I prefer investing 50% of my monthly salary on bitcoin, mostly now that every body on this forum is holding their coins. I hope what am doing isn't a bad idea for not saving funds?

BTW I am not sure how you link depreciation with inflation.

The Mastercard-Immersve partnership uses decentralized protocols to settle real-time cryptocurrency transactions on outlets accepting Mastercard payments online.

A partnership between Web3 payment protocol Immersve and payments giant Mastercard will allow users to make crypto payments on digital, physical and the Metaverse worlds. USDC tokens — a US dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Circle — will be used to settle transactions on Mastercard’s network.

The Mastercard-Immersve partnership uses decentralized protocols to settle real-time cryptocurrency transactions on outlets accepting Mastercard payments online. Users will be able to use their existing Web3 wallets to make direct crypto payments without relying on a third party for collateral.

Instead, Immersve will partner with a third-party settlement provider and allow its users to use USDC for all purchases. Once the transaction is successful from the user’s end, USDC will get converted to fiat before settling on Mastercard’s network.

Users will be able to access the feature through popular Web3 wallets and use their private keys to approve payments. In this regard, Jerome Faury, CEO at Immersve, shared optimism toward crypto use cases, stating:


Moreover, Web3 wallets and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols can integrate into Immersve’s APIs and smart contracts to transact anywhere Mastercard is accepted.

Over several years, Mastercard has fostered numerous partnerships to stay relevant in the crypto ecosystem. One such initiative was Mastercard’s partnership with crypto exchange Binance to launch a prepaid card in Latin America.

The card allows real-time crypto-fiat conversions for 14 tokens in Brazil. At the time of the launch, perks included up to 8% cash back in crypto on eligible purchases and zero fees on some ATM withdrawals.


https://cointelegraph.com/news/mastercard-to-allow-crypto-payments-in-web3-via-usdc-settlements

Reignmakers PGA Tour will launch in March, letting users battle for millions of dollars in prize money via Polygon NFT player cards.

After establishing NFT-based fantasy sports games around the National Football League (NFL) and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), sports betting firm DraftKings announced today that it will launch an NFT fantasy golf game in partnership with the PGA Tour.

DraftKings will roll out the Reignmakers PGA Tour experience in March, following the same kind of format as with its previous NFT projects. Digital cards based on PGA Tour golfers will be minted and sold via Polygon, an Ethereum sidechain network, and users can compete for millions of dollars’ worth of cash prizes.

Just like in traditional fantasy sports games, users will earn points based on the real-world performance of the players in their respective lineups. But as in DraftKings’ other Reignmakers games and in rival games like Sorare, users will build their lineups by buying and trading digital cards based on the real-world athletes.

It’s an extension of DraftKings’ existing alliance with the PGA Tour, which began in 2019 and includes a traditional fantasy golf experience without NFT elements. Beth Beiriger, DraftKings’ senior VP of marketplace operations, told Decrypt that golf is the firm’s fourth-largest fantasy sport and seventh most-bet-on sports league.

“We already see a high level engagement from these users,” she said of DraftKings golf fans, adding that Reignmakers lets the firm “take gamified NFTs and really push our users over into the fantasy space a little bit more.”

Reignmakers PGA Tour will begin its launch with a premium Greens Pass NFT on March 1, which Beiriger said will provide “preferred access, as well as season-long rewards” for players. It’s similar to the field pass NFT from Reignmakers Football, which is officially licensed by the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) but not the league itself.

The first set of PGA player cards will launch on March 6, then, ahead of the first in-game event—The Players Championship—from March 9-12. The NFT-driven experience should be largely familiar to players of other Reignmakers games, but Beiriger said to expect specially-themed future NFT drops around major PGA Tour tournaments.

This is the PGA Tour’s second NFT collaboration, following a deal announced with Tom Brady’s NFT startup Autograph last September that has yet to bear fruit.

Autograph’s NFTs will be digital collectibles themed around on-the-course moments, according to Tom Jeffs, the PGA Tour’s VP of media business development, while DraftKings focuses on player cards with in-game utility. He believes that there’s enough room for both projects to thrive in the sports NFT world.

Broadly, Jeffs told Decrypt that the PGA Tour sees potential for NFT projects to boost fans’ affinity for players through ownership of their respective assets, citing pros like Jon Rahm and Max Homa that battled it out last weekend at the Genesis Invitational.

“You are living and breathing by that player’s success, and not only for that week in which you are participating in a competition,” said Jeffs. “Now you can't wait to see the next time Max is going to tee it up, because you know that you have him in your roster—so you feel vested.”



https://decrypt.co/121786/draftkings-pga-tour-nft-golf-game

Various projects supporting censorship resistance and Bitcoin education have received funding from the HRF.

