“Privacy is the foundation of free societies.”

“Sort of the ultimate Tamagotchi, the blockchain is a globally distributed nest egg.”

One of the biggest challenges to the adoption of blockchain technology is education.It is a highly technical topic that one cannot fully learn and understand in one briefing, meeting or discussion. It truly takes a concerted study.

Challenges in adopting blockchain

However, it took a while for people to realize how useful it was. Similarly, Bitcoin is the currency that will power blockchain technology in this century.But before you can understand its usefulness, you need to know how to use it and earn your first bitcoins.

The internet is the backbone of our modern world

You might be skeptical of a seller who refuses to use banks or notaries, and for good reason. Banks have long served as the middleman between buyers and sellers by authenticating transactions and ensuring that property titles are correct. However, there’s no guarantee that the bank itself is trustworthy. Banks can go bankrupt and lose money by making bad deals, companies like Uber sell customer data without getting consent from customers, and governments are capable of going bankrupt themselves.

Trusting banks

<ul><li>The internet is a powerful tool for communication, but it lacks the security necessary to conduct big transactions. However, there’s a new technology that might change this perception of the internet in the future.</li><li>Blockchain technology is a way of managing transactions. It makes it possible for people to bypass traditional banking authorities by making all transactions transparent and decentralized so that everyone involved can see what’s happening with the database.</li><li>Blockchain is a system of verification that makes it impossible for hackers to make changes without being noticed. It also does<warningtag>n’t allow old entries to be changed, since no one entity controls the blockchain.</warningtag></li></ul>

Internet and security

“We believe that blockchain technology could be an important tool for protecting and preserving humanity and the rights of every human being, a means of communicating the truth, distributing prosperity, and—as the network rejects the fraudulent transactions—of rejecting those early cancerous cells from a society that can grow into the unthinkable.”

“Creating a complete picture of a company financial health, by looking at periodic financial statements, is like turning a hamburger into a cow”

“Every cultural industry is up for disruption, and the promise is that creators get fully compensated for the value they create.”

“Let the code speak for itself.”

“ I’m a big believer in the ability of blockchain technology to effect fundamental change in the infrastructure of the financial service industry.” Bob Greifeld, CEO of NASDAQ

“Governments that wish to repress the voices of citizens everywhere and have captured technologies like the Internet to silence dissidents and block outside media will find blockchain technology significantly more challenging.”

The first, foundational book on blockchain technology, from the bestselling author of Wikinomics Don Tapscott and blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, now in paperback with a new preface and chapter explaining recent developments in the world of blockchain, including cryptoassets, ICOs, smart contracts, and more. “This book has had an enormous impact on the evolution of blockchain in the world.” —Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corporation In this revelatory book, Don and Alex Tapscott bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and essential book about the technology driving the future of the economy. Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolution­ary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it’s best known as the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital cur­rencies, it also has the potential to go far beyond currency, to record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certifi­cates to insurance claims, land titles, and even votes. As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, blockchain technology will create winners and losers. This book shines a light on where it can lead us in the next decade and beyond.

crypto

Cryptocurrency

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

books

Books

The first, foundational book on blockchain technology, from the bestselling author of Wikinomics Don Tapscott and blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, now in paperback with a new preface and chapter explaining recent developments in the world of blockchain, including cryptoassets, ICOs, smart contracts, and more.   “This book has had an enormous impact on the evolution of blockchain in the world.” —Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corporation In this revelatory book, Don and Alex Tapscott bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and essential book about the technology driving the future of the economy.    Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolution­ary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it’s best known as the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital cur­rencies, it also has the potential to go far beyond currency, to record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certifi­cates to insurance claims, land titles, and even votes.    As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, blockchain technology will create winners and losers. This book shines a light on where it can lead us in the next decade and beyond.

Don Tapscott is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Don Tapscott has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Don Tapscott's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Don Tapscott

Alex Tapscott is the CEO of NextBlock Global a digital asset company. Previously, he worked for seven years in investment banking in New York and Toronto.

Alex Tapscott

Blockchain Revolution

Society is on the leading edge of a technology tsunami. Advances in artificial intelligence, the internet of Things, virtual reality, robotics, nanotechnology, deep learning, mapping the human brain, and biomedical, genetic, and cyborg engineering will revolutionize how most of us live and work. Technology will be able to learn, as well as teach and program itself. We call this next big step the Smart Machine Age, or SMA. The SMA has the potential to be as disruptive and transformative for us as the Agricultural Age and Industrial Revolution were for our ancestors.

