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Ledgers

ledgers

In an era in which the traditional ‘white picket fence’ feels increasingly out of reach for many, a growing number of investors are trading in their ambitions of homeownership for a stake in the digital frontier. This trend isn't just a fleeting fad - it's a significant shift in how people are thinking about investment and wealth creation. Janine Grainger, Founder, and CEO of Easy Crypto, weighs in on why people are swapping lawns for ledgers… Home ownership has become increasingly elusive A recent survey reported that in New Zealand, just 16% of Kiwis said they could invest a small amount in real estate over time, compared to almost 60% who believe they could do the same in crypto. This isn’t just a statistic; it’s a reflection of the broader economic landscape. In many parts of the world, skyrocketing property prices and stagnant wages have created an insurmountable barrier to homeownership. Unless you have intergenerational wealth, the dream of owning a home is at odds with our current economic reality. Millennials and Gen Z, in particular, are finding it increasingly difficult to save for a down payment, let alone afford monthly mortgage repayments. Crypto investors are no longer ‘the odd one out’ Once considered the Wild West of finance, cryptocurrency has come of age and is no longer the sole domain of tech enthusiasts and libertarians. The asset class has entered the mainstream, with institutional investors, hedge funds, and even traditional banks dipping their toes into the digital currency waters. This institutional interest has lent credibility and stability to the market, making it a more viable alternative investment that could help deliver comparatively outsized gains as part of a portfolio. It takes mere minutes (and cents) to invest Reputable exchanges have also made buying and selling crypto as easy as shopping online. This accessibility is a game-changer. Unlike real estate, which often requires a significant upfront investment in terms of both finance and time, crypto allows for ‘micro investing’. You don’t need to buy an entire Bitcoin to get started; you can invest as little as you want and gradually increase your stake. What’s more, if you invest regularly, you stand to benefit from dollar-cost-averaging that reduces the impact of market volatility over time. A new mindset about institutions The financial crises of the past decades have left a lingering distrust in traditional financial institutions for many, and some are increasingly questioning how their investments and money are being used and who stands to benefit the most from their financial activities. Crypto, with its promise of decentralization, transparency, and democratization, presents an appealing alternative. Unlike traditional banking systems, where a portion of your money might end up lining the pockets of big tech, government, and banks, crypto offers a system that many believe to be more free and fair. Transactions are transparent and traceable on the blockchain, giving investors more confidence in how their funds are being handled. An eye on a ‘bigger prize’ Lastly, GenXers and Boomers, in particular, are looking to supercharge their retirement in an increasingly challenging economic environment. While returns are never guaranteed, and the crypto market is more volatile than other assets, it’s a risk many are willing to take for the possibility of outsized gains. While homes have long been seen as the ultimate investment and symbol of financial stability, this perception is changing and many believe we are at an inflection point in the history of wealth creation and investment. The move from lawns to ledgers is emblematic of a new era of investment -  one that values accessibility, innovation, and transparency. As more people recognize the potential of digital currencies and decentralized finance, we might see a future in which wealth aspirations focus on digital assets over property. Disclaimer: Crypto is volatile and carries risk, and its value can go up and down. Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. Please do your own research. In an era in which the traditional ‘white picket fence’ feels increasingly out of reach for many, a growing number of investors are trading in their ambitions of homeownership for a stake in the digital frontier. This trend isn't just a fleeting fad - it's a significant shift in how people are thinking about investment and wealth creation. In an era in which the traditional ‘white picket fence’ feels increasingly out of reach for many, a growing number of investors are trading in their ambitions of homeownership for a stake in the digital frontier. This trend isn't just a fleeting fad - it's a significant shift in how people are thinking about investment and wealth creation. Janine Grainger, Founder, and CEO of Easy Crypto, weighs in on why people are swapping lawns for ledgers… Home ownership has become increasingly elusive A recent survey reported that in New Zealand, just 16% of Kiwis said they could invest a small amount in real estate over time, compared to almost 60% who believe they could do the same in crypto. This isn’t just a statistic; it’s a reflection of the broader economic landscape. In many parts of the world, skyrocketing property prices and stagnant wages have created an insurmountable barrier to homeownership. Unless you have intergenerational wealth, the dream of owning a home is at odds with our current economic reality. Millennials and Gen Z, in particular, are finding it increasingly difficult to save for a down payment, let alone afford monthly mortgage repayments. A recent survey A recent survey Crypto investors are no longer ‘the odd one out’ Crypto investors are no longer ‘the odd one out’ Once considered the Wild West of finance, cryptocurrency has come of age and is no longer the sole domain of tech enthusiasts and libertarians. The asset class has entered the mainstream, with institutional investors, hedge funds, and even traditional banks dipping their toes into the digital currency waters. This institutional interest has lent credibility and stability to the market, making it a more viable alternative investment that could help deliver comparatively outsized gains as part of a portfolio. It takes mere minutes (and cents) to invest It takes mere minutes (and cents) to invest Reputable exchanges have also made buying and selling crypto as easy as shopping online. This accessibility is a game-changer. Unlike real estate, which often requires a significant upfront investment in terms of both finance and time, crypto allows for ‘micro investing’. You don’t need to buy an entire Bitcoin to get started; you can invest as little as you want and gradually increase your stake. What’s more, if you invest regularly, you stand to benefit from dollar-cost-averaging that reduces the impact of market volatility over time. A new mindset about institutions The financial crises of the past decades have left a lingering distrust in traditional financial institutions for many, and some are increasingly questioning how their investments and money are being used and who stands to benefit the most from their financial activities. Crypto, with its promise of decentralization, transparency, and democratization, presents an appealing alternative. Unlike traditional banking systems, where a portion of your money might end up lining the pockets of big tech, government, and banks, crypto offers a system that many believe to be more free and fair. Transactions are transparent and traceable on the blockchain, giving investors more confidence in how their funds are being handled. An eye on a ‘bigger prize’ Lastly, GenXers and Boomers, in particular, are looking to supercharge their retirement in an increasingly challenging economic environment. While returns are never guaranteed, and the crypto market is more volatile than other assets, it’s a risk many are willing to take for the possibility of outsized gains. While homes have long been seen as the ultimate investment and symbol of financial stability, this perception is changing and many believe we are at an inflection point in the history of wealth creation and investment. The move from lawns to ledgers is emblematic of a new era of investment -  one that values accessibility, innovation, and transparency. As more people recognize the potential of digital currencies and decentralized finance, we might see a future in which wealth aspirations focus on digital assets over property. Disclaimer: Crypto is volatile and carries risk, and its value can go up and down. Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. Please do your own research. Disclaimer: Crypto is volatile and carries risk, and its value can go up and down. Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. Please do your own research. Disclaimer: Crypto is volatile and carries risk, and its value can go up and down. Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. Please do your own research.

Why Investors are Swapping Lawns for Ledgers

They make me dream your dreams. They make me scream your screams - Muse I actually like using Ledger. It’s been one of the best crypto hardware wallets for a long time now - a long time being 7 years, which is an eternity in crypto land. I don’t wanna focus on bat-shitting on Ledger, and neither do I wanna focus on saying ‘How we should give them a chance!’. What I wanna theorize about in the most neutral way is - What may have been happening behind the scenes that convinced Ledger to make such an idiotic move. The idiotic move to allow users to store their seed phrase on cloud servers. Let’s break down a few problems in crypto land: a) User design and user experience problem It’s been shitty usually. Crypto companies are generally desperate to solve this problem. Mostly because the companies who solve it correctly will be able to monopolize a large market. Our entire internet and browser experience is built mostly on centralized tech. It is a problem that’s easy and hard to solve at the same time. It’s an easy problem to solve if you rely on centralized tech, but a fucking nightmare if you wanna solve it while keeping the ethos of decentralization. Ledger wanted to solve the UX/UI problem with centralized tech. More specifically they wanted to solve the ‘backup your keys easily’ problem. b) Regulatory pain in the ass problem It is very common knowledge that regulators are on the asses of various crypto companies - exchanges, blockchain protocols, Defi, and hot wallets. Cold wallets are no exception. Sooner or later they are gonna go after self-custody wallets if they haven’t. Ledger probably wanted to be ahead of this regulatory curve. Ledger’s idea - let’s make some of our users share their seed phrase first, then we can do mandatory KYCs. Not so fast, ledger! c) Lack of decentralized tech The innovation around Web3 is actually disappointing. A majority of the applications are built on the same or similar underlying tech. The differentiation is on the product or market level, not necessarily on the tech level. If not all, a large majority of the Defi projects on Ethereum are built using Solidity. We don’t even have a proper second language!! How fucking crazy is that? Even has its competitors - PHP, anyone? Javascript This whole - extract your seed into 3 parts and store it in different centralized servers was probably Ledger’s attempt to build more reliable decentralized tech. Oh well, semi-centralized tech if that makes you feel better. Overall, Ledger tried to solve all these problems together with one quick fix. So, they made the market mad. Instead, they could have taken the harder road and tried to solve these problems one by one while keeping crypto values (such as privacy, and decentralization) in mind. Nonetheless, if I were you I would use Ledger cautiously. Maybe get a Trezor? Why not decentralize your hardware wallets? Just fucking opinions. Keep your crypto safe, everyone. Disclaimer - Nobody (Ledger or Trezor) paying me to write this shit. Also published here.

