Klaus Schwab, author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Photo: XinhuaJOHANNESBURG – South Africa's economic development will ride in the cockpit of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.My assertion is based on the forecasts done by Klaus Schwab in his latest book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution.

According to this book, Africa will benefit immensely from the ageing declining populations in Europe, North and South America, the Caribbean, Asia (including China), southern India, and some Middle East countries.

This view is supported by the report published in 2011 by the African Development Bank (ADB) entitled “Africa in 50 Years’ Time”.

According to this report – Africa is the only region where there will be about 1.87 billion people of working age in about 50 years’ time.

RELATED ARTICLES

OPINION: The fourth industrial revolution: Be prepared

WEF founder and chairman to address researchers conference in Pretoria



On the other hand, Africa will have more than 3billion people by 2050. This means that around 74percent of the African population will be of working age.

Other than an increment of nationalism sentiments across Europe and the US, the Europeans are tightening their migration regulations and that is why instead of importing skilled labour, they move their firms to the countries that have such labour.In the past century, East Asia and South America were the best beneficiary of this kind of direct investment.

However, due to Asia's ageing populations, investors will move their manufacturing plants to Africa, where there will be abundant labour and consumers of produced products.

According to the ADB, there is a huge decline in Africa's child mortality rate and deaths caused by HIV/Aids related diseases. This is a significant factor in Africa's population growth.Another crucial factor in favour of Africa's massive economic growth is the fact that the continent possesses half the world's arable land.

This will lead to massive agricultural investments and Africa's food production will feed the whole world.This view is supported by the World Bank - which predicted that Africa's agriculture and agribusiness markets are destined to top $1trillion (R14.39trillion) in 2030.

According to Professor Calestous Juma of Harvard Kennedy School of Government, three technologies will be deployed to boast agricultural output in Africa; these include Geographical Information Systems, nanotechnology, biotechnology and mobile-technology.

Four technological (industrial revolution) megatrends which will play a prominent role in driving economic development in the near future are: autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, advanced robotics, and new materials. Africa will be the biggest beneficiary of these technologies.

Due to the shortage of infrastructure in the form of roads, rail, border posts, airports, seaports etc, it is cheaper for Nigeria to import food from Peru instead of Cameroon.

Due to the fact that multinationals will mainly be operating in Africa, they will work with the African governments to build infrastructure that services their operations and transports their goods. In other words, infrastructure will be built through public-private partnerships.

It will be in the best interests of the investors to participate in the construction of the infrastructure.In some instances, the public (consumers) will also have to pay for this, in the form of taxes and payments, such as tolls.

Currently, due to the lack of infrastructure, trade among African countries is limited. By 2050, intra-African trade will increase substantially thanks to the availability of regional connectivity.

The availability of multinationals and infrastructure in Africa will inevitably lead to free labour movement. Something good about labour movement is that it will increase the flow of remittances across the African countries.

The incremental growth of populations, industrial production, agricultural activities and mining will require huge quantities of water.In certain parts of Africa, there is a lot of water in the ground and technology will be employed to extract such water.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution’s mega-technology will also be used to harvest rainwater.

Africa is surrounded by two oceans, the Atlantic and the Indian.Mega-technology will also be employed to extract water from these oceans and make it consumable.

Moreover, technology will play a critical role in the recycling of water.As a matter of fact, most production activities in manufacturing plants will be done with less water. Technology will play a critical role in promoting intra-continental trading and the supply of water.

Although the South African population remains stagnant and will not grow rapidly, South Africa can become the biggest beneficiary of this African growth.That is why South Africa should cultivate better relationships with other African countries.

Among other things, we should stop being xenophobic, and treating fellow Africans with arrogance and a condescending attitude.In the absence of huge population like other African countries, South Africa's strength will be to continue to serve as African gateway to the African continent and regional financial hub.

Rabelan Dagada is Professor of Practice in Digital Commerce at the University of Johannesburg's Postgraduate School of Engineering Management. He is on Twitter: @Rabelani_Dagada

The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

Many people argue that cryptocurrencies are the revolution, not to mention, the technology. How can you blame them? They have only started hearing about Blockchain and crypto during the bitcoin boom last year.I say, it's time we know how to separate the technology from its application.

Blockchain technology has the potential to cause a massive paradigm shift, that decentralizes systems and process for business, organizations, economies and governments. Blockchain technology simply engenders trust in inherently “trustless” interactions and negates the need to have a centralized intermediary to attest to events.

Cryptocurrency for instance is an application of Blockchain technology that functions as peer-to-peer money without the input of banks as a central recording or settlement intermediary.

"Compared to the internet, we're still very early. The internet was around for a while before the dotcom boom at the end of the nineties," tells me Ian Balina, a Blockchain influencer. "There is a lot of volatility in the space, due to growth and speculation.

Naturally, prices rise tremendously and fall tremendously. Each time this happens, the industry becomes more mature, with the current adopters filtering out the signal from the noise.”Unfortunately, Blockchain is still miles away from attracting the critical mass necessary to unlock its mass-market adoption.

The results of a survey conducted by UK-based bank HSBC, last year revealed that 59% of customers polled have not heard about Blockchain and 80% of those who’ve heard about it don’t really understand what it is.

Many people erroneously confuse Blockchain with Bitcoin and the earliest associations of Bitcoin with Silk Road is making many people averse to cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin came into limelight for its use on Silk Road as payment for illegal and borderline criminal activities because of the anonymity that it ensured in settling transactions.

The subsequent media sensations of Silk Road and Bitcoin, and the eventual take down of the site and its operators succeeded in ensuring that many traditional financial institutions, businesses, and individuals would not entertain the idea Bitcoin as a means of payment.

It is practically impossible to discuss Blockchain technology without a mention of its associations with cryptocurrency; hence, the first mention of Blockchain often evokes memories of Bitcoin and Silk Road.

Nonetheless, Blockchain technology is fundamentally different from cryptocurrency. In fact, cryptocurrency is only of the many possible applications of Blockchain.

Some fans believe Blockchain could change the world, but most of the ideas on the disruptive nature of this technology are still in landing pages, white papers and tech papers.

For this most part, the truly disruptive applications of Blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrencies are still in ideation stage and it might take a couple of years before they even hit the market as MVPs.

Interestingly, many of the enterprise clients that are experimenting with the technology are only using it to store their company data as they gradually reduce dependence on centralized data bases.

Of course, some high-tech startups are already looking ways to use Blockchain to leverage existing technology. Nonetheless, the fundamental challenge is the chicken and egg paradox. Some companies won’t invest in seeing decentralized applications until there’s a mass-market adoption of the technology; unfortunately, there can’t be mass-adoption until there are market ready applications.

“Blockchain is rapidly moving from the fat protocols stage, where all value is generated in the protocol layer, into the fat applications (DApps) stage, " says Erez Ben Kiki, founder of 2Key Network, "The foundations that have been built are strong enough to host applications, that will attract users that not necessarily interested in the financial side of it, but by the real usage.

”The cryptocurrency market suffers huge volatility that is exponentially bigger than the kinds of volatility recorded in other assets such as stock and forex.  In the year-to-date period, the market cap of the entire cryptocurrency market has declined by 56% in contrast to massive gains in the same period last year.