Smart Machine Age

In the last few decades, the American worker has been outsourced, off-shored, and automated on many factory floors and in many routine tasks. Up next is broader and more encompassing automation that will likely affect many more workers, including many professionals.While automation has been happening for decades, now technology is even beginning to replace knowledge workers—accountants, business managers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, researchers, architects, higher-education teachers, and consultants.

Get Ready For The Next Ride

Smart technologies will become ubiquitous, invading and changing many aspects of our professional and personal lives and in many ways challenging our fundamental beliefs about success, opportunity, and the American Dream. The best research to date indicates a high probability that technology will replace 47 percent of US jobs or displace as many as eighty million US workers within the next ten to twenty years.

The American Dream

In the Smart Machine Age or SMA—operational excellence may well become almost totally technology-driven, making human innovation the key to value creation. Organizations will need their people to be hyper-learners who can adapt to rapidly changing environments. These needs are unlike what was required in the command-and-control style organizations of the Industrial Age. Agility, adaptability, and responsiveness also will be required for most, and thus organizational efficiency will be necessary but no longer sufficient.

The Smart Machine Age: A New Game Requires New Rules

NewSmart is a measure not of what you know or how much you know but of <ul><li>- the quality of your thinking, listening, collaborating, and learning. </li><li>- how good you are at “not knowing” and decoupling your beliefs (not values) from your ego. </li><li>- how good you are at being open to continually stress-testing your belief about how the world works. </li><li>- how good you are at trying out new ideas and ways to accomplish your objectives and learning from those experiments.</li></ul>

A New Kind Of Smart

Humility is rarely associated with intellectual aptitude or professional success in Western societies, especially in the United States. Synonyms for Humility often include lowliness, meekness, and submissiveness—characteristics that would seem to be the antithesis of achievement and success. Our definition of Humility comes from our study of it as a philosophical, intellectual virtue and psychological construct. We define Humility as a mindset about oneself that is open-minded, and selfless.This enables one to embrace the world as it “is” in the pursuit of human excellence.

Humility: The Gateway to Human Excellence 

That doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself, but it does mean thinking about yourself less (e.g., how you look, what other people are thinking or saying about you; how you’re coming across; how you’re being judged). It implies the lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one’s beliefs.

The Meaning Of Humility

The outward focus that follows from a Humility mindset is what’s in our best interest. Truly effective teamwork, collaboration, and innovation can’t happen when we’re defensive or when we’re too tied up in looking or feeling superior to our colleagues, teammates, clients, or customers.Humility is the gateway to human excellence in the SMA. It’s necessary in order to excel at the foundational NewSmart Behaviors which underlie the highest levels of thinking, learning, and emotionally engaging with others.

Focussing Outwards

You must slow down and make daily, thoughtful choices and exert effort to engage in the behaviours that will allow you to develop the skills you’ll need to survive and thrive.Quieting Ego is how we can deliberately work to reduce our reflexive emotional defensiveness; have empathy and open-mindedness; engage in reflexive Listening, and proactively seek other people’s feedback and perspectives to stress-test our own thinking.

Good intentions and Quieting The Ego

The most effective way to quiet our ego is through practising mindfulness. Quieting Ego through mindfulness results in heightened attention and awareness to experience and reality—in the present moment—that is open and receptive without bias or distortion. Meditation is one way to improve mindfulness, to quiet our egos, and to behave with humility. Another way to practice Quieting Ego is through gratitude. Studies of gratitude have discovered wide-ranging physical and psychological benefits associated with it.

Practising Mindfulness

A fundamental component of managing ourselves is the simplest to understand but not always the simplest to do: Slowing down. This seems counterintuitive to the cultural pressures in this day and age of doing more and more, faster and faster, with fewer and fewer resources. What we are talking about, again, is being mindful; slowing down to pay adequate attention and curbing our reflexive cognitive and emotional ways.

Managing Self: Thinking and Emotions

Managing our emotions and behavioural reactivity is also important to managing ourselves, and so is our ability to understand and react appropriately to other people’s emotions—which together constitute emotional intelligence (EI). This is so very important because so much of the value-added work humans will do in the SMA will be done in small teams. Sensitivity to other people’s emotions has been found to be a key to effective collaboration.

