T-Series, a YouTube channel dedicated to Indian music videos, will soon surpass PewDiePie as the most subscribed account on YouTube, according to Tubular Labs. PewDiePie — a Swedish vlogger best known for his video game commentaries — has 67 million subscribers to his channel, inching just ahead of T-Series at 66 million subscribers.
But the latter is growing at a more rapid clip — T-Series expanded its subscriber base by 4.2 million in September against PewDiePie's 863,000 — and Tubular predicts the Bollywood channel will hit No. 1 next week. The data underscores the growing importance of India — and the greater Asia-Pacific (APAC) region — for US-based tech companies as the next major market for expansion.
Here's why India is a strategic international market, and how some major tech firms are starting to adjust their strategies:
The increasing western influence could spark Indian government to impose new rules and regulations on American tech companies. Last summer, the country's Supreme Court declared that Indians have a fundamental right to privacy, and pushed Parliament to pass a data privacy law, according to The New York Times. Potential legislation could hinder growth in India, or limit how user data can be used by tech, much like GDPR in Europe. In the meantime, global companies should start thinking about localization strategies to capture a piece of the market.
0 Comments
Sony Pictures Joins Greenfence to Put Goosebumps Collectible Trading Cards on the Blockchain10/24/2018
If you were a child growing up in the 90s you may have read Goosebumps, the children’s horror fiction novels written by American author R.L. Stine.
Books such as Say Cheese and Die, One Day at Horrorland, Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes, How I Got My Shrunken Head, and Vampire Breath are just a few of the classics. Since then the books have hit the big screen, with the first Goosebumps movie released in 2015.
Now, with the release of Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, Sony Pictures – who helped finance both films – has teamed up with Greenfence Consumer, a platform that builds blockchain protected mobile loyalty and rewards platforms, to distribute digital trading cards.
Through Websaver.ca, consumers can collect cards each day until the 5th of November where they have the chance to get a digital scratcher card and a new opportunity to collect and win. Some of the cards are pre-loaded with free cinema tickets while others are pre-loaded with money. It’s no longer a case of children trading cards in person, now they can do so via the blockchain. With the Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween GFT Authentic Digital Collectibles, it illustrates how crypto collectibles and non fungible tokens can be used for marketing, and the impact it can have on young children who spend their time online.
With the GFT brand – created by Greenfence, a blockchain platform and sister company to Greenfence Consumer – people are provided with an identifiable mark. This shows that the collectible is verfied, authentic, and authorised by the IP holder. Not only that, but value is placed on the cards due to their scarcity, desirability, and trust in the origin.
Speaking of the collaboration, Jamie Stevens, executive vice president of worldwide consumer products at Sony Pictures Entertainment, said that the company was intrigued with the work Greenfence Consumer has been doing and making blockchain user-friendly to a mass audience. “When they approached us about collaborating with Websaver.ca, the largest coupon site in Canada, we were excited to try the platform and to reach such a large number of our target audience,” Stevens added. “Greenfence Consumer created simple, fund sweepstakes that will engage parents and their children with our movie – which is perfect because Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is a really fun movie.”
Through a simple sign-in process, with no third-party requirements needed, Goosebumps’ fans can create a private digital wallet. When they sign-in, they will be presented with a Magic Book, as seen in the film, to store the cards they collect.
Stepping away from the hype of initial coin offerings (ICOs), Bitcoin, and the blockchain, Greenfence Consumer said that they instead focused on the development of blockchain-powered assets, with intrinsic value, which appeals to mass audiences. “Digital collectibles are a powerful and practical use case for the technology, and speaks to the diverse ways in which blockchain can be leveraged,” said Mimi Slavin, head of marketing and business development at Greenfence Consumer.
The value of cryptocurrencies might be down in the dumps, but demand for blockchain engineers has never been higher.
Blockchain engineers are making between $150,000 and $175,000 on average, according to global stats provided to CNBC by Hired, a San Francisco firm that helps clients recruit tech candidates. That's quite a premium over the $135,000 salaries that typical software engineers earn on average, according to Hired, which uses data from its service to compile the stats.
In fact, salaries for engineers with blockchain expertise are on par with developers who specialize in artificial intelligence, and higher than any other specialized engineering roles, Hired says.
