Crypto Adoption

"Every country has the government it deserves."

Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle merite .......... (Joseph de Maistre 1753-1821, French writer and diplomat)

War has significant and multifaceted effects on the economy of the countries involved. While the specific impacts can vary based on the scale, duration, and nature of the conflict. 

Here are some common effects.

Destruction of Infrastructure- War often results in the destruction of physical infrastructure, including roads, bridges, buildings, and utilities. The costs of rebuilding and reconstruction can be immense, diverting resources away from other economic activities.

Displacement of Population- War can lead to mass displacement of people, causing a strain on resources and services. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees may require humanitarian aid, affecting both the host country's economy and the economies of the countries providing assistance.

Impact on Human Capital- Loss of life, injuries, and psychological trauma during war affect the labor force. This can lead to a shortage of skilled workers, a decline in productivity, and increased healthcare and social support costs.

The current war shows different leadership style but similar crypto adoption pattern. Sanctions is crushing the economy and GDP is set to drop by 22% this year alone. The destruction of facilities is also affecting the agricultural exports and hence destabilizing the global food ecosystem.  

The above is a classic scene for an increasing demand in the economic possibilities of blockchain.

Blockchain technologies are the future, and any effort to ban them—or even excessively intervene in their operations—would meet the same fate as other state attempts to circumscribe behavior. Restricting cryptocurrencies at the moment, when they are facilitating innovations and brimming with potential, would undermine financing of critical sectors.

Top 10 Countries in Crypto Adoption Index:

1. Ukraine

2. Russia

3. Venezuela

4. China

5. Kenya

6. United States of America

7. South Africa

8. Nigeria

9. Columbia

10. Vietnam

Government should play a role; a tailored regulatory environment that allows for the live testing of innovative capital markets related products, solutions and services with the potential to deepen and develop the capital markets prior to launching into the mass market.

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The Coins in Blockchain

"Its the economy stupid".........(1992 Bill Clinton Presidential Campaign)

Blockchain technology is known today because of platforms like Bitcoin, which enable the peer-to-peer transfer of assets. On more advanced blockchains, like Ethereum, you can transfer assets, create other forms of assets, and also record votes as a point of coordination.

While many see Bitcoin as a store of value, most see Ethereum as a platform for launching new cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications.

Use cases of  Blockchain (Ethereum)

Smart contracts and dApps: A smart contract could reward a musician when a music dApp plays their song or grant a loan to someone using crypto as collateral in a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol.

Tokenize anything: Blockchain (Ethereum) allows users to create their own unique, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can represent anything from virtual assets to real-world commodities. Users can then trade these tokens or use them to power other decentralized applications.

Create a new currency: Blockchain (Ethereum) lets anyone create their own cryptocurrency with a few lines of code. For example, USD StableCoin (USDC) runs on Ethereum.

Transaction fees. When you send an Ethereum-based token or use the network, you pay transaction fees in ETH.

Individuals will gravitate towards options that give them more flexibility or value.  So a currency that is accepted universally and preserves purchasing power will always be chosen over one that is limited to a region and prone to devaluation. 

If regulation does not keep up with innovation, many will start having parallel financial lives.

Scenerio 1:

Ngozi wants to rent a flat for N5mm - she says to the estate agent;

Femi, I will pay you N2mm in naira and N3mm in stablecoins.

The Owner is happy - He only books N2mm in revenue and a lower tax bill but he also 

has stablecoins that he can deploy to pay his Chinese supplier. 

This is how a shadow system will be built up over time.

Payment infrastructure will soon be built that is powered by crypto with the complexity hidden from the user. 

Scenerio 2:

Compare sending money to 0x23463959CFeC064f5e5aE68FB9bf5735D204d12 ( A blockchain address)- even if you copy and paste, there is no bank to verify if you make a mistake, the funds are simply lost.

But now you can send Ethereum to femi.eth and it will get delivered

Increased cross-border payments. 

Scenerio 3:

You want to pay your Chinese supplier in $. 

Your local currency will first be converted into USD then yuan. So you suffer transaction costs twice. Then the bank will put a fee on this. 

Now you can send your Chinese supplier stablecoins (USDT) 

1 USDT is instantly changeable for $1 via crypto-exchanges.

Every day, SMEs and individuals are making this choice not because they are economic saboteurs but because using stablecoins makes their life easier, and opens up opportunities that didn’t exist before.