Managing Yourself

It’s hard for any of us to critique our own thinking and truly think critically. We’re just too wired to confirm what we already believe, and we feel too comfortable having a cohesive simple story of how our world works. We need to have thinking “partners” who force us to confront those biases, and we need to listen to them. The most effective way to think innovatively is to think with others in small teams made up of people who have experiences and training different from us.You need to listen to others to open your mind and push past your biases and mental models.

Reflective Listening

Listening is the way most of us learn. To be a good listener you have to be totally focused on the speaker with an open mind. You have to listen in a non-judgmental way, with the only goal being to try to understand what the other person is saying before you prepare and deliver your response. Good listeners ask questions to make sure that they understand before responding, or they paraphrase and repeat back what they believe that the person said and ask if they’ve understood correctly.

Listen To Learn

Accepting NewSmart and Humility as well as practising Quieting Ego, Managing Self, and Reflective Listening lays the groundwork for relationship building with others. What else can you do to help yourself better focus on and connect with other people? Here are five keys to connecting with others: (1) be present, (2) be genuine, (3) communicate affirmation, (4) listen effectively, and (5) communicate support. Trust doesn’t just happen—it takes hard work, and it requires slowing down and taking time to be genuine with and care about other people.

Otherness: Emotionally Connecting and Relating to Others

Old Cultural Ways:Individual wins, Play cards close to the chest, Highest ranking person wins, Listen to confirm, Telling, Knowing, IQ, Mistakes are bad, Competing, Self-promote. New Cultural Ways:Teams win, Transparency, the Best idea wins, Listening to learn, Asking questions, Being good at not knowing, IQ & EQ, Mistakes are learning opportunities, Collaborate, Self-reflect.

The NewSmart Organization

To manage and lead a team, you need to meditate so that you dissolve your ego. Buddhism for the corporate world.

Humility Is the New Smart Your job is at risk—if not now, then soon. We are on the leading edge of a Smart Machine Age led by artificial intelligence that will be as transformative for us as the Industrial Revolution was for our ancestors. Smart machines will take over millions of jobs in manufacturing, office work, the service sector, the professions, you name it. Not only can they know more data and analyze it faster than any mere human, say Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig, but smart machines are free of the emotional, psychological, and cultural baggage that so often mars human thinking. So we can't beat 'em and we can't join 'em. To stay relevant, we have to play a different game. Hess and Ludwig offer us that game plan. We need to excel at critical, creative, and innovative thinking and at genuinely engaging with others—things machines can't do well. The key is to change our definition of what it means to be smart. Hess and Ludwig call it being NewSmart. In this extraordinarily timely book, they offer detailed guidance for developing NewSmart attitudes and four critical behaviors that will help us adapt to the new reality. The crucial mindset underlying NewSmart is humility—not self-effacement but an accurate self-appraisal: acknowledging you can't have all the answers, remaining open to new ideas, and committing yourself to lifelong learning. Drawing on extensive multidisciplinary research, Hess and Ludwig emphasize that the key to success in this new era is not to be more like the machines but to excel at the best of what makes us human.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

business

Business

creativity

Creativity

Smart machines are replacing more and more jobs. Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig show how to develop abilities that machines don't have so we can thrive in this Smart Machine Age. Underlying them all is a sense of personal humility: honestly recognizing our limitations and working to mitigate them. In nearly every industry, smart machines are replacing human labor. It's not just factory jobs-automated technologies are handling people's investments, diagnosing illnesses, and analyzing written documents. If we humans are going to endure, Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig say we're going to need a dose of humility. We need to be humble enough to let go of the idea that smart means knowing the most, using that information quickest, and making the fewest mistakes. Smart machines will always be better than we are at those things. Instead, we need to cultivate important abilities that smart machines don't have (yet): thinking critically, creatively, and innovatively and building close relationships with others so we can collaborate effectively. Hess and Ludwig call this being NewSmart. To develop these abilities, we need to practice four specific behaviors: keeping our egos out of our way, managing our thoughts and emotions to curb any biases or defensiveness, listening to others with an open mind, and connecting with others socially and emotionally. What all these behaviors have in common is, again, humility-avoiding self-centeredness so we can learn from and work with other humans. Hess and Ludwig offer a guide to developing these NewSmart abilities and to creating organizations where these qualities are encouraged and rewarded.

