[The ICO frenzy: First Major Wave in Crypto Adoption]

Bitcoin was created over a decade ago and remained quite popular among certain subgroups in the tech and gaming communities, but didn’t gain mainstream popularity until a few years ago. It has come a long way from being associated with illegal activities, for example, being used  in the infamous dark web site, Silk Road, the first modern-day darknet marketplace — to being used as a legitimate payment method by some of the largest companies on the planet, including AT&T. In just over a decade, blockchain, the underlying technology behind Bitcoin, has given rise to a new category of financial instruments: cryptocurrencies. Over the years, we have seen a greater push for mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies. If the ICO boom was the buzz around town in 2017, and the bear market was prominent in 2018, institutional investment in the crypto industry is definitely the theme for 2019.

The ICO frenzy: First Major Wave in Crypto Adoption

The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) frenzy in 2016 and 2017 remains a very significant event in the cryptocurrency industry to date. Initial coin offerings, through the help of blockchain, allowed thousands of companies to raise funds from the general public rather than going the more traditional route of institutional investment or venture capital. To date, ICOs represent the most prominent use case of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts on the blockchain: fundraising. Within a span of two years, this use case brought in hundreds of thousands of people into the cryptocurrency space. By December 2017, the Bitcoin price had soared to almost $20,000 and the cryptocurrency market cap crossed the $800 billion mark. What was most interesting about this rally was the fact that up until then, institutional involvement in cryptocurrency investing was minuscule. And while ICOs managed to entice some, most people remained sceptical as the space still lacked a high degree of genuineness and accountability, bringing us to the next development in the space. After the 2018 bear market, companies are now focused on building products and services, with some shifting their focus to institutional investors.

Institutional Investors: The Need of the Hour

Institutional investors have remained the “gold standard” in determining the quality of investments. Institutional investors control large chunks of financial assets and have substantial resources at their disposal. Over the decades, institutional investors have built a reputation for themselves, since they have had access to companies that an average person does not. The 2013 crypto bubble was driven by technocrats and dark web trawlers, while the 2017 rally was led by speculative retail traders. Several research studies, as well as the involvement of reputable financial institutions deciding to take the plunge into crypto, are popularising the narrative around institutional investment and its potential impact, which is why most companies today believe that the growth in 2020 will be a result of financial institutions which are diversifying their portfolios and adding cryptocurrency trading to the mix.

Fidelity Investments, the financial giant that has over a trillion dollars worth of assets under management, revealed plans to launch its own cryptocurrency division after it saw huge interest from institutional investors and recently managed to receive the trust license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). According to a study conducted by Fidelity, the findings saw that most investors (72%) preferred to buy crypto investment products, while 57% prefered to buy crypto assets directly and another 57% preferred to buy an investment product that comprised digital asset companies.

Another big institutional player that has found its way into the crypto-sphere is Intercontinental Exchange whose long-awaited Bitcoin futures platform, Bakkt, was launched in October. After a very underwhelming start, the daily volume of the futures contract has gone up substantially.

Gradually, we are witnessing the entrance of some of the biggest players in traditional financial markets into the crypto space, and as a result, it has not taken long for the markets to deem that institutional investors will bring in the next wave of the crypto bull market. The question, however, remains: Can institutional investment help in the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies?

How Institutional Investments Catalyse Mainstream Adoption

Institutional investors and top institutions make the news. In order to understand the impact of big-name firms entering the crypto-sphere, one may only need to look at Facebook’s Libra coin, that was announced earlier this year. In a short period of time, the Facebook-led stablecoin has garnered so much attention that lawmakers in the United States and around the world are holding hearings to review the project. Just a month after the whitepaper was launched, eToro commissioned a study in the US in which it found that 16% of respondents had heard of Libra, while only 12% of respondents had heard of Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency which has existed since 2015 and had a market cap of over $15 billion at the time of writing. If there is one lesson we can learn from Libra, it is the fact that big companies make the news — and that interests more people. The launch of Facebook’s Libra coin has been considered by many as one of the reasons for this year’s Bitcoin price rally. Keeping aside the viability of the stablecoin, there is no denying that it has been successful in bringing more people to the discussion table and fostered the conversation around cryptocurrencies, which is key to eventual mainstream adoption.

