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#USA Epic Games buys 3Lateral, maker of super-realistic ‘digital humans’

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Epic Games announced this morning that they’ve acquired Serbia-based 3Lateral, a game studio focused on designing more realistic computer-generated human characters.

The team of 60+ will be continuing their work with existing partners and maintaining their presence in Serbia. 3Lateral founder Vladimir Mastilovic will lead Epic Games’ worldwide digital humans efforts, the company says.

No details on a price or specific deal terms were given.

Epic Games, which operates Fortnite as well as the Unreal Engine game development platform, has worked with 3Lateral in the past on projects to push the level of realism and detail that are possible with human avatars.

“Real-time 3D experiences are reshaping the entire entertainment industry, and digital human technology is at the forefront. Fortnite shows that 200,000,000 people can experience a 3D world together. Reaching the next level requires capturing, personalizing, and conveying individual human faces and emotions,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said in a statement.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2WfLp66

#USA DoorDash poaches Uber Eats engineering boss

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One way to gain ground on a competitor is to poach their best executives. We’ve seen it time and time again, from high-level Tesla employees fleeing for Lyft or Apple stealing Google’s AI talent.

DoorDash, a well-funded food delivery unicorn, is familiar with this method of staffing. The company announced this morning that it has poached its second Uber employee in the last year to join its growing business. Ryan Sokol, credited with leading and scaling Uber Eats, Uber’s food delivery arm, from its inception, has joined DoorDash as its vice president of engineering.

The news comes shortly after the San Francisco-based company hired Prabir Adarkar, Uber’s former head of strategic finance, as its chief financial officer. The company also recently hired chief people officer Sarah Wagener from Pandora, where she was VP of human resources.

Reporting to co-founder and chief executive officer Tony Xu, Sokol will lead the product, infrastructure and data science teams within DoorDash’s engineering department.

“Ryan comes to DoorDash at a critical inflection point in our business following a breakout year,” DoorDash wrote in an announcement. “In 2018 we 5xed our geographic footprint from 600 to 3,300 cities and tripled our valuation to more than $4 billion.”

“We doubled the engineering team to 200+ last year, working on a variety of problems from machine learning applications to logistics to personalizing consumer experiences,” they added. “This year, we plan to double our team again and continue on our trajectory as the fastest growing last-mile logistics company in the space.”

Six-year-old DoorDash has raised nearly $1 billion in venture capital funding, most recently at a $4 billion valuation, from SoftBank, Sequoia, Coatue Management, DST Global,  Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, CRV and several others.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2MtMna2

#USA Anchorage emerges with $17M from a16z for ‘omnimetric’ crypto security

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I’m not allowed to tell you exactly how Anchorage keeps rich institutions from being robbed of their cryptocurrency, but the off-the-record demo was damn impressive. Judging by the $17 million Series A this security startup raised last year led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by Khosla Ventures, Max Levchin, Elad Gil, Mark McCombe of Blackrock, and AngelList’s Naval Ravikant, I’m not the only one who thinks so. In fact crypto funds like Andreessen’s a16zcrypto, Paradigm, and Electric Capital are already using it.

They’re trusting in the guys who engineered Square’s first encrypted card reader and Docker’s security protocols. “It’s less about us choosing this space and more about this space choosing us. If you look our backgrounds and you look at the problem, it’s like the universe handed us on a silver platter the venn diagram of our skillset” co-founder Diogo Monica tells me.

Today, Anchorage is coming out of stealth and launching its cryptocurrency custody service to the public. Anchorage holds and safeguards crypto assets for institutions like hedge funds and venture firms, and only allows transactions verified by an array of biometrics, behavioral analysis, and human reviewers. And since it doesn’t use “buried in the backyard” cold storage, asset holders can actually earn rewards and advantages for participating in coin-holder votes without fear of getting their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other coins stolen.

The result is a crypto custody service that could finally lure big-time commercial banks, endowments, pensions, mutual funds, and hedgies into the blockchain world. Whether they seek short-term gains off of crypto volatility or want to HODL long-term while participating in coin governance, Anchorage promises to protect them.