Ledger's Cautionary Tale 

For years now, blockchains have made headlines on an almost daily basis, alongside the rise of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. However, a common misconception - largely caused by companies with outsized marketing budgets - is that distributed ledger technology (DLT) is synonymous with blockchain. This is a rather unfortunate confusion, as DLTs do not offer any of the advantages that blockchain-based solutions provide. Legacy technology providers, as well as legacy financial providers, are using the DLT and blockchain conflation as a buzzword to attract new customers, or seem progressive in their approach to new technologies. Questions You Should Ask: What consensus mechanism does your “DLT” use? How is your DLT different from a database solution? Who controls transactions on the DLT? How does your DLT compare with popular smart-contract platforms like Ethereum? What data exchange standards does your DLT use? A distributed ledger is essentially a that is replicated across several locations and (sometimes) maintained by multiple participants. By contrast, most organizations currently use  centralized databases often at a fixed location, creating a single point of failure. database Enterprises may use distributed ledger technology to process, validate, or authenticate transactions or other types of data exchanges; records are only ever executed and recorded on the ledger when the consensus has been reached by the parties involved - if indeed there is a consensus mechanism at all. Blockchain technology is a particular type of encryption and is referenced in the second footnote/reference of the (H. Massias, X.S. Avila, and J.-J. Quisquater, "Design of a secure timestamping service with minimal trust requirements," In 20th Symposium on Information Theory in the Benelux, May 1999.). Bitcoin Whitepaper The Bitcoin Whitepaper makes no mention of a blockchain and does not use the term ledger. This is an important fact, ignored by proponents of the idea that blockchains share features with DTLs. Blockchains are indeed state machines (more ), and the chain connects blocks which include the information over the change in control over the set of bytes that have been manipulated in the recorded sequence. here However, in as much as the blockchain provides a “public ledger”, that is not a necessary feature of that application, and second-layer solutions and applications frequently address the exposure created by such a ledger. Blockchains enable permission-less peer-to-peer transactions, which was the motivation for the creation of the first blockchain (Bitcoin). This quality is observably absent from shared ledgers like DTLs, in which the operators of the chain - who usually know each other - set the rules, and can prevent transactions to occur. Conclusion DLTs are not blockchains, and blockchains are not DLTs. Users and investors should use great caution when engaging with providers and individuals who conflate these two concepts, chances are they a) do not understand the difference or b) are knowingly applying the label to a database solution that does not provide any of these advantages introduced by the blockchain paradigm.

Blockchains Missing Ledgers - The Myth of DLTs

Blockchains Missing Ledgers - El mito de las DLT

Have you ever been in your favorite city, needing to call a taxi and having first to install an application on your smartphone in addition to the 10 previously installed taxi apps? What if you could use a single application wherever you go to book your rides regardless of whether it is a taxi, public transport ride, or e-scooter? In this post, we explain how we can use Daml and a distributed ledger such as Canton ( ) to write such an app that is beneficial for both the service providers (transport operators), the travelers, and the drivers. We will first discuss the design and implementation in Daml and then see that without changes to the code, we can deploy the application to run on a decentralized ledger in a scalable, resilient, and open way. canton.io An Informal Description of the Problem In order to give a brief overview of the problem, let’s consider the situation from the perspective of a traveler—let’s call her Alice—who wants a ride from the main train station to her office. When specifying her ride request, Alice gives her pickup location (the train station), drop off location (the office), and the maximum time she agrees to wait before being picked up. She wants the pickup to happen as soon as possible and to spend as little time as possible inside the vehicle. A simplified, positive path is as follows: Alice sends a ride request to the operator (transportation provider) The transport provider collects the state of the vehicles (current location and planned actions) and makes a ride proposal (with a specific vehicle assigned) Alice accepts the ride proposal A new mission (with Alice’s pickup and drop off locations) is sent to the vehicle The above flow can fail if no vehicle can reach Alice’s pickup location early enough (within her specified maximum waiting time) or if she rejects the ride proposal. We may think from the above figure that the operator is the central entity governing the ride-booking process. However, we will see below that the operator is one party among others, together with the vehicles, the traveler, and the bank, and that multiple operators can be involved. Benefits of a Decentralized Application We present here some of the benefits of implementing a decentralized application deployed with a synchronization protocol we call Canton. We also bring in some features that come for free thanks to the Daml language. More details about the topology can be found in the section below. Distributed setting On the operational side, vehicles can seamlessly connect to different nodes running the application, which allows to balance the load (e.g., routing computations) and increase scalability. Moreover, the ability to connect a vehicle to different nodes also improves the resiliency of the system. On the traveler side, it is possible to connect to several providers, thus getting a unified view containing offers from the different providers. This behavior is similar to what an aggregator would provide. For the drivers, the ability to connect to different nodes means they can belong to different fleets at the same time, and are thus able to propose rides to different operators, unlike in most current systems. The atomicity of our protocol also enables transactions that span multiple vehicles: booking two legs of a journey (e.g., round trip), removing a ride from one vehicle and assigning it to another, and so on. The ability to handle such transactional atomicly is very important (e.g., to avoid the situation where only part of a round trip is confirmed or canceled) and is notoriously difficult in a distributed system. Such flows are enabled without the need for the programmer to actually focus on these aspects. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the authentication of the different actors (including the drivers/vehicles) is handled easily with Daml. In addition, the privacy of the different views (vehicles plans, traveler rides, bank transactions, etc.) results directly from specific features of our language. We’ll discuss these in the next section. Daml Modeling In this section, we describe the implementation of the application in Daml. We first present the different actors and the parties involved and discuss how the state is modeled. In the next post, we will demonstrate the different steps in the booking flow. Finally, we briefly explain what additional pieces are required in order to simulate such a system on a local machine. Actors, parties, and state Looking back at the figure depicting the simple flow above, we see that the following actors are involved: a traveler (Alice), a few vehicles, and an operator (or transportation provider). Let’s consider the different actors separately. Travelers Each traveler is modeled as a Daml party and can request rides. Vehicles and Their Properties For a given vehicle, we separate its state into two parts: an immutable one and a mutable one. The immutable one contains properties that do not change over time and can include seating capacity, maximal speed, and certain other characteristics (fuel vs. electric, energy profile, license plate, etc). For the sake of simplicity, we consider in this example only the speed, and we can thus write the vehicle properties as the following template: template VehicleProperties
 with
   operator: Party -- A vehicle is associated to an operator
   id: VehicleId   -- Vehicle identifier
   speed: Decimal
 where
   signatory operator
   observer id.driver -- Driver should be able to see the properties
 
   -- For a given operator, name of the vehicle should be unique
   key (operator, id.name): (Party, Text)
   maintainer key._1
 
data VehicleId = VehicleId
 with
   driver: Party
   name: Text As we can see, in addition to the actual vehicle properties (here, the speed), we also associate the operator and a vehicle identifier, which contains both information about the driver as well as  a name for the vehicle. In terms of authority and privacy, the operator is the sole signatory on the contract and the driver is added as an observer. On the other hand, the mutable part consists of the last known location of the vehicle (space and time) as well as information about activities it has to perform (pickup and dropoff of travelers): template Vehicle
 with
   operator: Party
   id: VehicleId
   lastTsLocation: TsLocation
   plan: [RideActionCid] -- List of activities to perform (pickups and drop offs)
 where
   signatory operator
   observer id.driver
 
   key (operator, id.name): (Party, Text)
   maintainer key._1
 
data TsLocation = TsLocation with time: Time, space: Location
data Location = Location with x: Decimal, y: Decimal The list of stakeholders of this template is exactly the same as for the vehicle properties one. The separation between properties and state (immutable and mutable) provides the ability to keep contract instances as small as possible, which is useful, since the vehicle contract is frequently “updated” (each time a ride is added or removed from the vehicle). For a similar reason, some updates of the vehicle state (last known location, dropping finished activities) is done only when needed, and not eagerly. Unsurprisingly, the last piece is the fleet, which contains the list of all vehicles managed by the operator: template Fleet
 with
   operator: Party
   vehicles: [VehicleId]
 where
   signatory operator
 
