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In an effort to provide needed education about news and information related to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, CryptoVice was founded in 2017. The website is currently being revamped with the help of customer feedback, in order to reflect growing interest in alt-coins, as well as to provide resources for frequently asked questions about understanding the basics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Though there are not as many barriers to entry in this space as there were several years ago, there is still a challenge in getting individuals involved and learning about the space. Now that there are hundreds of professionals who can give credibility to space, most of the remaining barriers can be overcome through education–which is where CryptoVice comes in. Troy and Ryan also discuss whether or not we are already seeing the early majority and the move towards widespread adoption, and the future of the industry. They also share some of their predictions for the space in the upcoming year, particularly around decentralized exchanges and privacy coins. For more information, visit www.cryptovice.com.
Unhappy with the lack of messaging in much of today's music, which singer/songwriter Tatiana Moroz attributes to lack of access for artists and the unwillingness of record labels to promote controversial artists, Tatiana created the first cryptocurrency designed to support artists. Users can donate money and receive TatianaCoin in return, which can be spent on merchandise, shared with friends, or used to access exclusive content through the Tokenly platform. The goal is to put the power of the music industry back into the hands of artists and fans, who should be the ones determining what musical and artistic content they want to consume. Tatiana is also the founder of Crypto Media Hub, which offers marketing, consulting, public relations, and community management for companies in the blockchain and cryptocurrency spaces. Tatiana plans to speak at the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Blockchain Super Conference happening February 16-18 in Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit www.tatianamoroz.com and www.cryptomediahub.com.
Having studied and worked in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence for over 25 years, Professor Bilmes has a different view of the field than many people here have so far heard. Recently, he has been excited by the science of information management as it relates to machine learning. For example, how to make large datasets smaller and more efficient. This is important for AI and machine learning, as the field is, at its core, about how to teach computers to solve complex tasks. Large and inefficient data sets make it more difficult for this to occur and significantly add to the cost of teaching computers to act intelligently. That the field has come so far in such a short time is due to three factors– (1) big data and big information, (2) large amounts of commodity vector supercomputing such as GPUs, and (3) mathematically expressive models (such as deep models) that are trainable using gradient-based methods in a way that perfectly matches the type of computing available via the commodity supercomputing–but there is still much work to be done. Though he says fears about machines or robots taking over the world is pure science fiction, society does need to have discussions about issues of liability for machines that malfunction or otherwise cause critical accidents, transparency in creating machine learning algorithms, making sure that machines do not unintentionally become biased against different groups of people, and more, as can be heard by listening in. http://melodi.ee.washington.edu/~bilmes
Inspired by nature, and made necessary by the city of Austin, Texas' struggle to reach their zero-waste goal, Zero Waste applies bio-mimicry ideas in order to reach a more sustainable, zero-waste future. In order to make their zero-waste goals on time, the city needed a way to manage their solid waste assets, and a network of businesses and projects was created. Zero Waste performs trash analysis for interested businesses by gathering data for one month on dumpster usage. After the data is collected, Zero Waste helps businesses find the correct dumpster size for their business, and arranges for the dumpster to be emptied only when it is full, as collecting trash whether or not the dumpster is full is one of the biggest inefficiencies in the solid waste industry. Businesses save money on their trash collection costs, become more aware of the types of trash that they produce, and will reward correct behavior with tokens. Zero Waste has a year of exciting partnerships coming up, leading to what they believe will be wide-scale adoption before the year is over. For more information, visit www.zerowasteadvocacy.com.
Ronnie Moas, a speaker at the upcoming Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Blockchain Superconference in Dallas, Texas February 16-18 is a well-known and respected financial commentator and the founder of Standpoint Research. He has written over 600 recommendations of stocks in his career, using a computer model with 150 variables that he designed and data overlays, and begun to write recommendations of cryptocurrencies in July 2016. His most recent recommendation, for a cryptocurrency and exchange called Binance, has increased in value by 40% within 5 days of his recommendation. He attributes his success to the enormous amount of hard work that he puts into each recommendation–each report that he writes is a minimum of 20-30 pages. Ronnie talks about his thoughts on the future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, major moves that we might see this year, and what he sees as the future of commercial blockchain applications. He also gives a brief overview of the subject of his talk at the upcoming conference and talks about a charity that is near to his heart, Food for the Poor. For more information about his recommendations, or to subscribe to his newsletter, visit www.standpointresearch.com. For more information on Food for the Poor, visit www.foodforthepoor.org/Moas.