Evolving Past “Pirate Security”

Anchorage’s story starts eight years ago when Monica and his co-founder Nathan McCauley met after joining Square the same week. Monica had been getting a PhD in distributed systems while McCauley designed anti-reverse engineering tech to keep the US military data from being extracted from abandoned tanks or jets. After four years of building systems that would eventually move over $80 billion per year in credit card transactions, they packaged themselves as a “pre-product acquihire” Monica tells me, and they were snapped up by Docker.

As their reputation grew from work and conference keynotes, cryptocurrency funds started reaching out for help with custody of their private keys. One had lost a passphrase and the $1 million in currency it was protecting. The pair realized there were no true standards in crypto custody, so they got to work on Anchorage.

“You look at the status quo and it was and still is cold storage. It’s the same technology used by pirates in the 1700s” Monica explains. “You bury your crypto in a treasure chest and then you make a treasure map of where those gold coins are” except with USB keys, security deposit boxes, and checklists of where they are. “We started calling it Pirate Custody.” They set out to build something better — a replacement for usernames and passwords or even phone numbers and two-factor authentication that could be misplaced or hijacked.

This led them to Andreessen Horowitz partner and a16zcrypto leader Chris Dixon, who’s now on their board. “We’ve been buying crypto assets running back to Bitcoin for years now here at A16zCrypto and its hard to do it in a way that’s secure, regulatorily complaint, and lets you access it. We felt this pain point directly.”

Andreessen Horowith partner and Anchorage board member Chris Dixon

This is when Monica and McCauley give me their off the record demo. While there’s no screenshots to share, the enterprise security suite they’ve built has the polish of a consumer app like Robinhood. What I can say is that Anchorage works with clients to whitelist employees devices. It then uses multiple types of biometric signals and behavioral analytics about the person and device trying to log in.

But even once they have access, Anchorage is built around quorum-based approvals. Withdrawls, other transactions, and even changing employee permissions requires approval from multiple users inside the client company. They could set up Anchorage so it requires five of seven executives to pull out assets. And finally, outlier detection algorithms and a human review the transaction to make sure it looks legit. A hacker or rogue employee can’t steal the funds even if they’re logged in since they need consensus of approval.

That kind of assurance means institutional investors can confidently start to invest in crypto assets. That swell of capital could help replace the retreating consumer investors who’ve fled the market this year leading to massive price drops. The liquidity provided by these asset managers could keep the whole blockchain industry moving. “Institutional investing has had centuries to build up a set of market infrastructure. Custody was something that for other asset classes was solved hundreds of years ago so it’s just now catching up” says McCauley. “We’re creating a bigger market in and of itself” Monica adds.

With Anchorage steadfastly handling custody, the risk these co-founders admit worry them lie in the smart contracts that govern the cryptocurrencies themselves. “We need to be extremely wide in our level of support and extremely deep because each blockchain has details of implementation. This is inherently a very difficult problem” McCauley explains. It doesn’t matter if the coins are safe in Anchorage’s custody if a janky smart contract can botch their transfer.

There are plenty of startups vying to offer crypto custody, ranging from Bitgo and Ledger to well-known names like Coinbase and Gemini. Yet Anchorage offers a rare combination of institutional-since-day-one security rigor with the ability to participate in votes and governance of crypto assets that’s impossible if they’re in cold storage. Down the line, Anchorage hints that it might serve clients recommendations for how to vote to maximize their yield and preserve the sanctity of their coin.

They’ll have crypto investment legend Chris Dixon on their board to guide them. “What you’ll see is in the same way that institutional investors want to buy stock in Facebook and Google and Netflix, they’ll want to buy the equivalent in the world 10 years from now and do that safely” Dixon tells me. “Anchorage will be that layer for them.”

But why do the Anchorage founders care so much about the problem? McCauley concludes that “When we look at what’s potentialy possible with crypto, there a fundamentally more accessible economy. We view ourselves as a key component of bringing that future forward.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2AYHhxY

#Blockchain The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC Desk to Launch in US

The Daily: Huobi Streamlines Operation, New OTC Desk to Launch in US

In Wednesday’s edition of The Daily we cover a number of developments that show how cryptocurrency exchanges around the world are evolving to attract institutional investors while also adding new services to stay competitive in this bearish market.