   key operator: Party
   maintainer key Again, we notice that the fleet is mostly immutable: it needs to be updated only when a vehicle is added or removed to the fleet, not when the state of a vehicle changes. Drivers Each driver is represented by a party and associated with a vehicle. Note that we could also directly represent vehicles by parties. This would also make sense, especially if the fleet consists of autonomous vehicles. Bank In addition to the parties described before, we also consider a bank with which travelers hold bank accounts. These accounts can be used to wire money and pay for the ride. In the description of the flows below, we will mostly ignore this part. In practice, we would instead integrate with a payment gateway. In the next post, we’ll look at the booking flow and how Canton enables the deployment and allows for the connection and synchronization of different ledger instances while still maintaining privacy and integrity. Connect to our and shape the future of Blockchain software. daml developers community Booking a Ride With a Smart Contract App The life of a booking starts with a created for Alice by the operator. On this contract, Alice can exercise the choice that creates a . The is then handled by the operator, who can either reject it (in case there is no vehicle available to serve the ride request) or create a , which contains a proposed pickup time, a dropoff time, and a fare. TravelerAccount RequestRide RideRequest RideRequest RideProposal Alice then can either accept or reject the ride proposal. If she chooses to accept, an instance of a is created. Finally, the operator triggers the creation of the , *Pickup,*and contracts, and the plan of a vehicle is updated. RideProposalAccepted Ride Dropoff The flow can be visualized in the following diagram while the different templates and choices that can be exercised on them are shown in the table below. At this point, you may wonder why we need the contract and why we cannot directly trigger the final step (ride creation and fleet update) directly on the . The reason is that Alice, our traveler, is a controller on the instance but is not an observer of the fleet, which means that she is not authorized to see the and contracts and exercise choices on them. By adding one more step in our propose-accept pattern, we make sure that the whole flow is properly authorized. RideProposalAccepted RideProposal RideProposal Fleet Vehicle From a Ride Request to a Ride Proposal We now discuss in more detail the ride request and its processing by the operator. Implementations of the ride requests and proposals as data structures are rather straightforward: template RideRequest
 with
   operator: Party
   traveler: Party
   origin: Location
   destination: Location
   maximumWaitingTime: RelTime -- Maximum time before pickup
 where
   signatory traveler
 
   ensure (origin /= destination)
 
template RideProposal
 with
   operator: Party
   traveler: Party
   vehicleId: VehicleId -- Assigned vehicle
   rideRequestCid: ContractId RideRequest
   rideRequestTime: Time
   pickupTime: Time  -- Initial planned pickup time
   dropoffTime: Time -- Initial planned drop off time
   fare: Decimal -- Price of the ride
 where
   signatory operator The biggest part is the processing of the request by the operator. The different steps that we need to perform are the following: Gather the list of all vehicles and their properties Find the list of vehicles that could serve the ride (in our simplified setting, we only need to check that the vehicle can reach the pickup location in time) If the list is empty, reject the ride; otherwise, select the vehicle which is the closest to the new pickup and create a ride proposal These high-level steps yield the following choice on the template. RideRequest controller operator can
 nonconsuming RideRequest_Process: Either (ContractId RideRequestRejected) (ContractId RideProposal)
   do
     (_, fleet) <- fetchByKey @Fleet operator
     time <- getTime
 
     -- List all the vehicles and their properties
     vehiclesAndProperties <- forA fleet.vehicles (\id -> do
       (_, vehicle) <- fetchByKey @Vehicle (operator, id.name)
       (_, properties) <- fetchByKey @VehicleProperties (operator, id.name)
       pure (vehicle, properties))
 
     let cRideRequest = C.RideRequest with ..
 
     {-
       Algorithmic helper that returns `Optional RideMatchingData`, where None
       indicates that no vehicle can serve the ride and `Some RideMatchinData`
       contains information about the vehicle that can serve the ride (including
       pickup time, drop off time and the fare).
     -}
     maybeMatchingCandidate <- findBestMatchingCandidate
       vehiclesAndProperties cRideRequest
 
     case maybeMatchingCandidate of
       None -> do
         archive self
 
         fmap Left
           (create RideRequestRejected with reason = "No vehicle available", ..)
 
       Some rideMatchingData -> fmap Right
         (create RideProposal with
           vehicleId = rideMatchingData.vehicleId
           fare = rideMatchingData.fare
           pickupTime = rideMatchingData.pickupTime
           dropoffTime = rideMatchingData.dropoffTime
           rideRequestCid = self
           rideRequestTime = time, ..) On Delays, Concurrency, and Transactions Several assumptions and simplifications are made in our simple implementation. The first is that every party will exercise his/her choices quickly. If that is not the case, e.g., if Alice waits a few minutes before accepting the ride proposal, then the offer made by the operator may not be feasible anymore. In particular, the pickup and the dropoff time need to be recomputed. Moreover, concurrency issues can arise when multiple travelers try to book rides in parallel. To see why, consider the following situation: Alice emits a ride request and gets a proposal Bob emits a ride request and gets a proposal assigned to the same vehicle as Alice Alice accepts her proposal Now, when Bob accepts his ride proposal, the vehicle that is assigned is already heading towards Alice, which means that the offer is no longer valid (or not without significantly increasing the delay before Bob’s pickup). Again, this can be solved by adding additional checks in the final transaction of the flow (choice of the template). CreateRideAndAddToFleet RideProposal_Accepted Finally, note that the characteristics of Daml can alleviate some inherent issues of such a system: By wrapping most of the side effects in the final transaction, one can ensure that creation of the ride, update of the state of the fleet, and payment for the ride happen atomically Using contract ids, it is straightforward to check that the current state of the vehicle corresponds to the state of the vehicle when the ride proposal was made, thus decreasing the risk of concurrent updates Algorithmic Considerations In the creation of the ride proposal, we chose a naïve and sub-optimal algorithm. For the purpose of simplicity, we decided to select the vehicle that is the closest to the pickup location, in case there are multiple candidate vehicles. Another possibility would be to choose the vehicle that can drive Alice from her pickup location to her destination as quickly as possible, or a combination of these two criteria. In general, if you allow ridesharing (i.e., multiple travelers sharing the vehicle during a portion of their journeys), pre-booking (booking in advance), or specifying the desired arrival time instead of the desired departure time, then the selection of the best possibility to serve the ride is a non-trivial task (indeed, the problem is a generalization of the traveling salesman problem). Additionally, taking routing constraints and traffic into account, as well as tracking the vehicle precisely and in real time, is operationally difficult. We neglect all these issues and focus instead on high-level modeling. Note that this choice is not a restriction: these more complex algorithms could be designed and implemented in parallel. Moreover, one could also perform some of the computations off-ledger in order to protect the IP of the algorithms. In that case, the ledger would only capture the result of such computations. The Missing Pieces for a Local Simulation In order to be able to run a complete workflow locally, two important pieces are missing: Routing, to compute drive distance and time between locations (vehicle current locations, pickups, drop offs) and simulate vehicle movement Matching, to decide whether a ride can be accepted and which vehicle should serve it In order to perform real routing computation, one usually relies on an external provider (e.g., Google Maps, local instance of OSRM server, etc). For the sake of simplicity (and since routing is orthogonal to the problem we’re solving), we can model vehicle location as tuples (x, y) that represent points in the Euclidean space. We then assume that vehicles drive between such points in straight lines at constant speed. Given a vehicle plan (pickups and dropoffs to visit), its last known location and the current time (in our case, the ledger time) it is then possible to infer: The activities that are already done and that should be dropped from the plan The current location of the vehicle (using interpolation between points when necessary) Similarly, we can implement a simplistic matching algorithm that only considers appending a new ride at the end of a plan. The best candidate is then the vehicle whose last dropoff (or current location, in case of an empty) is the closest to the new pickup. Distributed Setting Now that we have seen the different flows and building blocks for our application, we discuss the network topology that could be used to deploy our app. The ingredient that enables this deployment is Canton, a synchronization protocol that allows for the connection and synchronization of different ledger instances while maintaining privacy and integrity. This allows us to see the inter-connected ledgers as a virtual global ledger (see and ). overview key concepts The topology of Canton is flexible and is independent of the different parties mentioned above. One extreme case would be where all parties would be hosted by a single participant node: this corresponds to a fully centralized system managed by the transportation provider. On the other hand, richer topologies allow us to build a platform that possesses scalability, resiliency, and openness. As an example, let us discuss the topology depicted by the figure below. On the traveler side, any number of nodes can be deployed and connected to the domain. On the operational side, one transportation entity (consisting of a set of vehicles and their operator) can be either hosted on the same node (e.g., “Operations Node 2”) or on different nodes (e.g., “Operations Node 1” and “Vehicles 1”). Moreover, some vehicles (e.g., “Vehicle 2”) can also be hosted by multiple nodes. This topology enables the traveler to have a unified view over the offers of multiple operators. Moreover, with small changes in the code, it would be possible for vehicles to offer rides to clients of different operators at the same time. For the traveler, it means that a multi-modal journey can be managed in a single workflow. For the operators, it increases the efficiency of the fleet, because idling vehicles can be assigned to other missions, thus reducing the operational costs. Want to become a Daml developer? Start your journey . here Also published . here

