September 28, 2021
From the Desk of a Cartoon Gopher
It’s Tuesday.
You know what that means…
Another issue of the Gopher Gazette.
Hot
YOU CAN NOW AUTO-CONVERT YOUR PAYCHECK TO BITCOIN WITH COINBASE
Coinbase is rolling out paycheck direct deposits and auto-conversions into Bitcoin. The $223 billion Bitcoin and crypto exchange posted on their blog today that they will roll out the feature over the next few weeks.
Paychecks deposited directly into Coinbase can be converted directly into Bitcoin, cryptos, or US dollars. It can also be used to trade, earn crypto rewards, or load a Coinbase card.
The new feature will allow users to allocate “as much or as little” of their paycheck as they want.
Notably, the new feature boasts zero-fee deposits, making the process a bit more efficient and cheaper for users who frequently send funds to Coinbase.
Something many of us has either joked about or waited patiently for…either way, it’s finally here!
Crypto
Crypto is ‘in the early stages’ of a ‘long-term upward trend’
Speaking at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit Plus, Fairlead Strategies founder Katie Stockton said crypto adoption still remains in the “very early stages” with limited institutional money flowing into the space.
So far it seems like mainstream sources have been slow to catch up with everyone else in the crypto space.
However, if you’re someone who has been waiting for mainstream confirmation before getting your feet wet, Yahoo Finance has given you the green light.
DeFi
DeFi makes Western Europe the world’s largest ‘crypto economy’
China banned all crypto transactions last week, in the country’s latest crackdown on digital currency activities. But according to new data from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, China’s growth in crypto trading by volume was falling well before last week’s restrictions.
Meanwhile, most of Europe (excluding its Eastern portion) constitutes the world’s largest crypto economy, receiving $1 trillion over the last year, or 25% of all crypto activity worldwide, the Chainalysis report found.
The data shows that global crypto transaction volume in North America and a portion of Europe outpaced East Asia, a region that in the past has drawn the majority of its volume from China. To be sure, trading in East Asia did grow but at a much lower rate than other regions. Between January 2020 and July 2021, its growth slid from 31% to 14%, partly due to other countries outpacing the East Asia market.
We were really excited to read this.
Personally, even with that thing going on affecting everyone’s personal lives and economies everywhere, we believe blockchain technology will offer a ‘*roaring 20s” *period before inflation and other factors begin to cause serious economic damage.
NFTs
Epic’s CEO has bad news if you were hoping to see Fortnite NFTs
*On Monday, Tim Sweeney tweeted that Epic isn’t touching NFTs, in a public response to what was presumably an NFT pitch. He cites the space’s problem with scams as the reason for his hesitancy, which sparked some *discussion in the comments (as strong statements about crypto tend to do). Sweeney has since clarified his views on NFTs a little, saying that, to him, owning an NFT is about as valuable as liking an image on Twitter and calling into question whether NFT ownership is actually non-fungible.
I’m sure he’ll come around sooner or later.
They always do.
Metaverse
Facebook is spending $50 million to ‘responsibly’ build the metaverse
*Facebook has announced a $50 million fund that it says will help it develop the metaverse more responsibly. It’s officially called the XR Programs and Research Fund, and the company says it’ll be invested into “programs and external research” over the course of two years. Facebook has previously funded academic research into the social impact of AR wearables and solicited VR hardware proposals. Facebook’s announcement blog calls the metaverse the “next computing platform” and says that the company will be working with policymakers, researchers, and industry partners while building it.*
We’re beyond excited to see the formation of the Metaverse, and how that’ll change the internet and blockchain technologies.
Although, we can’t help but wonder, “Only $50 million?”
Zuck is just warming up.
Billions are on the horizon.
See below…
Big Tech wants to build the ‘metaverse.’ What on Earth does that mean?
The 2018 sci-fi film “Ready Player One” offers a glimpse of what many technology companies prophesy is the Internet’s next big thing.
Inspired by a 2011 Ernest Cline novel, the film’s orphaned teenage hero flees his bleak real-world existence by immersing in a dazzling virtual reality fantasy. The boy straps on his headset, reminiscent of a pair of VR goggles, and escapes into a trippy virtual universe, dubbed “OASIS.”
“People come to the OASIS for all the things they can do, but they stay for all the things they can be,” the main character says in the trailer.
A number of sci-fi-inspired tech CEOs say that one day soon, we will all be hanging out in an interactive virtual reality world, complete with games, adventures, shopping and otherworldly offerings, just like the characters in the movie.