Institutional Investors = Increased Confidence

In addition, institutional investors instill confidence. Not everyone understands the financial markets and certainly, not everyone understands blockchain and cryptocurrency. Institutional investors not only invest large amounts of their capital, but also put their reputations at stake. Confidence is key when it comes to investing. People will not put their money into something they do not clearly understand unless they see some reputable and genuine source doing the same. General public sentiment has gradually evolved over the past few years. Keeping the volatility of cryptocurrency aside, people have become more confident about the future of tokenisation and blockchain technology. Furthermore, some of the world’s most reputable universities, including the likes of Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of North Carolina, have invested in at least one cryptocurrency fund. Morgan Creek Digital made headlines by being the first US pension fund to invest directly in cryptocurrencies. Crypto requires credibility to achieve mainstream adoption and institutional investment has the potential to act as the catalyst.

Promoting Overall Growth

Furthermore, institutional investments foster overall growth in the market, from liquidity to product offerings to greater access. In order to entice institutional investors, an increasing number of companies are introducing crypto-based products. Almost all of the top cryptocurrency exchanges offer margin trading or at the very least, plan to offer margin trading in the near future. We have also started seeing the launch of more derivative crypto-based products. Bakkt, a major exchange operated by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and supported by several major companies, including the likes of Microsoft and Starbucks, is gradually gaining traction for its Bitcoin futures. Another leading exchange, Deribit, based in Amsterdam, is well known for being the first true Bitcoin options exchange. Issues around security are being addressed by several companies in the custodian business. The crypto community has seen some pretty bad examples of poor custodianship, such as when exchanges are hacked and lose millions of dollars of investors’ money, or when the exchanges themselves turn out to be fraudulent. The more we see institutional investors enter the space, the higher the bar is raised for stricter standards of custodianship. Institutions catalyse this process because they have a reputation to uphold.

Crypto’s Kryptonite: Volatility

Volatility in crypto markets is not a new phenomenon and is likely to be one of the major reasons why people do not invest in cryptocurrencies. Even though the cryptocurrency market cap is well over the $180 billion mark (at the time of writing), it still remains quite insignificant as compared to traditional financial markets. And since the liquidity is thin, any sudden price movements have the ability to turn the market on its head. Therefore, a growing interest from institutional investors presents in itself the opportunity for larger capital injection into the crypto markets, which in turn could help solve the volatility concerns to some extent. Coinbase, one of the most popular crypto exchanges, has also remained bullish on institutional investment in cryptocurrency. The company has a whole suite of products catered towards institutional investors, including custodial services to a professional trading platform. In August 2019, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted that Coinbase was receiving $200-$400 million in new crypto deposits from institutional customers.

Recent developments in the crypto industry cannot be overlooked or simply pushed away. Until now, cryptos have mainly attracted individuals — tech enthusiasts, early adopters, “geeks” and retail traders — and while this has allowed the industry to grow initially, the fuel from this group of investors can only drive the growth so far. In the long term, mainstream adoption and large-scale growth require large capital infusion and legitimacy which institutional investors can bring with them.

https://www.etoro.com/blog/market-insights/can-institutional-investment-become-a-catalyst-in-promoting-the-mainstream-adoption-of-cryptocurrencies/

[What is Litecoin?]

Litecoin is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies, with a market cap of $2,909,664,595. Its blockchain has been running consistently since its creation all the way back in 2011. Litecoin is a growing blockchain, that currently runs transactions that are all made publicly. However, there’s a growing need for privacy coins, as users become more and more concerned about confidentiality. Let’s take a closer look at Litecoin’s confidential transactions.

What is Litecoin?
Litecoin is an open-source blockchain and cryptocurrency, that originated from a software fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. Litecoin was created in October 2011, by a former Google engineer, Charlie Lee. The concept behind the project was to create a digital asset that addressed many of Bitcoin’s issues, and improved on areas where Bitcoin was weak. You can buy Litecoin on most exchanges, or trade it peer-to-peer on marketplaces like Vertex.Market.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccv31JU0-MU&t=3s

Privacy Coins
Now let’s take a closer look at Litecoin’s confidential transactions:

Privacy coins enable transactions that hide certain types of data, so that a person’s purchases and wealth cannot be tracked. Litecoin’s founder, Charlie Lee, announced the plan to explore confidential transactions back in 2019, stating “now that the scaling debate is behind us [for Bitcoin and Litecoin], the next battleground will be on fungibility and privacy.” The Litecoin Improvement Proposal (LIP) has now been published, but Litecoin is still looking for input from community members before they start developing new code.

https://twitter.com/LTCFoundation/status/1186652141089427456

The LIP will introduces the “opt-in MimbleWimble (MW) as a new transaction format through extension blocks (EB).” Extension blocks will run alongside mainchain blocks. Private transactions will happen inside the extension blocks, and users can use MimbleWimble to move their coins in and out.

