How To Replace Politicians With Computers (It’s Working!) #BitcoinFixesThis #GotBitcoin
After sneaking his AI-written water bill into law, Ramiro Rosário says other public servants could go, too. How To Replace Politicians With Computers (It’s Working!) #BitcoinFixesThis #GotBitcoin
The 37-year-old legislator in Brazil’s southern city of Porto Alegre passed the country’s first law in November that was written entirely by ChatGPT, the artificial-intelligence chatbot developed by the San Francisco startup OpenAI.
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil — In a country with a history of corruption and government inefficiency, Councilman Ramiro Rosário has come up with what he believes is a winning strategy to improve the work of politicians: replace them with computers.
The law itself was purposefully boring—a proposal to stop the local water company from charging residents for new water meters when they were stolen from their front yards. It would easily pass, calculated Rosário.
One recent day, donning jeans and sneakers, Rosário described how the city usually runs (or crawls) under Porto Alegre’s 36 councilors, from a warren of cubicles here in a vast modernist building overlooking the Guaíba River.
Under normal circumstances, it would have taken his six-person team several days to draft the bill. There would have been lengthy discussions over the legalese, interjected with dozens of coffee breaks and some heated discussions over the performance of Grêmio, one of the city’s local soccer teams.
His assistant would have had to figure out the inner workings of DMAE, Porto Alegre’s water and sewage authority. (Rosário said he had asked DMAE for help but they never replied to his message.) DMAE didn’t reply to a reporter’s request for comment about not replying to Rosário’s request.
Then some poor soul would have had to check if the bill was even constitutional, Rósario said—no small feat given that Brazil’s constitution is 64,488 words-long, outdone only by those of India and Nigeria.
Add to that several typically protracted Brazilian working lunches—followed by more coffee—and perhaps one of the country’s many public holidays, which if on a Thursday would have been unofficially extended to Monday.
But, in fact, none of that was necessary. ChatGPT got the job done in 15 seconds.
Rosário sat down in front of his computer back in June and described the bill he wanted in a sentence. A perfectly-crafted law with eight articles came back, including a clause Rosário had never thought of: if the water authority didn’t replace the stolen meter within 30 days the property owner would be exempt from paying their bill.
“Who knows where she got the 30-day thing from! She went above and beyond!” said Rosário, an AI enthusiast who said he likes to talk to “her” daily.
After the release of ChatGPT’s latest vocal version in Brazil, the chatbot has taken on a friendly woman’s voice with a slight country twang—a peculiarity ChatGPT itself suggests may be because the bulk of its input data comes from São Paulo, Brazil’s richest state and agricultural powerhouse.
“There was one day I asked for help in the kitchen. I told her: ‘Listen, all I have in the fridge is a mango, a lime, an apple, and an open bottle of wine,’” Rosário digressed. She came up with a recipe for pasta with a mango sauce and told him to drink the rest of the wine. “It was delicious!”
He also called on her to help settle an argument with his brother-in-law over the Israel-Hamas war. “He was saying stuff that just wasn’t true,” Rosário said. “So we went to ask her and, before we knew it, the three of us were having a conversation.”
Rosário put the drafted legislation up for vote exactly as ChatGPT had written it. It was unanimously approved by the city’s other councilors and signed into law by Porto Alegre’s mayor at the end of November. Chat GPT even whipped up the press release.
It was only then that Rosário revealed to the rest of councilors that he hadn’t written a word of it. “They would never have signed it if they’d known.”
Other countries have embarked on similar experiments. A judge in Colombia recently used the chatbot to decide whether an autistic child’s insurance should cover his medical treatment, while an Indian judge called on it to help determine whether a murder suspect should be granted bail.
But Rosário said he believes his law was the first in the world to be written entirely by ChatGPT. (As he talked, he picked up his phone and checked with the chatbot for confirmation, glowing with pleasure as she praised him for his efforts on what she called a “fascinating” subject.)
Rosário’s cause was a noble one. Brazil spends more than 13% of its gross domestic product on the salaries and pensions of public servants. He wanted to demonstrate how much more efficient and cost-effective the government could be if it employed AI instead of so many people.
The idea isn’t to replace all politicians and public servants, just some of them, he said with a grin. He cited, for example, the city hall’s public-relations assistants down the hall who write news releases like the one ChatGPT just churned out.
“There must be 20 or 30 of them—they probably won’t be needed in the future, well, to be honest, they’re already no longer needed.”
Voters were delighted by Rosário’s maneuver. “I’d choose artificial intelligence over the intelligence of politicians any day,” said Adriano Soares, a 21-year-old student in the city. Politicians frequently rank as society’s most hated group in Brazil.
Only 34% of Brazilians in a study last year said they trusted the government, an understandable reaction given recent figures showing that one in three members of Brazil’s Congress are under investigation for crimes ranging from graft to attempted homicide.
The reaction to Rosário’s big revelation wasn’t so great here in City Hall. Firstly, some councilors assumed Rosário had been caught cheating, like a lazy student using ChatGPT on schoolwork.
“They didn’t get it,” he said. When they did get it, they felt duped, accusing him of being unethical by lying to them, Rosário added.
“It’s a dangerous precedent! It’s just not something you do! He should have talked to the other councilors first,” said João Bosco Vaz, 68, a councilor for the Democratic Labour Party, calling for the law to be revoked.
To be sure, the biggest pushback came from the council’s most elderly members. A week after the law was sanctioned, a group of graying public servants organized a lecture on the perils of AI.
Rosário didn’t get an invite.
Regulation Is The Bugaboo of Today’s Politics
We have too much of it in most areas, we have too little of it in others, but mostly, we just have the wrong kind, a mountain of paper rules, inefficient processes, and little ability to adjust the rules or the processes when we discover the inevitable unintended results.
Consider, for a moment, regulation in a broader context. Your car’s electronics regulate the fuel-air mix in the engine to find an optimal balance of fuel efficiency and minimal emissions. An airplane’s autopilot regulates the countless factors required to keep that plane aloft and heading in the right direction.
ISPs and corporate mail systems regulate the mail that reaches us, filtering out spam and malware to the best of their ability.
Search engines regulate the results and advertisements they serve up to us, doing their best to give us more of what we want to see.
What Do All These Forms Of Regulation Have In Common?
- A Deep Understanding Of The Desired Outcome
- Real-Time Measurement To Determine If That Outcome Is Being Achieved
- Algorithms (I.E. A Set Of Rules) That Make Adjustments Based On New Data
- Periodic, Deeper Analysis Of Whether The Algorithms Themselves Are Correct And Performing As Expected.
There are a few cases—all too few—in which governments and quasi-governmental agencies regulate using processes similar to those outlined above. Probably the best example is the way that central banks regulate the money supply in an attempt to manage interest rates, inflation, and the overall state of the economy.
Surprisingly, while individual groups might prefer the US Federal Reserve to tighten or loosen the money supply at a different time or rate than they do, most accept the need for this kind of regulation.
Why Is This?
- The Desired Outcomes Are Clear
- There Is Regular Measurement And Reporting As To Whether Those Outcomes Are Being Achieved, Based On Data That Is Made Public To Everyone
- Adjustments Are Made When The Desired Outcomes Are Not Being Achieved
Contrast this with the normal regulatory model, which focuses on the rules rather than the outcomes. How often have we faced rules that simply no longer make sense? How often do we see evidence that the rules are actually achieving the desired outcome?