The SIFR Volatility Index for cryptocurrency is currently around 54.6 and it has been as high as 148.11 this year. For context, annualized historical, long-term average of realized volatility of the S&P 500 index is roughly 15%/year.

The volatility in the cryptocurrency space and the collations between cryptocurrency and Blockchain, makes Blockchain, as a technology to be perceived as fragile and unstable.

Unfortunately, the criticism and outright antagonism that cryptocurrency faces from traditional financial establishments invariably rubs off on Blockchain technology.

Many traditional financial institutions believe that cryptocurrency is too volatile to be a reliable form of money – by implication, many people assume that Blockchain technology is inherently unstable or unreliable.

Hence, other applications of Blockchain such as tokenization, Smart Contracts and automated governance are being overshadowed by the negativity surrounding cryptocurrencies.Interestingly, the Blockchain high-tech industry has seen some growth towards maturity in the past year.

Gradually, it seems that entrepreneurs are coming to understand the need for such a technology and they are not afraid to dive into these uncharted waters.Ivan Liljeqvist, a well-known Blockchain influencer and the face of the ‘Ivan On Tech’ YouTube channel is optimistic:

“Blockchain is an industry full of opportunities, we are open-sourcing finance and transforming the way Internet works by decentralizing digital money, computing and data." 

Yoav Vilner is a world recognized startup mentor, industry leader and entrepreneur.

Gina Clarke

Forbes Contributor

I cover financial technology within the European sector

It has been a turbulent two days in British politics, and the economy is already looking nervous as a result. Sterling fell by 1.8% against the Euro on Wednesday as Prime Minister Theresa May attempts to convince a skeptical government to accept the proposed Brexit deal.

While the rest of the world looks on bemused, reactions from the industry are mixed, with appetite for blockchain still vociferous – something a borderless Brexit won’t change. I spoke with industry leaders to find out just what worries them about the proposed withdrawal bill.

Trade and PeopleBorders and trade agreements are on the mind of a many a U.K. business owner as details of the proposed agreement are revealed. The cost of trading with the EU is a concern for some, whilst others believe that technology offers the tools needed to mitigate the impact of Brexit on their business.

Vlad Dobrynin, CEO and Co-Founder of Humans.net sees tech as a positive way of keeping trade borderless, whether Brexit affects trade borders or not.He said: "We are on the verge of the 4th technological revolution. It will correlate with the change in the relationship between the people around - how one interacts, purchases and percepts.

It will mitigate the borders and vanish the middlemen and there is no legislative power out there to slow it down. Blockchain is capable of eliminating any borders between people and entities exchanging goods, products, services, and information, no matter what those borders are: governments, geography, ethnicity or identity."

Neurovalens CEO Dr Jason McKeown is concerned in particular about restrictive border controls, due to the production location of the company’s AI-based products. He said:

“We design and make our product in Northern Ireland, so the biggest question Brexit raises for us is, I think, around the viability of export.

We make a headset device which when worn helps the user lose weight. It is a universally-relevant product and our potential market is global. However, Brexit raises significant concerns about our ability to trade viably with our nearest and most obvious market – the EU. If trading with distributors there is made more expensive or slower as a result of leaving the Union, we will have to seek deals much further abroad.

I think we’ll be able to do it ok, but it makes everything harder.”Currency, Crypto and the Customs Union Exchange rates, trade, and currency have been one of the main concerns throughout Brexit negotiations.

However, for some the decentralization of cryptocurrency can pave a way forward. Industry insiders believe that this new era in trade between the U.K. and the EU could encourage widespread cryptocurrency use in an attempt to bypass the potential turmoil in traditional markets.

MoneyTransferComparison.com CEO Alon Rajic is concerned about the impact of Brexit on exchange rates and trade, but sees it as an opportunity for crypto to grow.He said:

“An unsuccessful Brexit in which the UK economy drops and the valuation of the pound heavily decreases could be a key event from Brexit. The referendum’s tight results already showed us that there are essentially two Britain’s - Londoners, and non-Londoners, and the mindset is completely and utterly different between them.

Once the wealthy Londoners feel the direct outcome of this vote, it will be another step in them losing trust of the establishment, which can propel all cryptocurrency to reach new heights.

”Oscar Vickerman, CMO of Sweetbridge, believes companies who trade with the EU will be turning to blockchain-based finance to mitigate the impact of exchange rates and trade agreements.He said:

“If we don't have a customs union agreement, we pay tax on everything going in and out of the EEA. But if we do stay in, we are locked into the customs union. Either way, it could mean tied up capital for UK firms, as we cannot negotiate any deals with other countries ourselves. Not to mention an increased cost of doing business with Europe.

Blockchain based trade finance solutions can enable access to liquidity trapped in assets to provide much-needed cash-flow through the upheaval of Brexit negotiations. Blockchain will also provide provenance and certification of goods.

Provenance of goods during the transition will be more important than ever, as laws around pesticides, labor, and source of products will become vaguer without legal protections in place. Overall, blockchain lowers the barriers to entry for new business and innovation.

Additionally, many blockchain-based organizations, like Sweetbridge, have fintech and regtech (regulation technology) that provide departments within the U.K. Government the motivation to facilitate innovation in a new potential Commonwealth focused customs union.

A new fintech and blockchain technology framework will enable cross-regulatory transactions and be the U.K.'s fastest answer to competing on an international stage.

”Banking and Finance

There is concern amongst the industry that Brexit will shake the stability of the U.K. economy, which is only recently recovering from years of turmoil following the recession. The Bank of England has warned of the potential risk to £70 trillion of complex financial contracts, business insiders see it as a cause for concern but also as potential to grow.

ConsenSys is one of the largest blockchain companies in the world, founded by Ethereum co-founder, Joe Lubin. Chief of Staff, Jeremy Millar, released a statement saying “Financial and regulatory landscapes are changing rapidly. It is imperative for the UK to retain its leadership in entrepreneurship and fintech, despite any effects of Brexit.

Blockchain and digital assets is one area where the United Kingdom can continue to lead, with appropriate policy. In particular, the next generation of digital assets provide opportunities to redefine the roles of previously centralized intermediaries into decentralized networks.

 Never could such a re-architecture be more timely.”With the news that 94% of banks and financial institutions are planning two or more fintech acquisitions in the next 12-months according to their most recent survey, James Wilkinson, Partner at Reed Smith believes the fintech landscape will change if Brexit goes ahead:

“I think one of the outcomes will be more of a distributed fintech community in Europe. Brexit won’t shut things down in London, but it does create an open door in other communities.

”Rushd Averroes, CEO & Founder of BABB says, “At this point, uncertainty still prevails.

We, and all the other fintech startups we’re in regular contact with, are working hard on plans A and B.At BABB we’re aiming to build the world’s first bank account based on blockchain. To do that, we need two things: 1.) a banking license and 2.) a brilliant team of the brightest blockchain minds in the world. Brexit has the potential to influence both.

To solve the license[ issue we are applying in tandem for banking licenses in both the U.K. and Lithuania, to ensure the best possible access to the European market. We believe we already have the best blockchain team, so our main priority is the protection of the rights and wellbeing of our 25-strong London-based team, of which eight people are EU nationals originating from five different countries.

