#19 Elon Musk became the richest
US ban Chinese payment apps, WhatsApp ultimatum by Facebook, DB settle criminal allegations and bitcoin disrupt the payment clearing houses.
Markets
“Brazil is bankrupt. There is nothing I can do,” President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday, attributing the crisis to“ this virus fueled by the press”, at a time when aid that saved millions of people from poverty has ended.
… and they are not even including his other private companies:
SpaceX, StarLink, The Boring Company, OpenAI and Neural-ink
Deutsche Bank AG agreed to pay $100 million to settle criminal allegations, including that it manipulated the market for precious metals futures through a trading tactic known as spoofing, according to a person familiar with the matter.
- then this happened, but you all saw that…
... and Donald Trump’s twitter account got permanently suspended.
Technology
U.S. President Donald Trump has issued an executive order banning transactions with eight Chinese apps, including Alipay, the payment app affiliated with Alibaba, and Tencent-owned WeChat Pay, describing the companies as national security threats.
For the past nine months, Tesla has been expanding Gigafactory Shanghai to prepare for the production of the electric SUV. Tesla sold out the first quarter of Model Y electric SUVs in China after just a few days of taking orders, according to an update to its website.
Deepfake on the rise
Deepfakes are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness. While the act of faking content is not new, deepfakes leverage powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content with a high potential to deceive.
Here is a recent example which shows you just how far this technology has reached for “casual usage” - as always, don’t trust - verify!
Privacy
WhatsApp ultimatum
WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messenger that claims to have privacy coded into its DNA, is giving its 2 billion plus users an ultimatum on February 8th 2021: agree to share their personal data with the social network or delete their accounts.
If you value your privacy - consider using Sphinx.chat which is routing messages over Bitcoin Lightning Network where you can control your own content and you can even run your own node or rent one. Alternatives to WhatsApp: Telegram or Signal
The hacking group behind the SolarWinds compromise was able to break into Microsoft and access some of its source code, Microsoft said on Thursday, something experts said sent a worrying signal about the spies’ ambition.
Bitcoin
This really blows my mind - international instant payments with no fees using the existing banking system and Bitcoin Lightning.
TL;DR;
When you send money from USD to EUR for example, it goes:
USD -> BTC/LN -> BTC/LN -> EUR
Instant, permission-less, global, no fees and spot FX.
Jack Mallers explains about all the breakthroughs with the Bitcoin Lightning network and how it will disrupt the payment clearing houses in the video below. Also Jack talks about his company Strike and how it is allowing NFL superstar Russell Okung to receive half his salary in bitcoin.
You can register to try out Strike for free it - available for iOS and Android.
Check these 2 short videos to better understand the potential impact of this development.
In full disclosure, I am not an investor nor related to Strike in any shape or form. There is a similar service is the works in Europe called BottlePay which is starting to roll out in the UK at the moment.
"Bitcoin 'whales,' addresses with more than 100 bitcoin, accumulated an additional 47,500 bitcoin amid bitcoin’s ruthless rally throughout December," researchers at bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Kraken wrote in a report earlier this week.
Digital Currency Miners of North America, will be a non-profit entity whose mission is to create a better mining environment for North American miners, to help improve their financial performance, and to create North America’s first cooperative mining pool.
Headlines
Three Arrows reports more than $1.2 billion position in Grayscale's GBTC
US federal regulator says banks can conduct payments using stablecoins
JPMorgan sees $146,000-plus bitcoin price as long-term target
The9 has announced plans to enter the cryptocurrency mining space
One River makes one of the largest cryptocurrency trades in history
Treasury’s crypto reporting proposal may be a fourth amendment breach
Morgan Stanley now owns 792,627 shares of MicroStrategy (10.9%)
Tweets
This newsletter is for informational purposes only. Individuals and entities should not construe any such information as legal, tax, investment, financial, accounting or other advice. Nothing contained in this newsletter constitutes a recommendation or endorsement by the author to buy or sell bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, music rights or other financial instruments. #DYOR
Don’t trust. Verify.
À Bientôt