Sometimes the “rules” aren’t really even rules. Gordon Bruce, the former CIO of the city of Honolulu, explained to me that when he entered government from the private sector and tried to make changes, he was told, “That’s against the law.” His reply was “OK. Show me the law.”
“Well, it isn’t really a law. It’s a regulation.” “OK. Show me the regulation.” “Well, it isn’t really a regulation. It’s a policy that was put in place by Mr. Somebody twenty years ago.” “Great. We can change that!”
But often, there really is a law or a regulation that has outlived its day, an artifact of a system that takes too long to change. The Obama Administration has made some efforts to address this, with a process of both “regulatory lookback” to eliminate unnecessary regulations, and an increased effort to quantify the effect of regulations (White House, 2012).
But even this kind of regulatory reform doesn’t go far enough. The laws of the United States have grown mind-bogglingly complex. The recent healthcare reform bill was nearly two thousand pages. The US Constitution, including two hundred years worth of amendments, is about twenty-one pages.
The National Highway Bill of 1956, which led to the creation of the US Interstate Highway system, the largest public works project in history, was twenty-nine pages.
Laws should specify goals, rights, outcomes, authorities, and limits. If specified broadly, those laws can stand the test of time.
Regulations, which specify how to execute those laws in much more detail, should be regarded in much the same way that programmers regard their code and algorithms, that is, as a constantly updated toolset to achieve the outcomes specified in the laws.
Increasingly, in today’s world, this kind of algorithmic regulation is more than a metaphor. Consider financial markets. New financial instruments are invented every day and implemented by algorithms that trade at electronic speed.
How can these instruments be regulated except by programs and algorithms that track and manage them in their native element in much the same way that Google’s search quality algorithms, Google’s “regulations”, manage the constant attempts of spammers and black hat SEO experts to game the system?
Revelation after revelation of bad behavior by big banks demonstrates that periodic bouts of enforcement aren’t sufficient. Systemic malfeasance needs systemic regulation. It’s time for government to enter the age of big data. Algorithmic regulation is an idea whose time has come.
Blockchain And Government As A Platform
There are those who say that government should just stay out of regulating many areas, and let “the market” sort things out. But there are many ways in which bad actors take advantage of a vacuum in the absence of proactive management.
Just as companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon build regulatory mechanisms to manage their platforms, government exists as a platform to ensure the success of our society, and that platform needs to be well regulated!
Right now, it is clear that agencies like the SEC just can’t keep up. In the wake of Ponzi schemes like those of Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, the SEC has now instituted algorithmic models that flag for investigation hedge funds whose results meaningfully outperform those of peers using the same stated investment methods.
But once flagged, enforcement still goes into a long loop of investigation and negotiation, with problems dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
By contrast, when Google discovers via algorithmic means that a new kind of spam is damaging search results, they quickly change the rules to limit the effect of those bad actors. We need to find more ways to make the consequences of bad action systemic, rather than subject to haphazard enforcement.
This is only possible when laws and regulations focus on desired outcomes rather than the processes used to achieve them.
There’s another point that’s worth making about SEC regulations. Financial regulation depends on disclosure – data required by the regulators to be published by financial firms in a format that makes it easy to analyze.
This data is not just used by the regulators themselves, but is used by the private sector in making its own assessments of the financial health of firms, their prospects, and other financial decisions. You can see how the role of regulators in requiring what is, in effect, blockchain, makes the market more transparent and self-policing.
You can also see here that the modernization of how data is reported to both the government and the market is an important way of improving regulatory outcomes.
Data needs to be timely, machine readable, and complete. (See Open Government Working Group, 2007.) When reporting is on paper or in opaque digital forms like PDF, or released only quarterly, it is much less useful.
When data is provided in re-usable digital formats, the private sector can aid in ferreting out problems as well as building new services that provide consumer and citizen value. This is a goal of the US Treasury Department’s “Smart Disclosure” initiative (see http://www.data.gov/consumer/page/consumer-about). It is also central to the efforts of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
When government regulators focus on requiring disclosure, that lets private companies build services for consumers, and frees up more enforcement time to go after truly serious malefactors.
Regulation Meets Reputation
It is true that “that government governs best that governs least.” But the secret to “governing least” is to identify key outcomes that we care about as a society—safety, health, fairness, opportunity—encode those outcomes into our laws, and then create a constantly evolving set of regulatory mechanisms that keep us on course towards them.
We are at a unique time when new technologies make it possible to reduce the amount of regulation while actually increasing the amount of oversight and production of desirable outcomes.
Consider taxi regulation. Ostensibly, taxis are regulated to protect the quality and safety of the consumer experience, as well as to ensure that there are an optimal number of vehicles providing service at the time they are needed. In practice, most of us know that these regulations do a poor job of ensuring quality or availability.
New services like Uber and Hailo work with existing licensed drivers, but increase their availability even in less-frequented locations, by using geolocation on smartphones to bring passengers and drivers together.
But equally important in a regulatory context is the way these services ask every passenger to rate their driver (and drivers to rate their passenger).
Drivers who provide poor service are eliminated. As users of these services can attest, reputation does a better job of ensuring a superb customer experience than any amount of government regulation.
Peer-to-peer car services like RelayRides, Lyft, and Sidecar go even further, bypassing regulated livery vehicles and allowing consumers to provide rides to each other.
Here, reputation entirely replaces regulation, seemingly with no ill effect. Governments should be studying these models, not fighting them, and adopting them where there are no demonstrable ill effects.
Services like AirBnB provide similar reputation systems that protect consumers while creating availability of lodging in neighborhoods that are often poorly served by licensed establishments.
Reputation systems are a great example of how blockchain can help improve outcomes for citizens with less effort by overworked regulators and enforcement officials.
Sites like Yelp provide extensive consumer reviews of restaurants; those that provide poor food or service are flagged by unhappy customers, while those that excel are praised.
There are a number of interesting new projects that attempt to combine the reach and user-friendliness of consumer reputation systems with government data.
One recent initiative, the LIVES standard, developed by San Francisco, Code for America, and Yelp, brings health department inspection data to Yelp and other consumer restaurant applications, using blockchain to provide even more information to consumers. The House Facts standard does the same with housing inspection data, integrating it with internet services like Trulia
Another interesting project that actually harnesses citizen help (rather than just citizen opinion) by connecting a consumer-facing app to government data is the PulsePoint project, originally started by the San Ramon, California fire department.
After the fire chief had the dismaying experience of hearing an ambulance pull up to the restaurant next door to the one in which he was having lunch with staff including a number of EMR techs, he commissioned an app that would allow any citizen with EMR training to receive the same dispatch calls as officials.
The Role of Sensors In Algorithmic Regulation
Increasingly, our interactions with businesses, government, and the built environment are becoming digital, and thus amenable to creative forms of measurement, and ultimately algorithmic regulation.
For example, with the rise of GPS (not to mention automatic speed cameras), it is easy to foresee a future where speeding motorists are no longer pulled over by police officers who happen to spot them, but instead automatically ticketed whenever they exceed the speed limit.
Most people today would consider that intrusive and alarming. But we can also imagine a future in which that speed limit is automatically adjusted based on the amount of traffic, weather conditions, and other subjective conditions that make a higher or lower speed more appropriate than the static limit that is posted today.