We hold EU regulations and controls in high regard, so much so that our approach to data privacy, which is natively GDPR compliant, will set the standard for all our customers no matter where they are in the world.

”The Irish Backstop

A survey carried out by Wachsman exploring Irish attitudes towards, and knowledge of blockchain technology, has found that 75% of Irish people would not consider a career in blockchain technology. Despite European spend on blockchain set to soar to €3.5 billion in the next five years, a lack of understanding of how the technology works are holding Irish people back from pursuing a career in blockchain.

CEO and Founder of Wachsman, David Wachsman believes Brexit could be the key to unlocking the Blockchain door.

He said: "As blockchain is, by its nature, a particularly borderless industry, startups looking to accrue customers, investors, or partners throughout Europe may be hesitant to set up companies in the United Kingdom as a consequence of Brexit.

Moreover, due to fundamental benefits, such as more flexible banking relationships or the ability to procure talent from across the EU, Brexit provides a tremendous opportunity for Ireland to become a launchpad for international corporations establishing blockchain hubs in Europe.

"Alan Foreman, CEO of B-Secur, a world-leading Biometric Security business based in Northern Ireland is concerned about the impact of Brexit on securing top talent, as well as the impact on trade:

“One of my biggest fears around Brexit is how it might impact the attracting and retaining of talent to our core technology team. How do we recruit from Republic of Ireland in the future?

Or Germany, or France? The uncertainty and the unknowns are a cause for concern and may put off talent from these countries.The short-term impact is potential currency fluctuations because we work cross-border from U.K. to EU countries and further afield.

The uncertainty around this means it is very difficult to plan and forecast the next two years. And in general, as a Northern Ireland based company, there is uncertainty around our relationship with London and with the EU. It is frustrating because our customers are asking what this means to us and we aren’t entirely certain of the answer.

”It appears that there is cautious industry optimism that Brexit could the cataclysmic shift that blockchain needs to propel cryptocurrencies into the mainstream, depending on their decentralized networks for future open border trading. But as to whether Mrs May will be able to continue to take this current bill forward remains to be seen.

I have worked for broadcasters such as the BBC, BFBS and the Press Association before becoming a full-time freelance journalist in 2016.

Previously I had written on the FinTech sector for both national and niche publications, but it was the Brexit referendum that sparked my ... MORESee more on what I'm writing here or say hi on Twitter @ginadav

Many would argue that the enthusiasm for blockchain and cryptocurrency is waning.

Indeed, according to Gartner’s hype cycle, blockchain is tumbling into the trough of disillusionment where the fleet of Lamborghini’s belonging to early crypto speculators have all but run out of fuel as cryptocurrency prices stabilize and regulators tighten their scrutiny of security-issues masking as initial coin offerings (ICOs) or newfangled ways of getting rich quick.

If peak crypto is behind us and the blockchain bubble has burst, where does the promise of this world-changing technology go from here? Time to pack it up or time to reformulate how we think about this technology and the implied digital transformation it necessitates?

Will blockchain go the way of early electric car prototypes only to lay dormant for 40 years before a Tesla comes along? Will cloud-based spreadsheets masquerading as blockchains temper enthusiasm for the value of technology investments?

Many questions remain, but one thing is certain, fully harnessing blockchain has less to do with technology and more to do with advances in management thought and the art of the possible.

The argument that the blockchain bubble has burst made vociferously by the likes of Nouriel Roubini in a Senate hearing, misses a couple of key points.

The first and foremost being that the technology has only come out of beta in 2017, despite bitcoin and its underlying public blockchain turning 10 this year. 

Since, in addition to the pilot projects being carried out by the 50 largest companies in the world (with some industries opting for “coopetition”), there is a growing cadre of blockchain-based projects gaining serious global recognition for their potential to change the fundamental nature for how economies and essential services are organized.

Unlike the internet, which is a disruptive technology borrowing from Clayton Christensen’s thinking on disruptive innovation, blockchain is very much an augmenting technology. For this power to be unlocked, however, companies, entrepreneurs, technologists and policymakers need to do the unthinkable – relinquish control.

This much is demanded by the market and the constituent parts of the global economy that have been telling us one thing in increasingly louder voices, they do not trust status quo or the traditional centralized structures that gain the most from it.


Implied in decentralized and distributed systems, where each node or participant operates pari passu or on equal footing, is that no on counterparty has control or more authority than another.

This is a difficult and perhaps impossible level of abstraction in our current economic order, where an embarrassment of riches and power has been amassed by centralized structures, technologies and control. Indeed, the reason the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, is favorable toward bitcoin is precisely because of its decentralization.

Is there a realm in which firms deploying blockchain can create a new category of service or solution where control, trust and value become evenly distributed? Why not!

In order to get there, however, the change is not singularly about digital transformation for which blockchain cannot operate in a vacuum of other frontier technologies, it has more to do with the evolution of management thinking and organizational design.

The matrix below provides a useful guide for how this transformational journey begins and where it should end in a proverbial blockchain “magic quadrant,” provided project sponsors wish to fully leverage a high-trust, low-friction platform.




A matrix showing the domain of true high-trust, low-friction structures.


Against this methodology, it is difficult to identify another true blockchain project other than bitcoin, that category defying digital asset, that meets these criteria in balance. Even the crypto wunderkind Vitalik Buterin’s cryptocurrency, ether, began life as a semi-centralized instrument.

What does this say about the current state of play and the projects, ICOs and other supposedly world-changing applications of this technology, from digital identity, payments, supply chain provenance, even e-voting, are they blockchains at all?

Or is the rate of innovation and tinkering taking place with this new technology just now getting serious, hence the accelerated appearance and demise of projects? Blockchain, like the early days of the internet, is in its thousand flowers blooming phase.

The market picks winners, technologists are merely the gardeners. Some may be disappointed to learn that the path to becoming a blockchain billionaire may be harder than the one charted by the internet tech titans before them, in no small measure because of the span of control issues posed by true blockchain projects.

Much like the advent of cloud computing or the flight of imagination needed for an untethered internet, the shift to digital transformation using blockchain is more about management culture and leadership than it is about technology or informational architecture. In many ways, the technology is the easy part.

The hard part is the suspension of disbelief and long-held norms about organizational approaches to trust, transparency, intermediation control and value capture, which all conspire to form the high-friction market we currently operate in.

The outcomes in this low-trust, high-friction analog world leave a lot to be expected. Billions of people are left on the sidelines without a universally portable and secure personal identity.  

Millions of votes are uncast, uncounted or disputed because there is no scalable high-fidelity way of addressing micro-counting and election security. Trillions in stranded assets and complex global threats are on the margins of being economically viable because current distribution, pricing and service structures make market entry unpalatable and uncompetitive.

Blockchain as a technology can abundantly address these gaps. The scarcest resource appears to be the lack of imagination and will from entrenched power structures that gain the most from status quo.

Progress with blockchain, even for large incumbent companies or power structures, need not be a zero-sum proposition. Indeed, blockchain is an augmenting technology precisely because it does not have to disrupt the type of value derived from existing systems, rather it can help create entirely new service, product and relationship models with and between markets or constituents.

As an example, imagine the evolution of insurance distribution from the agent and broker-based distribution model that was borne from the analog days, to the advent of models like Geico direct courtesy of the internet, to something more akin to a customer mutual where dividends, losses and trust are managed in lockstep for a market or risk-sharing pool.

