Snippings

xxx

The new president wants America to become the crypto capital of the planet, floating a proposal to create an official US bitcoin reserve. Establishment of such a reserve would give bitcoin an official imprimatur. But it makes little sense.

From: Crypto is celebrating but Trump’s boosterism could end badly.

xxx

Eswar Prasad, a professor at Cornell University and a senior fellow at Brookings, drew an interesting parallel between the US government support for cryptocurrencies and the Chinese government’s support for the domestic property sector to drive its economy while touting it as a way for households to build their own wealth. Now that that property bubble is bursting, the burden is falling heavily on the lower-income households who locked up a large share of their savings in property or are now stuck with failed developers.

xxx

The switch in Trump’s views on cryptocurrencies — from sceptic to vocal advocate — does not mask the reality that nothing has changed in the fundamentals of this asset class, including its lack of intrinsic value.

From: Crypto is celebrating but Trump’s boosterism could end badly.

xxx

OpenAI’s “Operator” is an AI agent that can take control of a web browser to automate tasks such as booking travel accommodations, making restaurant reservations and shopping online. Operator is powered by a Computer-Using Agent (CUA) model  that combines the vision capabilities of the OpenAI’s GPT-4o model with reasoning abilities from their more advanced models. What this means is that an agent doesn’t need an API to access services, it can use buttons, navigate menus and presumably pass the “prove you are not a robot” puzzles just as people do.

(OpenAI reports that it is collaborating with companies such DoorDash, eBay, Instacart, Priceline, StubHub, Uber and others to ensure that the agents respect the terms of service agreements.)

As it stands, Operator requires human supervision for certain categories of task including, as I am sure you would expect, financial transactions, so that consumer currently need to take control to enter payment information, for example. With the advent of CUA, we can now see the practical evolution of full-blown agentic commerce in strategi timeframes. Agents will go online to obtain services, look for an agentic API and then, if no such APIs is found, simply access the web pages as a human customer does.

xxx

Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos today, Prime Minister Sanchez went on a 17-minute tirade against social media and big tech companies for being dangerous to democracies while presenting three solutions:

Force social media platforms to link user accounts with the EU digital identity wallet and end anonymity

From: Spanish PM Calls to End Social Media Anonymity, Force Digital ID: WEF.

xxx

xxx

Dutch banks are poised to recommend their clients always keep cash money hidden at home, because of the risk that payment systems may be disrupted because of mounting geopolitical tensions.

The Dutch central bank (DNB)said on Wednesday that the chance of a cyber attack on important infrastructure is increasing, particularly from Russia. If the digital payment system is disrupted, then people will no longer be able to pay for goods by bank card, or transfer money automatically.

From: Keep some cash at home because of cyber attacks, DNB says – DutchNews.nl.

xxx

xxx

No physical businesses and very few online businesses are accepting crypto payments, no one is getting paid in crypto, and those who are use it to evade taxes. Investments in cryptos remain extremely low on a global scale with only 562 million people (or 6.8% of the world population) owning some form of cryptocurrencies.
Some see those low numbers as a sign that the industry is still in its early days. The alternative story is that cryptos have no practical use cases (except making creators and early adopters rich), hence, very few adopters.
The market is now established enough that it’s unlikely to change in the future.
In the mid-term, we can expect the value of Bitcoin to keep climbing.
In the long term though, it’s likely that the blockchain will be made redundant by a superior technology that will be able to break it.

From: 17 Years After Their Invention, Cryptocurrencies Have No Use Case | by Aure’s Notes | Notes | Jan, 2025 | Medium.

xxx

xxx

A British Museum spokesman told the BBC: “An IT contractor who was dismissed last week trespassed into the museum and shut down several of our systems.
“Police attended and he was arrested at the scene.

From: British Museum hit by alleged IT attack by ex-worker – BBC News.

xxx

Speakong on the “Oddlots” podcasts with Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, Austin Campbell ( a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the CEO of stablecoin company WSPN USA) make a number of informed obversvations about what the “crypto” industry wants from the Trump administration.

 

“All right, so I’ll give you my super hot take, which is I think over the next, call it 20ish years, probably the entire euro dollar market is moving to stable coins.”

 

“Yeah, I will say I’m gonna file that entire idea for the crypto community under be careful what you wish for. I don’t think that people who are promoting a technology where the value proposition is that there’s not government interference with the technology should be advocating strongly for significantly more government interference in their technology. To me, the easiest way to send Bitcoin to zero in the long run is to push for the strategic reserve.

 

And the reason I say that is if you understand the thinking of nation states around financial rails, if you tell the United States, hey, Bitcoin is highly strategic, their thought is not, well, that means we should buy coins to go up in value. The United States can print its own money. And there are people at the very top who are very aware of this.

 

They’re gonna think, oh, well, we should control that network”

 

From Odd Lots: This Is What the Crypto Industry Actually Wants From Trump, 20 Jan 2025

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?i=1000684667808&r=1483

This material may be protected by copyright.

“work if people are gonna use it to transfer value, which will eventually, even if not at the start, lead to things like commandeering or nationalizing miners and having legal authority to take control of them in times of crisis. And by the way, if you read between the lines and look at our activities in the Middle East over the past 20 years, how do you feel about drone strikes against foreign miners and things of that sort? If you’re telling them it’s strategic, be careful because they may actually agree with you and then start doing these things.

 

Doing the types of things that governments do when a resource is strategic. Correct. That’s a, it’s grim, but also seems epic.

 

I forgot who said it on Twitter. If we’re gonna have the government buy a bunch of Bitcoin for strategic reason, then the least we could do is apply a special excise tax on existing Bitcoin holders. Because if it’s so important for strategy, let’s at least make sure it’s not just some money grab.

 

That could be the test. Are all Bitcoiners willing to pay a tax because of this important aspect of having a strategic holding”

 

From Odd Lots: This Is What the Crypto Industry Actually Wants From Trump, 20 Jan 2025

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?i=1000684667808&r=1533

This material may be protected by copyright.

xxx

OpenAI says that Operator is powered by a Computer-Using Agent model, or CUA, that combines the vision capabilities of the company’s GPT-4o model with reasoning abilities from OpenAI’s more advanced models. The CUA is trained to interact with the front-end of websites, meaning it doesn’t need to use developer-facing APIs to tap into different services.
In other words, the CUA can use buttons, navigate menus, and fill out forms on a web page much like a human would.

From: OpenAI launches Operator, an AI agent that performs tasks autonomously | TechCrunch.

xxx

 

xxx

Bitcoin is hailed as “freedom money”, a tool for financial sovereignty, free from state control. However, as institutional players co-opt its narrative, its fundamental properties are threatened.

From: Is Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve A Threat To Freedom?.

xxx