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Celebrate Each Day

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me  "..........Abraham Lincoln 1809 -65 (letter to A.G Hodges)

Each day is an S Curve of its own. I encourage you to reflect of them this way. 

Take a few moments in the morning before engaging in any task. 

— even before reading emails 

— to meditate through the day to come. 

What is the most important objective today?  This is the mountaintop, the summit of the day’s S Curve. 

No matter what the day requires, keep this critical objective the top priority. The morning routine is your base camp to attack the climb. 

At the end of the day, celebrate the achievement, or your progress. 

B.J. Fogg says celebration can be as simple as looking in the mirror and claiming, “Victory.”

Feyzi Fatehi, CEO of Corent Technology said; “I always told myself when you feel too comfortable, you have to move….It’s like in climbing; you can’t just camp somewhere. You can rest. You can look around. You can take a deep breath, have a snack. But you’ve got to keep moving, otherwise you get complacent.”

Celebration is an Event, not a Destination. 

It’s the little pause where we survey the Journey. We can have a snack, with our colleagues or friends, rather than alone in our office. We rest, we catch our breath and we contemplate on the next opportunity ahead. 

The fact that the interval is brief doesn’t make it unimportant, or harmless if neglected. 

Celebrating an achievement great or small is a platform for further achievement. 

We don’t just celebrate the win; we celebrate to win.

Excerpt; Whitney Johnson, Author Smart Growth

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Seasons Greetings

 Enjoy Your Holidays

The debate between talent and character is a longstanding one, particularly in the 

context of personal and professional development. Each has its merits and significance, 

and their relative importance can vary depending on the context and individual goals. 

Let's explore both concepts and their differences:

Talent:

Innate Abilities: Talent refers to innate abilities or natural aptitudes that a person possesses. These abilities can encompass a wide range of areas, such as sports, arts, music, mathematics, or other skills. People often display talent from an early age, and it may come more effortlessly to them compared to others.

Potential for Excellence: Having talent can provide a head start and the potential for excellence in a particular field. It can make it easier to acquire advanced skills and achieve high levels of performance with less effort compared to those who lack that innate talent.

Limitations: Talent alone does not guarantee success or long-term achievement. It's possible to have talent but not capitalize on it through hard work and dedication. Additionally, talent in one area may not necessarily translate to success in other aspects of life.

Character:

Personal Qualities: Character refers to a person's moral and ethical qualities, including attributes like honesty, integrity, perseverance, resilience, empathy, and self-discipline. It encompasses how a person behaves, treats others, and approaches challenges and setbacks.

Work Ethic: Character is closely tied to work ethic and the determination to put in the effort required to develop skills and achieve goals. Even without natural talent, a strong character can lead to success through perseverance and dedication.

Long-Term Success: While talent can provide an initial advantage, character often plays a 

more critical role in long-term success. It enables individuals to navigate obstacles, 

adapt to changing circumstances and maintain positive relationships with others.

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Smart Tech and Adoption

The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village......(Marshall Mcluhan, The Gutenber Galaxy, 1962)

Smart technology and a sustainable framework is a necessity for every modern city

Three main factors are spurring acceleration in the adoption of IoT solutions:

• Technology. There has been a remarkable advances in technology with affordable sensors that enables deployment of IOT at scale. Sensors now cover the entire spectrum, from visual to sound. Computing is fast enough, storage is bigger; battery power has improved. AI and machine learning are faster for more granular insights for automated decision from sensors.

• Networks. Telecom companies with fourth-generation (4G) networks have spread to cover more people at higher performance and 5G networks are rapidly being deployed. There is visible improvements matched with connectivity options associated with capacity, speed, latency and reliability.

• Perceived value proposition. Cities see real value in deploying the IoT, a core enabler of the digital transformations and sustainability drives under way in companies and public institutions around the world. The $1.6 trillion in economic value generated from IoT solutions in 2020/21 exemplifies the technology’s ability to deliver value at scale.

All is not favorable for large-scale adoption IoT solutions. 

Three factors are acting to dampen growth:

• Interoperability. the IoT landscape contains numerous proprietary ecosystems. Many companies and public-sector bodies are struggling to get to scale without significant IT work to overcome the numerous system barriers.

