“The top five government contracts disputes that could be be decided this upcoming year concern:”
Category: government – Page 184
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has awarded $1.85M contract to the University of Waterloo for the Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) mission.
The QEYSSat mission was one of two projects cited in the 2017 budget when it was unveiled in March of this year. In April, the government sent Innovation Science and Economic Development (ISED) Minister Navdeep Bains to the CSA’s headquarters to formally announce the funding for the QEYSSat mission along with funding for a radar instrument that will be developed for a future orbiter mission to Mars and to announce the Canadian CubeSat Project. The $80.9M of funding would be over five years.
A short history of the QEYSSat mission.
Read more
The internet may be an international system of interconnecting networks sharing a rough global consensus about the technical details of communicating through them – but each country manages its own internet environment independently. As the U.S. debate about the role of government in overseeing and regulating the internet continues, it’s worth looking at how other countries handle the issue.
As the U.S. weakens its protections for internet users, it risks falling behind the rest of the world.
- By Sascha Meinrath, Nathalia Foditsch, The Conversation US on December 14, 2017
Read more
Bitcoin has many characteristics of a currency. It is portable, fungible, divisible, resistant to forgery, and it clearly has value. Today, that value came close to $20,000 per coin. Whether it has ‘intrinsic value’ is somewhat of a moot question, because the US dollar hasn’t exhibited this trait since 1972. Today, economists don’t even recognize the intrinsic value of gold—beyond a robust, international, supply-demand network.
Lately, Bitcoin is failing as a viable currency, at least for everyday consumer transactions. The settlement of each transaction is bogged down with long delays and a very high cost. The situation has become critical because of squabbling between miners, users and developers over how to offer speed transactions or lower the cost of settlement. Bitcoin forks and altcoins such as Dash and Bitcoin Cash demonstrate that these technical issues have solutions. Since Bitcoin is adaptable, I believe that these issues are temporary.
But an interesting question is not whether Bitcoin will eventually become a consumer currency. it is whether Bitcoin can distinguish itself as a store of value, rather than just an instrument for payment or debt settlement. After all, a Visa credit card, a traveler’s check and an Amazon gift card can all be used in retail payments, but none of them have value unless backed by someone or something. US Dollars on the other hand are perceived as inherently valuable. They carry the clout and gravitas of institutions and populations, without users questioning from where value arises. (This is changing, but bear with me)…
What about Bitcoin? Does owning some bitcoin represent a store of value? Yes: It absolutely does!
Bitcoin is a rapidly maturing two-sided network. Despite a meteoric rise in exchange value and wild fluctuations during the ride, it is the epitome of a stored value commodity. Regardless of government regulation, adoption as a consumer payment instrument, or the cost and speed of transactions, it has demonstrated stored value since May 22 2010, when Laszlo, a Bitcoin code developer, persuaded a restaurant to accept 10,000 BTC for 2 pizzas.
The “currency” accepted by the pizza parlor wasn’t a gift card. It was not backed by a government, a prior deposit, dollars, gold, the promise of redemption, or by threat of force or blackmail. When a large community of individuals value, exchange, and can easily authenticate something that has none of those underpinnings, that thing clearly has stored value.
In this case, value arises from its scarcity and a robust supply-demand-network. Because its value is not tied to a government or to other commodities, its exchange rate with other things will be bumpy, at first. But as it is recognized, traded and adopted as a stored value token, the wild spikes will smooth out.
A tipping point will precipitate rapid adoption when…
- when some vendors begin to quote prices in Bitcoin (rather than national currency)
- when some of these vendors retain a fraction of their bitcoin-revenue for future purchases, payments or debt settlements—rather than converting revenue to fiat/national currency with each sale
Bitcoin is clearly a store of value, and it is beginning to displace gold and the US dollar as the recognized reserve currency (it is gradually becoming the new gold standard). But before Bitcoin can serve as a widely adopted everyday currency (i.e. as a payment instrument—with or without the stored value of a currency unto itself), it must first incorporate technical improvements that speed transactions and lower cost.
This is taking longer than many enthusiasts would have liked. But, that’s OK with anyone who keeps their eye on the big picture. Democracy is sometimes very sloppy.
Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, publishes A Wild Duck and hosts the New York Bitcoin Event. Last month, he kicked off the Cryptocurrency Expo in Dubai. Click Here to inquire about a live presentation or consulting engagement.
In an April 2014 article, I demonstrated how one might approach a fair Bitcoin valuation.
- Original Methodology: What fraction of the daily float
needed to support daily global commerce will Bitcoin capture?
My methodology was based on the demand that Bitcoin would generate if it displaced a small fraction of cash and credit used for retail and commercial payments around the world. At the time, Bitcoin had a value of USD $450. I estimated that if it captured 5% of global payments, it would have a fair value of about $10,000/BTC (I didn’t complete the calculation—I left that up to the reader. That’s because I was concerned that publishing such a prediction would cause me to lose credibility as an economist and blogger. For what it is worth, I also predicted that a rise to $10,000 would take 5~8 years.