After many recent reports of exchanges and wallets being hacked or compromised, computer security is a major concern. Loopring provides an open protocol that adds extra security layers between exchanges and wallets, in order to keep consumer's funds safe. Loopring is also a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that aims to solve many of the problems of centralized exchanges, including high transaction fees, low transparency, and a high risk of funds being stolen. Additional features such as order-sharing and ring matching provide liquidity to the market and ultimately make the exchange more convenient and secure for users. The protocol is currently open for ERC20 tokens, and despite setbacks with their ICO in August 2017, have already released their Qtum protocol ahead of schedule, and plan on releasing their Neo protocol around May 2018. Their protocols are also accompanied by a cold-storage wallet, and they are launching their Android and iOS app versions shortly. For more information, visit www.loopring.org.
In order to provide value for both end-users and shareholders, companies need to access to large amounts of high-quality data, and IBM's blockchain services are designed to accomplish this task. Through the use of blockchain, IBM can provide companies with reliable and trusted data, a single version of the truth, and allowed designated individuals permissioned access to that data in order to make rational well-informed business decisions. IBM's efforts generally focus on multi-step, complex transactions in areas that deal mainly with people, processes, or paperwork. For example, through their blockchain efforts, IBM has seen a 90% reduction in paperwork. Walmart, another client of IBM's blockchain services, has seen the time it takes to identify the source of contaminated produce during recent scares drop from almost 7 days to 13 seconds. Because of these and many other examples, Jason believes that widespread adoption of blockchain in large corporations has already begun. Jason also discusses his thoughts on large companies and cryptocurrencies, and what he thinks is coming in the blockchain and crypto spaces during 2018. For more information, visit www.ibm.com/blockchain.
With a background in bio-terrorism preparedness and response, as well as previous experience in intelligence and with the Federal Communications Commission, David Bray came to Singularity University with the belief that the ability to make the world better for all of us lies at the intersection of technology and society. He currently focuses on the area of public health, recognizing that because of our increasingly connected world, both public health and technology are not bound by geographical borders and demographics, and shares with us some of his insights into both areas. David is also the Executive Director of People-Centered Internet, a non-profit that focuses on using technology to bring communities together. They are currently working on three separate projects–bringing Internet access to rural Native American communities on their terms, providing quicker ways for victims of California wildfires to replace destroyed identity documents without fraud, and helping Puerto Rico in their efforts to recover from the effects of Hurricane Maria. David also discusses his thoughts on Net Neutrality, and why he is passionate about people retaining control of their online data. To talk with David directly, follow him on Twitter at @chief_ventures. For more information on People-Centered Internet, visit www.peoplecentered.net. For more information about Singularity University, visit www.su.org.
IndieBio, located in San Francisco, is the world's largest seed bio-technology accelerator and has funded 81 companies over their three-year history. Each company or start-up that they work with receives $250,000 in funding, full access to on-site laboratories, mentorships, and introductions to investors throughout their four-month program, with the ultimate goal being the creation of a product that is ready for market. The idea for IndieBio was born out of three recent trends–biology becoming both cheaper and faster, and a so-called "Post-docalpyse," characterized by high numbers of individuals with advanced degrees and relatively few academic job openings. Overall, IndieBio believes in using biology as a fundamental technology that can be expanded to all aspects of society, and two of the most well-known companies they have funded, Memphis Meats and Koniku, exemplify that. Over the next year, IndieBio hopes to integrate more changes that they learn from each round of mentorships, and are potentially looking to scale to other industries or to other geographical areas around the world. To learn more, or to apply for their next four-month program coming up for Summer 2018, visit www.indiebio.co.
Launched in September 2017, TigerGraph is a distributed graphing and data analytics platform that can produce real-time graphs in under 1 second from many different types of data, including product data, production and supply data, marketing data, and social data such as customer use information. It is popular in many different industries, including financial services, banking, and e-commerce. The production of graphs in real-time, from data that is streamed to the platform, is highly beneficial for companies, who can deploy it for use cases including catching financial fraud in real-time or validating the authenticity of money transfers. TigerGraph can also be used to create snapshots over time, to see trends in the data. Over the next year, TigerGraph intends to integrate more artificial intelligence capabilities into their platform, as well as working on scaling their platform out to be able to handle larger groups of data while still providing real-time graphs and analysis. For more information, visit www.tigergraph.com
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