The endgame might be a future of autonomous vehicles that are able to travel faster because they are connected in an invisible web, a traffic regulatory system that keeps us safer than today’s speed limits.
The goal, after all, is not to have cars go slower than they might otherwise, but to make our roads safe.
While such a future no doubt raises many issues and might be seen by many as an assault on privacy and other basic freedoms, early versions of that future are already in place in countries like Singapore and can be expected to spread more widely.
Congestion pricing on tolls, designed to reduce traffic to city centers, is another example. Systems such as those in London where your license plate is read and you are required to make a payment will be replaced by automatic billing. You can imagine the costs of tolls floating based not just on time of day but on actual traffic.
Smart parking meters have similar capabilities—parking can cost more at peak times, less off-peak. But perhaps more importantly, smart parking meters can report whether they are occupied or not, and eventually give guidance to drivers and car navigation systems, reducing the amount of time spent circling while aimlessly looking for a parking space.
As we move to a future with more electric vehicles, there are already proposals to replace gasoline taxes with miles driven—reported, of course, once again by GPS.
Moving further out into the future, you can imagine public transportation reinventing itself to look much like Uber. It’s a small leap from connecting one passenger and one driver to picking up four or five passengers all heading for the same destination, or along the same route.
Smartphone GPS sensors and smart routing algorithms could lead to a hybrid of taxi and bus service, bringing affordable, flexible public transportation to a much larger audience.
The First Step is Measurement
Data driven regulatory systems need not be as complex as those used by Google or credit card companies, or as those imagined above. Sometimes, it’s as simple as doing the math on data that is already being collected and putting in place new business processes to act on it.
For example, after hearing of the cost of a small government job search engine for veterans ($5 million per year), I asked how many users the site had. I was told “A couple of hundred.”
I was understandably shocked, and wondered why this project was up for contract renewal. But when I asked a senior official at the General Services Administration if there were any routine process for calculating the cost per user of government websites, I was told, “That would be a good idea!” It shouldn’t just be a good idea; it should be common practice!
Every commercial website not only measures its traffic, but constantly makes adjustments to remove features that are unused and to test new ones in their place. When a startup fails to gain traction with its intended customers, the venture capitalists who backed it either withdraw their funding, or “pivot” to a new approach, trying multiple options till they find one that works.
The “lean startup” methodology now widely adopted in Silicon Valley considers a startup to be “a machine for learning,” using data to constantly revise and tune its approach to the market. Government, by contrast, seems to inevitably double down on bad approaches, as if admitting failure is the cardinal sin.
Simple web metrics considered as part of a contract renewal are one simple kind of algorithmic regulation that could lead to a massive simplification of government websites and reduction of government IT costs.
Other metrics that are commonly used on the commercial web include time on site; abandon rate (people who leave without completing a transaction); and analysis of the paths people use to reach the desired information.
There is other data available as well. Many commercial sites use analysis of search queries to surface what people are looking for. The UK Government Digital Service used this technique in their effort to redesign the Gov.UK site around user needs rather than around the desires of the various cabinet offices and agencies to promote their activities.
They looked what people were searching for, and redesigned the site to create new, shorter paths to the most frequently searched-for answers.
(Code for America built a site for the city of Honolulu, Honolulu Answers, which took much the same approach, adding a citizen “write-a-thon” to write new, user friendly content to answer the most asked questions.)
This is a simpler, manual intervention that copies what Google does algorithmically when it takes search query data into account when evaluating which results to publish. For example, Google looks at what they call “long clicks” versus “short clicks.”
When the user clicks on a search result and doesn’t come back, or comes back significantly later, indicating that they found the destination link useful, that is a long click. Contrast that to a short click, when users come back right away and try another link instead. Get enough short clicks, and your search result gets demoted.
There are many good examples of data collection, measurement, analysis, and decision-making taking hold in government. In New York City, data mining was used to identify correlations between illegal apartment conversions and increased risk of fires, leading to a unique cooperation between building and fire inspectors.
In Louisville, KY, a department focused on performance analytics has transformed the culture of government to one of continuous process improvement.
It’s important to understand that these manual interventions are only an essential first step. Once you understand that you have actionable data being systematically collected, and that your interventions based on that data are effective, it’s time to begin automating those interventions.
There’s a long way to go. We’re just at the beginning of thinking about how measurement, outcomes, and regulation come together.
Risks of Algorithmic Regulation
The use of algorithmic regulation increases the power of regulators, and in some cases, could lead to abuses, or to conditions that seem anathema to us in a free society. “Mission creep” is a real risk. Once data is collected for one purpose, it’s easy to imagine new uses for it.
We’ve already seen this in requests to the NSA for data on American citizens originally collected for purposes of fighting overseas terrorism being requested by other agencies to fight domestic crime, including copyright infringement! (See Lichtblau & Schmidt, 2013.)
The answer to this risk is not to avoid collecting the data, but to put stringent safeguards in place to limit its use beyond the original purpose. As we have seen, oversight and transparency are particularly difficult to enforce when national security is at stake and secrecy can be claimed to hide misuse. But the NSA is not the only one that needs to keep its methods hidden.
Many details of Google’s search algorithms are kept as a trade secret lest knowledge of how they work be used to game the system; the same is true for credit card fraud detection.
One key difference is that a search engine such as Google is based on open data (the content of the web), allowing for competition.
If Google fails to provide good search results, for example because they are favoring results that lead to more advertising dollars, they risk losing market share to Bing. Users are also able to evaluate Google’s search results for themselves.
Not only that, Google’s search quality team relies on users themselves—tens of thousands of individuals who are given searches to perform, and asked whether they found what they were looking for. Enough “no” answers, and Google adjusts the algorithms.
Whenever possible, governments putting in place algorithmic regulations must put in place similar quality measurements, emphasizing not just compliance with the rules that have been codified so far but with the original, clearly-specified goal of the regulatory system. The data used to make determinations should be auditable, and whenever possible, open for public inspection.
There are also huge privacy risks involved in the collection of the data needed to build true algorithmic regulatory systems. Tracking our speed while driving also means tracking our location.
But that location data need not be stored as long as we are driving within the speed limit, or it can be anonymized for use in traffic control systems.
Given the amount of data being collected by the private sector, it is clear that our current notions of privacy are changing. What we need is a strenuous discussion of the tradeoffs between data collection and the benefits we receive from its use.
This is no different in a government context.
In Conclusion
We are just at the beginning of a big data algorithmic revolution that will touch all elements of our society.
As Outlined In The Introduction, A Successful Algorithmic Regulation System Has The Following Characteristics:
- A Deep Understanding Of The Desired Outcome
- Real-time measurement to determine if that outcome is being achieved
- Algorithms (I.E. A Set Of Rules) That Make Adjustments Based On New Data
- Periodic, Deeper Analysis Of Whether The Algorithms Themselves Are Correct And Performing As Expected.
Blockchain plays a key role in both steps 2 and 4. Blockchain, either provided by the government itself, or required by government of the private sector, is a key enabler of the measurement revolution. Blockchain also helps us to understand whether we are achieving our desired objectives, and potentially allows for competition in better ways to achieve those objectives.