Demand has grown as large companies have begun to work on projects that make use of the technology. Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft are among companies that have job listings at the moment for blockchain engineers.
Hired added blockchain as a sub-role to its service at the end of 2017, and since then, the company has seen postings for jobs that seek employees with blockchain as a desired skill rise by 400 percent.
"There's a ton of demand for blockchain," said Mehul Patel, CEO of Hired. "Software engineers are in very short supply, but this is even more acute and that's why salaries are even higher."
"When my title became 'principal blockchain engineer,' it became relentless," said Dustin Welden, who was hired in March by Seattle-based Globys to work on a project that makes use of the vanguard technology to integrate different accounting services. "I get interview requests every day on LinkedIn now."
At the moment, these type of jobs tend to carry titles such as back-end engineer, systems engineer or solutions architect, but more of these positions tend to list blockchain as a desired skill for the job, according to Hired. Engineers who want to specialize in blockchain should know networking, database design and cryptography computing skills, according to multiple blockchain engineers. Blockchain engineers code in a variety of programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, C++, Go, Solidity and Python, among others. "There's a mindset here of taking a long-term view of planning," Patel said. "If you're going to build blockchain technology, you have to get that talent."
Blockchain based cryptocurrencies all revolve around the principles of cryptoeconomics. The economics part allows developers to design a system so that actors are incentivized to make decisions in line with the goals of the greater good. This enables the future of the system to be secured whereas the past can be secured with cryptography. Many say that Bitcoin is widely regarded as the first successful cryptoeconomic mechanism
Cryptography’s goal is to secure the integrity and confidentiality of information and ensure decisions and actions cannot be manipulated by observers or malicious entities. Distributed systems such as blockchains need cryptography where unknown actors are a potential threat to the secrecy and safekeeping of information.
The process of transforming information into an incomprehensible intermediary piece of information which can be transformed back into its original state is called encryption and decryption. An early example of encryption is Caesar’s Cipher, a simple code developed by the Roman Empire in which letters in messages are shifted to the right by a previously set number known as a key. It allowed generals to send messages without third parties being able to read them. It did not prevent third parties destroying or manipulating the messages though.
A development of this simple beginning resulted in the cryptographic hash function (or simply hash) which is an integral part of the Bitcoin blockchain. Hashes are used to capture the identity of information without revealing anything about the information itself, thus providing a tamper proof system. We will cover this in more depth in another article.
Economics and game theory also plays a major role in cryptocurrency evolution and basically boils down to the following question; how do you determine the best choice to make with your limited resources in order to maximize your profit? Game theory aims to deduce how an actor will act in a given situation. This includes decisions which are influenced by the actions of others and the rewards and penalties associated with certain decisions.
In blockchains, tokens – or protocol defined cryptocurrencies, are used to incentivize the ‘players’ to act in a mutually beneficial way. The assumption is that the underlying objective for actors, such as miners, in a blockchain network is to maximize their profit, which equals their revenues minus their costs. The two primary methods of consensus methods currently used for most major cryptocurrencies is Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, again these will be covered in depth at a later date.
So at the very rudimentary level for a blockchain based cryptocurrency to function it needs the principles of economics to govern the participant’s actions and incentives, and cryptography to secure the information and prevent manipulation.
DELTA Summit, Malta’s blockchain conference held earlier this month, attracted more than 3,500 industry experts and government officials. At the conference, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, spoke on the impact of blockchain technology for driving economic growth.
Highlighting Malta's forward-thinking leadership, Zhao, stated, "This is a country where the leaders and the government understand blockchain technology." He encouraged more companies to learn about and explore establishing in Malta, where Binance announced the launch of the country's first fiat-to-crypto exchange earlier this year.
Malta is a country with regulators and government leaders who understand blockchain technology in depth. They understand the financial, business and technological impact for this technology and industry. Malta is also a great place to be based since the government leaders and regulators are very approachable, reasonable and want to have conversations with us to discuss what we need, Zhao told me. In addition to being at the forefront of blockchain innovation, industry leaders in Malta have also made it clear that they are avid supporters of the blockchain for social good movement.