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has granted 2 billion satoshis, approximately $475,000, from the Bitcoin Development Fund to 10 global projects. The funding will support areas such as censorship-resistant communication, Bitcoin education in authoritarian regimes, core development and building local communities and education, with a focus on Africa and Southeast Asia. The grants include $100,000 to Qala, a fellowship program training the next generation of African Bitcoin and Lightning developers, allowing the program to continue their 13-week fellowship and sponsoring six Qala fellows to attend the Oslo Freedom Forum.

The HRF has also awarded $75,000 to the Africa Bitcoin Conference, the largest Bitcoin-focused conference in Africa, and $50,000 to William Casarin for his work on Nostr, a censorship-resistant, open-source and decentralized social network platform. Additionally, $50,000 went to Bitcoin for Fairness, which focuses on raising awareness of Bitcoin for disadvantaged communities and in authoritarian states. Another $50,000 went to Vasil Dimov, a top-20 contributor to Bitcoin Core, to ensure continued development and stability of the Bitcoin protocol.

The remaining $25,000 grants were awarded to Emmanuel Bronshtein for his contributions to Wallet Scrutiny, Exomunia to expand Bitcoin educational resources, Ekenimoh Elyan for EasePay, and Bitcoin Myanmar for financial freedom education. HRF has allocated over $2.2 million in BTC and USD to more than 70 developers, educators and open-source initiatives worldwide since early 2020. The organization continues to raise support for the Bitcoin Development Fund, with the next round of gifts to be announced in May 2023.

"Bitcoin is a powerful tool for human rights defenders around the world," and these grants support their belief that "financial freedom is a human right," Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer of HRF, said. "We are proud to support the amazing work of these individuals and organizations who are using Bitcoin to fight for human rights and freedom, especially in regions where it's needed most."

HRF is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law. Proposals for support can be submitted to dev.fund@hrf.org, and more information can be found on HRF's website.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/hrf-donates-2-billion-satoshis-bitcoin-projects

In the country I spend most of my time (country A), you can access interest-only credits. You only pay the interest during the mortgage and then the loan value at the end.

How does it work in your region? Do you think there should be a ban on "interest only" to favour live-in owners?

Cardano (ADA) continued to gain this week after a brief pullback in early February. In the past 72 hours, the cryptocurrency surged over  17% to tap $0.41 amid a market-wide lift-off before recoiling on Sunday. At press time, ADA was exchanging hands at $0.40, down 0.77% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.

ADA’s attractive price growth can be traced to several developments around Cardano’s ecosystem. According to a report by crypto research firm CryptoCompare, the Total Value Locked (TVL) on the Cardano blockchain rose 49.9% in January, reaching levels last seen in August 2022. This growth was led by decentralized protocols, with lending protocols such as Meld and Indigo growing by over 48% and 76%, respectively. At the time of reporting, Cardano’s TVL sat at about $126M, as seen on DefiLama, showing that growth continued in the first half of February.

The report also highlighted Cardano’s price growth in January, stating that “this was the best-performing month for the asset since August 2021.” The No. 7 cryptocurrency by market cap benefited from a market-wide crypto lift-off last month which saw its price recover by just over 70% from a record bottom of $0.25. Cardano’s attractive price action was accompanied by a spike in trading activity, with volumes on centralized exchanges rising roughly 158% to $9.87B.

“This was the first increase in trading volume for the asset in thirteen months, a much-needed rebound after hitting the lowest monthly trading volume since October 2020 in December 2022,” said the firm

Earlier this month, the much-awaited Djed stablecoin went live on the Cardano blockchain, sparking a wave of excitement for the community. Barely two weeks after launch, the so-called overcollateralized stablecoin has garnered over 31 million Cardano (ADA) coins as backing. As of Feb 16, there were 31,200,698.37 ADA in its base reserves, accounting for a 514% collateral ratio. Furthermore, the market capitalization of Djed had increased from $1.7M at launch to $2.17M  at press time, suggesting some adoption of the pegged asset.

During a Twitter Spaces session on Tuesday, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao noted that the crypto industry would likely “look for other options” as regulators tighten the nose around stablecoins. This suggests that non-dollar-backed stablecoins such as Djed and other algorithmic stablecoins may begin to emerge, propelling the entire crypto industry towards complete decentralization.


https://zycrypto.com/cardano-ada-sees-immense-price-bump-in-18-months-as-ecosystem-grows-exponentially/

AMD is now within striking distance of claiming a third of the CPU market, as the company benefited from inventory corrections and price increases by rival Intel, according to the latest data from Mercury Research. The gain in share also came as the processor market as a whole suffered the largest quarterly and annual declines in the market research firm's 30 years of tracking such data.

"While Mercury wasn't tracking the market during the 1985-1986 PC downturn, the market revenue decline for 2022 was worse than Intel's results for either of those years, likely making the current processor downturn the worst in PC market history on both a unit and revenue basis," Mercury Research said.