Similarly, in California’s move to solar-enable its housing stock by 2020, the advent of blockchain-based microgrids can ensure that older homes can buy excess energy in economical ways producing a more resilient energy matrix.

Absent blockchain and management acceptance of distributed systems, which can record trust with the fidelity and permanence as an atomic clock records time, this new class of market offering would not be possible, and the assets stranded on the sidelines of the market by stubborn friction and sclerotic structures would not be activated.

The question is not whether to blockchain or not to blockchain, the real question is how.

I’m the founder and CEO of Risk Cooperative, a specialized strategy and risk advisory firm focused on risk, readiness and resilience. I also serve on the board of the American Security Project, where I founded and chair the Business Council for American Security. I’m a memb... MORE

THESE DNA STARTUPS WANT TO PUT ALL OF YOU ON THE BLOCKCHAIN

HOTLITTLEPOTATO

IN 2018, PEOPLE started using the blockchain to battle deepfakes, track sushi-grade tuna from Fiji to Brooklyn, and even cast a (symbolic) vote. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to put all 6 billion bits of your genetic source code on the blockchain too.

Starting this week, a startup called Nebula Genomics is doing just that, offering whole-genome sequencing for free, as a way to stock up for its real ploy: a blockchain-based genetic marketplace.

Of course, nothing is free free. But if you’re willing to cough up some health information and refer your friends, you can earn special Nebula tokens that can help pay for a lo-fi sequence, the equivalent of a first draft that someone went over once with a subpar spell-checker.

If you don’t want to answer survey questions about your donut and negroni habits or your family’s history of heart disease, you can get the same quick-and-dirty sequence for $99.

But if you do answer the questions, and if a researcher or pharmaceutical company finds them interesting, they might pay to upgrade you to the Cadillac of whole genomes (what’s called 30x coverage, in the gene biz). In exchange, you grant them permission to study your data.

This offer comes bundled with all the promises of security, anonymity, and transparency (and money!) at the core of the blockchain’s immutable ledger.

Once users have their genome sequenced, they can charge a fee, in tokens, to anyone who wants to access it. In the future, those tokens can be redeemed for additional tests and products that will further interpret your DNA.

Users also retain more control over their data than is typical. Anyone who’s been granted access to an individual’s de-identified DNA can only crunch analyses on that data using Nebula’s own computers. Buyers get to see the results, never the raw data itself.

The only person who can download DNA data from the platform is the person whose DNA it is. The goal, says Nebula co-founder and chief scientific officer Dennis Grishin, is to create an environment where users can cheaply learn about their DNA and share it with scientists, while protecting themselves from potential privacy breaches.

The field of DNA testing has long been stuck with a circular problem. With whole genome sequences running about $1,000 each, the tests are so expensive, and the privacy concerns serious enough, that adoption has been slow. Further, only about two percent of people who get sequenced will turn up any information that could help them treat or stave off potential health risks.

Your DNA could tell you more, if scientists had more genomes to work with. But the incentives for individuals just aren’t there yet.

This entrenched chicken-and-egg situation is the reason the federal government is spending $4 billion to sequence and study a million people across the US, asking them to donate their blood and spit and, eventually, giving them their results for just the price of participation.

Now Nebula is joining the trend with its freemium approach.Co-founded in 2016 by George Church, one of the field’s OGs (that’s Original Genomicist to you), Nebula is one of a collection of companies trying to speed up the arrival of personalized medicine.

Its subsidized whole-genome sequencing services will be provided primarily by nearby Veritas, another Church-founded startup. Together, they want to help people see the value in every bit of their double helix. DNA can be big business, as genetic testing company 23andMe recently made plain with its blockbuster $300 million pharma deal.

Marketplaces like Nebula will allow individuals to cash in on the genomics rush themselves while retaining control over who gets to profit from their data.




NEBULA

Using the blockchain to do so is an enticing idea, and Nebula is far from alone. In the last three years, nearly 150 companies building biomedical blockchain applications have raised more than $660 million in the private and cryptocurrency markets.

About a quarter of those projects aim to be decentralized clearinghouses for various kinds of health data, according to a recent analysis by researchers at Mount Sinai’s newly formed Center for Biomedical Blockchain Research.


“What’s the closest thing you can come up with to a direct data marketplace?” asks Noah Zimmerman, the center’s director. “I can’t think of one. We’ve always required trusted third-party brokers to make these deals, and the value isn’t accruing to individual participants.

”He likens the current system—where pharma companies pay intermediaries for de-identified health information—to college sports. In the same way unpaid student athletes are told to be grateful for their free education, patients who participate (knowingly or unknowingly) in research are told to be happy there’s now a drug on the market that treats their illness.

“I mean, sure,” says Zimmerman. “Be happy. But there’s someone up there making gobs of money on the backs of people that product is built on. Now, there is the potential here for people who are contributing data to be rewarded proportionally to how valuable their data is.

”For that promise to materialize, marketplaces like Nebula’s are going to have to recruit a LOT of customers. That’s one of the reasons it’s offering the free sequencing deal. It’s not unlike when Google debuted Gmail in 2004, offering ample free storage that the search giant monetized through targeted ads—targeting that only became possible once the company had collected bazillions of emails.

Zimmerman just hopes they can make it that long.

“My biggest concern from an entrepreneurial standpoint is that these marketplaces are only valuable once they get to huge numbers,” he says. “Anything less than 100,000 genomes probably isn’t going to be useful to anyone.

” 23andMe was able to survive some dark times because it had deep pockets. It’s unclear how far Nebula’s $4.3 seed investment will carry it.The company declined to comment on whether it would be pursuing an ICO—the controversial and increasingly regulated practice among blockchain startups of raising funds through an “initial coin offering.

” Like many other medical information-related startups, Nebula’s blockchain is closed, with the company acting as a central authority to award tokens and verify researchers before letting them in.

Church hopes to convince people that getting your genome sequenced is just like buckling a seatbelt or not smoking. “Cars, cigarettes, genomes, these are all public health risks,” says Church.

“They’re rare, but extremely impactful if they hit you.”Nebula is joining another genomic data platform, called EncrypGen, which launched the first blockchain-enabled DNA marketplace on November 6. Called Gene-Chain, it allows users to upload the kind of genetic data produced by most direct-to-consumer companies, including 23andMe and Ancestry, and set a price for potential buyers.

David Koepsell, the company’s CEO, says it is aiming to attract the 20 percent of 23andMe customers who’ve decided against participating in the testing company’s research program.

Encrypgen plans to support whole genome sequences by the end of the year.It also faces a challenging road forward. In the last week, EncrypGen has seen a couple dozen transactions on its platform, according to Koepsell, and most people are setting the price for a person’s genotype data plus answers to health-related survey questions at less than ten dollars.

Potential buyers can search for data by self-reported health conditions or by physical characteristics, such as body-mass index, ethnic background, or age.

DNA tokens used to buy any data can be converted to bitcoin or ethereum on a cryptocurrency exchange.Unlike the Nebula marketplace, once buyers have spent their DNA tokens to purchase genetic data, they’re free to download it to their local machines.

Also unlike Nebula, anyone whose computer can do the required math can join to mine and add blocks. “One of the things we’re trying to empower is citizen science,” says Koepsell.