Updated: 6-7-2021
Hybrid Smart Contracts Will Replace The Legal System
Hybrid smart contracts will change the world by revolutionizing the legal system that exists today.
The era of unintelligible contracts written in legalese by lawyers in $2,000 suits with degrees from Ivy League schools is over. The contracts of the next century will be hybrid smart contracts, written in code by programmers wearing $20 hoodies and living in their NYC-shared apartment.
What Is A Hybrid Smart Contract?
Smart contracts are self-enforcing contracts, written in code and executed by the blockchain. These smart contracts are great at sending and receiving money, and doing simple calculations, but they cannot access off-chain data, perform complex calculations or generate random numbers on their own.
Those limitations previously prohibited smart contracts from fulfilling many of the roles that traditional legal contracts currently hold. Now, the introduction of oracle networks onto the blockchain promises to solve this problem.
Oracle networks can provide verifiable randomness, off-chain data and additional computational resources to smart contracts.
Oracle networks are made up of validators that write data onto the blockchain. The oracle aggregates inputs from multiple validators so that no one validator has control over the oracle feed.
Validators might also use different mechanisms to come up with the data they write to further increase robustness. For example, oracle networks that provide verifiable randomness might want each validator to use a different pseudorandom number generator.
Oracle networks are decentralized, so using an oracle network doesn’t require sacrificing the benefits of decentralization that blockchain provides. A smart contract that makes use of an oracle network is called a hybrid smart contract.
Use cases for hybrid smart contracts
Once hybrid smart contracts have access to off-chain data through an oracle network, they can begin to replace traditional contracts. For example, weather insurance — a type of insurance that pays out in the event of extreme weather, is currently supported by traditional contracts.
If an oracle network provides data on extreme weather events, weather insurance can be easily implemented by hybrid smart contracts instead.
In general, any contract that pays out based on real-world events can be implemented on the blockchain, as long as there is an oracle network that can provide that off-chain data.
Hybrid contracts can also implement mechanisms that have higher computational complexity than their non-hybrid counterparts. For example, the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) algorithm is a sealed, bid auction mechanism. Google and Facebook use VCG to run their ad auctions. The only problem with VCG is that it’s difficult to compute.
It would be prohibitively expensive to implement a VCG mechanism entirely on the blockchain. But, if the computation was delegated to off-chain computing using a hybrid smart contract, VCG could be cost-effective and implemented on the blockchain.
Oracle networks that act as random number generators can, of course, support multiple on-chain gaming and gambling matches, but they also can support randomized algorithms and mechanisms, some of which are more efficient than their non-random counterparts.
One example is an auction mechanism called a candlestick auction, which is equivalent to the standard English auction except that instead of ending after a fixed period of time, the auction ends at a random time. EBay users may be familiar with the scalping problem in which nearly all bidding activity takes place just before the auction ends.
This can be frustrating for buyers, as they have little information about the actual price the auction will clear at before the auction ends. The candlestick auction solves that problem by incentivizing bidders to place bids early so that they can get them in before the auction ends.
Without a random number generator, it would be impossible to implement a candlestick auction or any other randomized mechanism or algorithm on the blockchain.
The Advantages Of Hybrid Smart Contracts Over Traditional Contracts
Unlike traditional contracts, smart contracts are enforced by the blockchain, meaning that there is no need for an external court system to enforce the contracts. Without a costly court system, contracts are cheaper, so more peer-to-peer transactions can be governed by contracts rather than trust.
Contracts between firms located in different countries are often challenging, since navigating the different court systems is expensive, and usually, the judicial systems of one nation have limited power over corporations from other nations.
Hybrid smart contracts do not share this weakness; they don’t see nationality at all.
Enforcing traditional contracts through the courts is not only expensive but also introduces uncertainty into the outcome. There will always be a chance that lawyers uncover some arcane loophole buried in the basement of a haunted house that completely voids the contract.
Even when the contract is airtight, the contracting parties rely on their government’s continued goodwill to ensure that the contract is enforced.
The recent moratorium on evictions in many states within the U.S. and countries around the world is an example of this. Landlords and tenants signed an agreement under the guise that if rent was not paid, the landlord would have legal recourse against the tenant in the form of eviction.
I am not going to argue about whether this decision was justified; that’s a discussion for policymakers. What is not up for discussion is that this action taken by governments around the globe effectively voided every single rental agreement that was in place at the time.
This change didn’t only affect the tenants who were unable to pay their rent, it also effectively voided rental agreements between landlords and tenants who could pay. Even tenants who could pay their rent would not be subject to eviction, which meant that some of those tenants chose not to pay either.
Whatever your opinion on the eviction moratorium, it is clear that contracts that can be burned at any time by a government official with a rubber stamp are not desirable when compared with hybrid smart contracts.
In the coming years, traditional legal contracts will be replaced by hybrid smart contracts, as they are faster, more efficient and less vulnerable to legal loopholes. They are less expensive and can reach across borders just as easily as within borders.
References:
- Lichtblau, E., & Schmidt, M.S. (2013, August 3). Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/us/other-agencies-clamor-for-data-nsa-compiles.html
- Open Government Working Group. (2007, December 8). 8 Principles of Open Government Data. Retrieved from http://www.opengovdata.org/home/8principles
- The White House. (2012). As Prepared for Delivery: Regulation: Looking Backward, Looking Forward – Cass R. Sunstein. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/inforeg/speeches/regulation-looking-backward-looking-forward-05102012.pdf
Updated: 10-13-2021
Algorithms vs. Regulators Battle Royale Kicks Off In China
China is regulating algorithms. How that experiment goes could help Western regulators understand what to embrace—and what to avoid.
China is taking a first step toward regulating algorithms. How that experiment goes could help Western regulators understand what to embrace—and what to avoid—as they ponder tougher controls on Western social-media giants too.
China launched a sweeping three-year plan last month to regulate the use of algorithms, setting itself up as a potential trailblazer as governments around the world step up regulation of Big Tech.
According to draft rules released in August, companies can’t use algorithms which lead to addiction or excessive spending. Users should also have the right to opt out.
The broad-based regulations, if implemented strictly, could fundamentally shake up the business models of many successful internet companies. For example ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has succeeded largely by recommending catchy content with the help of its powerful algorithm.
To be sure, some aspects of China’s proposals are clearly targeted at maintaining government control. Guidelines from the internet watchdog say algorithms should uphold core socialist values and promote positive energy. Democratic societies are unlikely to accept such strictures, and even more benign rules would likely face court challenges.
But watching how China’s moves work out—and how large any collateral economic damage ultimately is—could still prove useful to other countries which also are grappling with the enormous societal impact of internet companies.
The European Union proposed a bill in April to regulate artificial intelligence systems in some so-called high-risk uses like critical infrastructure, college admissions and loan applications.
In the U.S., Congress recently conducted a hearing on Facebook after The Wall Street Journal’s investigations into the social-media giant.
The biggest problem for regulating algorithms is how opaque they are. That is becoming a bigger issue as more decisions are made by machines which learn through crunching a vast amount of data. It isn’t easy, sometimes even for the creators of algorithms, to pinpoint the exact reason why an artificial intelligence makes a particular decision.
Biases embedded in the training data could unknowingly seep into the decision-making process. And algorithms can also narrowly focus on some objectives, like amplifying viral content, without considering other impacts. Moreover, they are also continually updating, which makes regulation even harder.