It's all relative, of course, and people are still buying PCs even if at a reduced clip. Not including ARM hardware, unit shipments in 2022 tallied 374 million with $65 billion in collective revenues. Those numbers represent declines of 21 percent and 19 percent, respectively.

"While this appears very gloomy, note that overall processor market revenue was still higher in 2022 than any year ever with the exception of 2020 and 2021," Mercury Research pointed out in its report.

According to the report, the bulk of the downturn in shipments can be attributed to excess inventory shipments in the previous quarters. As a result, CPU suppliers are "deliberately limiting shipments" to clean out existing stock. It's a challenge for suppliers because they're also contending with lower demand for PC processors and weakening macroeconomic concerns, according to the report.

"Desktop processor shipments were down significantly after the large boost in the third quarter. This is likely due to Intel's price increases driving pull-in of sales into the third quarter followed by a steep decline in the fourth quarter. While both Intel and AMD saw much lower desktop CPU shipments, Intel's fell significantly more resulting in AMD gaining share in a shrinking market," Mercury Research said.

The market research firm caveats that this is more reflective of Intel's inventory position rather than end user demand. Additionally, some of AMD's market share gains came from IoT and semi-custom products, the latter of which takes into account chips in game consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.



Image link:  https://i.ibb.co/QCbFBCn/amd-cpus.jpg

Even factoring all that in, Mercury Research says the totality of AMD's rise in market share (5.7 points last year) "is probably legitimate share gains rather than inventory movement." It's a bit of a mixed message, but the end result is that AMD's overall x86 CPU share at the end of 2022 climbed to 31.3 percent, up from 28.5 percent in the previous quarter and 25.6 percent at end of 2021.

This came entirely at the expense of Intel, which still dominates the market with a 68.7 percent share, though that's down from 74.5 percent from a year ago.

There's a wider gap and less movement if looking at the lucrative server market. Intel still dominates there as well, accounting for 82.4 percent of all server CPUs at the end of 2022. That's virtually unchanged from the previous quarter (82.5 percent), albeit down from 89.3 percent at the end of 2021.

That left AMD with a 17.6 percent share of the market, versus 17.5 percent the third quarter of 2022 and 10.7 percent from the previous year.

https://hothardware.com/news/amd-steals-intels-lunch-money-increasing-cpu-market-share

Digital ruble payments will be launched for retail purchases and peer-to-peer transactions, a central bank official said.

The Bank of Russia's central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital ruble, is ready for its pilot phase, said the bank's deputy governor, Olga Skorobogatova, on Friday.

The project will be launched for peer-to-peer transfers between individuals and for retail purchases, Skorobogatova told journalists during a fintech conference in Russia. "The pilot will work on real operations for real people, but only for a limited number of them, with the 13 banks that have signaled they're ready," she said, according to Russian news agency TASS.

The central bank will pilot the CBDC with sets of selected clients, she added. After the pilot, the Bank of Russia will decide on the ways to expand the project, according to TASS.
Russia's central bank first proposed a CBDC project in October 2020 when it published a consultation paper outlining potential designs of the digital ruble. In later comments, the bank said the project can help decrease the Russian economy's dependency on the U.S. dollar and mitigate the impact of foreign sanctions on the country since its invasion of Ukraine.

The pilot was initially expected to go live in 2021 but provoked some concerns in the Russian banking community that rolling out infrastructure for the digital ruble will be burdensome for lenders and make the banking system more centralized and less diverse. The Bank of Russia later promised to modify the concept so that it doesn't hurt the traditional system.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/17/bank-of-russia-to-pilot-cbdc-in-april/

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has added to its already-massive holding of Apple stock. In a filing today, the conglomerate revealed that it expanded its stake in Apple by over $3 billion during Q4 2022. AAPL remains Berkshire’s single largest equity investment.

Feb. 14th 2023

With this expansion, Berkshire Hathaway’s stake in Apple is now worth over $137 billion. The shares owned by Buffett’s conglomerate represent 5.8% of total AAPL shares outstanding, according to data compiled by StreetInsider.

Its investment in Apple is Berkshire’s largest holding, representing 39% of disclosed assets for Q4 2022. It also received a $210.6 Million dividend check from Apple in Q4 2022.

At the same time, Berkshire also decreased its holdings in TSMC, one of Apple’s most important supply chain partners. TSMC is the chip fabricator on all of the Apple Silicon chips used in iPhone, Mac, iPad, and more. Berkshire only made its initial investment in TSMC in Q3 2022.

According to today’s filings, Berkshire reduced its stake in TSMC by a whopping 86%, dropping from 60 million shares down to 8.29 million shares valued at $617.7 million.

In fact, Berkshire only increased its holdings in three companies: Apple, Paramount, and construction materials company Louisiana-Pacific.