Also Read: Bitpay Reports Processing Over $1 Billion Transactions in 2018

Huobi Sheds Staff and Plans Stablecoin

Huobi is the latest cryptocurrency company to reduce its staff to cope with the current challenging market environment. The exchange is reportedly downsizing loss-making units such as venture funding and news aggregation. Huobi has already closed its subsidiary in Shenzhen that once employed about 30 people in research and development and the Huobi Info news app is now operated by just a few people. According to a report from China, the company still has 1,300 employees around the world after scrapping about 100 positions over the past few weeks.

The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC Desk to Launch in US

Despite these changes, the company is looking forward to adding new services in 2019 including potentially launching its own stablecoin. “2018 brought us huge challenges but I’m personally optimistic about the crypto market. I do think we’ll see things get better this year,” Chris Lee, CFO of Huobi Group, said on Jan. 20 at an event in Singapore. He identified a number of priorities the company will be concentrating on in 2019, including upgrades to its trading systems, further development of regional exchanges, and stablecoins. “This year will be huge for stablecoins and we will be a part of that. Likely Huobi Group will launch its own stablecoin in 2019 in the first half of the year,” Lee added.

New OTC Desk to Launch in US

Nukkleus Capital, a boutique brokerage firm based in the U.S., is reportedly set to launch a new OTC crypto trading desk. The venture is aiming to attract clients from the buy side of the financial services industry including hedge funds, asset managers, family offices and high net worth individuals. The company will also provide in-house custodial services and plans to launch an exchange in the first quarter of 2019.

The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC Desk to Launch in US

“We are trying to bridge the gap between the institutional world and the retail crypto world,” Joe Tuccio, head of asset management at Nukkleus Capital, told Finance Magnates. “If we can help build a streamlined product that replicates other financial markets offerings, I feel this market will flourish and mature. The recent commitments of major institutions like Bakkt, ICE, Fidelity and Erisx demonstrate that a formidable foundation of this new asset class is being soundly laid which will bring confidence to traditional capital market participants to deepen digital asset liquidity across products.”

AAX to Use London Stock Exchange Technology

Hong Kong-based Atom Group has announced that its upcoming AAX digital asset exchange will use institutional-grade tech from London Stock Exchange Group Technology. AAX is set to launch in H1 2019 and will be built on LSEG Technology’s Millennium Exchange matching engine, which also provides technology services to London Stock Exchange and other traditional venues such as HKEX and SGX.

AAX will enable users to trade spot and futures markets for cryptocurrencies, and it plans to eventually add a range of tokenized assets including securities tokens, asset-backed tokens and stablecoins. Atom will also launch AAX Pro, a trading platform catering for institutional clients with low latency connectivity and co-location services.

The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC Desk to Launch in US

“We are delighted to have been selected by ATOM to provide a best-in-class technology solution to help power its new exchange. It underlines Millennium Exchange’s reputation for performance, scalability, flexibility and reliability and we look forward to working with the AAX team ahead of the launch in H1 2019,” said Ann Neidenbach, CIO at LSEG Technology.

Coinbase Expands Services for High Volume Customers

Coinbase has announced that it will now support inbound and outbound Swift transfers from non-U.S. bank accounts, meaning that its Pro and Prime customers in Asia and Europe can use wire transfers to fund their accounts. A select group of Coinbase Prime customers from around the world will also now have access to the company’s U.S. and European OTC trading desks and Coinbase Custody, its New York-regulated cold storage solution.

“In the past 12 months, hundreds of crypto-first hedge funds have launched around the world, and many hundreds more traditional institutions such as proprietary trading firms, family offices and endowments have begun actively trading digital assets,” explained Coinbase’s Elliott Suthers. “Coinbase’s suite of products — Coinbase Pro, Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Custody — serves these customers, along with other participants in the market, like asset issuers, exchanges and miners.”

Okex Adds Thai Baht and British Pound OTC Trading

Okex, the Malta-based exchange, has announced the launch of two new fiat currencies on its over-the-counter trading platform: Thai baht (THB) and British pound (GBP). Users in Thailand and the United Kingdom need to complete KYC verification to be eligible to trade on the fiat-to-crypto platform. The THB and GBP OTC trading markets currently support BTC, USDT, ETH, and LTC.

The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC Desk to Launch in US

“Thailand and the UK own the fastest growing crypto communities in the world. We see great potential in these two markets and want to support the needs there. Because of the increasing trading volume and number of traders in these two countries, we decided to launch the new THB and GBP trading services on our OTC trading platform. Wherever the market potential locates, we will expand to there. In 2019, you can expect more currencies will be supported on OKEx,” said Andy Cheung, the company’s head of operations.