Following the final night of DELTA summit, founders and representatives from Binance, TRON and the Blockchain Charity Foundation (BCF; the recently launched charity division by Binance) attended a private reception hosted by her Excellency, President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca of Malta. During the reception, TRON and BCF publicly shared their vision of blockchain technology for social good. The companies highlighted how the technology can help resolve current pain points for charitable institutions.
Sony announced today that it's jumping on the blockchain bandwagon for digital rights management (DRM), starting with written educational materials under the Sony Global Education arm of the business. This new blockchain system is built on Sony's pre-existing DRM tools, which keep track of the distribution of copyrighted materials, but will have advantages that come with blockchain's inherent security.
It's not shocking that Sony would step foot into blockchain territory in an era when companies like Kodak launch their own cryptocurrency. Given that Sony deals largely in digital properties it wants to protect, blockchain seems like a natural move.
â Because of the nature of blockchain, which tracks digital transactions in records that are particularly difficult to forge or otherwise tamper with, its application as a DRM tool makes sense and may also help creators keep tabs on their content. Currently, it's up to creators themselves (or the companies they create for) to monitor their contents' rights management. Sony's system could take over the heavy lifting of DRM.
The way blockchain works allows Sony to track its content from creation through sharing. This means that users of the blockchain DRM tool will be able to see --and verify-- who created a piece of work and when. Sony Global Education is the current focus of the DRM tool, but going forward, the company hints that the rest of its media --including entertainment like music, movies, and virtual reality content-- may be protected the same way.
With this news, Sony joins the likes of Walmart and Major League Baseball, who have also experimented with the blockchain game, and today's announcement could be the tip of the iceberg for the tech juggernaut.
As most kindergarteners know, sharing is caring. That's also true for grownups, particularly those with a Netflix account.
Altogether, 3 out of 4 Americans are sharing streaming, shopping and mobile accounts such as Netflix, Hulu, Uber, Spotify, Amazon Prime and Airbnb with their family, friends and even exes, according to a new study by Country Financial.
But they're not also sharing the tab. More than a third, or 36 percent, of users who share their accounts, log-ins and passwords aren't sharing the monthly costs with others, the survey of more than 1,000 adults in August found.
"Be careful that you're not the person holding the bag," said Doyle Williams, the executive vice president at Country Financial. Entertainment services, such as Netflix and Hulu, were the most commonly shared with at least one other person, followed by mobile phone plans and shopping accounts like Amazon Prime or Costco, Country Financial found.
However, most financial advisors agree that those types of monthly recurring expenditures are a great place to cut costs when times are tight.
And yet, when it comes to their subscription services, such as Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime, many people have no idea how much they are actually paying — or care. The vast majority, 84 percent, of consumers underestimated what they shell out on those monthly expenses, which also include dating apps, cable television and Wi-Fi, according to a separate report by the Waterstone Management Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm.
On average, consumers spend more than twice as much as they think they do: They estimated they cough up $111 a month on such services,when they actually average $237, Waterstone found in its survey of 2,500 people in May.
(It's worth noting that investing the difference of about $100 a month at 4 percent interest would amount to nearly $40,000 in savings in 20 years.) Still, regardless of the price tag, consumers said they were "happily hooked" on many of their subscriptions, particularly Amazon Prime (which now costs $119 a year), cable TV and music streaming services such as Spotify, the Waterstone report said.
On October 9, American financial services giant Mastercard was granted a patent for a method to partition a blockchain so that it can store multiple transaction types and formats. The filing published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reveals the details of the new system — not the first of the kind for Mastercard.
Why would you need to partition a blockchain?Simply put, different blockchains store their transactions in different blocks — say, Bitcoin (BTC) uses one kind of system to record data on its blockchain, while Ethereum (ETH) opts for alternative metrics.
Now, imagine a company that wants to use blockchain technology to store different kinds of data or use multiple cryptocurrencies for their business. It will have to run multiple blockchains, because, as per the recent patent’s filing, the transaction records are “often required to be of the same format and include the same types, and sometimes even sizes, of data.” Consequently, this company will also have to be able to afford all the extra resources and computing power involved. This problem might be caused by varying degrees of permissioned or open access of blockchains. On the one hand, there are non-permissioned blockchains that allow anyone to view record or be part of it — just like the aforementioned BTC and ETH with their public ledgers. On the other hand, they can also be permissioned — those require special permissions to read, access, and write information on them. They are more common among industry-level corporations, for whom security, identity and role definition are crucial.