Instead of OASIS, they call it the metaverse.
…
Facebook should be known as a “metaverse company,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in July on an earnings call. The goal, he said, is to populate this virtual world by enticing new users with cheap headsets. Eventually, Zuckerberg hinted, this robust user base would prove an adverting boon: “hundreds of millions of people” in the metaverse “compounds the size of the digital economy inside it.”
Facebook moved closer to this vision in recent weeks, revealing a virtual reality workspace for remote workers. The company is also working on a smart wristband and VR goggles that project the wearer’s eyes. The company is investing billions of dollars into the effort.
…
In May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company working to build an “enterprise metaverse.” A month earlier, Epic Games said it raised $1 billion to spend on its metaverse plans. The computing giant Nvidia and gaming platform Roblox are also working in this realm. Last year, Spatial released a free AR app allowing avatars to appear within a user’s real-world environment. Meanwhile, Snapchat has been moving in this direction for years, introducing custom avatars and filters that overlay the world with digital content. Apple also has longtime AR ambitions.
Yep.
Billions.
And that’s only a couple of companies.
Web 3.0
WEB 3.0 PUTS YOU IN CONTROL OF THE INTERNET
OUR DECENTRALIZED FUTURE
Web 3.0 will give users control over the internet again.
Instead of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter owning everyone’s data, you’ll be able to control it, much like you can keep crypto tokens in a browser wallet like MetaMask. This will allow users to choose who they want to share this data with.
Web 3.0 will also cut out the middleman in the creator economy.
It will transform platforms like Spotify and YouTube, allowing creators to share music and videos directly with their fans. And cryptocurrencies will allow you to own a part of Web 3.0.
Building this decentralized future won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. But like all technologies of the past half-century, adoption happens slowly at first … and then all at once.
We witnessed this with the internet. The number of global internet users jumped from 300 million in 2000 to 2 billion in 2010 to nearly 5 billion by the end of 2020.
Smartphones are another example. They barely existed 15 years ago. And now, the average American spends 3.5 hours a day on one!
Can Web 3.0 Solve the Linkrot Crisis?
Data on the web is more ephemeral than you realize. A recent examination of linkrot and content drift by Harvard Law School found that as time progresses, web-based content is becoming more and more lost. By analyzing half a million links within New York Times articles, 6% of deep links from 2018 were found to be inaccessible, and 72% of links from 1998 were completely dead.
The rotting web could have severe consequences that affect society’s collective understanding. Consider links used to substantiate pivotal arguments in the course of law. Studies now show that 49% of hyperlinks in Supreme Court decisions no longer function. The linkrot situation undermines humanity’s shared intelligence, which the Internet once promised.
…
I recently met with Jonathan Victor, Protocol Labs, to see how Web 3.0 and blockchain might be used to solve the linkrot endemic.
…
The longer data sits, the higher the likelihood of losing track of it. Forgotten databases and rising data storage costs can easily lead to whole networks of websites and user data being accidentally (or intentionally) destroyed. Putting so much faith in private companies to preserve data indefinitely is not viable, explained Victor.
…
When an article points to a website, this imbues an implicit dependency on an external organization to keep the domain live, said Victor. The second dependency is on the domain owner to keep content unchanged. “If we can talk about content and how to reference it in a different way, maybe we can create references that are much more resilient,” suggested Victor.
One way to solve the linkrot issue is to create a ‘fingerprint’ for web resources. This could be a canonical reference to specific pieces of content. Organizations would store and retrieve content based on a hash of that contract itself, Victor explained. Such a system would likely require an incentive-based, non-exploitative, decentralized network where web users own their data and control who profits from it.
Some have coined this concept Web 3.0. Victor describes Web 3.0 as a broad classification of distributed technologies and tools that enable a peer-to-peer internet underpinned by blockchain.
…
A decentralized nature fits the original goal of the open web, allowing creators to own and share content horizontally. If you can decouple data storage and retrieval from a specific location, it gives you an impressive ability to rearchitect modern communication, said Victor.
Don’t worry.
We initially had no idea what ‘Linkrot’ meant either.
Pour Conclure
Moving forward, we may stick to this format for each issue.
If you have any suggestions or things you’d like to see, please, let us know!
Until tomorrow.
Your Pal,
The Gopher
P.S.
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Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice in any way, shape, or form. You are reading opinions from an anonymous news publisher in Cartoon Gopher Format.
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