Booking a Taxi Ride on Distributed Ledgers: A Smart Contract Example 

As a spiritually adept and occult practitioner, it’s always interesting to blend technology with spirituality, particularly in relation to cryptocurrencies. For instance, the entirety of 3D physical existence is basically an illusion of the 5 senses. It’s an , the point being to realize this and step away from it (via the Third Eye/Pineal Gland and Higher Awareness practices). Illusory Metaverse The soul, seated in the brain, is what gives meaning to everything. All sensory information goes back to the mind anyway, the mind/soul creating the senses as well as the information the sense brings back to it. This also applies to what is known as “clairsenses''. Of this higher mind or soul, the rational 3D mind is but a tiny part. You are in an illusion; would you like to proceed further in? What The Soul Wants From an occult perspective, the symbolic elements of any new technology are more telling than the technical specifications. With regard to , it is extremely relevant that it is not tied to any persona. This is why it is the most successful cryptocurrency; it’s not tied to an individual ego who is bound to make mistakes. Individual people are subject to bribery, coercion, flattery, or death. But you cannot oppress an anonymous person. Bitcoin This is also the reason that cryptocurrencies have been so successful in a general sense. The government (who everybody hates, let's be sincere), cannot harvest our money, time, energy, and attention unless we are forced into their corrupt monetary regime. This is why they are fanatical about KYC, compliance, and identity verification; so they can steal from us while pretending to be altruistic in some fashion. Their excuse is usually that it's for our own protection. So Bitcoin, in a very plain manner, is symbolic of freedom and sovereignty. You cannot be free if you are working 9-5 in a job you hate while paying high taxes to a corrupt government that you detest but don’t see a way out of. That kind of thing cripples the soul and makes it want to leave. And you can’t be blackmailed by the IRS if nobody knows your ego/identity. The soul, in other words, wants freedom. This is what was promised in the original US constitution. What Distributed Ledgers Can Do For The Soul Technology can indeed provide a means of self-realization, or at least provides a . But not in the way that people think. Right now, distributed ledgers are required to get us of centralized systems that we all foolishly and automatically agreed to for convenience. The financial/medical/legal/media webs are intertwined in a manner that they work together, to oppress evolution. We need to build our own Web. We are, and it’s called Web3. means to increase awareness out There are serious societal conditions that need to be exited from, and distributed ledgers offer increased transparency, efficiency, and freedom to do so. The fact is that: Mortgages are expensive. Marriages are expensive. Divorces are expensive. Health care is expensive. Childcare is expensive. Insurance is expensive. Oil is expensive. Smartphones and laptops are expensive. This should be the case. It is not natural, but artificial. And it all ties back to centralized systems that are currently exploding due to greed, evil, and mismanagement. Inflation is not an accident. Actually, nothing is an accident; everything occurs due to positive or negative action. not Thankfully, distributed ledgers are going to take apart legacy systems and give the power back to users - me and you. Souls in other words, and potentially like-minded if you have read this far. Every soul is entitled to its own time, space, and freedom of attention without constantly having to “earn a living”. Distributed ledgers can provide this, the constitutional rights of the soul enabling fair rewards for fair input. Technology Is Just An Amplifier As every spiritual adept knows, you don’t get a “fresh start” after you finish up your lifetime; you have to deal with the habits and patterns you created in this one. The equation must balance, and the idea that somebody else is going to clean up your mess is what has caused such planetary dysfunction in the first place. This should be extremely worrying if you are , fast food, mainstream media, and lethargy. But it's quite liberating if you are addicted to meditation, yoga, philosophy, and freedom. addicted to technology Technology, after all, is simply an amplifier. Wise souls will get wiser. Foolish souls will get more foolish.

The Metaverse of 5 Senses & How Distributed Ledgers Help The Soul

Distributed ledgers, or blockchains, are doing a lot to disrupt existing systems. Finance, the classical example, is being completely revolutionized through decentralized finance (DeFi). At the other end of the spectrum would be the disruption of digital art and creative enterprise through NFT sales, which experienced an explosive from 2021 to 2022. 38,000% CAGR But distributed ledgers are not merely disrupting existing systems. They are creating entirely new paradigms for future generations to profit from. And it’s mainly newer generations who are on board with and actively working on these Web3 projects. Vitalik Buterin, currently 28, launched Ethereum at just 21 (he co-founded at 18). Justin Sun, Tron founder and serial entrepreneur, is only 31. It’s an industry created by younger generations, mainly for young generations, who are comfortable with the fast-paced movements of Web3. Bitcoin Magazine Blockchain Technology - New Paradigms For Graduates The blockchain industry is gigantic and provides numerous employment opportunities. It also generates a lot of jobs via its spin-off industries like , smart contract auditing, crypto custody, whitepaper writing, and social sentiment analytics like , a coin analytics platform, to name just a few. PR, marketing Defy Trends Legacy finance professionals, especially younger ones, are institutions towards crypto startups that have a better potential for growth. A similar trend is seen in software development, where developers can work on their own Web3 projects with like-minded developers instead of slugging it out in a corporate environment (by , a demoralizing path). jumping from traditional banking many accounts With the rise of open-source tools, it’s actually easier than you would think to launch your own Web3 startup. Communication is easy on the typical free communication channels and project management tools like Telegram, Discord, Slack, Trello, Clickup, etc. The blockchain space is more enticing, more exciting, and allows graduates and young adults increased freedom in comparison to large institutions with fixed roles. In a bank, you're often a cog in the machine. In a startup, you could be part marketer, part developer, part PR specialist, part writer, and also the co-founder. Roles are more fluid. Of course, I’m not saying that it’s a Golden ticket to success. Your Web3 startup is probably going to fail, based on . But your second or third will be a lot more successful and you’ll make more money in a shorter time frame if you stick with it, compared to historical fixed roles with set increases per year. past statistical averages Blockchain offers more opportunities than the classical career model - provided you can innovate and work hard. Alternative Styles Of Work Aside from employment opportunities, distributed ledgers offer new forms of work, which is really a new lifestyle. , for example, was designed to give university students a means of earning an income during Covid-19 and its associated geo-restrictions. Students can earn up to $1,500 a week in the real-life play-to-earn platform doing jobs, either local or remote. It also comes with an immutable review system to build up your reputation. This allows students to set up their own avatar on the H3RO3S system and avoid centralized freelance agencies like UpWork which can be very harsh towards new freelancers. H3R03S In 2019, UpWork started to reject new freelance applications and charge money to - a classic example of a centralized entity profiting at the expense of underprivileged global citizens. The move hurt the freelancers who needed the most support and are least likely to be able to afford the bids, especially if located in third-world countries. This is exactly the behavior that distributed platforms can assist with as it prevents these measures through community governance and its decentralized nature. The legacy freelance model is also a race to the bottom if it prevents new freelancers from gaining experience. bid on jobs New industries are also emerging. Considerable numbers of creatives have made money by turning their art into Non-Fungible Tokens. This includes a UK-born 12-year-old who made in less than a year with his Weird Whales digital art NFT collection. This NFT and wider crypto industry provides an opportunity for growth that is simply not available in historical systems. $1 Million Wealth can be created in a very rapid time frame within the industry of distributed ledgers. The Adoption of Historical Industries: From Old To New Revenue can also be generated by new versions of older models - by putting existing systems on a blockchain. For example, instead of investing in real estate, you can invest in virtual real estate in the Metaverse. provides investors with the opportunity to purchase real estate space in a Metaverse that replicates existing 3D functionality. Revenue can be generated through retail, staking, advertising, and leasing through the Metamall Metaverse. Owners can enhance their VR ‘property’ as they wish, using the native $MALL token for transactions while Spaces (‘Properties’) are transacted as NFTs on the underlying Solana blockchain. Younger generations are more liable to warm to this easier form of real estate investing, due to the technological components. Metamall This is made far more appealing when you consider the immersive VR component, in a completely unsaturated niche, and the fact that there are no rent or utility bills. There are a lot of Metaverses scheduled to go live in 2022 and beyond. The quality of their VR technology will likely play a role in how successful they are. Of course, it’s not just financial remuneration that is changing for younger generations. The way they interact, how they work, and how they spend their leisure is also changing. They will be conducting a lot of their activities in VR-enhanced metaverses. This includes attending musical concerts or events from the comfort of their homes, through a VR headset. The End Of The World…As We Know It Distributed Ledgers are a game-changer. Modern generations are growing up with cryptocurrencies and NFTs almost as a standard. Later generations will be growing up with VR-enhanced Metaverses as a standard. Despite certain technical and ethical concerns with these advances (which are coming forward at a staggering pace, as anybody involved in this industry can attest), distributed ledgers are freeing up and empowering the global youth. Never before has there been such an opportunity for financial growth and expansion with the help of a computer and an internet connection. After all, 12-year-olds are doing it, and it raises serious questions as to the legitimacy of the education system, which requires enormous time and money for an income that is nowhere near guaranteed.