Edward D. Hess

Katherine Ludwig

Humility Is the New Smart

<ul><li>Gabriel Wyner used this method to learn four languages: Italian, German, French, and Russian.</li><li>There are four stages to each language.</li><li>The stages will take different amount of time for different languages and depend on how much time you have available per day.</li></ul>

Four-Step Method for Language Learning

<ul><li>Time: 1-2 weeks (or longer for languages that have a new alphabet that will take some time to get comfortable with).</li><li>There are a few routes to learn pronunciation.</li><li>Learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for the English language first.</li></ul>

Stage 1: Learn the Correct Pronunciation of The Language

<ul><li>Time: About 3 months</li><li>This stage involves two different time commitments: building your vocabulary and grammar flashcards and reviewing the deck.</li><li>Using frequency lists to guide your vocabulary acquisition.</li><li>Cover all the words in a 2000 word frequency list as a foundation and add any specific vocab you need for your own interests.</li><li>Most people's eventual goals will be ~2000-6000 words, plus around 1000 grammar cards.</li></ul>

Stage 2: Vocabulary and Grammar Acquisition

Use Anki, a free flashcard program that runs on smartphones and every computer platform, to practice thinking in the language directly.Once you have a decent vocabulary and familiarity with grammar, you can start writing essays, watching TV shows and reading books, and talking (at least to yourself!) about the stuff that you see and do. Every writing correction gets added to the Anki deck, which continues to build your vocab and grammar.

Stage 3: Listening, writing and reading work

Once you can more or less talk (haltingly, but without too many grammar or vocab holes) and write about most familiar things, find some place to immerse yourself in the language and speak all the time.The more intense you can make it, the faster your brain will adapt and learn how to put all the info you learned in stages 1-3 together quickly enough to turn into comfortable, fluent speech.

Stage 4: Speech

Lifehacker reader Gabriel Wyner was tasked with learning four languages in the past few years for his career as an opera singer, and in the process landed on "a pretty damn good method for language learning that you can do in limited amounts of spare time." Here's the four-step method that you can use, too (and you…

education

Learning & Education

I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here's How

IQ is one of the most widely cited and versatile tools in psychology. It aims to measure the innate intelligence of the human population. IQ tests work by aggregating the scores from several distinct tasks into a singular number representing the person’s cognitive ability. However, the tests have many methodological flaws and do more harm than good.

IQ - intelligence quotient

One of the biggest issues with using IQ is the degree to which any test measures the construct it proclaims. IQs construct does not exist<ul><li>in the sense used in scientific measures</li><li>or knowing what differences on the 'inside' are being truly reflected in the scores on the 'outside.' This is simply because few agree on what happens on the 'inside.'</li></ul> In job performance, the correlations in IQs are doubtful. There is little if any correlation with later job performance or other markers of success. The job performance measures that many studies rely upon are themselves not reliable.

Questioning construct validity

The degree to which IQ may have a genetic foundation is questioned. The work done by behavioural geneticists rests upon <ol><li>studies with fraternal and identical twins, and </li><li>studies which survey the whole genome to find genes linked to certain traits.</li></ol> But both of these measures have methodological problems because they rely on assumptions. For example, heritability is based on outdated models that don't account for epigenetics, the study of how your environment causes changes in your genes.

Biological failings

IQ tests are one of the most prominent tools in the modern psychologist's toolbox. They also have numerous methodological flaws.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Understanding the Flaws Behind the IQ Test

<ul><li>Many of the big questions of our time require them to work closer than ever.</li><li>There is a new culture emerging, inspired by questions old and new.</li><li>Intellectuals of all disciplines are needed to guide this culture.</li><li>The aim is to bring scientists and humanists together in constructive engagement.</li></ul>

Science and The Humanities Have Been Antagonistic for Too Long

We live in times when civil discourse is seriously threatened by bigotry and tribal entrenchment.The purpose of the different activities related to the institute and the conversations was to show how people can engage in a fruitful exchange of ideas, even when there is disagreement.

Promoting a Civil Discourse

The two-culture split has come to symbolize a wider and growing gulf in academia between the sciences and humanities.It cuts directly to the heart of the liberal arts curricula of schools across the globe and to the widespread yet markedly wrong perception that the humanities are an anachronism in a world driven by technology.