“There’s no legal reason to prevent anyone from purchasing de-identified data and doing research with it. We wanted to democratize the process.

”Federal policies for protecting human research subjects do not currently extend to de-identified genetic data. But those laws have come under increasing scrutiny as DNA data combined with information from other databases has exposed individuals’ identities.

“Once you give access to your genome data, there’s no magical self-destruct button,” says Zimmerman. Not even a blockchain can prevent that from happening. So you still have to be careful about whom you trust with your DNA.

Welcome to Hard Fork Basics, a collection of tips, tricks, guides, and advice to keep you up to date in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world.

Cryptocurrency forks are as inevitable as death and taxes. You might have seen recent news detailing the contentious Bitcoin Cash hard fork, and be wondering what a fork actually is.

While every hard fork comes with its own nuances and intricacies, beneath all that is a fairly concrete principle for what a hard fork is and what it is supposed to do. This article will try to explain, as simply as possible, what a hard fork is.

A reminder about blockchain

Before we dive in and start talking about hard forks it’s useful to remember how blockchains are structured. Put simply, a blockchain is a series of verified and chronologically ordered cryptocurrency transactions organized into blocks. These blocks are added by a process called mining.

The transactions of one blockchain will relate to one specific cryptocurrency or token. Naturally, each of these has its own set of rules that dictate how transactions are verified, how many can be verified in each block, and so on. These rules must be followed if you want to mine a specific coin and blocks to that blockchain.

But, what if you don’t like the rules?

Quite simply, if you don’t like the rules, you can change them, and in doing so “fork” the existing blockchain.

When you make a hard fork, you are making a new blockchain, with new rules that are not compatible with older versions. As a result, an entirely new cryptocurrency will be created.

You might think that your cryptocurrency needs bigger blocks to try and lower transaction fees. If some devs agree, and others don’t, you can take the codebase of the original blockchain, update it to allow for larger blocks, and roll out the update to fork the blockchain. It’s then up to the community to decide which blockchain to support: the old one, or the newly “forked” one, or both.

This is what happened with Bitcoin back in August 2017. A group of developers decided the cryptocurrency needed bigger blocks after transaction fees for the original Bitcoin were getting out of hand.

So they wrote a new protocol, started a new blockchain, and with it a new cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash.

Fundamentally, when developers instigate a fork, all they are doing is updating, changing, or rewriting the software code that makes a cryptocurrency work.

Hard forks are not the same as soft forks

You might have also heard of “soft forks.” While soft forks operate on the same premise as hard forks, there is one key difference. In a soft fork, the resulting software update is backwards compatible with older versions.

In soft forks, there is no new cryptocurrency created, and for the most part business will continue as normal.Now, next time your favorite coin is talking about “forking” you’ll hopefully know what they’re talking about.

View from the Marketplace

Technology innovations: The future of AI and blockchain

A survey conducted at the EmTech MIT conference, September 11-14, 2018, and online, yielded some interesting responses on how technology is changing our lives.

• by MIT Technology Review Insights
•  
• November 16, 2018

I’ve been writing about how bitcoin has been in an increasingly tight range and how when it breaks out it should run in that direction a long way. It’s trader thinking.

This coiled spring compression has got downright silly in recent weeks with the usually volatile bitcoin trading in an ultra-tight range. This tight trading range seemed very contrived to me and suggested something was “up.”Yesterday out of the blue bitcoin dropped 10%:



Bitcoin dropped 10%CREDIT: ADVFN


According to my thinking this should be the start of a very significant fall. That is my “speculation.

” An asset like bitcoin is an extreme speculative asset so if you are going to play this market you must be and are a “speculator.”$2,500 has been my target since the crash started at $20,000. I bailed at $18,000 and have been waiting since then to reenter in size.

If it hits that price I will load up. It could bounce tomorrow, it could hit $1,000 but $2,500 is my target waypoint, my unreliable crystal balls are indicating.

Price goals can only be guesses but as a trader you pivot around them as the market develops.

What is this move about? What is going on?The obvious culprit causing this dump is bitcoin Cash, the ‘wannabe’ bitcoin usurper, which forked from bitcoin last year. It is forking again and there are competing forks and all sorts of conniptions are expected.

It sounds plausible this is causing the move but the fact the bond market spiked at the same time suggests something else is going on to me.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

The stock market is crashing and the Nasdaq is crashing more and can crash the most.




The Nasdaq - surely this is a bubble!CREDIT: ADVFNAgainst this background, at some point large institutions are going to bail on risk markets and go to cash/bonds.This is what I think is going on.Risk capital is running to safety from risk assets and equities, especially in the bubbly Nasdaq that looks like a disaster in the making as Apple, its darling, tanks.



The Nasdaq looks shaky

CREDIT: ADVFN

It is highly probably we are in for a market rout and Bitcoin is just going to be part of the spectrum of assets thrown overboard in a general market panic.We can, of course, forget the influence of the $25 trillion U.S. equity markets and look to the narrow crypto market for reasons.

We can claim crypto is uncorrelated with stocks and bonds, but I do not agree, crypto often moves when equity markets open and as institutions and private individuals trade crypto, equities, commodities and bonds, it is impossible that there would be no interconnection between these trading assets.

The whole crypto market has tanked at the same time, which strongly suggests large sellers hitting the bid across the asset spectrum. This large seller or sellers are realigning themselves for a major draw down in the financial markets and stuffing the receipts of that liquidation into bonds, a classic hiding place in dangerous market conditions.

Of course it could all turn around tomorrow but for me this is another nail in the coffin of the longest bull market in history and another step along the road of a crash in one of the most obviously developing market “double tops” or “head and shoulders” we’ve seen in a long time.

The crash scenario is unfolding and it will take a lot to turn it around.

Stay informed and ahead of the crowd with Forbes Crypto Confidential, a free weekly e-letter delivered to your inbox. Sign up today.

----Clem Chambers is the CEO of private investors Web site ADVFN.com and author of Be Rich, The Game in Wall Street and Trading Cryptocurrencies: A Beginner’s Guide.

As mining machines harvest bitcoin, they generate excess heat. Instead of letting it go to waste, a Canadian company is capturing it and using it to warm people’s homes.

BY ADELE PETERS

Bitcoin mining uses massive amounts of energy as computers churn through the steps needed to make a record on the blockchain. Now, one mining company is recycling some of that energy to heat buildings.

Heatmine, a Canadian mining company, works in Quebec, where almost all electricity comes from renewable sources, so its carbon footprint is relatively small. But the company saw that it could also extend the value of that electricity by harvesting the waste heat from its mining machines.

The company started first with its own large warehouse. “We’re in Quebec–it’s very cold 10 months of the year,” says Jeremy Dahan, Heatmine’s COO. “So we started recycling the heat.” Heatmine first used the excess energy from its processing systems to heat its water.



[Image: courtesy Heatmine]Now, though, the company is experimenting with a network of decentralized mining machines that can connect to heating systems elsewhere, like private homes and businesses. Essentially, Heatmine connects a small mining machine to a heating system.

As the machine runs and mines bitcoin, the heat the process generates is transferred to more productive use, like warming a home.In one recent test, Heatmine piloted this equipment at a local greenhouse that grows strawberries.

