

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To those closely watching the firm, Humane appears well positioned to secure a foothold in the budding market for AI devices. It has raised over $240 million from Microsoft, Tiger Global Management and Marc Benioff’s Time Ventures. It was founded by two well-regarded former Apple executives, Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, who assembled an all-star team of several dozen former Apple designers, engineers and executives. And it has already mustered a buzzy marketing campaign that’s taken the Ai Pin to the TED Talks stage and the runways of Paris Fashion Week, where it adorned the lapel of supermodel Naomi Campbell.

The co-founders’ ambitious vision for a future of “ambient computing” aims to free humankind from our addiction to screens, allowing us to become more fully engaged with the physical world around us. If widely adopted, Humane’s technology could also disrupt the advertising-driven attention economy that has come to define the big tech ecosystem.

But as expectations for Humane and its Ai Pin mount, some close to the company have expressed nagging doubts about Humane’s debut product and its overall business strategy. In conversations with former employees, current investors and industry observers, questions arose about the company’s approach to user privacy and the form factor of the Ai Pin itself. In particular, some worry that the device’s front-facing camera will alienate segments of the public who fear being recorded against their will.

From: Has Humane Created the Next iPhone—or the Next Google Glass? — The Information.

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The alternative they’ll present at next month’s Ai Pin launch is a small, screenless device about the size of a saltine cracker, equipped with a camera, a microphone and speaker, a variety of sensors, and a laser projector. The device is meant to secure magnetically to a user’s clothing, allowing its camera, with a 180-degree field of view, to take in the world around the wearer.

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While we are just beginning to see vendors like Socure and Trulioo using inorganic and organic growth to create IIPs, we are moving to a platform phase where we will see market consolidation.

According to Liminal, estimates point to a total addressable market (TAM) of $48.1 billion in 2023, projected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.6% and reach $115.9 billion by 2027.

From: The Evolution Of Integrated Identity Platforms.

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The ‘Holy Grail of shipwrecks’ containing up to 200 tons of gold, silver and emeralds could be floating on the Caribbean within months after Colombia declared a national mission to recover the treasure.

The Spanish galleon San Jose sank off the Colombian port of Cartagena after its powder magazines detonated during a skirmish with the British in 1708. On board were treasures worth up to $20 billion in today’s money along with 600 sailors, all but 11 of whom went down with the ship.

From: San Jose shipwreck to dubbed ‘the Holy Grail’ to be exhumed off Colombia with $20 billion sunken treasure | Daily Mail Online.

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Often the participants used a token system, where they would send one another the serial number of a specific bank note beforehand, and then flash that note on arrival to verify they have met with the right person, a common tactic in money laundering circles.

From: Inside a $30 Million Cash-for-Bitcoin Laundering Ring in the Heart of New York.

Well, you live and learn. Try as I might I remain as stranger money laundering circles so I havd never of thei IRL (in real life) security protocol but it is indeed brilliant in its simplicity.

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All of this data suggests to me the existence of three American crypto archetypes.

The most dominant crypto archetype is the young wealthy male crypto dabbler, most likely non-white, who holds a few hundred bucks worth of doge or some other coin in order to gamble on prices going up. Coinbase’s America Loves Crypto campaign makes the claim that “the crypto owner is a critical voter,” but I suspect this doesn’t hold for the dominant dabbler archetype, who probably doesn’t have much attachment to their casual $50 bet on doge or litecoin or bitcoin, and thus can’t be assembled into a voting block for crypto-related cause.

Another archetype is the much rarer crypto fundamentalist, a young male who has committed most of his savings to crypto. I suspect these are the types I encounter on Twitter, who evangelize and debate crypto to anyone who’ll listen. This may be a small group, but they are also the most likely to vote for crypto-related causes.

Lastly, there seems to be a very small group of low-income people who are using crypto for actual transactions, the original use-case that Satoshi Nakamoto intended when he introduced the first cryptocurrency back in 2008.

From: Moneyness: Crypto adoption in America.

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Why do the Americans who own “crypto” own crypto? The Federal Reserve’s Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (SDCPC) is a long-running data collection effort that tries to obtain a comprehensive picture of U.S. consumers’ payment preferences and behavior. When this survey queried participants in 2022 for their “primary reason for owning virtual currency,” the most popular answer (at 67%) was investment (see chart below, orange rows). The second most popular reason (21%) was “I am interested in new technologies.” It was rare for respondents to list any sort of payments-related use case as their primary reason for ownership. As for lack of trust in banks, the government, or the dollar – all of which are common cryptocurrency themes – these were rarely mentioned in 2022 as a primary reason for ownership.

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So there you have it. The two Federal Reserve surveys put crypto ownership at 9.6% and 8-10% respectively in 2022, while Weber et al peg it at 12% using Nielsen Homescan data. Pew has American crypto ownership at 11-12% by early 2023. And in Canada, the Bank of Canada calculates bitcoin ownership to be at 10% by the end of 2022, while the Ontario Securities Commission pegs total crypto ownership at 13% in early 2022, before much of crypto imploded.

From: Moneyness: Crypto adoption in America.

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Going through the SDCPC data, the majority of Americans who own crypto only have a little bit of the stuff. Out of all U.S. crypto owners surveyed, 45% owned just $0-200 worth of crypto in 2022. This is illustrated in the chart below. The median quantity of crypto held was $312. Given such small amounts, I doubt that these crypto owners qualify as durable crypto adopters, as opposed to folks who’ve jumped on the bandwagon when they saw a Superbowl ad from Coinbase, bought some dogecoin, and have since stopped paying any attention.

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The agency claims that a hacker with the pseudonym ‘pwn0001’ disclosed information about the breach on Breach Forums on October 9. They advertised the availability of 815 million records. Although the government has not officially confirmed the data breach, Resecurity’s HUNTER unit has identified millions of personally identifiable information records, including Aadhaar cards, offered for sale on the Dark Web, belonging to Indian residents.

The data set presented by pwn0001 encompasses various personal information, such as names, fathers’ names, phone numbers, passport numbers, Aadhaar numbers, ages, genders, addresses, districts, pincodes, and states.

From: Massive Data Breach Exposes Sensitive Information of 815 Million Indians on Dark Web.

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ISO/IEC 27566 — Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection — Age assurance systems — Framework

From: ISO/IEC 27566 age verification.

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