The Two Culture Divide

<ul><li>What we now call the sciences started to chart their own path away from the Greek philosophical tradition.</li><li>The 17th century marked a turning point in human intellectual history when this divergence started.</li><li>Direct experimentation and data analysis empowered them to describe a variety of terrestrial and celestial phenomena with mathematical precision.</li><li>Their spectacular success changed the way we understand the cosmos and our place in it.</li></ul>

Science Emerged from Philosophy

<ul><li>As influential thinkers promoted science as the sole source of "truth," the humanities lost some of their clout.</li><li>The relentless ascent of scientific thinking brought the contempt of many humanists who considered themselves the only worthy intellectuals.</li><li>Most scientists returned the disdain, considering the humanities to be worthless for their intellectual pursuits.</li><li>Frontiers of knowledge broadened and academic departments multiplied.</li></ul>

Hard-Selling Facts

<ul><li>The split between the sciences and humanities is largely illusory and unnecessary.</li><li>Developments in the physical, biological, and neurosciences now leave such narrow-minded antagonism looking problematic and corrosive.</li><li>Many of the key issues of our times call for constructive engagement between the two cultures.</li></ul>

No More Turf Wars

<ul><li>We must reach beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and create truly cross-disciplinary ways of thinking.</li><li>Who we are and what we are, form an irreducible whole.</li><li>It is more than just academic questions that call for the sciences and humanities to come together.</li></ul>

We Are One

<ul><li>There is a new culture emerging, inspired by questions old and new that reside at the very core of our pursuit of knowledge.</li><li>The choices we make now as we shape our curricula, create academic departments and institutes, and engage in discussions with the general public, will shape the nature of intellectual cooperation for decades to come.</li></ul>

The Bottom Line

Science and the humanities have been antagonistic for too long. Many of the big questions of our time require them to work closer than ever.

philosophy

Philosophy

Great minds don't think alike: Bringing sciences and the humanities together

<ul><li>Learn pronunciation first.</li><li>Don't translate.</li><li>Use spaced repetition systems.</li></ul>

The three keys to language learning

<ul><li>Make memories more memorable. Make foreign words more memorable by learning the sound system of your language, then connect those sounds to images, then connect those images to your past experiences.</li><li>Maximize laziness. Don't do rote repetition. Study a concept until you can repeat it once without looking, then stop.</li><li>Recall rather than review. Make and use flashcards containing images and personal connections for words, pronunciation or grammatical construction.</li><li>Test yourself just before you think you'll forget.</li><li>Rewrite the past. When you recall a memory, you can rewrite earlier experiences.</li></ul>

Five principles of memory

<ul><li>Ears. Your brain is hardwired to ignore the differences between foreign sounds. Train your brain to listen to similar-sounding words, such as niece and knees.</li><li>Mouth. Improve your accent by using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Learn the position of the tongue, lips and vocal cords.</li><li>Eyes. Every language contains a pattern of connections between its spelling and its sounds. Try to internalise that pattern using a spaced repetition system (SRS). Create flashcards to memorise every spelling pattern you need.</li></ul>

Train your ears, mouth and eyes

Learning only a thousand words can help you recognize almost 75 percent of what you read. <ul><li>Learn 625 words from word frequency lists. Each language has its own list.</li><li>Use games to create deep multi-sensory memories for words.</li></ul> Game 1: Spot the differences.Search for the words in the native language, then switch to Basic Version. Look for differences, then add one or two good images in flashcards for that word. Game 2: Memory Game.Look for a personal memory related to the word. Try to remember the word rather than the translation.

Learning words

All language learning follows the same pattern: We go from simple sentences (doggie jump), we change their forms, -ing forms(doggie jumping) to irregular past (birdies went). Then regular past tense verbs (doggie jumped) and present tense in third person (Daddy eats). To make sentences:<ul><li>Take the first example out of your grammar book. and make a flashcard.</li><li>When you see new words or word forms that surprise you, make flashcards based on them.</li></ul>

Learning sentences

<ul><li>Start with the top 1000 words in your new language.</li><li>Add keywords based on your interests.</li><li>Use a thematic vocabulary book.</li><li>Use Google Images to find quality example sentences and pictures for your words.</li><li>Write example sentences and definitions, get them corrected.</li><li>Add a dictionary when you have enough vocabulary.</li></ul> Read a book.<ul><li>The first book should be familiar to you.</li></ul> Watch movies and TV.<ul><li>Read an overview of the series or movie first. Don't use subtitles.</li></ul> The game of taboo.The only rule - no first language allowed.<ul><li>Do video chatting.</li><li>Take language holidays.</li></ul>

Learn with language games

The basics of learning a foreign language

productivity

Productivity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

Learning A Foreign Language

This book will equip you with simple and effective ideas to learn a language.