How Distributed Ledgers Are Generating New Career Opportunities For Younger Generations

This is the second article of the series; the first one was about True NFT . This time, Roman Nguyen from RSquad, one of the developers of the Free TON blockchain ecosystem, talks about how modern blockchains approach the problem of data storage in decentralized systems and what advantages such a complex has in comparison with the existing model of token transfer. What is a Distributed Ledger? If we talk about distributed ledger systems as such, there are a lot of implementations — from torrents and IPFS to blockchains. The approach is not new, and, lately, it has been increasingly developing towards blockchains. Blockchain, as a technology, solves a number of diverse problems, from ensuring the reliability of information to its storage. As a rule, these are the regular “key-value” pairs, where some identifier corresponds to a certain value. For example "number-balance", "name-status" or "domain name-address". In any blockchain with smart contracts, we will have similar structures in one way or another. What's the Problem with Regular Ledgers? In general, nothing at all. The data structure itself has existed since time immemorial and has been used successfully in both centralized and decentralized systems, including blockchains. However, in blockchain any action (except reading) costs something, and in some blockchains, such as FreeTON, data storage is not free either. In terms of data storage, the key problem is always the limitations of the media — a conditionally infinite ledger requires a conditionally infinite amount of storage. In real life, we can think of a large data center as a kind of single media, which, if necessary, can be expanded. In decentralized systems (blockchains with smart contracts) this approach is not possible. It is simply impossible to store an infinite amount of data in one contract: we will inevitably run into, for example, the size of the block or catch a collision, which will lead to unpredictable consequences. This is the same as in real life, not adding new media to the data center, but building another one nearby. The comparison is very abstract, but it illustrates the situation. Additionally, existing ledgers in blockchains, as a rule, are a large smart contract that supports a complete list of records or a tree-like solution that splits the list into parts based on certain parameters. Such solutions disappear due to lack of scalability, high maintenance costs, long search time with increasing data volume, single point of failure, and so on. So What To Do? A set of criteria that a solution must meet: it must be able to store data in key-value format; it must be conditionally infinitely scalable; it must perform crud (create read update delete) operations; the user experience of interacting with the solution should not differ from that of regular ledgers. The first thing that comes to mind is that the ledger records should be divided into some parts, which will not exceed a certain maximum possible size. But creating a mass of contracts with ledger parts makes no sense, they need to be linked somehow. You can create a blockchain on a blockchain and try to link the records to each other — that way, each record will have one or two links to similar records and will represent something like a table row. But in this case, you will have to deal with the issue of deleting and creating records, which will entail changing not only the record on which the operation is performed but also others. Creating a central contract and remembering record references is also not suitable - even an array of line references can be conditionally infinite within one contract. That leaves one thing — the records must be linked somehow, while not remembering the links to them. It would be nice to come up with a way to search and verify records, as well as to create and provide irreplaceable records, without having to remember the parts. Sounds like a fantasy, but Free TON offers an elegant solution to this problem. In regular blockchains, the contract address is usually either a public key or some hash from it. In Free TON it's different. The address is a hash of the public key (can be taken as part of the initial data), the code of the smart contract itself, and the initial data. Since all addresses are calculated from the contract code, public key, and initial data, we can deploy the same contract code with the same public key (usually zero), changing only its initial data. This allows you to calculate a contract address from anywhere by specifying a unique identifier in the initial data. The principle remains — we, as in a centralized ledger, can get the address of the contract, which contains data, by a unique identifier without creating a ledger as such, while completely excluding the possibility of replacing a child contract. In the latter case, when you change the address of the child contract will also change the code, leading to a change in subsequent addresses. That is, if we put a unique ID in the contract initial data, we will get a unique address. In general, the ledger will look like the following scheme: But how do you get a record? The client accesses the root smart contract, which already contains the child contract code, transfers the initial data (in our example, only the identifier), and calculates the contract address. It turns out the address of the contract - an identifier that points to a ledger string. This approach is not only possible by changing the initial data, the code itself can also be changed. A "salt" code has been added to TIP-31, which makes it possible to change the contract code without changing its functionality by adding some data structure directly to it. This is useful if you need to separate ledger lines in two different ledgers and when searching for a contract by code hash. Issues and Security But how do you solve the problem of "fake" contracts that can be deployed with the same parameters without referring to the parent contract? To do this, all child contracts write the address of the parent contract in the initial data in addition to the ID. This gives you the ability to check in the constructor when deploying a contract, who deploys that contract, and whether it is parental, otherwise the message is rejected. If this verification is removed and the contract is recompiled, the contract code will change, which will still lead to the wrong address in terms of the parent contract. ________________________ The described approach allows you to look at the blockchain from an unfamiliar angle - as a database storing the format [contract code, initial data] -> contract address. This opens the door to the world of distributed ledgers of unlimited scalability, which will undoubtedly lead to the creation of a new generation of distributed ledger systems, which is what True NFT is. Also published on: https://freeton.house/en/distributed-ledgers-the-approach-dictated-by-modern-blockchains/