That is a big challenge even for China, which has more powerful tools at its disposal. Another problem is how to make the algorithmic process more transparent and accountable, without taking too broad a brush that could stifle all innovation, especially at smaller companies.
That is one big risk Beijing takes by being a first-mover—it may reap immediate benefits, as it sees it, in terms of enhanced social control and fewer ugly side effects like addiction and indebtedness. But it may also squash the potential emergence of any new ByteDances in the process.
Algorithms have become an integral part of everyday life. Regulations may finally need to catch up—but how to go about it remains a difficult puzzle. Investors in U.S. internet companies, and their detractors, should both be watching China’s experience closely.
Related Articles:
Bitcoin Information & Resources (#GotBitcoin?)
Newest Episodes of ‘Billions’ To Put More Emphasis On Bitcoin
To Generation X, Y and Z, add C. As in Generation Crypto (#GotBitcoin?)
Less Than 1% of FinCEN’s Suspicious Activity Reports Since 2013 Mentioned Crypto
Bitcoin Doubling Gold’s Yearly Gain So Far (#GotBitcoin?)
No, Donald Trump, Negative Rates Aren’t A ‘Gift,’ Bitcoin Advocates Warn
JPMorgan Provides Banking Services To Crypto Exchanges Coinbase And Gemini (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Advocates Cry Foul As US Fed Buying ETFs For The First Time
Final Block Mined Before Halving Contained Reminder of BTC’s Origins (#GotBitcoin?)
Meet Brian Klein, Crypto’s Own ‘High-Stakes’ Trial Attorney (#GotBitcoin?)
3 Reasons For The Bitcoin Price ‘Halving Dump’ From $10K To $8.1K
Bitcoin Outlives And Outlasts Naysayers And First Website That Declared It Dead Back In 2010
Hedge Fund Pioneer Turns Bullish On Bitcoin Amid ‘Unprecedented’ Monetary Inflation
Antonopoulos: Chainalysis Is Helping World’s Worst Dictators & Regimes (#GotBitcoin?)
Survey Shows Many BTC Holders Use Hardware Wallet, Have Backup Keys (#GotBitcoin?)
Iran Ditches The Rial Amid Hyperinflation As Localbitcoins Seem To Trade Near $35K
Buffett ‘Killed His Reputation’ by Being Stupid About BTC, Says Max Keiser (#GotBitcoin?)
Blockfolio Quietly Patches Years-Old Security Hole That Exposed Source Code (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Won As Store of Value In Coronavirus Crisis — Hedge Fund CEO
Decentralized VPN Gaining Steam At 100,000 Users Worldwide (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto Exchange Offers Credit Lines so Institutions Can Trade Now, Pay Later (#GotBitcoin?)
Zoom Develops A Cryptocurrency Paywall To Reward Creators Video Conferencing Sessions (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Startup Purse.io And Major Bitcoin Cash Partner To Shut Down After 6-Year Run
Open Interest In CME Bitcoin Futures Rises 70% As Institutions Return To Market
Square’s Users Can Route Stimulus Payments To BTC-Friendly Cash App
$1.1 Billion BTC Transaction For Only $0.68 Demonstrates Bitcoin’s Advantage Over Banks
Bitcoin Could Become Like ‘Prison Cigarettes’ Amid Deepening Financial Crisis
Bitcoin Holds Value As US Debt Reaches An Unfathomable $24 Trillion
How To Get Money (Crypto-currency) To People In An Emergency, Fast
Bitcoin Miner Manufacturers Mark Down Prices Ahead of Halving
Privacy-Oriented Browsers Gain Traction (#GotBitcoin?)
‘Breakthrough’ As Lightning Uses Web’s Forgotten Payment Code (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Starts Quarter With Price Down Just 10% YTD vs U.S. Stock’s Worst Quarter Since 2008
Bitcoin Enthusiasts, Liberal Lawmakers Cheer A Fed-Backed Digital Dollar
Crypto-Friendly Bank Revolut Launches In The US (#GotBitcoin?)
The CFTC Just Defined What ‘Actual Delivery’ of Crypto Should Look Like (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto CEO Compares US Dollar To Onecoin Scam As Fed Keeps Printing (#GotBitcoin?)
Stuck In Quarantine? Become A Blockchain Expert With These Online Courses (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin, Not Governments Will Save the World After Crisis, Tim Draper Says
Crypto Analyst Accused of Photoshopping Trade Screenshots (#GotBitcoin?)
QE4 Begins: Fed Cuts Rates, Buys $700B In Bonds; Bitcoin Rallies 7.7%
Mike Novogratz And Andreas Antonopoulos On The Bitcoin Crash
Amid Market Downturn, Number of People Owning 1 BTC Hits New Record (#GotBitcoin?)
Fatburger And Others Feed $30 Million Into Ethereum For New Bond Offering (#GotBitcoin?)
Pornhub Will Integrate PumaPay Recurring Subscription Crypto Payments (#GotBitcoin?)
Intel SGX Vulnerability Discovered, Cryptocurrency Keys Threatened
Bitcoin’s Plunge Due To Manipulation, Traditional Markets Falling or PlusToken Dumping?
Countries That First Outlawed Crypto But Then Embraced It (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Maintains Gains As Global Equities Slide, US Yield Hits Record Lows
HTC’s New 5G Router Can Host A Full Bitcoin Node
India Supreme Court Lifts RBI Ban On Banks Servicing Crypto Firms (#GotBitcoin?)
Analyst Claims 98% of Mining Rigs Fail to Verify Transactions (#GotBitcoin?)
Blockchain Storage Offers Security, Data Transparency And immutability. Get Over it!
Black Americans & Crypto (#GotBitcoin?)
Coinbase Wallet Now Allows To Send Crypto Through Usernames (#GotBitcoin)
New ‘Simpsons’ Episode Features Jim Parsons Giving A Crypto Explainer For The Masses (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto-currency Founder Met With Warren Buffett For Charity Lunch (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin’s Potential To Benefit The African And African-American Community
Coinbase Becomes Direct Visa Card Issuer With Principal Membership
Bitcoin Achieves Major Milestone With Half A Billion Transactions Confirmed
Jill Carlson, Meltem Demirors Back $3.3M Round For Non-Custodial Settlement Protocol Arwen
Crypto Companies Adopt Features Similar To Banks (Only Better) To Drive Growth (#GotBitcoin?)
Top Graphics Cards That Will Turn A Crypto Mining Profit (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Usage Among Merchants Is Up, According To Data From Coinbase And BitPay
Top 10 Books Recommended by Crypto (#Bitcoin) Thought Leaders
Twitter Adds Bitcoin Emoji, Jack Dorsey Suggests Unicode Does The Same
Bitcoiners Are Now Into Fasting. Read This Article To Find Out Why
You Can Now Donate Bitcoin Or Fiat To Show Your Support For All Of Our Valuable Content
2019’s Top 10 Institutional Actors In Crypto (#GotBitcoin?)
What Does Twitter’s New Decentralized Initiative Mean? (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto-Friendly Silvergate Bank Goes Public On New York Stock Exchange (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin’s Best Q1 Since 2013 To ‘Escalate’ If $9.5K Is Broken
Billionaire Investor Tim Draper: If You’re a Millennial, Buy Bitcoin
What Are Lightning Wallets Doing To Help Onboard New Users? (#GotBitcoin?)