“Most of the farmers have an issue because they don’t make any profit because they spend a lot of money on the heat and electricity,” says Dahan. With the new system, the cost of heat is covered 75-100%. The greenhouse was able to produce its strawberries as cheaply enough to compete with berries imported from Mexico.




[Image: courtesy Heatmine]

One of the company’s machines can provide 75,000 BTU in an hour, or enough to heat up to 300 square meters 24 hours a day. In larger buildings, the company can install additional units. The system can be used in houses or in industry.

It’s similar to projects that heat buildings with waste energy from servers (often giving eliminating heating bills for residents) or data centers that send heat into district heating systems for neighborhoods.

It’s one small way to offset bitcoin’s massive footprint. Globally, the process of bitcoin mining uses so much electricity that, by one estimate, the industry is already using as much power as the entire country of Ireland. 

One recent study projected that if the industry grows at a similar rate as some other technologies, it could single-handedly produce enough emissions over the next 15 years to lock in the world for 2 degrees Celsius of global warming.

The industry will be forced to evolve. But harvesting waste heat makes sense now, and could also make sense in the future.

Heatmine plans to continue to expand in Canada, and will also begin to distribute its machines in the U.S., working in places that have cheap electricity and are particularly cold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley. More

Bitcoin prices last year rocketed from under $1,000 at the beginning of the year to almost $20,000 before falling back throughout 2018. (Photo by Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images) GETTY

The bitcoin price dropped around 15% over the last two days, as a fork of the bitcoin cash cryptocurrency (itself a fork of the original bitcoin) cast a dark cloud over the bitcoin industry, with two prominent early bitcoin adopters threatening to go to war over their differences.

Coeure's comments reflect bitcoin's massive price rise over recent years, which saw the value of one bitcoin explode from under $1,000 at the beginning of 2017, to almost $20,000 by the end of the year.

While 2018 has seen the value of bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency market sharply decline, prices remain far above where they were before last year's bull run. "Bitcoin was an extremely clever idea.

Sadly, not every clever idea is a good idea," the European Central Bank Executive Board member said at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. 

"Few remember that Satoshi embedded the genesis block with a Times headline from January 2009 about U.K. banks’ bailout. In more ways than one, bitcoin is the evil spawn of the financial crisis."

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Bitcoin was created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto 10 years ago towards the end of 2008, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the global financial crisis.

Coeure was speaking after International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde urged central banks to look into issuing digital currencies of their own earlier this week. 




The bitcoin price has soared over the last 24 months, though has slipped from its highs at the end of last year.

COINDESK


Elsewhere, U.S. economist Nouriel Roubini, an outspoken critic of bitcoin and decentralized cryptocurrencies, said bitcoin was headed for a price of zero."I could gloat about bitcoin collapsing 10% in a day to $5700. But that is still some way to zero where bitcoin belongs.

Actually, since bitcoin is The Mother of All Toxic Pollutions & Environmental Disasters its true fair value is highly negative with the right externality tax," Roubini, who teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business and is chairman of Roubini Macro Associates LLC, an economic consultancy firm, told bitcoin news site AMBCrypto.


I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported on how technology is changing business, political trends, and the latest culture and lifestyle.

I have cov... MORE

You can follow me on Twitter @billybambrough and read my other Forbes posts here

Disclosure: I occasionally hold some small amount of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Over the past two years, initial coin offering (ICO) projects in the crypto market have raised more than $30 billion.

Yet, most ICO projects have little to show, especially pertaining to user growth, blockchain adoption, and overall user activity on decentralized systems.

It Will Only Get Worse

A handful of tokens have demonstrated success in establishing clear vision, growth paths, and valid use cases of blockchain technology that benefits users.

Binance Coin (BNB), for instance, which already operates as the base cryptocurrency of the Binance exchange, will be extensively utilized to process peer-to-peer trades upon the launch of the Binance decentralized exchange (DEX).

Tens of thousands of merchants have also recently started to use BNB to accept crypto payments.0x (ZRX), the native cryptocurrency of the 0x decentralized exchange protocol, is necessary to facilitate liquidity amongst many decentralized exchanges that operate on top of the 0x protocol.

While there are several tokens in the market that represent viable applications of the blockchain, the vast majority of projects have ambiguous roadmaps and long-term strategies.

As Uber’s Sam Gellman said:

“After $30 billion invested in the past two years in ICOs there still isn’t a single crypto app with a real user base for anything other than speculating on crypto. The BTC price movement is tough, but the lack of real user base for anything they’re investing in is tougher.”

With regulatory hurdles set forth by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the ICO ecosystem will become even more difficult for both innovators and projects.

This week, the U.S. SEC cracked down on two ICO projects called AirFox and Paragon, characterizing their token sales as unregistered security offerings and requesting the two tokens to refund all of their investors.

“They have also agreed to compensate investors who purchased tokens in the illegal offerings if an investor elects to make a claim. The registration undertakings are designed to ensure that investors receive the type of information they would have received had these issuers complied with the registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”) prior to the offer and sale of tokens in their respective ICOs.

”The U.S. SEC emphasized that it is in support of the blockchain and the usage of newly emerging technologies. But, the commission said that market participants must acknowledge and adhere to local regulations.

“We wish to emphasize, however, that market participants must still adhere to our well-established and well-functioning federal securities law framework when dealing with technological innovations, regardless of whether the securities are issued in certificated form or using new technologies, such as blockchain.

Importance of Bear Market

The bear market of 2018 will filter good projects from the bad, and those that survive will be projects that have a clear vision, roadmap, active user base, and a competitive model.

As the capital in the market drops, investors who previously invested in every new project in the market will become more cautious and it will be challenging for token sales without competitive strategies to appeal to the public.

Over time, as investors learn to conduct due diligence and the market evolves into a more competitive sector, underperforming projects will naturally see a decline in investment opportunities, user activity, and demand.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

Follow us on Telegram or subscribe to our newsletter here.

Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence predict that Bitcoin (BTC) “has further to fall,” Bloomberg reported Nov. 16.

“Bitcoin’s no longer boring” declares Bloomberg, before stating that analysts predict the price could fall as low as the $1,500 point, a further 70 percent drop in the coin’s price.

Bloomberg cites hedge fund founder Travis Kling saying that he “didn’t sleep well” because of the potential turmoil in wider crypto markets due to the recent Bitcoin Cash hard fork:

“There’s a small chance that, it’s difficult to estimate, that something really bad could happen related to Bitcoin Cash that could then impact the entire crypto market.”

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone continued the argument, saying the recent market crash “was sparked by the pump for the Bitcoin Cash hard fork.

” As Bloomberg reports, he explains that the “pump that began a few weeks ago, got the market a bit too offsides with speculative longs playing for the good-old days. But this is an enduring bear market.

”The bear market in the cryptocurrency industry has evidently affected more than just prices. Major U.S.-based GPU manufacturer Nvidia recently reported a notable decrease in sales in the current quarter, citing fewer GPU sales specifically used for cryptocurrency mining.

In a recent note to clients, Fundstrat Global Advisors analyst Rob Sluymer predicted that it will take “weeks, if not months” for Bitcoin to rebound from the “technical damage” caused by the recent price collapse.

