Lifeboat Foundation

ConsenSys has acquired the private space outfit.

I recently become an advisor at Brain Space, a new #blockchain company creating a better system to deal with copyrights and patents. They have an ICO coming up here very soon. Here’s an article (with a video I did) with more info: https://medium.com/…/transhumanist-zoltan-istvan-becomes-ad… AND CHECK OUT THEIR WEBSITE: https://brain-space.io/

Zoltan Istvan, an American-Hungarian, began a solo, multi-year sailing journey around the world at the age of 21. His main cargo was 500 handpicked books, mostly classics. He’s explored over 100 countries — many as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel — writing, filming, and appearing in dozens of television stories, articles, and webcasts. His work has also been featured by The New York Times, Outside, Wired UK, Slate, Vice, San Francisco Chronicle, BBC Radio, CNN, CBS, RT, Fox News, the Travel Channel, and in much other media.

More about Zoltan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoltan-istvan-78aa2964/

Continue reading “Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan becomes advisor at ‘Brain Space’! Welcome!” »

At Quora.com, I respond to quetions on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency. Today, a reader asked “Will we all be using a blockchain-based currency some day?”.

This is an easy question to answer, but not for usual Geeky reasons: A capped supply, redundant bookkeeping, privacy & liberty or blind passion. No, these are all tangential reasons. But first, let’s be clear about the answer:

Yes, Virginia. We are all destined to move,
eventually, to a blockchain based currency.

I am confident of this because of one enormous benefit that trumps all other considerations. Also, because of flawed arguments behind perceived negatives.

Continue reading “Will we all be using a blockchain currency some day?” »

The bitcoin industry could push global temperatures past a 2 degree Celsius rise in less than two decades.

Maria Bustillos is founder of the blockchain supported publication, Popula. I stole the title of this post from her essay at Medium.com (linked below).* I hope that Maria considers it a tribute rather than title-plagiarism. Her article is blocked by a pay wall, so allow me to explain a concept that confounds even a Nobel Prize winning economist. My take on the issue is somewhat different than Ms. Bustillos.

The difficulty understanding or appreciating Bitcoin boils down to a misconception that the dollar is backed by something more tangible, such as gold, guns or the promise of redemption. Not only is this an illusion, but Bitcoin is backed by something far more tangible, intrinsic and durable.

The illusion that “real” value emanates from government coupled with a robust consumer economy has been woven into our DNA for millennia. But, the value we attribute to a Dollar, Euro, or Yuan is a result of conditioning rather than any intrinsic value. That same conditioning has led us to believe that there is something sane and inherent in a nation that controls its money supply and its monetary policy.

Most public works projects—power generation, space ships, or the telephone network—were controlled by government in the past. If not, they were regulated as a licensed monopoly. This creates a choke point, a lack of competition, and a gaping opportunity for inefficiency, mismanagement or graft. It defies a free market economy and it concentrates power in the hands of politicians. But, at one time, it seemed necessary.

Continue reading “You don’t understand Bitcoin because you think money is real” »

Biohacking raises a host of ethical issues, particularly about data protection and cybersecurity as virtually every tech gadget risks being hacked or manipulated. And implants can even become cyberweapons, with the potential to send malicious links to others. “You can switch off and put away an infected smartphone, but you can’t do that with an implant,” says Friedemann Ebelt, an activist with Digitalcourage, a German data privacy and internet rights group.

Patrick Kramer sticks a needle into a customer’s hand and injects a microchip the size of a grain of rice under the skin. “You’re now a cyborg,” he says after plastering a Band-Aid on the small wound between Guilherme Geronimo’s thumb and index finger. The 34-year-old Brazilian plans to use the chip, similar to those implanted in millions of cats, dogs, and livestock, to unlock doors and store a digital business card.

Kramer is chief executive officer of Digiwell, a Hamburg startup in what aficionados call body hacking—digital technology inserted into people. Kramer says he’s implanted about 2,000 such chips in the past 18 months, and he has three in his own hands: to open his office door, store medical data, and share his contact information. Digiwell is one of a handful of companies offering similar services, and biohacking advocates estimate there are about 100,000 cyborgs worldwide. “The question isn’t ‘Do you have a microchip?’ ” Kramer says. “It’s more like, ‘How many?’ We’ve entered the mainstream.”

Continue reading “Biohackers Are Implanting Everything From Magnets to Sex Toys” »

Many A.I. experts are concerned that Facebook, Google and a few other big companies are hoarding talent in the field. The internet giants also control the massive troves of online data that are necessary to train and refine the best machine learning programs.

Several start-ups hope to use the technology introduced by Bitcoin to give broader access to the data and algorithms behind artificial intelligence.

Globally decentralized protocols like Bittorrent, Bitcoin and Tor provide users a remarkable level of censorship resistance, privacy and communication freedom. But highly centralized local communication networks can block, throttle and log users of these protocols and work with governments and private firms to surveil and harass users. Centralized communication networks historically tend toward rent-seeking behavior, do a poor job at serving last-mile communities, and are fragile during natural and manmade disasters. This talk will review decentralized alternatives for local communication and demonstrate a new open source solution called TxTenna for sending offline Bitcoin transactions over a mobile mesh network.

Institute of Cryptoanarchy.

Invite to consolidation of efforts.

Top of Longevity and healthtech companies. AI, blockchain, digital health and mHealth are the top investment opportunities in aging world.