If You Missed Out On Investing In Amazon, Bitcoin Might Be A Second Chance For You (#GotBitcoin?)
2020 And Beyond: Bitcoin’s Potential Protocol (Privacy And Scalability) Upgrades (#GotBitcoin?)
US Deficit Will Be At Least 6 Times Bitcoin Market Cap — Every Year (#GotBitcoin?)
Central Banks Warm To Issuing Digital Currencies (#GotBitcoin?)
Meet The Crypto Angel Investor Running For Congress In Nevada (#GotBitcoin?)
Introducing BTCPay Vault – Use Any Hardware Wallet With BTCPay And Its Full Node (#GotBitcoin?)
How Not To Lose Your Coins In 2020: Alternative Recovery Methods (#GotBitcoin?)
H.R.5635 – Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act of 2020 ($200.00 Limit) 116th Congress (2019-2020)
Adam Back On Satoshi Emails, Privacy Concerns And Bitcoin’s Early Days
The Prospect of Using Bitcoin To Build A New International Monetary System Is Getting Real
How To Raise Funds For Australia Wildfire Relief Efforts (Using Bitcoin And/Or Fiat )
Former Regulator Known As ‘Crypto Dad’ To Launch Digital-Dollar Think Tank (#GotBitcoin?)
Currency ‘Cold War’ Takes Center Stage At Pre-Davos Crypto Confab (#GotBitcoin?)
A Blockchain-Secured Home Security Camera Won Innovation Awards At CES 2020 Las Vegas
Bitcoin’s Had A Sensational 11 Years (#GotBitcoin?)
Sergey Nazarov And The Creation Of A Decentralized Network Of Oracles
Google Suspends MetaMask From Its Play App Store, Citing “Deceptive Services”
Christmas Shopping: Where To Buy With Crypto This Festive Season
At 8,990,000% Gains, Bitcoin Dwarfs All Other Investments This Decade
Coinbase CEO Armstrong Wins Patent For Tech Allowing Users To Email Bitcoin
Bitcoin Has Got Society To Think About The Nature Of Money
How DeFi Goes Mainstream In 2020: Focus On Usability (#GotBitcoin?)
Dissidents And Activists Have A Lot To Gain From Bitcoin, If Only They Knew It (#GotBitcoin?)
At A Refugee Camp In Iraq, A 16-Year-Old Syrian Is Teaching Crypto Basics
Bitclub Scheme Busted In The US, Promising High Returns From Mining
Bitcoin Advertised On French National TV
Germany: New Proposed Law Would Legalize Banks Holding Bitcoin
How To Earn And Spend Bitcoin On Black Friday 2019
The Ultimate List of Bitcoin Developments And Accomplishments
Charities Put A Bitcoin Twist On Giving Tuesday
Family Offices Finally Accept The Benefits of Investing In Bitcoin
An Army Of Bitcoin Devs Is Battle-Testing Upgrades To Privacy And Scaling
Bitcoin ‘Carry Trade’ Can Net Annual Gains With Little Risk, Says PlanB
Max Keiser: Bitcoin’s ‘Self-Settlement’ Is A Revolution Against Dollar
Blockchain Can And Will Replace The IRS
China Seizes The Blockchain Opportunity. How Should The US Respond? (#GotBitcoin?)
Jack Dorsey: You Can Buy A Fraction Of Berkshire Stock Or ‘Stack Sats’
Bitcoin Price Skyrockets $500 In Minutes As Bakkt BTC Contracts Hit Highs
Bitcoin’s Irreversibility Challenges International Private Law: Legal Scholar
Bitcoin Has Already Reached 40% Of Average Fiat Currency Lifespan
Yes, Even Bitcoin HODLers Can Lose Money In The Long-Term: Here’s How (#GotBitcoin?)
Unicef To Accept Donations In Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Former Prosecutor Asked To “Shut Down Bitcoin” And Is Now Face Of Crypto VC Investing (#GotBitcoin?)
Switzerland’s ‘Crypto Valley’ Is Bringing Blockchain To Zurich
Next Bitcoin Halving May Not Lead To Bull Market, Says Bitmain CEO
Bitcoin Developer Amir Taaki, “We Can Crash National Economies” (#GotBitcoin?)
Veteran Crypto And Stocks Trader Shares 6 Ways To Invest And Get Rich
Is Chainlink Blazing A Trail Independent Of Bitcoin?
Nearly $10 Billion In BTC Is Held In Wallets Of 8 Crypto Exchanges (#GotBitcoin?)
SEC Enters Settlement Talks With Alleged Fraudulent Firm Veritaseum (#GotBitcoin?)
Blockstream’s Samson Mow: Bitcoin’s Block Size Already ‘Too Big’
Attorneys Seek Bank Of Ireland Execs’ Testimony Against OneCoin Scammer (#GotBitcoin?)
OpenLibra Plans To Launch Permissionless Fork Of Facebook’s Stablecoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Tiny $217 Options Trade On Bitcoin Blockchain Could Be Wall Street’s Death Knell (#GotBitcoin?)
Class Action Accuses Tether And Bitfinex Of Market Manipulation (#GotBitcoin?)
Sharia Goldbugs: How ISIS Created A Currency For World Domination (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Eyes Demand As Hong Kong Protestors Announce Bank Run (#GotBitcoin?)
How To Securely Transfer Crypto To Your Heirs
‘Gold-Backed’ Crypto Token Promoter Karatbars Investigated By Florida Regulators (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto News From The Spanish-Speaking World (#GotBitcoin?)
Financial Services Giant Morningstar To Offer Ratings For Crypto Assets (#GotBitcoin?)
‘Gold-Backed’ Crypto Token Promoter Karatbars Investigated By Florida Regulators (#GotBitcoin?)
The Original Sins Of Cryptocurrencies (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Is The Fraud? JPMorgan Metals Desk Fixed Gold Prices For Years (#GotBitcoin?)
Israeli Startup That Allows Offline Crypto Transactions Secures $4M (#GotBitcoin?)
[PSA] Non-genuine Trezor One Devices Spotted (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Stronger Than Ever But No One Seems To Care: Google Trends (#GotBitcoin?)
First-Ever SEC-Qualified Token Offering In US Raises $23 Million (#GotBitcoin?)
You Can Now Prove A Whole Blockchain With One Math Problem – Really
Crypto Mining Supply Fails To Meet Market Demand In Q2: TokenInsight
$2 Billion Lost In Mt. Gox Bitcoin Hack Can Be Recovered, Lawyer Claims (#GotBitcoin?)
Fed Chair Says Agency Monitoring Crypto But Not Developing Its Own (#GotBitcoin?)
Wesley Snipes Is Launching A Tokenized $25 Million Movie Fund (#GotBitcoin?)
Mystery 94K BTC Transaction Becomes Richest Non-Exchange Address (#GotBitcoin?)
A Crypto Fix For A Broken International Monetary System (#GotBitcoin?)
Four Out Of Five Top Bitcoin QR Code Generators Are Scams: Report (#GotBitcoin?)
Waves Platform And The Abyss To Jointly Launch Blockchain-Based Games Marketplace (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitmain Ramps Up Power And Efficiency With New Bitcoin Mining Machine (#GotBitcoin?)