Distributed Ledgers: The Next Logical Step

Image Attributed to @LucianoInf Now second only to South Korea as the biggest crypto market in Asia, Hong Kong's future might be one of decentralised ledgers, Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies. Hong Kong will always hold a special place in my heart. For just shy of two years from 2016 to 2018 I lived and worked in the city, and still today it sits close to the top of the list of my preferred jurisdictions for business incorporation. Hong Kong is, as ever, a great place to do business and with its grit and its tenacity is very much the New York City of East Asia, or at least, it was. Every so often a need arises to clear up some business or banking in the city and so I find myself landing at its world class airport and dining at its world class restaurants with old friends and contacts. People who are close to the action and keyed in to the city's inner workings. Yet, as an infrequent visitor my eyes and ears observe changes not so obvious to those stuck in the daily grind, in the same way the ageing process is invisible from one day to the next, but stark and profound as the years roll by. Hong Kong is struggling to reinvent itself. Before you boomers get all giddy with your 'muh China', hold on. This isn't an article about the Chinese Government, I rather want to lay out my thoughts around Hong Kong itself, as well as the city relative to its immediate region. I don't intend to make the case for Singapore, which, despite being arguably the greatest beneficiary of Hong Kong's headaches, is still a top contender for title of the most boring place in Asia. I intend only to outline the unique challenges and opportunities faced by one of the most magnificent - and least boring - cities in the world. Gateway to the Middle Kingdom Incorporating your business in Hong Kong still makes sense in many cases. Hong Kong is pragmatic, with systems and infrastructure that is well established to facilitate commerce and trade. Structures can be highly tax efficient, and while getting a bank account has become more difficult, once established, the banking services at your disposal are second-to-none. Hong Kong is still a respected jurisdiction globally. Yet for entrepreneurs and companies alike the case for incorporating in Hong Kong has often been as part of an overall strategy to do business in and with the mainland. Because of the prevalence of a legal system and system of governance with its foundations in the British style, foreigners could come to Hong Kong and feel just enough familiarity not to be scurrying back to wherever they came from (and often this meant quite a lot of familiarity was on offer). Recently a contact of mine who does business in the mainland linked me to a new structure in Shanghai for establishing 100% foreign owned companies. While the corporate tax rate on the mainland is higher (25% vs 16.5% in Hong Kong), the fees associated with establishing such an entity are far lower, and skipping Hong Kong to go directly to the supplier or client has the benefit of reduced friction and complexity. There is no obvious remedy to this dilemma for Hong Kong. As companies have become more confident engaging directly with the mainland, the appeal of Hong Kong in this respect has waned. Added to this the fact that Hong Kong itself is too small to be a genuine start-up hub, there exists a need for the city to take a new approach. Economic Woes At the same time as Hong Kong's role as gateway to the mainland has diminished, there has been an ever growing inflow of both capital and people from the mainland. Every year the prevalence of Mandarin on the streets of the city grows, but, in the wake of the pandemic, this growth has been offset by an exodus of both Hong Kongers (primarily to the UK, Canada and Australia) and Western Expats. This population shuffle fundamentally changes the fabric of Hong Kong society, and is a phenomenon seen elsewhere, including for example in Germany. Those leaving Hong Kong are by-and-large wealthier than the average Hong Konger, and with them goes their skills and capital worsening the city's already pessimistic demographic outlook (with a Total Fertility Rate of 0.7 according to the World Bank, Hong Kong's ageing population - an almost worldwide issue - is one of its greatest challenges in the years ahead). Arrivals from the mainland have helped to offset this exodus, but only so much, and with the collapse in the Yen, Tokyo is increasingly attractive to wealthy Chinese looking to diversify themselves both financially and by way of residency. The fact that Hong Kong remains one of the most expensive places in the world only adds fuel to the fire. As the saying goes, one man's (or city's) loss is another's gain, and as already mentioned, Singapore has been effective in attracting capital and businesses included in the exodus. At the same time, countries such as Malaysia with its sizeable Chinese diaspora and corporate structures offering tax rates as low as 3% (via the Labuan incorporation route), are also seeing an uptick in interest from those who might otherwise have stayed in the Fragrant Harbour. While the economy on the mainland has been sluggish, the PBOC has adjusted rates downwards. Hong Kong's peg however has dictated that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has followed the Fed's increases over the past few years. This has resulted in a policy rate that sits at 5.25% vs 3.10% for the PBOC at the time of writing (5 years ago the PBOC rate stood at 4.31% while the HKMA policy rate was around 1%). While the increase in rates in the USA was implemented to reign in inflation, Hong Kong suffered no such comparable phenomenon - although it did suffer significant capital outflows - and the increase in rates has been in direct contradiction to conventional economic wisdom that may have encouraged a policy of easing rather than tightening over the last few years had it not been for the peg. Crypto In February 2022, with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia marking a dramatic escalation in hostilities, Chinese policy makers and tycoons alike were undoubtedly keenly observing the geopolitical fallout. If not already clear, this event and the close to three years since has demonstrated the closeness of these two civilisational states. However, and perhaps more importantly, it has exposed the extent to which the United States will go to both pursue sanctions and weaponise the financial system that it controls via the greenback. Many, including myself, did not think that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would do it, and many others believed that the Russia - which had popularly, and falsely, been described by many in the West as a 'gas station masquerading as a country' (John McCain, 2015) - would quickly crumble under the weight of economic exclusion. As is usually the case, pretty much nothing happened according to consensus. Russia which had been so successful in its quick, practically bloodless annexation of Crimea, did not scare the Ukrainians back to the negotiating table. Conversely, the Russian economy has actually experienced something of an economic boom. However, and the point I want to drive home, from the perspective of those in Asia, it was a test case for what Hong Kong may face in the wake of any escalation in the straits of Taiwan. China's approach to crypto-currencies has been mixed at best. While officially there are bans on crypto, it is no coincidence that Hong Kong, which initially pushed back so hard on this financial innovation, has now seen a dramatic uptick in crypto assets. In a recent report by Chainalysis Hong Kong saw the fastest growth in its region at 86% from July 2023 to June 2024. In light of the situation in Ukraine, it is possible that crypto could be considered a useful tool in mitigating the effects of an economic war, such as that which the West has waged on Russia. At the very least, it does provide an incentive for regulators to look the other way or turn a blind eye. Conclusion With approximately 7.5 million inhabitants, Hong Kong just doesn't have the scale to make it a stand-out start-up hub, and its role as a conduit into the mainland will in all probability be further eroded by the likes of Shanghai and Shenzhen. Nevertheless, its role as a critical financial centre may be reinvigorated by a realignment towards crypto-assets and the newly emerging financial paradigm unfolding before our very eyes. Whether Trump's reelection will inspire a rapprochement and deescalation of the now vivid geopolitical schism calving up the world is yet to be seen. Nevertheless, one thing is abundantly clear, if Hong Kong is to retain its prestige and replicate its past success, things will need to change. Image Attributed to @LucianoInf Image Attributed to @LucianoInf Now second only to South Korea as the biggest crypto market in Asia, Hong Kong's future might be one of decentralised ledgers, Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies. Now second only to South Korea as the biggest crypto market in Asia, Hong Kong's future might be one of decentralised ledgers, Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies. Hong Kong will always hold a special place in my heart. For just shy of two years from 2016 to 2018 I lived and worked in the city, and still today it sits close to the top of the list of my preferred jurisdictions for business incorporation. Hong Kong is, as ever, a great place to do business and with its grit and its tenacity is very much the New York City of East Asia, or at least, it was. Every so often a need arises to clear up some business or banking in the city and so I find myself landing at its world class airport and dining at its world class restaurants with old friends and contacts. People who are close to the action and keyed in to the city's inner workings. Yet, as an infrequent visitor my eyes and ears observe changes not so obvious to those stuck in the daily grind, in the same way the ageing process is invisible from one day to the next, but stark and profound as the years roll by. Hong Kong is struggling to reinvent itself. Before you boomers get all giddy with your 'muh China', hold on. This isn't an article about the Chinese Government, I rather want to lay out my thoughts around Hong Kong itself, as well as the city relative to its immediate region. I don't intend to make the case for Singapore, which, despite being arguably the greatest beneficiary of Hong Kong's headaches, is still a top contender for title of the most boring place in Asia. I intend only to outline the unique challenges and opportunities faced by one of the most magnificent - and least boring - cities in the world. Gateway to the Middle Kingdom Incorporating your business in Hong Kong still makes sense in many cases. Hong Kong is pragmatic, with systems and infrastructure that is well established to facilitate commerce and trade. Structures can be highly tax efficient, and while getting a bank account has become more difficult, once established, the banking services at your disposal are second-to-none. Hong Kong is still a respected jurisdiction globally. Yet for entrepreneurs and companies alike the case for incorporating in Hong Kong has often been as part of an overall strategy to do business in and with the mainland. Because of the prevalence of a legal system and system of governance with its foundations in the British style, foreigners could come to Hong Kong and feel just enough familiarity not to be scurrying back to wherever they came from (and often this meant quite a lot of familiarity was on offer). Recently a contact of mine who does business in the mainland linked me to a new structure in Shanghai for establishing 100% foreign owned companies. While the corporate tax rate on the mainland is higher (25% vs 16.5% in Hong Kong), the fees associated with establishing such an entity are far lower, and skipping Hong Kong to go directly to the supplier or client has the benefit of reduced friction and complexity. There is no obvious remedy to this dilemma for Hong Kong. As companies have become more confident engaging directly with the mainland, the appeal of Hong Kong in this respect has waned. Added to this the fact that Hong Kong itself is too small to be a genuine start-up hub, there exists a need for the city to take a new approach. Economic Woes At the same time as Hong Kong's role as gateway to the mainland has diminished, there has been an ever growing inflow of both capital and people from the mainland. Every year the prevalence of Mandarin on the streets of the city grows, but, in the wake of the pandemic, this growth has been offset by an exodus of both Hong Kongers (primarily to the UK, Canada and Australia) and Western Expats. This population shuffle fundamentally changes the fabric of Hong Kong society, and is a phenomenon seen elsewhere, including for example in Germany. Those leaving Hong Kong are by-and-large wealthier than the average Hong Konger, and with them goes their skills and capital worsening the city's already pessimistic demographic outlook (with a Total Fertility Rate of 0.7 according to the World Bank, Hong Kong's ageing population - an almost worldwide issue - is one of its greatest challenges in the years ahead). population shuffle population shuffle Arrivals from the mainland have helped to offset this exodus, but only so much, and with the collapse in the Yen, Tokyo is increasingly attractive to wealthy Chinese looking to diversify themselves both financially and by way of residency. The fact that Hong Kong remains one of the most expensive places in the world only adds fuel to the fire. As the saying goes, one man's (or city's) loss is another's gain , and as already mentioned, Singapore has been effective in attracting capital and businesses included in the exodus. At the same time, countries such as Malaysia with its sizeable Chinese diaspora and corporate structures offering tax rates as low as 3% (via the Labuan incorporation route), are also seeing an uptick in interest from those who might otherwise have stayed in the Fragrant Harbour. one man's (or city's) loss is another's gain While the economy on the mainland has been sluggish, the PBOC has adjusted rates downwards. Hong Kong's peg however has dictated that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has followed the Fed's increases over the past few years. This has resulted in a policy rate that sits at 5.25% vs 3.10% for the PBOC at the time of writing (5 years ago the PBOC rate stood at 4.31% while the HKMA policy rate was around 1%). While the increase in rates in the USA was implemented to reign in inflation, Hong Kong suffered no such comparable phenomenon - although it did suffer significant capital outflows - and the increase in rates has been in direct contradiction to conventional economic wisdom that may have encouraged a policy of easing rather than tightening over the last few years had it not been for the peg. Crypto In February 2022, with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia marking a dramatic escalation in hostilities, Chinese policy makers and tycoons alike were undoubtedly keenly observing the geopolitical fallout. If not already clear, this event and the close to three years since has demonstrated the closeness of these two civilisational states. However, and perhaps more importantly, it has exposed the extent to which the United States will go to both pursue sanctions and weaponise the financial system that it controls via the greenback. Many, including myself, did not think that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would do it, and many others believed that the Russia - which had popularly, and falsely, been described by many in the West as a 'gas station masquerading as a country' (John McCain, 2015) - would quickly crumble under the weight of economic exclusion. As is usually the case, pretty much nothing happened according to consensus. Russia which had been so successful in its quick, practically bloodless annexation of Crimea, did not scare the Ukrainians back to the negotiating table. Conversely, the Russian economy has actually experienced something of an economic boom. However, and the point I want to drive home, from the perspective of those in Asia, it was a test case for what Hong Kong may face in the wake of any escalation in the straits of Taiwan. China's approach to crypto-currencies has been mixed at best. While officially there are bans on crypto, it is no coincidence that Hong Kong, which initially pushed back so hard on this financial innovation, has now seen a dramatic uptick in crypto assets. In a recent report by Chainalysis Hong Kong saw the fastest growth in its region at 86% from July 2023 to June 2024. In light of the situation in Ukraine, it is possible that crypto could be considered a useful tool in mitigating the effects of an economic war, such as that which the West has waged on Russia. At the very least, it does provide an incentive for regulators to look the other way or turn a blind eye. report Conclusion With approximately 7.5 million inhabitants, Hong Kong just doesn't have the scale to make it a stand-out start-up hub, and its role as a conduit into the mainland will in all probability be further eroded by the likes of Shanghai and Shenzhen. Nevertheless, its role as a critical financial centre may be reinvigorated by a realignment towards crypto-assets and the newly emerging financial paradigm unfolding before our very eyes. Whether Trump's reelection will inspire a rapprochement and deescalation of the now vivid geopolitical schism calving up the world is yet to be seen. Nevertheless, one thing is abundantly clear, if Hong Kong is to retain its prestige and replicate its past success, things will need to change.