This might sound a little complicated, but it’s actually fairly simple. By offloading the private part of the transaction onto the EB side-chain, the Litecoin upgrade can take place with a backward-compatible soft fork upgrade. There’s zero risk of the upgrade initiating a hard fork, which would result in two versions of Litecoin (LTC).

Using a sidechain actually simplifies the process. Litecoin can implement the upgrade without having to make major changes to the core blockchain. Users can opt-in to private transactions, choosing whether to make their movements confidentially or available on the public ledger.

How will this benefit Litecoin?
Like most coins, Litecoin is currently striving for mainstream adoption. However, as privacy coins become more popular, Litecoin will need to provide increased financial privacy. Increased fungibility protects users from having their transactions or balances available on the blockchain, which allows criminals to more readily identify targets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBh-69V2b00

The nature of a transparent ledger means that transaction history can be publicly traced. This automatically hinders Litecoin’s fungibility. By implementing MimbleWimble, and providing private transactions, Litecoin improves on its fungibility. This will likely help in the onboarding of new users, particularly as concerns around privacy and confidentiality grow.

Mainstream adoption, and adoption by businesses, will help Litecoin grow. Litecoin is currently the 6th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, but this new protocol could change that. With the cryptocurrency industry becoming increasingly competitive, Litecoin needs to keep up with the rest. Privacy coins like Monero and Dash are doing really well, as crypto-holders see the need for increased discretion when making transactions. Public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum will likely rule the roost for the time being, but things could change in the future. If Litecoin wants to keep up, it’ll need to make some changes - that’s where MimbleWimble and the Extension Block come in.

User input
Now that we’ve taken a closer look at Litecoin’s confidential transactions, maybe you’re wondering how you can help. Litecoin is still looking for input from community members, and is also seeking donations to fund David Burkett, the developer who will be working on implementing the Extension Block and MimbleWimble code. If you’d like to assist, you can donate to the Litecoin Community Crowdfunding System. Private transactions on the Litecoin blockchain will benefit the entire community, encouraging mainstream adoption and increased fungibility. Otherwise, continue trading Litecoin on Vertex.Market, check out the buy offers here.

https://vertex.market/blog/litecoin-transactions-en

[About the Crypto Fire Alliance]

The Australian bush fires reached a critical level a long time ago - and the rest of the world is only beginning to play catch up. Australia has been burning since early September, and it’s not really showing any signs of slowing down. Since then, approximately 1 billion animals have died - including koalas, whose population is already greatly threatened. In response, cryptocurrency influencer and native Aussie, Naomi Brockwell, has launched the Crypto Fire Alliance, aimed at raising funds to help combat the growing devastation. Crypto to the rescue!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=566&v=QkDtovAKzrY&feature=emb_logo

About the Crypto Fire Alliance
“Australia is in the grips of an ongoing bushfire emergency,” the Crypto Fire Alliance explained. “We’re challenging the global cryptocurrency community to unite, help out, and showcase the strength and compassion of our great ecosystem.” CFA funds are being managed by auditors Finder and HiveEx, and Blockchain Australia, TraderCobb.com, and Coinstop are among CFA’s 6 supporting members.

Any funds raised will go to the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief, as well as Recovery Fund, NSW Rural Fire Service Association, and WIRES. The relief will go to human and wildlife victims, as well as environmental damage relief. Australia is in great need of help - over 3000 homes have been burned, two dozen people are dead, and at least 1 billion animals have succumbed to the fires, and yet the Australian government is doing little to help.


New South Wales (NSW) has been hit the hardest by the fires, with more than 100 fires raging in the region. NSW authorities have pinned the blame on around 200 people, who have allegedly had a role in helping the fires spread. However, activists on the ground claim that climate change is to blame for the situation entirely, or at least for exacerbating the ferocity and length of the flames.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J__4V0ujlaU

Many Australian politicians are refusing to acknowledge climate change’s role in the bush fires. Scott Morison, Australia’s PM, has finally acknowledged climate change’s impact, but also said that, “job-destroying, economy-destroying, economy-wrecking targets and goals” on climate change “won’t change the fact that there have been bushfires or anything like that in Australia”.