Mastercard’s new patent claims the inflexibility of blockchains in terms of data formatting restricts the usage of permissions on permissioned blockchains:
“[...] an entity may want to operate a permissioned blockchain, where varying levels of permissions may be used for participation in the blockchain, such as by limiting the nodes that may add new blocks to the blockchain. However, because all transactions in a traditional blockchain are formatted similarly, the permissions may not be extended to access to the actual transactions in the blockchain … The patent authors say their partitioned blockchain could bypass such limitations and provide ‘enhanced usage of permissions’. So how would that work? Mastercard’s new system aims to expand blockchain’s utility by allowing blocks to receive data from “a plurality of subnets”.
“Subnets” are proposed partitions, which would be internally consistent but would interact in a wider, single system: “a subnet may have rules about data in a transaction record, the organization of the data, the size of each data value, and the hashing algorithms used in the formulation of the subnet’s merkle root.” Therefore, subnets would be able to receive information from different computing devices and allow to add data of any kind and size without following a standardized data format. However, the amount of subnets is limited, as the proposed system supports a maximum of three.
Tencent’s market value has been hammered this year by a confluence of factors, but the one that has investors and gamers most concerned is the tech giant’s regulatory woes.
China’s gaming industry – the world's largest – has effectively been left in limbo after authorities stopped approving new games amid a wider government reshuffle aimed partly at strengthening the Communist Party’s control over cultural policies. While the approval process “should restart soon” following the longer than expected suspension, Nomura analyst Shi Jialong wrote in a recent research note, Chinese gaming companies are expected to remain under closer scrutiny as authorities are increasingly concerned about undesirable content in online games.
Tencent, formerly Asia’s most valuable company, is bearing the brunt of the impact. The company still has yet to receive the necessary licenses to start charging for the mobile versions of the hugely popular battle-royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds(PUBG), or distribute the desktop version of the game in China. More recently, it was forced to pull Monster Hunter: World from its WeGame platform because the content didn’t meet regulatory requirements. The slowdown in gaming revenue led to a rare declinein profit in the second quarter that sent Tencent’s shares tumbling and wiped out almost $150 billion in the company’s market value since its peak in January.
“At this point in time, we don’t have visibility on when exactly the official approval will start yet,” Tencent President Martin Lau said in a recent analyst call. “We do believe it’s not a matter of whether these games will be approved for monetization, but a matter of when.”
|
CORWIN GROUPLatest News Archives
October 2021
CategoriesBy submitting this form, you provide consent for Corwin Group to email you occasionally with industry news and promotions. You may unsubscribe from these emails at any time.Testimonials & Disclaimer
Important Disclosure: By visiting this site, you agree to be bound by CorwinGroup’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. CorwinGroup.com is intended for accredited investors and otherwise qualified investors who understand and accept the risk associated with private investments. Investing in private investments on CorwinGroup involves risks, including, but not limited to market and industry risks, risks related to a specific property, currency fluctuation risk and liquidity constraints. Investments are not bank deposits and are not guaranteed. There is a potential for loss of part or ALL of the investment capital. CorwinGroup does not endorse any of the opportunities that appear on the site, nor does it make any recommendations regarding the appropriateness of particular opportunities for any investor. No correspondence or information provided on CorwinGroup.com or by any representative of CorwinGroup should be construed as a recommendation of a security. Each investor is advised to conduct his/her own due diligence as CorwinGroup does not provide any investment advice, business advice, or tax or legal advice. CorwinGroup is not registered under the Securities & Futures Act or the Financial Advisor’s Act. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission in the country nor any federal or state securities commission or any other regulatory authority has recommended or approved of the investment or the accuracy or inaccuracy of any of the information or materials provided by or through the website. Please read Corwin’s Terms of Use for more detailed terms and conditions to which users of CorwinGroup are subject. |