What do you think about today’s news tidbits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.


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The post The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC Desk to Launch in US appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2ASWLUr The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC Desk to Launch in US

#USA Lumigo scores $8M seed to help manage serverless operations

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Lumigo, an Israeli startup, announced a healthy $8 million seed round today, as it emerged from stealth to help companies monitor serverless architecture. Investors included Pitango Venture Capital, Grove Ventures and Meron Capital.

The company was started by a couple of ex-Checkpoint execs, Erez Berkner and Aviad Mor. They decided to head out on their own to solve a problem they were seeing around monitoring, as developers moved to serverless environments.

Serverless computing lets developers code applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. That’s because services like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions and Google Cloud Functions provide the exact amount of infrastructure resources required to run the application at any given moment. It is incredibly convenient for developers trying to move more quickly, but it poses challenges for the operations team trying to manage and monitor the application.

To help solve this, the company uses a visual map to show operations exactly what’s happening  inside the application. The map enables operations teams to see and understand every request and get to the root cause of a problem. It can trace the path not only from the serverles infrastructure, but also to adjacent services like database and storage.

For starters, the company is working with AWS, but plans to add support for other cloud platforms down the road. Moving forward, the founders’ vision is more than just serverless. They  plan to expand to monitor containers and API services like Twilio and Stripe.

For now, it’s still early days, but the company has eight employees and a dozen customers using the product. The money should allow them to hire more engineers and begin building out the product further.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2CFbylL

#USA Lumigo scores $8M seed to help manage serverless operations

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Lumigo, an Israeli startup, announced a healthy $8 million seed round today, as it emerged from stealth to help companies monitor serverless architecture. Investors included Pitango Venture Capital, Grove Ventures and Meron Capital.

The company was started by a couple of ex-Checkpoint execs, Erez Berkner and Aviad Mor. They decided to head out on their own to solve a problem they were seeing around monitoring, as developers moved to serverless environments.

Serverless computing lets developers code applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. That’s because services like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions and Google Cloud Functions provide the exact amount of infrastructure resources required to run the application at any given moment. It is incredibly convenient for developers trying to move more quickly, but it poses challenges for the operations team trying to manage and monitor the application.

To help solve this, the company uses a visual map to show operations exactly what’s happening  inside the application. The map enables operations teams to see and understand every request and get to the root cause of a problem. It can trace the path not only from the serverles infrastructure, but also to adjacent services like database and storage.

For starters, the company is working with AWS, but plans to add support for other cloud platforms down the road. Moving forward, the founders’ vision is more than just serverless. They see that as one of three pillars for the company, and plan to expand to monitor containers and API services like Twilio and Stripe.

For now, it’s still early days, but the company has eight employees and a dozen customers using the product. The money should allow them to hire more engineers and begin building out the product further.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2CFbylL

#USA Adobe acquires Allegorithmic, makers of the Substance texture tools

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Adobe today announced that it has acquired Allegorithmic, the French company behind the Substance tools for creating textures that are widely used by AAA game creators, as well as visual effects artists, animators and designers. Over time, Adobe will bring many of Allegorithmic’s technologies to its various Creative Cloud tools, many of which already offer complementary tools. Beyond those integrations, though, what this acquisition is really about is the fact that 3D design and creating 3D content is becoming increasingly important for the creatives who use Adobe’s tools. With Adobe Dimensions and, more recently, Project Aero for creating AR experiences, the company has started focusing on 3D, and this acquisition will bring both talent and technology to the company.

It’s worth noting that Adobe previously invested in Allegorithmic and that Dimensions already features integration with Substance, so today’s announcement has clearly been in the works for a while.

As Adobe’s chief product officer Scott Belsky told me, it’s worth remembering that many of Adobe’s most important products today were acquisitions, including Photoshop back in 1995. “Adobe is a company that has always embraced new DNA and has grown through these critical acquisitions,” he said, and noted that Adobe always looks to these acquisitions to see how it can change through them — not how it can change the company it acquires. “For Creative Cloud, this is one of these acquisitions,” he added.