Backbench MP Craig Kelly denied the link between bushfires and climate change in an interview on British television, and the conservative media have focused on other factors, like the amount of hazard reduction burning that was carried out, and the activities of arsonists. Unfortunately for them, both of those claims have been proven to be inflated.

Bushfire experts argue that normally hazard reduction is an effective way to control the fires, but climate change is making it increasingly challenging to carry out controlled burns.

Why have the fires been so bad?
Extreme heat and dry weather have had a major impact on the fires - and 2019 was the hottest year on record for Australia. Average temperatures were 1.52°C above the 1961-1990 average. The second hottest year was 2013, followed by 2005, 2018 and 2017.

New South Wales broke its record by an even wider margin, with temperatures reaching 1.95°C above average.

Australia has also had its driest year on record in 2019, with 40% less rainfall than average - based on data going all the way back to 1900.

At this point, we don’t know the extent of the damage that the fires have done. So, it’s time for crypto to come to the rescue! Crypto Fire Alliance has just started, so there’s still a long way to go. Check it out and donate here.

Climate change is only going to make things worse
According to Global Forest Watch Fires, there were more than 4.5 million fires worldwide, spanning larger than 1 square kilometer. That’s 400,000 more than 2018. Climate change is only going to make things worse. As the world heats up, we’ll see more fires of this devastating nature - and our wildlife and our homes will be decimated. It’s time for crypto to come to the rescue - the cryptocurrency community can now step up and provide donations to help combat the devastation.

https://4king.com/crypto-to-the-rescue/

[The research]

There’s been a lot of discussion around regulating crypto over the last couple of years, and strides have started being made. Keeping an eye on crypto news is a good idea for any trader, but news about regulations seems to be a pretty big one. So, how will new laws impact digital assets? Let’s take a look at how regulation affects the crypto price.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1149472282584072192

The research
The introduction of new regulations drives down the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, says new research.

According to a 2020 paper published in the journal Research in International Business and Finance, news of increased cryptoasset regulations tends to have a negative effect on the price of Bitcoin. The report looks into five news categories: anti-money laundering, exchange controls, issuance (securities) regulations, and state-backed cryptocurrencies - all of which seemingly drive prices down.

The report looked at 120 regulation news events, reported on by traditional media outlets like Reuters, BBC, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times. All of the events were reported on during 2017 and 2018, and belonged to at least one of the five categories.

The study’s authors estimate that the effect of each regulatory event impacts the price of around 300 cryptocurrencies - mainly of Bitcoin, just because of its huge market cap. They discovered that four out of the five events had a significant effect on prices, with anti-money laundering and issuance regulation being the most significant. However, reports of risk concerns from government don’t seem to impact the prices.

Exchange regulations have caused prices to drop by around 1.78%. News of harsh AML regulations caused a dip of 2.46%, but the largest was issuance regulations, which caused prices to drop by an average of 2.67%.

Contrastingly, news of the relaxation of a specific regulatory policy is seen as good news by the markets and is generally followed by an appreciation in cryptocurrency value. Take President Xi Jinping’s October 2019 speech for example - Bitcoin’s price surged above $10,000 after the speech, a level it hadn’t reached for more than a month.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a53YgjlGM2c

Why news about regulation?
Cryptocurrency holders generally value freedom above all. News of encroaching regulations of digital assets threatens the foundations of the entire cryptoasset industry. While regulations are meant to reduce risk and help wider adoption in the long run, early crypto holders often eschew government interference - and for good reason. Considering that the crypto industry is still in its early stages, we’ll have to see how it matures for us to gather the true impact of regulations on the market.

Overall, regulations are likely to drive mass adoption, and drive up prices in the long run. Still, it’s pretty clear that crypto holders aren’t happy about increased regulation. The findings of this study also have a pretty huge impact for investors, who should keep an eye out for regulatory news when trading Bitcoin and other crypto. Regulatory news could drive the price up or down, and knowing which way it’ll go is a huge boon.