In a separate note this week, Fundstrat co-founder and Head of Research Tom Lee told clients that he was lowering his previous end-year target for Bitcoin’s price from $25,000 to $15,000.

IMF Chief Christine Lagarde asserted today central banks should consider the possibility of issuing digital currency Photocredit: Justin Chin/Bloomberg© 2018 BLOOMBERG FINANCE LP


Central banks should consider the possibility of issuing digital currency, International Monetary Fund Chair Christine Lagarde said today in a major address.

“That currency could satisfy public policy goals, such as financial inclusion, and security and consumer protection; and to provide what the private sector cannot: privacy in payments,” Lagarde asserted in prepared remarks to the Singapore Fintech Festival.

In addition, she said central bank digital currencies could improve financial stability by reducing the risk of bank runs. She noted with cash, people make runs on banks when they believe withdrawals are honored on a first-come-first-serve basis.

“Digital currency, instead, because it can be distributed much more easily than cash, could reassure even the person left lying on the couch!” Lagarde contended.

The IMF head added that in the fintech revolution, people expect money to be integrated with social media; readily available for online and person-to-person use (including for micro-payments);  cheap and safe; and protected against criminals and prying eyes.

Countering opponents of central bank digital currencies, she argued technology offers a wide canvas to mitigate the potential risks to financial integrity and financial stability.

She added a public-private partnership would be the best way to foster central bank digital currency innovation.

“The central bank focuses on its comparative advantage back-end settlement—and financial institutions and start-ups are free to focus on what they do best—client interface and innovation. This is public-private partnership at its best,” said Lagarde.

The IMF leader said central bank digital currency offers great promise to increase financial inclusion in remote and marginalized regions of the world. “We know that banks are not exactly rushing to serve poor and rural populations,” she said pointedly.

Lagarde’s speech was accompanied by the release of a 39-page report by IMF staff on central bank digital currencies. To see the full white paper, go to https://bit.ly/2zcBrrY . Then click on “Free Full Text.”

I am bringing you perspectives on financial regulation from the rare vantage point of experience.

For nearly 20 years on the beat in Washington, I am capturing the flavor of developments at the alphabet soup agencies from SEC to CFTC to OCC to CFPB on issues from cybersecuri... MORE

Ted Knutson is one of the most experienced financial regulatory reporters in Washington. For years, he has covered the SEC, CFTC, the bank regulators and the key Congressional committees.

Bitcoin's moment of relative stability ended abruptly Wednesday.The world's largest cryptocurrency hit its lowest level of the year, falling as much as 9 percent to a low of $5,640.36, according to CoinDesk. 

Bitcoin had been trading comfortably around the $6,400 range for the majority of the fall, a stark contrast from its volatile trading year.

Other cryptocurrencies fared even worse on Wednesday. Ether fell as much as 13 percent while XRP, the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, dropped 15 percent, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

The rout is likely being spurred by uncertainty around bitcoin cash, according to founder and CEO of BKCM, Brian Kelly.That cryptocurrency was down 18 percent ahead of a "hard fork" scheduled for November 15.

The two digital currencies will split into "Bitcoin ABC," or core Bitcoin Cash, and "Bitcoin SV," short for "Satoshi's Vision." Bitcoin Cash itself is a result of a fork from bitcoin, after a disagreement on the best way to scale a digital currency.



A crypto financial crisis is happening, says Coinshare's Demirors  1 Hour Ago | 07:47

The entire cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped by $15 billion over 24 hours Wednesday, according to CoinMarketCap.com. The total market cap $85 billion, down more than 70 percent since the start of this year.

From a technical analysis standpoint, as bitcoin falls below $6,000 it's possible that stop loss orders are automatically going into effect and investors are "trying to play the breakout," eToro Senior Market Analyst Mati Greenspan said.

Spillover from U.S. stock markets, led lower by Apple on Wednesday, could also be weighing on crypto prices."Another contributing factor is the selloff in tech stocks, which could be having a spillover effect into crypto markets," Greenspan said.





Kate Rooney
Markets Reporter

It’s the end of spring and millions of young Americans have put on caps and gowns, collected their college degrees, and are out looking for jobs. Many are aiming for the companies they consider the coolest, behemoths like Apple and Google and Facebook. I’d like to offer one piece of advice: If you want to know what it feels like to make a real difference, go anywhere but Silicon Valley.

Ten years ago, I was a recent grad myself, a tech dreamer with few prospects. Some of my friends went west to find their fortune; I stayed in Connecticut and bootstrapped a company out of my father’s basement. When it took off, I was summoned by the Valley’s oligarchs to meetings designed to impress me.

I’ll never forget one in particular: Sitting in a slick office and talking about million-dollar deals, I looked out the window and saw a homeless man in the street below sorting through garbage. This is the kind of radical gap between rich and poor you rarely see so conspicuously elsewhere in America, and, sadly, Silicon Valley does little to make it smaller.

In large part, it’s because the Valley’s main goal isn’t to make the world a better place; it’s to make investors wealthier. It is why an industry that started out as a vibrant and competitive market is now controlled by a few companies that treat people and ideas as just more lines on a spreadsheet.

And that, dear grads, is where you come in.  Let me tell you something: America doesn’t need another blockchain startup or another app disrupting another industry — or whatever the latest tech trend in the Valley happens to be. It needs young people who understand two things: What you do matters and where you do it matters too.




Austin McChord built a tech unicorn in Connecticut — way outside of Silicon Valley. (Photo: Rebecca Greenfield)

The real world, as I’m sure you have noticed, has very real problems, and fixing them is up to nobody but you. Instead of shuffling off to some tech company’s campus to have your dry cleaning taken care of and your snacks provided, and your creative output consumed by some mammoth company, try asking the seminal question that every great entrepreneur — and every good person — should ask: What do people need? Muhga Eltigani did.

Born in Sudan, she arrived in America when she was five years old. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and had her pick of plum positions. Instead of heading to the Valley, she settled in Cleveland, courtesy of Venture for America, an impressive fellowship that sends recent college graduates to communities that are busy reinventing their economies.

There she worked on a healthy snack company that sought to address the obesity epidemic. Soon she launched her own company, NaturAll Club, which uses avocado oil to create hair products that met the specific needs of African-American women.

The company doubled in size last year, with offices opening in midsized towns across America. This is what real innovation looks like, benefiting both employees and consumers in communities not traditionally served by the bottom-line-driven tech industry.Which brings me to my second, and closely related, piece of advice: Where you do what you do matters.

A lot. Instead of heading to Cupertino or Menlo Park, consider Des Moines or Detroit or Durham, the maligned but absolutely necessary “second- and third-tier” American cities that were once the backbone of our economy.Go to these proud places, and you’ll find three things that are crucial to success, no matter what it is that you choose to do.

The first is simple — your buck goes much further in real America than it does in the tony and overpriced towns of the Valley.The second is even more crucial: Settle down in a “second-tier city” and you’ll find a very helpful community — from the local government on down — eager to see you thrive.

And finally, rather than surrounding yourself with talented people who are too often only interested in padding their resumes before hopping to the next opportunity, you’ll find communities of equally talented men and women who aspire to have meaningful careers without leaving their hometowns.

Forget about going west to work for companies that build $700 juicers while turning a blind eye to people going hungry down the road. And don’t worry about missing out: Google and Apple and Facebook will always be hiring.

