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“I think it’s very unlikely that any of us would issue a retail CBDC as a bearer instrument. (…) It would probably be some form of account-based instrument.”

From Bank of England dismisses using digital pound like cash; Here’s why.

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A critical Ethereum security assumption is that smart contract code is immutable and therefore cannot be changed once it is deployed on the blockchain. In practice, some smart contracts can change – even after they’ve been deployed. With a few clever tricks, you can create metamorphic smart contracts that “metamorphose” into something else – and by understanding what makes them possible, you can detect them.

Metamorphic smart contracts are mutable, meaning developers can change the code inside them.

From A Tool for Detecting Metamorphic Smart Contracts – a16z crypto.

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you can actually be at risk from a quantum computer, even though a quantum computer does not yet exist. This is often called “harvest now, decrypt later.” It’s the idea that your enemy could copy your data, which is encrypted, and they can hold onto it right now. They can’t read it. But maybe a quantum computer comes out in 10 years, and then they can get access to your data. If the information you’re protecting is valuable enough, then you’re already in trouble because of that threat.

From What Is the Future of Quantum-Proof Encryption? – IEEE Spectrum.

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Pix also promoted greater access to banks among Brazilians. Recent data revealed that about 110 million people had a Pix key registered in the country, while the number of people with access to banks added up to around 80 million people. “There is a gap of 30 million people using Pix that were previously considered unbanked”, Pandur calculates, citing as a reason for this the possibility of using Pix not only through banks but also on digital wallets.

From Get to know Pix, Brazil’s instant payment method.

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In another suit filed against Bank of America in May, plaintiff Mohammad Al-Ramahi alleges he was tricked into sending $4,950 through the platform as part of a scam in which he thought he was sending the money in his role at a new job.

From Banks aren’t doing enough to address Zelle fraud, senators say | Banking Dive.

I feel very sorry for Mr. Al-Ramahi and I don’t doubt that he was indeed the victim merciless scammers. But why is it his bank’s fault? The money could only have been sent to another bank, and US banks have famously extensive (and expensive) KYC procedures, so it should be fairly easy to obtain justice. If the destination bank knows who the scammer is, the police can arrest the scammer. If the destination bank does not know who the scammer is, the police can arrest the compliance officer.

I’ve been a fan of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game (universally known as D&D) for more than 40 years now. I was hooked on it from the first time I played it. When it was first published in 1974, it was a revolution in game playing, creating this idea of a Dungeon Master (DM) who serves as referee and organiser, maintaining the setting in which adventures occur, while the players take the part of characters interacting in that setting.

In 1977, the game was split into two branches: the relatively rules-light game system of basic Dungeons & Dragons, and the more structured, rules-heavy game system of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D), which is where I started my journey, moving on to the AD&D 2nd Edition in 1989.I didn’t play it she much then, what with work and starting a family, but in 2000 it moved on to the D&D 3rd edition and then on to a revised version 3.5 in June 2003. I started my kids and their friends on the “gateway drug” of Heroquest (one of my all-time favourite tabletop games, which has just been reissued to a new generation) and then when they were around 8 or 9 moved them on to D&D 3.5, ,which they continued to play through high school, university and into their working lives in a campaign that finally came to an end earlier this year when the band of heroes defeated the tarrasque and saved the world.

There was a not very good 4th edition that was released and generally ignored in June 2008 and then in 2014 came the wildly successful fifth edition. D&D 5e, which is what I have played since it was first released is a marvel and D&D is now a huge business, mainstream entertainment and no longer the hidden passion of nerds. 

Louis Rosenberg, is CEO of Unanimous AI. His doctoral work at Stanford University resulted in the virtual fixtures system for the U.S. Air Force – an immersive augmented-reality system built in 1992. He predicted: “By 2035 people will laugh at images of the 2020s that show people walking down the street staring down at a phone, necks bent, thinking it looks awkward and primitive. The metaverse will evolve in two directions at once – the virtual metaverse (fully simulated worlds) and the augmented metaverse (layers of rich virtual content overlaid upon the real world with precise spatial registration).

The augmented metaverse, on the other hand, will replace mobile phones as our primary gateway to digital content. The transition from mobile phones to AR hardware will begin the middle of the 2020s and will be complete by 2035, possibly sooner.

From The Metaverse in 2040 | Pew Research Center.

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One can trace the origin of the metaverse back to Dungeons & Dragons before it was digitized and look at it as an imaginary, creative space of social interaction and storytelling.

From The Metaverse in 2040 | Pew Research Center.

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Interac, a Canadian e-transfer service, is currently down due to issues with the Rogers network provider.

From Rogers outage shuts down Canadian banks’ ATMs, POS and internet banking.

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Canadian debit network Interac is adding a backup network provider in the wake of last week’s massive outage at Rogers, which left millions of customers unable to make payments.

In a statement to Reuters, the firm says: “We are adding a supplier (besides Rogers) to strengthen our existing network redundancy so Canadians can continue to rely on Interac daily.”

The Rogers outage, which lasted throughout Friday, left Canadians unable to make debit payments online and in-store.

It also knocked out the hugely popular e-transfer service, which lets the customers of 13 Canadian financial institutions send money directly from their bank accounts to the accounts of other consumers and businesses, using their email address or mobile number.

From Interac adds backup supplier following Rogers outage.

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DeFi can’t succeed if it’s circular, feeding speculative games based on a speculative bubble.

From 🧠🍝 – 3rd July 2022 – The bull case for DeFi, FTX does all the things, and the Robinhood memestock reckoning begins:

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