Ledger Live Now Supports Over 1,250 Ethereum-Based ERC-20 Tokens (#GotBitcoin?)
Miss Finland: Bitcoin’s Risk Keeps Most Women Away From Cryptocurrency (#GotBitcoin?)
Artist Akon Loves BTC And Says, “It’s Controlled By The People” (#GotBitcoin?)
Ledger Live Now Supports Over 1,250 Ethereum-Based ERC-20 Tokens (#GotBitcoin?)
Co-Founder Of LinkedIn Presents Crypto Rap Video: Hamilton Vs. Satoshi (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto Insurance Market To Grow, Lloyd’s Of London And Aon To Lead (#GotBitcoin?)
No ‘AltSeason’ Until Bitcoin Breaks $20K, Says Hedge Fund Manager (#GotBitcoin?)
NSA Working To Develop Quantum-Resistant Cryptocurrency: Report (#GotBitcoin?)
Custody Provider Legacy Trust Launches Crypto Pension Plan (#GotBitcoin?)
Vaneck, SolidX To Offer Limited Bitcoin ETF For Institutions Via Exemption (#GotBitcoin?)
Russell Okung: From NFL Superstar To Bitcoin Educator In 2 Years (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Miners Made $14 Billion To Date Securing The Network (#GotBitcoin?)
Why Does Amazon Want To Hire Blockchain Experts For Its Ads Division?
Argentina’s Economy Is In A Technical Default (#GotBitcoin?)
Blockchain-Based Fractional Ownership Used To Sell High-End Art (#GotBitcoin?)
Portugal Tax Authority: Bitcoin Trading And Payments Are Tax-Free (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin ‘Failed Safe Haven Test’ After 7% Drop, Peter Schiff Gloats (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Dev Reveals Multisig UI Teaser For Hardware Wallets, Full Nodes (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Price: $10K Holds For Now As 50% Of CME Futures Set To Expire (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Realized Market Cap Hits $100 Billion For The First Time (#GotBitcoin?)
Stablecoins Begin To Look Beyond The Dollar (#GotBitcoin?)
Bank Of England Governor: Libra-Like Currency Could Replace US Dollar (#GotBitcoin?)
Binance Reveals ‘Venus’ — Its Own Project To Rival Facebook’s Libra (#GotBitcoin?)
The Real Benefits Of Blockchain Are Here. They’re Being Ignored (#GotBitcoin?)
CommBank Develops Blockchain Market To Boost Biodiversity (#GotBitcoin?)
SEC Approves Blockchain Tech Startup Securitize To Record Stock Transfers (#GotBitcoin?)
SegWit Creator Introduces New Language For Bitcoin Smart Contracts (#GotBitcoin?)
You Can Now Earn Bitcoin Rewards For Postmates Purchases (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Price ‘Will Struggle’ In Big Financial Crisis, Says Investor (#GotBitcoin?)
Fidelity Charitable Received Over $100M In Crypto Donations Since 2015 (#GotBitcoin?)
Would Blockchain Better Protect User Data Than FaceApp? Experts Answer (#GotBitcoin?)
Just The Existence Of Bitcoin Impacts Monetary Policy (#GotBitcoin?)
What Are The Biggest Alleged Crypto Heists And How Much Was Stolen? (#GotBitcoin?)
IRS To Cryptocurrency Owners: Come Clean, Or Else!
Coinbase Accidentally Saves Unencrypted Passwords Of 3,420 Customers (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Is A ‘Chaos Hedge, Or Schmuck Insurance‘ (#GotBitcoin?)
Bakkt Announces September 23 Launch Of Futures And Custody
Coinbase CEO: Institutions Depositing $200-400M Into Crypto Per Week (#GotBitcoin?)
Researchers Find Monero Mining Malware That Hides From Task Manager (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto Dusting Attack Affects Nearly 300,000 Addresses (#GotBitcoin?)
A Case For Bitcoin As Recession Hedge In A Diversified Investment Portfolio (#GotBitcoin?)
SEC Guidance Gives Ammo To Lawsuit Claiming XRP Is Unregistered Security (#GotBitcoin?)
15 Countries To Develop Crypto Transaction Tracking System: Report (#GotBitcoin?)
US Department Of Commerce Offering 6-Figure Salary To Crypto Expert (#GotBitcoin?)
Mastercard Is Building A Team To Develop Crypto, Wallet Projects (#GotBitcoin?)
Canadian Bitcoin Educator Scams The Scammer And Donates Proceeds (#GotBitcoin?)
Amazon Wants To Build A Blockchain For Ads, New Job Listing Shows (#GotBitcoin?)
Shield Bitcoin Wallets From Theft Via Time Delay (#GotBitcoin?)
Blockstream Launches Bitcoin Mining Farm With Fidelity As Early Customer (#GotBitcoin?)
Commerzbank Tests Blockchain Machine To Machine Payments With Daimler (#GotBitcoin?)
Man Takes Bitcoin Miner Seller To Tribunal Over Electricity Bill And Wins (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin’s Computing Power Sets Record As Over 100K New Miners Go Online (#GotBitcoin?)
Walmart Coin And Libra Perform Major Public Relations For Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Judge Says Buying Bitcoin Via Credit Card Not Necessarily A Cash Advance (#GotBitcoin?)
Poll: If You’re A Stockowner Or Crypto-Currency Holder. What Will You Do When The Recession Comes?
1 In 5 Crypto Holders Are Women, New Report Reveals (#GotBitcoin?)
Beating Bakkt, Ledgerx Is First To Launch ‘Physical’ Bitcoin Futures In Us (#GotBitcoin?)
Facebook Warns Investors That Libra Stablecoin May Never Launch (#GotBitcoin?)
Government Money Printing Is ‘Rocket Fuel’ For Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin-Friendly Square Cash App Stock Price Up 56% In 2019 (#GotBitcoin?)
Safeway Shoppers Can Now Get Bitcoin Back As Change At 894 US Stores (#GotBitcoin?)
TD Ameritrade CEO: There’s ‘Heightened Interest Again’ With Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Venezuela Sets New Bitcoin Volume Record Thanks To 10,000,000% Inflation (#GotBitcoin?)
Newegg Adds Bitcoin Payment Option To 73 More Countries (#GotBitcoin?)
China’s Schizophrenic Relationship With Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
More Companies Build Products Around Crypto Hardware Wallets (#GotBitcoin?)
Bakkt Is Scheduled To Start Testing Its Bitcoin Futures Contracts Today (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Network Now 8 Times More Powerful Than It Was At $20K Price (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto Exchange BitMEX Under Investigation By CFTC: Bloomberg (#GotBitcoin?)
“Bitcoin An ‘Unstoppable Force,” Says US Congressman At Crypto Hearing (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Network Is Moving $3 Billion Daily, Up 210% Since April (#GotBitcoin?)
Cryptocurrency Startups Get Partial Green Light From Washington
Fundstrat’s Tom Lee: Bitcoin Pullback Is Healthy, Fewer Searches Аre Good (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Lightning Nodes Are Snatching Funds From Bad Actors (#GotBitcoin?)
The Provident Bank Now Offers Deposit Services For Crypto-Related Entities (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Could Help Stop News Censorship From Space (#GotBitcoin?)
US Sanctions On Iran Crypto Mining — Inevitable Or Impossible? (#GotBitcoin?)
