Showing posts with label Bitcoin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bitcoin. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

NYT Now|US Presidential Race, Bitcoin, Moon Express: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing


Documentary: The Bitcoin Gospel (VPRO Backlight)

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Good evening. Heres the latest.

Photo Credit Evan Vucci/Associated Press

1. Donald Trumps campaign has been buoyed by a torrent of small donations over the past month that nearly evened the financial playing field with Mrs. Clinton. His war chest now boasts $74 million in cash.

Still, the Republicans disarray was on display as Mike Pence, the vice-presidential nominee, endorsed Speaker Paul Ryans re-election bid a day after Mr. Trump declined to.

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Video Unfiltered Voices From Donald Trump"s Crowds

New York Times reporters have covered Donald J. Trump"s rallies for more than a year. His supporters at these events often express their views in angry and provocative ways. Here are some examples.

By ERICA BERENSTEIN, NICK CORASANITI and ASHLEY PARKER on Publish Date August 3, 2016. . Watch in Times Video

2. Mr. Trumps rallies often stir strong emotions, but one aspect sets them apart from other political gatherings: the frequency with which his supporters use coarse and violent language.

The video sampling above captures a range of the vulgarities and racial and ethnic slurs that have sometimes characterized Trump events.

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Photo Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

3. The hacks that infiltrated computer systems on the Democratic side have made election cybersecurity a new focus for the Department of Homeland Security.

Intelligence agencies have told the White House they have a high degree of confidence that Russia was behind the breaches.

Above, Hillary Clinton campaigned in Colorado.

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Video Exporting Terror

In this rare jailhouse interview, a former ISIS member from Germany tells his story and provides new insight into the militant groups plot to attack Western countries.

By ANDREW GLAZER, RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and BEN LAFFIN on Publish Date August 3, 2016. Photo by Gordon Welters for The New York Times. Watch in Times Video

4. From a prison in Germany, a former ISIS member gave our reporter a detailed account of his rapid disillusionment with the group in Syria and his escape from its clutches. (Watch the video, above.)

His experience, including being urged by masked men to return to Germany to spearhead attacks there, adds insight into how a unit of the Islamic State, called the Emni, exports terror abroad.

For Americans, he said, the unit prefers to recruit over the internet: They say we can radicalize them easily, and if they have no prior record, they can buy guns.

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Photo Credit Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse Getty Images

5. India overhauled its tangled tax code, a major victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi that economists say should significantly boost the countrys growth rate.

This is hugely consequential for the ease of doing business, an analyst said, and for demonstrating to the outside world that India is dragging its economy into the 21st century.

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Photo Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times

6. A study of two insular farming communities in the U.S. the Amish of Indiana and the Hutterites of North Dakota strongly suggests exposure to microbes from farm animals can lower asthma and allergy rates.

The results were so compelling that a discussion is already underway on developing a microbial spray that could prompt many more children to develop immune systems that can sidestep asthma.

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Photo Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times

7. Barbra Streisand, 74, may be reclusive, but shes not idle. The megastar is about to issue a star-studded new album (Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway), embarking on a nine-city concert tour (The Music the Memries the Magic!) and writing a memoir.

Her perfectionist tendencies were in evidence on matters great and small during an interview at her Malibu estate.

She said she was dismayed when she heard a fellow singer in conversation with an interviewer, and They both called me Barbra Strize-and, not Stry-sand.

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Photo Credit Moon Express

8. A Florida start-up called Moon Express won F.A.A. permission to try to land a spacecraft on the moon.

Doing so would earn it $20 million Google Lunar X Prize, as the first such private effort. But the Moon Express chairman said the stakes were much higher.

Everything we fight over whether its land or its fresh water, whether it is energy is in abundance in space, he said.

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Photo Credit Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse Getty Images

9. The value of the digital currency Bitcoin plunged after one of the worlds largest Bitcoin exchanges said it had been hacked.

An official with the exchange, Bitfinex in Hong Kong, said that 119,756 Bitcoins worth tens of millions of dollars had been stolen.