He also noted that while Substance has been around for more than 15 years, there’s a lot of tailwind in the industry now that it’s often easier to render and image than set up a photo or video shoot and then edit and retouch those images. Adobe, of course, wants to catch as much of that tailwind as possible.

Adobe’s Stefano Corazza, who is the company’s head of AR, also noted that the Allegorithmic team was among the first to focus on physics-based rendering and that tools like Substance will become increasingly important as creatives try to build realistic AR experiences that need to be as photorealistic as possible — and to do that, you need to be able to create materials that are able to reflect light properly, for example. He also stressed that new technologies like Nvidia’s RTX raytracing hardware will keep pushing the boundaries on photo realism.

The current Substance product line will remain intact, by the way. Adobe obviously knows that it is acquiring a set of tools that have been used for creating games like Assassin’s Creed, Forza and Call of Duty, but also movies like Blade Runner 2049. Those use cases aren’t going away. But while Adobe obviously has a long history in the movie industry, this is also a move that takes it deeper into the world of game development. Don’t expect to see Adobe launch a competitor to Unity or other game development tools, though. What Belsky seems to be more interested in — besides the existing use cases — is to enable a wider range of people to make objects in games, for example. He noted there’s already a flourishing number of games that allow players to use their own objects and textures, for example, and Adobe wants to offer tools for them, too.

The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2COCX4T

#USA Brandless introduces a $9 price point with the launch of baby and pet products

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Since launch, Brandless has looked to make shopping for everyday items simple by pricing everything at $3. Today, for the first time since the company came on the scene, Brandless will be adding new items that exceed its own $3 limit.

The e-commerce brand is adding baby and pet products to its portfolio.

Baby products include Premium Diapers with no latex, lotion fragrance or chlorine processing, organic baby food pouches and cruelty-free baby care products like baby wipes, lotion, shampoo and diaper rash cream. Pet products include protein treats, supplement chews, non-toxic toys, hemp collars and pet cleanup waste bags made with a TDPA technology material that breaks down faster in landfills.

Though some of these products won’t wear the $3 pricetag as a uniform like other Brandless goods, the company says that 90 percent of its products still fall into the $3 category. Products that are not $3 or less will be $9.

Brandless recently introduced a subscription, giving users a stickier way to interact with the brand, especially on the heels of the launch of pet and baby products.

The subscription is free, but it asks users to meet a minimum of $36 for free shipping, and it auto-fills the box with goods you’ve chosen for monthly resupplies.

The time between purchase and receipt is difficult for products like the ones Brandless sells. Toilet paper, snacks, pet food etc. all come in different amounts that last a different length of time. This means that options like Amazon Prime, which offers shipping as fast as same-day in some cases, become incredibly attractive to restock on that one thing that ran out too quick.

Edison Trends took a look at Brandless over a period between 2017 and 2018 and found that retention was the company’s most pressing issue. Only 20 percent of customers who bought something in late 2017 came back the next quarter for a purchase, and only 13 percent came back the quarter after that.

Since Brandless gives back the cost of marketing its products to consumers, word of mouth and customer loyalty are the two pillars upon which the company is built. Subscriptions and new product categories are two ways to bring on new users and build loyalty with an existing customer base.

But the seven-year-old company has plenty of work to do. With nearly $300 million in funding, investors and shareholders are expecting big things from Brandless.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2CCPF6n

#Blockchain Governmental Overreach in Developing Nations Will Hasten Hyperbitcoinization

Bad Government Policies Could Help Fast Track Hyperbitcoinization in Struggling World Economies

For bitcoin idealists, the coming utopia for global finance stars bitcoin dismantling the fiat hegemony, empowering citizens to own their money without central bank mediation, and facilitating borderless trade. Credited to Satoshi Nakamoto Institute co-founder Daniel Krawisz, hyperbitcoinization is a term which describes bitcoin coming to dominate the global currency basket through mass adoption.

Also read: Romania Imposes 10% Tax on Cryptocurrency Earnings

Fiat Currencies in Race to the Bottom

Should hyperbitcoinization occur, it will almost certainly be fast-tracked by bad policies. While some countries are clearing the turf for cryptocurrency through soft touch regulation, others are unwittingly doing the same by failing to contain inflation and maintain liquidity, culminating in a breaking point where citizens will be forced to take back their financial freedom through alternative currencies, primarily bitcoin.