Hong Kong and the Crypto Boom: Economic Woes, Money Flows and Sanctions

INX, a marketplace known for its regulated trading of security tokens and tokenized real-world assets, has joined forces with Backed, a pioneer in asset tokenization, to bring a wider array of stocks into the digital realm. Building on the success of their tokenized Nvidia stock, INX and Backed have now introduced a fresh lineup of digital assets to their platform. Eligible investors outside the United States can now trade tokenized versions of some of the most sought-after stocks in the market: Tesla, Microsoft, Google, and even the much-discussed GameStop. New Listings The new tokenized stocks available on the INX platform include: Tesla (bTSLA)


Microsoft (bMSFT)


Google (bGOOGL)


GameStop (bGME) These assets are created under EU securities laws and tokenized on the Polygon Proof of Stake (PoS) network. Each token is backed one-to-one by its corresponding underlying stock, with ownership conveyed through the blockchain ledger. But what exactly are these tokenized stocks? Imagine taking a traditional share and giving it a digital makeover. These new assets, created under EU securities laws and brought to life on the Polygon Proof of Stake network, represent a one-to-one relationship with their underlying stocks. It's as if each share has been given a unique digital twin, with ownership recorded on a blockchain ledger instead of traditional books. The expansion doesn't stop there. INX has its sights set on even broader horizons. In the coming weeks, they plan to unveil their first tokenized ETF – a digital version of the S&P 500 ETF. Alongside this landmark addition, tokenized Apple stock and BlackRock's iShares Treasury ETF are also slated to join the roster. It's a move that signals a growing bridge between the worlds of traditional finance and digital assets. What makes these tokenized stocks stand out? For starters, they offer a level of flexibility that traditional stocks can't match. Imagine being able to trade your favorite stocks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or picture holding your stocks not in a brokerage account, but directly in your own digital wallet. These tokens even open doors to the world of decentralized finance, potentially serving as collateral for loans or other innovative financial products. Of course, with innovation comes the need for robust safeguards. Backed has ensured that these tokenized assets are issued under an EU prospectus, providing a layer of transparency for eligible investors. The underlying value is secured with a licensed custodian, and token holders have primary claims to this collateral. It's a blend of cutting-edge technology and traditional financial security. For now, this digital stock revolution is accessible to non-US residents and approved customers on the INX platform. Interested investors can dive in by creating an account and completing the necessary checks. What's particularly intriguing is the ability to fund these investments with cryptocurrency, further blurring the lines between traditional and digital finance. As we witness this merger of Wall Street and the blockchain, questions naturally arise. Could this be the future of stock trading? Will we see a day when all stocks have digital counterparts? While it's too early to say for certain, one thing is clear: the financial landscape is changing. Traditional assets are finding new homes on digital ledgers, potentially opening up global markets in unprecedented ways. This expansion of tokenized stocks represents more than just a new investment option. It's a glimpse into a possible future where financial assets move freely across digital platforms, where trading hours are a thing of the past, and where the average investor has more direct control over their assets than ever before. As the dust settles on this latest development, the financial world watches with bated breath. Will this be the spark that ignites a wider adoption of tokenized assets? Only time will tell. But for now, it's clear that the lines between traditional finance and the digital frontier are becoming increasingly blurred, potentially reshaping how we think about investing in the digital age. Don’t forget to like and share the story! Vested Interest Disclosure: This author is an independent contributor publishing via our business blogging program. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR INX , a marketplace known for its regulated trading of security tokens and tokenized real-world assets, has joined forces with Backed, a pioneer in asset tokenization, to bring a wider array of stocks into the digital realm. Building on the success of their tokenized Nvidia stock, INX and Backed have now introduced a fresh lineup of digital assets to their platform. Eligible investors outside the United States can now trade tokenized versions of some of the most sought-after stocks in the market: Tesla, Microsoft, Google, and even the much-discussed GameStop. INX New Listings The new tokenized stocks available on the INX platform include: Tesla (bTSLA) Microsoft (bMSFT) Google (bGOOGL) GameStop (bGME) Tesla (bTSLA) Tesla (bTSLA) Microsoft (bMSFT) Microsoft (bMSFT) Google (bGOOGL) Google (bGOOGL) GameStop (bGME) GameStop (bGME) These assets are created under EU securities laws and tokenized on the Polygon Proof of Stake (PoS) network. Each token is backed one-to-one by its corresponding underlying stock, with ownership conveyed through the blockchain ledger. But what exactly are these tokenized stocks? Imagine taking a traditional share and giving it a digital makeover. These new assets, created under EU securities laws and brought to life on the Polygon Proof of Stake network, represent a one-to-one relationship with their underlying stocks. It's as if each share has been given a unique digital twin, with ownership recorded on a blockchain ledger instead of traditional books. The expansion doesn't stop there. INX has its sights set on even broader horizons. In the coming weeks, they plan to unveil their first tokenized ETF – a digital version of the S&P 500 ETF. Alongside this landmark addition, tokenized Apple stock and BlackRock's iShares Treasury ETF are also slated to join the roster. It's a move that signals a growing bridge between the worlds of traditional finance and digital assets. What makes these tokenized stocks stand out? For starters, they offer a level of flexibility that traditional stocks can't match. Imagine being able to trade your favorite stocks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or picture holding your stocks not in a brokerage account, but directly in your own digital wallet. These tokens even open doors to the world of decentralized finance, potentially serving as collateral for loans or other innovative financial products. Of course, with innovation comes the need for robust safeguards. Backed has ensured that these tokenized assets are issued under an EU prospectus, providing a layer of transparency for eligible investors. The underlying value is secured with a licensed custodian, and token holders have primary claims to this collateral. It's a blend of cutting-edge technology and traditional financial security. For now, this digital stock revolution is accessible to non-US residents and approved customers on the INX platform. Interested investors can dive in by creating an account and completing the necessary checks. What's particularly intriguing is the ability to fund these investments with cryptocurrency, further blurring the lines between traditional and digital finance. As we witness this merger of Wall Street and the blockchain, questions naturally arise. Could this be the future of stock trading? Will we see a day when all stocks have digital counterparts? While it's too early to say for certain, one thing is clear: the financial landscape is changing. Traditional assets are finding new homes on digital ledgers, potentially opening up global markets in unprecedented ways. This expansion of tokenized stocks represents more than just a new investment option. It's a glimpse into a possible future where financial assets move freely across digital platforms, where trading hours are a thing of the past, and where the average investor has more direct control over their assets than ever before. As the dust settles on this latest development, the financial world watches with bated breath. Will this be the spark that ignites a wider adoption of tokenized assets? Only time will tell. But for now, it's clear that the lines between traditional finance and the digital frontier are becoming increasingly blurred, potentially reshaping how we think about investing in the digital age. Don’t forget to like and share the story! Vested Interest Disclosure: This author is an independent contributor publishing via our business blogging program. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR Vested Interest Disclosure: This author is an independent contributor publishing via our business blogging program . HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR Vested Interest Disclosure: business blogging program business blogging program