Now that we’ve taken a look at how regulation affects the crypto price, you might be looking to trade. Check out marketplaces like Vertex.Market, for a world leading peer-to-peer trading experience which includes over 1000 tradable cryptocurrencies without the need of KYC and over 30 payment methods, including local and international bank transfers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay5EDAIeaj4

New regulations

We’re going to be seeing a lot more cryptoasset regulations in the future. The faster the industry advances, the sooner regulations will tighten. Still, we’ve seen how regulation affects the crypto price, and it’s not pretty. News of certain types of regulation drives down the crypto price, and others make it increase. Traders can be fickle - but it’s only natural that heightened regulation would make crypto stalwarts nervous. Cryptocurrency should be decentralized by nature, but governments and financial institutions are worried and are trying to gain some control. How they’ll continue to expand regulation remains to be seen, but the end result will probably turn the cryptoasset industry into something that it’s actively been trying to avoid. Either way, if you’re a trader, it’s probably best to keep a keen eye on regulatory news in the digital asset industry.

https://vertex.market/blog/how-regulation-affects-crypto-en

[The Study]

Researchers from Google, Northwestern University, the NHS, and Imperial College London have discovered that Google’s Deepmind AI outperforms radiologists in detecting breast cancer. The researchers trained the AI on thousands of mammograms, which resulted in the tech being able to identify breast cancer cases better than the radiologists who had made the initial assessment. In the fight against cancer, AI is winning - sometimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj2YSLPn6OY&t=4s

The Study
When analysing 18,000 patients from the US, the research showed that there was a 5.7% reduction in false positives, and a 9.4% reduction in false negatives. In the UK, the data showed a 1.2% reduction in false positives, and false negatives reduced by 2.7%. The researchers had a much bigger database to work from in the UK, screening more than 100,000 patients.  

The researchers then pitted the AI system against a group of six highly skilled radiologists. They were tasked with interpreting 500 cases, all randomly selected. Here the AI outperformed the radiologists too, however it did miss some cases that the team had highlighted as positive for cancer. So, in the fight against cancer, AI is winning - sometimes.

As the study’s abstract notes, the system is “...…capable of surpassing human experts in breast cancer prediction.” However, it’s unlikely that AI will replace human radiologists in the field anytime soon.

Machine learning algorithms are more than capable at completing repetitive tasks (like going over thousands of x-rays), it’s not quite ready to start popping up in hospitals and clinics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik9ps7L-p2E

According to Dr Hugh Harvey, managing director of digital health consulting firm, Haridan Health, “AI is perfect to support breast cancer screening. Machines are perfect for doing mundane, high-volume tasks.” He continued, “All of this early research is all well and good. To actually get it deployed into the clinic is a whole lot of work.”

An AI system will also still need to be approved by the FDA, and would likely have to connect with a hospital’s health records, and would need constant surveillance (human or otherwise) to ensure that its findings are maintaining their accuracy.

Will it be implemented?
Frankly, the study does have its limitations. Yes, researchers had a large and diverse data set, but all of the images were from a single manufacturer’s mammography system. The actual demographics of the study (as in the patients) was also not too diverse, and the study should have used a better variety of the population to enable any real accuracy. This technology will also have to be tested in clinical trials before it’s ever implemented.

“The real world is more complicated and potentially more diverse than the type of controlled research environment reported in this study,” wrote Dr. Etta Pisano, chief research officer for the American College of Radiology, in an analysis of the research. She added that earlier versions of this technology, like computer-aided cancer detection, showed good initial results. But when it came to real-world application, the systems just weren’t up to scratch.

Still, what benefits can this tech have? Can it reduce patient mortality, or make radiologists more efficient? Will it reduce costs? So far, it looks promising, but we haven’t seen anything concrete.

“Those are the papers we’ll see in the next couple of years,” Harvey noted. “The only industry we can look at to give us an estimate of how long (approval) takes is the pharmaceutical industry. People predict the digital sector will go faster, but we still have to do these prospective studies.”

https://twitter.com/DeepMindAI/status/1212456717306540033

It won’t be in the field anytime soon
While this report is very promising, the actual technology won’t be in the field anytime soon. Yes, in the fight against cancer, AI is winning - sometimes. But, really, only sometimes. Will this technology have enough real world benefits to pass clinical trials, or will it never see the daylight. AI has the power to change lives, and save lives, but we’ll never see this project come to fruition unless they expand on their research. Still, this research has certainly highlighted one important thing - there’s nowhere AI can’t reach.

https://4king.com/ai-is-winning-sometimes/

[Iran’s response]

Gen. Qassam Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was killed in a drone strike by US forces early on Friday morning. Soleimani’s death was confirmed by the Pentagon, which stated that the drone strike was ordered by President Donald Trump, to deter “future Iranian attack plans.” According to them, "Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” Granted, this probably isn’t news to anyone at this point. But, how does the assasination of Qassam Soleimani and the weaponization of drones point to a future in warfare that is arguably more terrifying than anything we’ve seen before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CklTPwSGA1w

Iran’s response
The drone strike that killed Soleimani was in response to pro-Iran protestors attacking the US embassy in Iraq. The protests are a result of US-led airstrikes, and drone strikes in the region.