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Photo Credit Simon Romero/The New York Times

10. Brazil is welcoming a flood of athletes and spectators to the Rio Games amid a mosquito-borne epidemic of the Zika virus.

This is the best mosquito repellent in the country. But its not the best money can buy because its not on the shelves. A military lab makes it for the exclusive use of the Brazilian Army.

There is no plan for external commercialization, a military statement said.

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Photo Credit Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated Press

11. Finally, Happy 90th birthday, Tony Bennett.

Thousands of Starbucks outlets played his albums, stars like Willie Nelson and Oprah Winfrey saluted him, and Lady Gaga ceremonially lights the Empire State Building in his honor at 8:30 p.m. Eastern.

It feels great to be 90! he wrote on Twitter. Thanks for all the birthday wishes. Im just getting started.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/nytnow/us-presidential-race-bitcoin-moon-express-your-wednesday-evening-briefing.html

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Could bitcoin change the game in Africa?


How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood

In the wildest of claims, bitcoin the virtual paperless and stateless currency transacted on the borderless internet was going to tear apart traditional money transfer companies and help alleviate poverty.

Accessing the multibillion-dollar remittance flows to Africa certainly has substantial appeal, perhaps helping to attract some large seed investments in African bitcoin startups.

Firms have also sought to draw users to bitcoin by undercutting the high costs of international money transfers. Some of its backers even claim it could leapfrog traditional financial infrastructure on a continent where two-thirds of people are unbanked.

Parts of Africa have already come a long way in developing mobile money payment systems that give the unbanked millions a chance to move into the formal economy. Advocates of bitcoin on the continent say it would take this a step further, though it requires an internet connection which more than three-quarters of Africans still do not have.

A small group of users mainly in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria trade speculatively in bitcoin via online forex sites, as they would any other asset.

Africa hosts several established bitcoin exchange services, such as ICE3X and BitX in South Africa and BitPesa in several countries in east and west Africa, where users can trade between bitcoin and traditional currencies. Peer-to-peer trading sites such as LocalBitcoins.com are also popular in early June, nearly KES10m was traded via the site in Kenya in one week.

You dont really need a third party in Kenya you can send money via M-Pesa direct to my phone in exchange for the bitcoins you buy. There has been an amazing increase in volumes traded, said Michael Kimani, head of the African Digital Currency Association.

One of the biggest opportunities for bitcoin could be online payments, but Ive also seen people funding online wallets, using it for online sports betting.

Spending bitcoin in the region is more difficult. South Africas largest online marketplace, Bidorbuy, recently introduced bitcoin payments on its site; a handful of other online retailers, mostly in South Africa, already accept the digital currency. In most cases, a bitcoin exchange company handles the back-end of the transaction, while merchants quote prices in local currency.

Despite slow progress so far, Nii Quaynor, often described as the father of the internet in Africa, told the Guardian that digital currency and transaction frameworks for the internet are the next step for the continent. In March, the company he chairs, Ghana Dot Com (GDC), launched what it claims is Africas first bitcoin mining facility.

Quaynor is hopeful too about the potential for blockchain technology the distributed transaction ledger seen as the cornerstone of bitcoin innovation and says non-financial applications around land registries and voting could be transformative. Banks in Africa are also looking into potential uses of blockchain.

Bitcoin still exists in a very niche space. There was early excitement about virtual currency especially as an affordable way for Africans in the diaspora to send money home but this has subsided as a result of price volatility, nervousness around anonymity and security, and difficulties understanding the product. As there are increases in bitcoin adoption, governments and central banks are considering regulating the sector, which some users think will legitimise bitcoin and others fear might make it more difficult to transact.

For now though, Africas bitcoin fans are set to keep on trading.

Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNG6pEOt83PScD9FaapwEYEtzMeyXw&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&ei=SGyiV_CcBtTx3AHs_4SYBg&url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/03/could-bitcoin-change-the-game-in-africa

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