This is Charles Brett’s start-of-the-week Enterprise Times ‘blockchain catch-up’ 2022-Week 49. Necessarily it is idiosyncratic and selective.
It is not intended to be comprehensive but does seek to highlight ‘Quick Takes’ on specific developments as well interesting pieces to read, a listing of some (not all) announcements/press releases and pointers to upcoming events.
Quick Take(s) – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up 2022-Week 49
The college essay is dead (maybe behind The Atlantic paywall)
Nobody is prepared for how AI will transform academia. “The world of generative AI is progressing furiously. Last week, OpenAI released an advanced chatbot named ChatGPT that has spawned a new wave of marveling and hand-wringing, plus an upgrade to GPT-3 that allows for complex rhyming poetry; Google previewed new applications last month that will allow people to describe concepts in text and see them rendered as images; and the creative-AI firm Jasper received a $1.5 billion valuation in October. It still takes a little initiative for a kid to find a text generator, but not for long.”
Quick Take: though not about blockchain, this piece from The Atlantic is worth reading and thinking about. Its conclusion is very much au point (and not without relevance to blockchain): “The connection between humanism and technology will require people and institutions with a breadth of vision and a commitment to interests that transcend their field. Before that space for collaboration can exist, both sides will have to take the most difficult leaps for highly educated people: Understand that they need the other side, and admit their basic ignorance. But that’s always been the beginning of wisdom, no matter what technological era we happen to inhabit.”
7 pieces to read – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up 2022-Week 49
- How crypto goes to zero (behind The Economist paywall)
- For digitalised governance, blockchain is where it matters
- Can blockchain facilitate sustainability and ESG-friendly investing?
- Blockchain gaming under the microscope part 1: mass adoption?
- Paul Krugman warns of an eternal winter for blockchain
- Bull vs. bear: betting on the blockchain
- The blockchain trilemma: can it ever be tackled?
Selected announcements/press releases/opinions – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up 2022-Week 49
- Blockchains, what are they good for? (opinion)
- Brad Rhodes: cryptocurrency, blockchain technology changing financial world (opinion)
- Is Boris Johnson really the emissary that blockchain needs right now? (opinion, behind FT paywall)
- Bank of Spain opens call for wholesale CBDC experiments (announcement)
- Russia’s Sber bank integrates Metamask into its blockchain platform (announcement)
- Galaxy wins bid for collapsed crypto lender Celsius’ GK8 unit (announcement)
- Solana founders see now as a time to bridge the blockchain and the physical world (announcement).
Selected upcoming events
- Bitcoin Conference (18th-20th May, 2023).