Trump has taken a hard stance on Iran throughout his presidency. He previously withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal, signed under President Barack Obama in 2015.

Late on Friday morning, Trump tweeted that Soleimani had “killed or badly wounded” thousands of US citizens, and that he was “both hated and feared” in Iran.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1213096352072294401

He continued on Twitter, "They are not nearly as saddened as the leaders will let the outside world believe. He should have been taken out many years ago!"

Top Iranian officials have condemned the attack, vowing retaliation. President Hassan Rouhani said that the drone strike was a “cowardly act'' and “another sign of America’s frustration and helplessness in the region.”

https://twitter.com/HassanRouhani/status/1213009152093696005

Trump’s drone strike has kicked off a domino effect of threats that could result in a deadly war between the US and Iran. When rich people declare war, it is the poor that suffer. Trump has made a move that will cost the lives, not just of military personnel, but American and Iranian citizens. Those who wanted nothing to do with the conflict in the first place. It seems that, once again, Trump has acted without a plan or any foresight - letting his ego get in the way of reasonable and targeted decision making. Threatening to bomb Iranian cultural sites proves that the assasination of Qassam Suleimani was not in response to a “plan” to attack United States’ interests. Rather it was an outright declaration of war, planned or not.

The issue here is not that Suleimani was a threat to the United States - he clearly was. It’s that Trump, once again, took matters into his own hands, lied to the American people and congress, and is attempting to use this farce of a war to distract from his failures as a president.

Weaponization of drones
Let’s look into the assassination of Qassam Suleimani and the weaponization of drones.

It should not go unmentioned that Suleimani’s assasination was facilitated by a drone strike. Drones are pilotless aircrafts, manoeuvred remotely from a distance of up to thousands of miles. Drones have been used in combat for years now, but they’re becoming more advanced - and vastly more deadly.

The United States used to rely on conventional methods, like deploying soldiers. As technology evolves, the threat of war and terrorism changes. Thus, US foreign policy becomes more militarized, and warfare techniques in counterterrorism evolve too. The boundaries of war have changed to include nuclear weapons, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), known to the general population as military drones. Drones enable the US to target threats with greater specificity, more precision, and increase the number of potential targets while reducing damage to surrounding areas and civilians. Drones can essentially be a force for a more ethical style of war, but not when you have Trump manning the helm.

The US Army is developing UAVs that can spot and target vehicles, sites and people with little to no human involvement. AI drones raise serious questions over the legal and ethical ramifications of such actions. Military drones like MQ-9 Reaper are currently guided by pilots (remotely), who have the final say in where a bomb or missile is launched. Just like the introduction of the AI Kalashnikov, AI drones prove complicated when it comes to the ethics of modern warfare.

UAVs have their benefits; with fewer boots on the ground, less civilian casualties, and damage to property among them. However, the impersonal nature that modern warfare has adopted makes committing acts of war, and war crimes, just that much easier.

Suleimani’s assassination was conducted via drone strike. Would the US have been able to conduct this operation without the assistance of drones? Targeting and killing “terrorists” in this manner proves so much easier with UAVs, but also highlights serious ethical questions regarding the use of drones in this kind of operation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xYjXrqHUg

US and Iran on the brink of war
Top Pentagon officials reported that there was little to no change in Iran’s behavior towards the US in the last few weeks - so why did Trump decide to go with the most extreme measure? Assassinating Suleimani was arguably a risky move - did drones make it that much easier? The assassination of Qassam Suleimani and the weaponization of drones has highlighted the importance of implementing clear guidelines in modern warfare. How far will we get before this all implodes? The US and Iran are on the brink of war, and this time there’s likely no going back.

https://4king.com/weaponization-of-drones/

I got scammed on LocalBitcoins and started looking for new p2p trading platforms in South Africa and came across Vertex Market (https://vertex.market ) as they posted on BitcoinTalk. Here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5194938.new#new


Has anyone used them before? I have already made a couple of small trades which all worked but nothing over $100 because I’m a little scared putting in large amounts on a platform I just found.

The platform works great but I just want to know if anyone else has used it and if anything, bad has happened? It will probably be my go-to trading platform but need to confirm first.