But if you want to change the world, do real work in real towns and you’ll soon know what real success feels like.

Austin McChord is the founder and CEO of Datto. He spoke about his experience outside of Silicon Valley at Techonomy NYC.  See the video here.

This might seem like an obvious one to a seasoned cryptocurrency hodler, but if you’re new to the game – there are a few basic things you should know when it comes to storing your cryptocurrency.

Technically, you don’t actually store your cryptocurrency, but rather the private key that allows you to access, send, and spend your cryptocurrency. But without that private key, you can’t access your coins, so for the most part storing your private key is effectively storing your coins.

There are three main ways of storing your cryptocurrency: custodial wallets, software wallets, and hardware wallets. Cryptocurrency storage can be either hot or cold.

Hot storage is when your coins are stored online, and – yep, you guessed it – cold storage is when your coins are kept offline.This article will take you through what each of these is and why you might or might not want to use them to store your cryptocurrency.

Custodial wallets

This might actually sound like the most complicated of the bunch, but it’s probably one of the first cryptocurrency wallets most people actually use. If you buy your cryptocurrency through exchanges like Coinbase or Abra, you might say you store your cryptocurrency on your Coinbase account. What you’re actually doing is storing it in a custodial wallet.

A custodial wallet is just a fancy way of saying that your private keys are being stored, and looked after for you by a third-party custodian. Custodial wallets are usually hot wallets.In some cases this is good because all you have to remember is your login details to the platform, the custodian takes care of ensuring your coins are safe. Good custodians are often more diligent with security than careless individuals.

That said, storing your coins in a custodial wallet doesn’t give you complete control over them. If you want to move them, you have to ask the custodian and hope that they comply with your request.If a custodian controls a large number of wallets on behalf of its clients, it may also be a big target for attackers. It might be a quick and easy way to store your coins, but it might not be the safest.

Software wallets

Software wallets are one the most accessible forms of cryptocurrency storage available. As the name suggests, it’s simply a piece of software that runs on hardware you already own, like your laptop or smartphone.

The software encrypts and protects your private keys. Like custodial wallets, software wallets are usually hot too.Software wallets have few barriers to entry as they don’t cost anything to download, and all you have to do is set them up, generate an address, and start sending or receiving cryptocurrency.

Most smartphone wallet apps have on screen guides that take you through the initial set up too, which can be very useful. However, software wallets, particularly those on smartphones, aren’t always secure.

The level of security in a smartphone-based software wallet varies depending on how the app makes use of the phone’s hardware to secure coins. You should also be aware that there are a lot of fake wallet apps that make off with your coins as soon as you put them into the app.

What’s more, as smartphones are usually always online, they are vulnerable to many more attack vectors, like phishing, than offline hardware-based storage.

Hardware wallets

Hardware wallets are one of the more secure ways of storing your cryptocurrency at the moment, as they store your cryptocurrency offline. A hardware wallet is an actual physical device responsible for protecting your cryptocurrency and private key.

Most of them look like a USB flash drive, usually with a small screen, and some buttons on them.You only ever need to connect a hardware wallet to the internet when you need to make a transaction, so if a hacker is going to try and target you over the web, they have a very small window of opportunity.

However, the fact you need to keep them offline makes them a little more cumbersome than a software wallet which has all your funds – ready to go – at all times. If you’re constantly moving coins around, hardware wallets might become a headache, from a practical point-of-view.

As hardware wallets are cold storage they are quite safe from hackers, but they’re not immune. They can be infected with malware, which tricks a user into sending coins to scammers. Also, because you are buying a physical device, you have to be sure you’re buying a legitimate version; not one that’s been tampered with and might siphon your coins to someone else’s address as soon as you load your coins.

If you’re really keen about long term cryptocurrency storage, you could put all your coins on a hardware wallet and lock it away in a safe-deposit bank, almost as if it were gold bullion! But even sometimes, that isn’t totally safe.

Which should I choose?

There is no such thing as a perfect way to store cryptocurrency. If you want a fast way of moving coins around, you’ll likely have to sacrifice security, and vice-versa.

Generally speaking, it makes sense to choose a wallet type based on how you use cryptocurrency and how much of it you plan on storing in said wallet.If you have a lot of coins, you’d be stupid not to try and pick the most secure form of storage.

If you have small amounts, that you regularly trade and can realistically afford to lose – custodial or software wallets should work just fine, but make sure you get a trustworthy one.

By Mary Kan D'Andrea  |  November 8, 2018, 2:28 PM  |  Techonomy Exclusive    Andela co-founder Christina Sass will be speaking at Techonomy 2018 this Tuesday. Tune in to our homepage to see her live from our stage.“Brilliance is evenly distributed,” said Andela co-founder Christina Sass onstage at Techonomy NYC in May 2018.

She was talking about people. Her company aims to be the answer to a software development and programming talent shortage, widening the search so employers can find them in new places. In the process, Andela is creating economic opportunity in developing countries.




Tolu Komolafe, one of Andela’s most senior developers, and co-founder of the Ladies in Tech organization, at work in EPIC Tower in Lagos, Nigeria. (Photo courtesy of Andela)

According to Code.org and statistics from The Conference Board, there are more than 544,000 open computing jobs in the United States, more positions than the nation’s universities and colleges can hope to fill with recent graduates.

Andela’s response is to identify talented young people in Africa, train them in software development, and place them in jobs at companies around the world without requiring them to move.

Andela offers a window into a promising possible future for work: A distributed workforce that is more diverse and creates economic opportunity where there was little before.

Founded in 2014 and venture funded, Andela serves as a recruiter, filling open developer roles at partner companies. But it does so by turning to the largely untapped talent pool of Africa, home to some of the world’s fastest-growing internet-savvy populations as well as sophisticated tech enclaves. Using tests and boot camps, the company selects coders and programmers and then trains them for six months.

These young coders often have educational backgrounds in computer science, though they generally lack the practical experience needed to turn their studies into a career. But with Andela, they don’t get your usual workplace training experience.

On top of receiving a computer, salary, and professional training, the package includes subsidized housing and regular meals. The company’s budding developers are then contracted out to companies across the globe, working remotely.

At times the developers head to lengthy, on-site visits at their contract companies in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, building work relationships and solidifying ties. Andela serves as the employer of record but assigns each worker full-time to the client. Some now have already worked for their companies for more than two years.

Since July 2016, Andela has partnered with The Zebra, a car insurance comparison site, which has brought 13 engineers onto their team in Austin, Texas. “In addition to [their] technical contributions, they’ve also brought an energy that is infectious,” Meetesh Karia, CTO of The Zebra says of the Andela engineers. “They’ve become a core part of our team.

”Andela has attracted $81 million in funding from investors including South African-based venture capital firm CRE Venture Capital, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Spark Capital, among others. And the company is swimming in qualified applicants, enabling it to hire only the most talented coders.

It now has more than 1,200 employees, many based in African urban hubs, including Lagos, Nigeria; Nairobi, Kenya; and Kampala, Uganda, with more to come.

Andela’s Kigali, Rwanda office is slated to open in January 2019. This company’s aspirations go way beyond its own profits. Andela hopes that the jump-start it gives trainees will not only give them work experience but inspire them to found local or global startups of their own.