US Lawmaker Reintroduces ‘Safe Harbor’ Crypto Tax Bill In Congress (#GotBitcoin?)
EU Central Bank Won’t Add Bitcoin To Reserves — Says It’s Not A Currency (#GotBitcoin?)
The Miami Dolphins Now Accept Bitcoin And Litecoin Crypt-Currency Payments (#GotBitcoin?)
Trump Bashes Bitcoin And Alt-Right Is Mad As Hell (#GotBitcoin?)
Goldman Sachs Ramps Up Development Of New Secret Crypto Project (#GotBitcoin?)
Blockchain And AI Bond, Explained (#GotBitcoin?)
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Outperformed Indexes In First Half Of 2019 (#GotBitcoin?)
XRP Is The Worst Performing Major Crypto Of 2019 (GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Back Near $12K As BTC Shorters Lose $44 Million In One Morning (#GotBitcoin?)
As Deutsche Bank Axes 18K Jobs, Bitcoin Offers A ‘Plan ฿”: VanEck Exec (#GotBitcoin?)
Argentina Drives Global LocalBitcoins Volume To Highest Since November (#GotBitcoin?)
‘I Would Buy’ Bitcoin If Growth Continues — Investment Legend Mobius (#GotBitcoin?)
Lawmakers Push For New Bitcoin Rules (#GotBitcoin?)
Facebook’s Libra Is Bad For African Americans (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto Firm Charity Announces Alliance To Support Feminine Health (#GotBitcoin?)
Canadian Startup Wants To Upgrade Millions Of ATMs To Sell Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Trump Says US ‘Should Match’ China’s Money Printing Game (#GotBitcoin?)
Casa Launches Lightning Node Mobile App For Bitcoin Newbies (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Rally Fuels Market In Crypto Derivatives (#GotBitcoin?)
World’s First Zero-Fiat ‘Bitcoin Bond’ Now Available On Bloomberg Terminal (#GotBitcoin?)
Buying Bitcoin Has Been Profitable 98.2% Of The Days Since Creation (#GotBitcoin?)
Another Crypto Exchange Receives License For Crypto Futures
From ‘Ponzi’ To ‘We’re Working On It’ — BIS Chief Reverses Stance On Crypto (#GotBitcoin?)
These Are The Cities Googling ‘Bitcoin’ As Interest Hits 17-Month High (#GotBitcoin?)
Venezuelan Explains How Bitcoin Saves His Family (#GotBitcoin?)
Quantum Computing Vs. Blockchain: Impact On Cryptography
This Fund Is Riding Bitcoin To Top (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin’s Surge Leaves Smaller Digital Currencies In The Dust (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Exchange Hits $1 Trillion In Trading Volume (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Breaks $200 Billion Market Cap For The First Time In 17 Months (#GotBitcoin?)
You Can Now Make State Tax Payments In Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Religious Organizations Make Ideal Places To Mine Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Goldman Sacs And JP Morgan Chase Finally Concede To Crypto-Currencies (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Heading For Fifth Month Of Gains Despite Price Correction (#GotBitcoin?)
Breez Reveals Lightning-Powered Bitcoin Payments App For IPhone (#GotBitcoin?)
Big Four Auditing Firm PwC Releases Cryptocurrency Auditing Software (#GotBitcoin?)
Amazon-Owned Twitch Quietly Brings Back Bitcoin Payments (#GotBitcoin?)
JPMorgan Will Pilot ‘JPM Coin’ Stablecoin By End Of 2019: Report (#GotBitcoin?)
Is There A Big Short In Bitcoin? (#GotBitcoin?)
Coinbase Hit With Outage As Bitcoin Price Drops $1.8K In 15 Minutes
Samourai Wallet Releases Privacy-Enhancing CoinJoin Feature (#GotBitcoin?)
There Are Now More Than 5,000 Bitcoin ATMs Around The World (#GotBitcoin?)
You Can Now Get Bitcoin Rewards When Booking At Hotels.Com (#GotBitcoin?)
North America’s Largest Solar Bitcoin Mining Farm Coming To California (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin On Track For Best Second Quarter Price Gain On Record (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Hash Rate Climbs To New Record High Boosting Network Security (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Exceeds 1Million Active Addresses While Coinbase Custodies $1.3B In Assets
Why Bitcoin’s Price Suddenly Surged Back $5K (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin’s Lightning Comes To Apple Smartwatches With New App (#GotBitcoin?)
E-Trade To Offer Crypto Trading (#GotBitcoin)
Bitfinex Used Tether Reserves To Mask Missing $850 Million, Probe Finds (#GotBitcoin?)
21-Year-Old Jailed For 10 Years After Stealing $7.5M In Crypto By Hacking Cell Phones (#GotBitcoin?)
You Can Now Shop With Bitcoin On Amazon Using Lightning (#GotBitcoin?)
Afghanistan, Tunisia To Issue Sovereign Bonds In Bitcoin, Bright Future Ahead (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto Faithful Say Blockchain Can Remake Securities Market Machinery (#GotBitcoin?)
Disney In Talks To Acquire The Owner Of Crypto Exchanges Bitstamp And Korbit (#GotBitcoin?)
Crypto Exchange Gemini Rolls Out Native Wallet Support For SegWit Bitcoin Addresses (#GotBitcoin?)
Binance Delists Bitcoin SV, CEO Calls Craig Wright A ‘Fraud’ (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Outperforms Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, Grows Whopping 37% In 2019 (#GotBitcoin?)
Bitcoin Passes A Milestone 400 Million Transactions (#GotBitcoin?)
Future Returns: Why Investors May Want To Consider Bitcoin Now (#GotBitcoin?)
Next Bitcoin Core Release To Finally Connect Hardware Wallets To Full Nodes (#GotBitcoin?)
Major Crypto-Currency Exchanges Use Lloyd’s Of London, A Registered Insurance Broker (#GotBitcoin?)
How Bitcoin Can Prevent Fraud And Chargebacks (#GotBitcoin?)
Why Bitcoin’s Price Suddenly Surged Back $5K (#GotBitcoin?)
Zebpay Becomes First Exchange To Add Lightning Payments For All Users (#GotBitcoin?)
Coinbase’s New Customer Incentive: Interest Payments, With A Crypto Twist (#GotBitcoin?)
The Best Bitcoin Debit (Cashback) Cards Of 2019 (#GotBitcoin?)
Real Estate Brokerages Now Accepting Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)
Ernst & Young Introduces Tax Tool For Reporting Cryptocurrencies (#GotBitcoin?)
Recession Is Looming, or Not. Here’s How To Know (#GotBitcoin?)
How Will Bitcoin Behave During A Recession? (#GotBitcoin?)
Many U.S. Financial Officers Think a Recession Will Hit Next Year (#GotBitcoin?)
Definite Signs of An Imminent Recession (#GotBitcoin?)
What A Recession Could Mean for Women’s Unemployment (#GotBitcoin?)
Investors Run Out of Options As Bitcoin, Stocks, Bonds, Oil Cave To Recession Fears (#GotBitcoin?)
Goldman Is Looking To Reduce “Marcus” Lending Goal On Credit (Recession) Caution (#GotBitcoin?)
Your Questions And Comments Are Greatly Appreciated.
Monty H. & Carolyn A.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.