Warren Buffett on AAPL

While Buffett avoided investing in technology for decades, he shifted his strategy after he started viewing Apple as a lifestyle brand with high consumer loyalty. The conglomerate began buying the stock in 2016 and has since grown its stake to over $100 billion.

At one point, Buffett even said that he would “love to own 100%” of Apple. This, of course, is impossible, but it signals how solid of an investment he thinks Apple is. Tim Cook has said that Apple is “thrilled to have Warren and Berkshire as a major investor,” and he’s always “greatly admired” the investor.

Despite being a major investor, however, Buffett only switched from a flip phone to the iPhone with the launch of the iPhone 11. He traveled to California to meet with Cook, who “spent hours trying to move me up to the level of the average two-year-old.”

And let us not forget the time Apple partnered with Berkshire Hathaway on a bizarre iPhone game: “Warren Buffett’s Paper Wizard.”


https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/14/warren-buffetts-berkshire-aapl-stock/

Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves talks about cryptocurrencies, NFTs, metaverse, and much more, during the promotion of John Wick 4, saying the principle behind cryptocurrency is amazing.

In an interview with Wired, Keanu Reeves noted “I think the principle, the ideas behind an independent currency, are amazing. These are amazing tools for exchanges and distribution of resources. So to pooh-pooh crypto, or the volatility of cryptocurrency, it’s only going to make it better in terms of how it’s safeguarded.”

When asked about how his popular movie the Matrix just looks more and more wildly prophetic by the day seeing how AI is taking over, Reeves responded “People are growing up with these tools: We’re listening to music already that’s made by AI in the style of Nirvana, there’s NFT digital art.”

Reeves added “It’s cool, like, Look what the cute machines can make! But there’s a corporatocracy behind it that’s looking to control those things. Culturally, socially, we’re gonna be confronted by the value of real, or the nonvalue.”

Speaking about his concerns about the metaverse, Reeves noted “It’s this sensorium. It’s spectacle. And it’s a system of control and manipulation. We’re on our knees looking at cave walls and seeing the projections, and we’re not having the chance to look behind us. Or to the side.”

Reeves stated that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has created more land, and now there’s more land for sale. “It’s wealth creation and its opportunity,” he added.

Last June Keanu Reeves launched Futureverse Foundation with Fluf world NFT along with artist Alexandra Grant. Regarding the foundation, Reeves stated it’s something his partner, Alexandra Grant, is really interested in, so he’s kind of riding her coattails.

“I helped set up the launch. We’re trying to take this technology that people are interested in and give opportunities to artists with different viewpoints,” the Matrix star added.


https://www.cryptotimes.io/keanu-reeves-says-principle-behind-cryptocurrency-is-amazing/

The economic fight is over power in the world.
Eu and china want to move over Green energy.
The russia and USA power Will be dominant if old oil is king Same goes for AE arab countries.
Eu and china are much more advanched in green energy then russia or USA.

The age group ( old people) can't queue on the ATM and also they are not conversant with cashless technology. So they have to resort to their old way of buying and selling method. That the exchange of goods to goods so that they can survive. Barter

Some reports indicate that the costs of running an electric car are actually lower than the costs of running a car with an internal combustion engine.
So, will this goal be achieved by the year 2035? Will the cars be more efficient and at a good price compared to current prices, or is it a policy that may take decades?

Riots erupt in Nigerian cities as bank policy leads to scarcity of cash

Angry protesters attack ATMs and block roads in frustration at lack of new banknotes days before election

Wed 15 Feb 2023

Rioters have attacked bank ATMs and blocked roads in three Nigerian cities as anger spilled on the streets over a scarcity of cash, just days before the country’s general election.

Nigeria has been struggling with a shortage in physical cash since the central bank began to swap old bills of the local naira currency for new ones, leading to a shortfall in banknotes.

Banks have limited access to cash for withdrawals because of a scarcity of the new notes, and some businesses refuse to accept old naira, causing huge queues, angering customers and disrupting businesses.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/angry-protests-erupt-across-nigeria-against-scarcity-of-cash

Man who took hostages demanding his own money becomes public hero in Lebanon

Public rallies around gunman who surrendered after bank agreed to give him funds for father’s medical bills

11 Aug 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/11/gunman-takes-hostages-at-beirut-bank-to-try-to-free-his-trapped-savings

If bitcoin crash today, what will be your fate? Poor or rich. Most people on the platform have submitted all their life savings to bitcoin investment. There was once a man in my area who sold his house to invest in a local platform called BARAZAR in 4 months missive the so-called BARAZAR was shoot down and now he does not have a cottage. So I ask again if bitcoin crashed today what will be your description rich or poor?

Also because I buy and sell to myself, I am the house in this game, if he got greedy and play my game, he is not the house and may not win.

But should you invest in stock market? I dunno, you can try to beat the house.