Governmental Overreach in Developing Nations Will Hasten Hyperbitcoinization

In Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Sudan, fiat currencies are in a race to the bottom, prompting governments to implement dubious policies to stop the rot. But the invocation of special powers by presidents, price controls and surrogate currencies also compete with sanctions, bad governance and other structural factors that render government fiscal control efforts futile and deny citizens control of their money.

The humanitarian failures of fiat money can be seen in Venezuelan families being forced to buy rotten meat for consumption and give up their children for adoption in the face of a shortage of basic commodities. Such tragic cases impress an urgent case for an alternative currency that is not vulnerable to the whims of central banks. In Zimbabwe, government policies have robbed citizens of their savings twice in two decades as the national currency has dramatically shed value.

Repression Opens up New Possibilities for Bitcoin

Historically, economically failing and increasingly isolated governments resort to obsessive control of institutions and repression of citizens as they voice protests. Zimbabwe on Jan.  21 lifted a ban on popular social networks, ordered a week earlier to contain protests and black out coverage of a brutal government clampdown that reportedly resulted in 12 deaths, more than 60 gunshot victims in hospital and widespread beatings. Sudan has also responded to protests with rounds of fire in recent weeks.

Governmental Overreach in Developing Nations Will Hasten Hyperbitcoinization

However, repression has also been known to open up new technological possibilities. As citizens take back their democratic liberties through alternative communication channels, there is reason to believe they will follow suit in reclaiming their financial freedoms through censorship-resistant currencies such as bitcoin.

Zimbabweans responded to the total internet shutdown by migrating to Telegram, which has not been targeted by authorities of late, and is designed to resist surveillance and suppression. Citizens also unlocked banned social networks, Whatsapp, Facebook and Youtube through virtual private networks (VPNs).

Taking Back Ownership of Our Money

As bitcoin continues to make inroads across the globe, both through progressive government policies and rising user adoption, the failure of fiat currencies in developing economies will compel citizens to take back ownership of their money. Across the world, an increasing number of people cite bitcoin approvingly as a form of investment, with 27 percent of those polled in one recent survey preferring it over property.

Governmental Overreach in Developing Nations Will Hasten Hyperbitcoinization

For Zimbabweans, some of whom have lost pensions and savings a decade apart, the virtues of bitcoin are becoming increasingly evident. Whereas alternative currencies are subject to geopolitical considerations and fiscal discipline, bitcoin investors have little reason to worry about central banks or sanction committees, who are powerless to control a decentralized cryptocurrency.

At the tipping point of hyperbitcoinization, Daniel Krawisz’ radical vision of financial freedom and inclusivity will see citizens from poorer nations transact in a borderless and permissionless manner after breaking free from the shackles of state-controlled currency.

What do you think about hyperbitcoinization? Let us know in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Unsplash.


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OP-ed disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support views, opinions or conclusions drawn in this post. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the content. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any information in this Op-ed article.

The post Governmental Overreach in Developing Nations Will Hasten Hyperbitcoinization appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2UbgqGi Governmental Overreach in Developing Nations Will Hasten Hyperbitcoinization

#Africa Applications open for $25k Baobab Network accelerator

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Applications have opened for the Baobab Network’s 2019 accelerator, which offers selected startups the chance to receive US$25,000 in funding and a platform for scaling.

Since launching in 2016, the Baobab Network has worked with 27 startups from Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia and South Africa.

It creates a tailor-made accelerator programme for each company, starting with a week of consulting from global business and industry experts, before each startup is assigned a dedicated Baobab Venture Partner for 24 months to help speed its growth and get it market and investor ready.

Every successful applicant receives US$25,000 in funding and access to an investor network of over 100 venture capital and impact funds, while a network of global partners are on hand to offer their assistance and explore early commercial partnerships, such as Amazon, Accenture, L’Oréal, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson.

“The goal of our new look accelerator is to raise follow on funding for every startup within 18 months, leveraging the Baobab Network’s global community of VCs, angels and corporates,” said Rich Sears, head of ventures at the Baobab Network.
Applications for the accelerator are open now, with startups to be accepted on a rolling basis. The first programme of the year kicks off in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on January 28.

The post Applications open for $25k Baobab Network accelerator appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

from Disrupt Africa http://bit.ly/2RKSvAA