INX and Backed Add New Tokenized Stocks to Trading Platform

In Āut's envisioned world, human capital is transformed into a quantifiable unit: Real-World Asset (RWA). Participation Score and Global Reputation are the leading concepts of this single system that frame individual worth in hard metrics rather than subjective qualities. Such a system would be able to quantify a person's many contributions, capabilities, and even moral merit. What would it mean if the value in humanity, long insulated from the market, became something like creditworthiness - defined, tracked, and traded like any other asset? Would we be cogs in the machine of dehumanization, or would this system lead us to perhaps a rediscovery of human interdependence, a throwback to the early origins of the community? My essay considers two possible futures enabled by measuring human capital over systemized humanity that constitutes a dystopian nightmare and a bucolic return to community-based values. The Dystopian Future: Humanity as Currency And now, imagine every interaction, each decision, and all actions being reduced to a point on a digital ledger. The Participation Score becomes another critical vital statistic, like blood pressure or oxygen level - but this rating dictates access to resources, freedom, and social mobility. Here, the ideal citizen is no longer just a productive worker but also a well-behaved node on the network. Fail to keep a good score, and your life becomes miserable. High scorers get premium housing, access to the latest medical advancements, and can travel wherever they want; low scorers are forced into low-skilled jobs, have no access to healthcare, and will be marginalized from the mainstream. The Global Reputation score further refines this division into hypersegregated digital classes. Ironically, the dystopian mechanism of ranking and commodification of human beings would be oddly democratic because of their fairness. The metrics would be out in the open; they would be transparent and algorithmically generated - so who could complain? Aren't these scores just a numerical reflection, after all, of one's actual participation and value to society? But within that lies the darkness. Human value defined by a quantified measure denies characteristics that cannot be measured: empathy, vulnerability, even creativity, and things that cannot be standardized. In a world consumed with measurable contribution, where would the room be for quiet contemplation, unprofitable kindness, or rebellion? The people no doubt would toe the line of the system's logic by turning life into some sort of performative exercise. Individuality would dissolve in everyone's pursuit of the highest Participation Score at the cost of authentic expression. This might ultimately create a world devoid of all emotional substance, where even interpersonal interactions would be driven by "reputational algorithms." Friendships, marriages, and even family communications become mercantile relationships - a bundle of ledgers pitted against a person's score's potential gain or loss. Trust, which had once been allowed to grow organically, is outsourced to technology: only those who emerge as trustworthy from such calculations can gain entry into the sanctum sanctorum of society. This is a dystopia based not on overt oppression but on subtle control. People think they are playing the game by their own will, yet they do not realize how the game has already possessed them. This would be the last stage of a systematized society: a free-for-all society in which everyone can succeed - but only according to the terms set forth by the system. A Bucolic Vision: Reconnecting Through Measured Interdependence But what if this same system could revitalize very ancient human values: reliance on community, mutual aid, and interdependence? Human beings weren't valued before the industrialized economies arose for their individual wealth or status but for their contributions within a tight-knit group. The community was the currency. In a bucolic return to these values, Āut's system could be reframed to celebrate human interconnection rather than competition. The Participation Score would track not just productivity but also how much one contributes to the well-being of others. Think of it as a kind of communal barometer, one that raises the stock of those who give the most—through care, teaching, mentoring, or simply being a good neighbor. In the Global Reputation system, technology could make this a speech tradition of another kind, one in which personal reputation earned over time via lived relationships means more than any abstract qualification. A world in which technology amplifies this human warmth through reinforcement of reasons to trust and cooperate. Trust becomes less transactional; instead, it's validated through the organic accumulation of positive interactions across many dimensions. In such a future, there would be a network where the measure of human capital is depth, not height. Here, instead of striving for the highest score, people may cultivate durable, mutual relations. Families and communities would flourish, governed by an integral measure of well-being, not by material success only. Social relations became the new currency. It is among ancient humans that societies were built up, earned trust, and kept through action rather than assigned by the algorithm. Systematization would reposition the value of human capital as a catalyst for community revival. No longer would it be solely a personal asset to be hoarded and displayed, but rather a communal resource that weaves people into the social fabric. By systematically rewarding collaboration, the Participation Score could spur people to care for each other and turn personal success into community well-being. Conclusion: The System as a Double-Edged Sword The systemization of human capital cuts both ways: On the one hand, it threatens to strip away the most treasured hallmarks of humanity—creativity, kindness, and autonomy. It reduces the individual to a series of quantified data points. On another, it may be a way to strengthen communities through participation and reputation-building, not in service of control, but to foster trust and cooperation. Āut's system of human capital as RWA is something that, in some way, computes what tech will do: to either conjoin more or break loose bonds between us. It begs the following questions about values: are we better off measured, ranked, and optimized? Or, do we come into our own when free from over-systemization and left to our relationships and communities as we did millennia ago? In Āut's envisioned world, human capital is transformed into a quantifiable unit: Real-World Asset (RWA). Participation Score and Global Reputation are the leading concepts of this single system that frame individual worth in hard metrics rather than subjective qualities. Such a system would be able to quantify a person's many contributions, capabilities, and even moral merit. What would it mean if the value in humanity, long insulated from the market, became something like creditworthiness - defined, tracked, and traded like any other asset? Would we be cogs in the machine of dehumanization, or would this system lead us to perhaps a rediscovery of human interdependence, a throwback to the early origins of the community? My essay considers two possible futures enabled by measuring human capital over systemized humanity that constitutes a dystopian nightmare and a bucolic return to community-based values. The Dystopian Future: Humanity as Currency And now, imagine every interaction, each decision, and all actions being reduced to a point on a digital ledger. The Participation Score becomes another critical vital statistic, like blood pressure or oxygen level - but this rating dictates access to resources, freedom, and social mobility. Here, the ideal citizen is no longer just a productive worker but also a well-behaved node on the network. Fail to keep a good score, and your life becomes miserable. High scorers get premium housing, access to the latest medical advancements, and can travel wherever they want; low scorers are forced into low-skilled jobs, have no access to healthcare, and will be marginalized from the mainstream. The Global Reputation score further refines this division into hypersegregated digital classes. Ironically, the dystopian mechanism of ranking and commodification of human beings would be oddly democratic because of their fairness. The metrics would be out in the open; they would be transparent and algorithmically generated - so who could complain? Aren't these scores just a numerical reflection, after all, of one's actual participation and value to society? But within that lies the darkness. Human value defined by a quantified measure denies characteristics that cannot be measured: empathy, vulnerability, even creativity, and things that cannot be standardized. In a world consumed with measurable contribution, where would the room be for quiet contemplation, unprofitable kindness, or rebellion? The people no doubt would toe the line of the system's logic by turning life into some sort of performative exercise. Individuality would dissolve in everyone's pursuit of the highest Participation Score at the cost of authentic expression. This might ultimately create a world devoid of all emotional substance, where even interpersonal interactions would be driven by "reputational algorithms." Friendships, marriages, and even family communications become mercantile relationships - a bundle of ledgers pitted against a person's score's potential gain or loss. Trust, which had once been allowed to grow organically, is outsourced to technology: only those who emerge as trustworthy from such calculations can gain entry into the sanctum sanctorum of society. This is a dystopia based not on overt oppression but on subtle control. People think they are playing the game by their own will, yet they do not realize how the game has already possessed them. This would be the last stage of a systematized society: a free-for-all society in which everyone can succeed - but only according to the terms set forth by the system. A Bucolic Vision: Reconnecting Through Measured Interdependence But what if this same system could revitalize very ancient human values: reliance on community, mutual aid, and interdependence? Human beings weren't valued before the industrialized economies arose for their individual wealth or status but for their contributions within a tight-knit group. The community was the currency. In a bucolic return to these values, Āut's system could be reframed to celebrate human interconnection rather than competition. The Participation Score would track not just productivity but also how much one contributes to the well-being of others. Think of it as a kind of communal barometer, one that raises the stock of those who give the most—through care, teaching, mentoring, or simply being a good neighbor. In the Global Reputation system, technology could make this a speech tradition of another kind, one in which personal reputation earned over time via lived relationships means more than any abstract qualification. A world in which technology amplifies this human warmth through reinforcement of reasons to trust and cooperate. Trust becomes less transactional; instead, it's validated through the organic accumulation of positive interactions across many dimensions. In such a future, there would be a network where the measure of human capital is depth, not height. Here, instead of striving for the highest score, people may cultivate durable, mutual relations. Families and communities would flourish, governed by an integral measure of well-being, not by material success only. Social relations became the new currency. It is among ancient humans that societies were built up, earned trust, and kept through action rather than assigned by the algorithm. Systematization would reposition the value of human capital as a catalyst for community revival. No longer would it be solely a personal asset to be hoarded and displayed, but rather a communal resource that weaves people into the social fabric. By systematically rewarding collaboration, the Participation Score could spur people to care for each other and turn personal success into community well-being. Conclusion: The System as a Double-Edged Sword The systemization of human capital cuts both ways: On the one hand, it threatens to strip away the most treasured hallmarks of humanity—creativity, kindness, and autonomy. It reduces the individual to a series of quantified data points. On the one hand, it threatens to strip away the most treasured hallmarks of humanity—creativity, kindness, and autonomy. It reduces the individual to a series of quantified data points. On another, it may be a way to strengthen communities through participation and reputation-building, not in service of control, but to foster trust and cooperation. On another, it may be a way to strengthen communities through participation and reputation-building, not in service of control, but to foster trust and cooperation. Āut's system of human capital as RWA is something that, in some way, computes what tech will do: to either conjoin more or break loose bonds between us. It begs the following questions about values: are we better off measured, ranked, and optimized? Or, do we come into our own when free from over-systemization and left to our relationships and communities as we did millennia ago?

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