• Installation. is one of the biggest cost issues in the deployment of IoT solutions at scale. every at-scale deployment requires customization, if not an entirely bespoke solution. 

• Privacy. is now the core issue for many consumers. 

Companies are grappling with what customers are willing to give up in return for lower prices or special offers in a retail setting.

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Perfect Waste of Electronics

Nothing, like Something, happens anywhere..........(Philip Larkin, English Poet, 1955)

Every device ever produced has a carbon footprint and E-waste is now the fastest-growing waste stream in the world. 

E-waste is defined as anything with a plug, electric cord or battery from toothbrushes to laptops that has reached the end of its life, as well as the components that make up these end of-life products. 

E-waste is also called waste electrical or electronic equipment (WEEE)

E-waste is often incinerated or dumped in landfills and sometimes pulled apart by hand or burned by the world’s poorest, to the detriment of health and the environment. E-waste can be toxic, is not biodegradable and accumulates in the environment, in the soil, air, water. 

E-waste may represent only 2% of solid waste streams, yet it can represent 70% of the hazardous waste that ends up in landfill.

One solution is Electronics as a Service;

The process/service called dematerialization, and is happening in many aspects of people’s lives. 

- In the Netherlands, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) sells lighting as a service, 

- In the UK, Rolls Royce sells airplane engine time rather than jet engines. 

Current leasing and rental models can also help with dematerialization;

With monthly contracts for smartphones, televisions, allow global consumers to access the latest technology, particularly products with short lifespans and without high up-front costs. Access to innovation and upgrades continues unabated, while barriers to usership have also lowered. With this new ownership model, the manufacturer has an incentive to ensure that all the resources are used optimally over a device’s lifecycle including recycling. 

There is also an incentive to keep the value in products for as long as possible, extend the life of devices, repair them when necessary, eliminate waste and reduce the impact that electronic products have on the environment.

Instead of a one-off transaction, the business model shifts to one of an ongoing service, and the subscription economy. This builds a much closer and stronger customer relationship. 

The rise of cloud computing has also helped with dematerialization, by moving the capability of devices away from hardware purchase and into remote data centers, hardware capabilities become less important relative to connectivity and services. 

In turn, this would increase product life cycles and decrease waste in the system.

This same e-waste represents a huge opportunity;

There is 100 times more gold in a ton of mobile phones than in a ton of gold ore. 

Furthermore, harvesting the resources from used electronics produces substantially less carbon-dioxide emissions than mining in the earth’s crust. 

Hence, all of the medals presented this summer at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were extracted from old phones.

However; Working electronic goods and components are worth more than the materials they contain. Therefore, extending the life of products and re-using components brings an even larger economic benefit (including mining of digital currency). 

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Intangibles of Wealth

The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth in the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.............George Gilder

Our economies are getting richer despite using less physical material. Aluminium drinks cans, declined in weight six-fold between 1996 and 2011. A modern mobile phone is smaller lighter and more powerful than 1980s handset. The blockchain crypto currency is being adopted as a store of value over traditional Fiat money

In business, 2011 was the first time for decades that the world’s largest company was not an oil company. By 2016, six firms based on digital technologies – Apple, Tencent, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook – were among the top ten largest on earth.

The breakthroughs in solar and wind power ridding us of the shackles of barrels of oil and tons of coal

Tesla, the electric car company managed to reduce the amount of cobalt, a distressing mineral to acquire, in its batteries by about 60% between 2012 and 2018.

Rather than building a new car, we build a digital model of a new car and run computational simulations of the new car through the power of AI. Less cost and less energy-intensive 

AI also enables researchers to expand quickly by analyzing vast data sources, many diseases and treatments in order to encompass the complexity of biology. One reason for the early vaccine breakthrough for Covid19

AI is not a single technology or product, but rather a set of techniques, mathematical models and algorithms with the ability to extract insights from large datasets, identify patterns and predict the probabilities of potential outcomes of complex, multivariate situations. 

AI is often confused with automation, but the two are distinct but related: automated systems perform repetitive tasks following a programmed set of rules, while AI identifies patterns and insights in data and “learns” to do this more accurately and effectively over time.

AI can also be classified by the forms of input data: audio, speech, images, videos, data gained from sensors, data collected manually or robotically.

In summation; the value of your product is not in its tangible heft, rather it is in the intangibles, the know-how, the design, the engineering, the specification and the brand.

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