As you might imagine, my friends and family urged me to unload my BTC investment. The April 2014 price of $450/BTC seemed very high to most armchair analysts. After all, thirteen months earlier, it had been just $45.
Yet, now, just 2½ years later, Bitcoin has reached $18,000 per coin. Last week, on Dec 7, 2017, it climbed 40% in just 40 hours, and 120% in less than 2 months. Naturally, this leaves everyone asking if Bitcoin’s rapid rise in value represents an investment “bubble”.
…And so it is time to update the calculation of a fair value for Bitcoin. I can’t do better than point to a terrific prediction model described by Divyanth Jayaraj. His answer to a question at Quora presents a sound basis for valuation—much better than my original valuation method. How so?…
- Reserve Methodology: What fraction of int’l business will be
settled with the transfer of Bitcoin instead of Gold or Dollars?
Bitcoin is rapidly demonstrating viability as a reserve rather than a daily transaction currency. Few people believe that Bitcoin will replace national currencies throughout the world, but it very well may replace gold for government and interbank settlement, and for large intercontinental purchases of commodities, such as oil, grain or airplanes.
Sure! When developers and miners get a handle on transaction cost and delays, it may also become a de facto instrument for retail payments and debt settlement even among consumers. But, even if Bitcoin never achieves this status, Divyanth’s excellent analysis is still valid.
I won’t steal the author’s thunder. Click the link and learn what is very likely to be a fair future value for Bitcoin. Prepare to digest a very large number. I didn’t think of this valuation methodology, but I agree that it represents a realistic peek into the future.
For a few other methods of determining Bitcoin’s inherent value, check out the links at the bottom of my original article. But that was then and this is now. Give extra weight to this newer analysis. The methodology is more accurate given what we know now.
Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, publishes A Wild Duck and hosts the Bitcoin Event. He was keynote at Cryptocurrency Expo in Dubai. Click Here to inquire about a presentation or consulting engagement.
Vulcanologist Jess Phoenix never expected to be involved in politics. Until recently her life revolved around science—traveling the world to study different volcanoes and running an educational nonprofit. But the environmental record of the Trump administration has motivated her to run for Congress.
“These guys are basically gutting every environmental protection that existed,” Phoenix says in Episode 284 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It’s a trend we have to stop now. We can’t let this continue.”
Read more
Daniel Ellsberg gained notoriety in the early 1970s for leaking the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department’s top-secret history of the Vietnam War, and then for outspokenly protesting the war and the government’s secrecy which sustained it. Yet few, then or now, are aware that he spent much of the previous decade immersed in highly classified studies of the U.S. nuclear-war machine: how it works, who can launch an attack, and how much devastation it can wreak if someone ever pushed the button.
His new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, is his long-gestating memoir of those times and the years since, and it is one of the best books ever written on the subject—certainly the most honest and revealing account by an insider who plunged deep into the nuclear rabbit hole’s mad logic and came out the other side.
Dr. Strangelove “was a documentary,” writes the man behind the Pentagon Papers.
Read more
The Tesla big battery – the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery storage installation to date – was officially switched on in South Australia on Friday, a day after it had already demonstrated its value by injecting energy into the grid during the previous day’s afternoon peak.
South Australia premier Jay Weatherill, whose government has provided the subsidy for the battery to be built on the grid with the largest penetration of wind and solar anywhere in the world, described it as a “landmark moment”.
“This means that, for the first time, clean and affordable wind energy can be dispatched to the grid 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, whether the wind is blowing or not, improving system reliability,” Weatherill said.
Read more
Ontario intends to provide a basic income to 4,000 people in three different communities as part of an experiment that seeks to evaluate whether providing more money to people on public assistance or low incomes will make a significant material difference in their lives. How people like Button respond over the next three years is being closely watched by social scientists, economists and policymakers in Canada and around the world.
Former security guard Tim Button considers how a sudden increase in his income from an unusual social experiment has changed his life in this Canadian industrial city along the shore of Lake Ontario.
Sipping coffee in a Tim Horton’s doughnut shop, Button says he has been unable to work because of a fall from a roof, and the financial boost from Ontario Province’s new “basic income” program has enabled him to make plans to visit distant family for Christmas for the first time in years. It has also prompted him to eat healthier, schedule a long-postponed trip to the dentist and mull taking a course to help him get back to work.
“It’s making a huge difference for me,” Button said of the almost 60 percent increase in monthly benefits he started receiving in October from the Ontario government.
Kalashnikov’s upcoming product shows how the US and Russia are on wildly different paths to autonomy.
The maker of the famous AK −47 rifle is building “a range of products based on neural networks,” including a “fully automated combat module” that can identify and shoot at its targets. That’s what Kalashnikov spokeswoman Sofiya Ivanova told TASS, a Russian government information agency last week. It’s the latest illustration of how the U.S. and Russia differ as they develop artificial intelligence and robotics for warfare.
The Kalashnikov “combat module” will consist of a gun connected to a console that constantly crunches image data “to identify targets and make decisions,” Ivanova told TASS. A Kalashnikov photo that ran with the TASS piece showed a turret-mounted weapon that appeared to fire rounds of 25mm or so.
Read more