Presents a series of techniques for acquiring a foreign language, including news ways of training the tongue for pronunciation, use of visual imagery for connecting sounds and spelling, and spaced-repetition methods for learning new vocabulary.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick.   “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero   At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered.   Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day.    This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.

Gabriel Wyner

Fluent Forever

Web 3.0 is an iteration of the internet where new social networks, search engines and marketplaces crop up that have no company overlords.Instead, they are decentralized, built upon a system known as the blockchain, which already undergirds Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Imagine it as a kind of bookkeeping where many computers at once host data that's searchable by anyone. It's operated by users collectively, rather than a corporation. People are given "tokens" for participating. The tokens can be used to vote on decisions, and even accrue real value.

The Web Version 3

Right now, the idea of the entire Internet reinventing may sound like some far-away digital utopia. But Web3 is <a href="https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1442201621266534402">driving new conversations</a> — and generating<a href="https://a16z.com/2021/10/27/investing-in-friends-with-benefits-a-dao/"> lots of new money</a>, particularly from crypto investors.The Web3 movement has been helped along by the rise of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which are digital collectables and other online files that can be bought and sold with cryptocurrency. Trying to explain Web3 can be exasperating since it's a  term that takes on a slightly different shape depending on who is defining it but that's the case with all new frontiers of technology.

The World Is Changing In Front Of Our Eyes

Web3 has remained a theoretical grand vision for years.Ideally, Web3 will mean that sharing photos, communicating with friends and buying things online will no longer be synonymous with Big Tech companies but be done through a multitude of small competing services on the blockchain — where, for instance, every time you post a message, you earn a token for your contribution, giving you both ownership stake in the platform and one day, a way to cash in.It means that all the value that's created can be shared amongst more people, rather than just the owners, investors and employees.

A Theoretical Grand Vision

Blockchain-based social networks, transactions and businesses can and will grow and thrive in the coming years. Yet knocking out Facebook, Twitter or Google completely is not likely on the horizon, according to technology scholars.Many people would want to be able to take their data and history of interactions online wherever they go on the Internet, rather than remain on singular web platforms--what some call the "walled gardens" of big tech companies.

An Unchained Future

If we stay in the current paradigm, we will move further and further into a realm where a small handful of companies run by a small number of people run our experiences in cyberspace, and in that world, the problems of Big Tech are exacerbated.Another issue, of course, is government oversight. Blockchain-based tokens are now in a regulatory netherworld, but that could soon change as the Biden administration begins the process of setting new rules for the industry.

The Pirates Of The Internet

Facebook recently rebranded itself Meta, and said its priority would be to build the "metaverse," a digital future where everyone is living and interacting and working together in virtual reality.Among the company's stated principles is "robust interoperability," meaning that users could take their accounts or avatars from site to site or service to service seamlessly, rather than have to log in to accounts controlled by separate companies every time they visit new sites.

Web 3.0 And Metaverse

Web 3.0 is bigger than Blockchain and NFTs. Let us find out how the next phase of the internet unfolds.

Introduction to Web 3.0

In the Web3 vision of the internet's future, tech giants like Facebook and Google aren't as critical. The internet instead is a peer-to-peer experience built on what's known as the blockchain. 

People are talking about Web3. Is it the Internet of the future or just a buzzword?

Since the start of the pandemic, mental health has declined for many Americans, with more individuals reporting mental illness since 2019. 
Those diagnosed with mental illness have disproportionately faced economic disadvantages and report greater financial stress. Affordability barriers are compounding these challenges by limiting mental health access for many in need.

The Decline In Mental Health

<ul><li>More respondents are seeking psychotherapy, behavioural health help, and treatment at an ER for mental health needs.</li><li>Respondents said they have greater fears around keeping their housing, especially if they have children.</li><li>Respondents reporting mental illness were on average 66 percent more likely to report debt across all categories.</li><li>Those who report having a mental health condition but have not sought treatment are 60 percent more likely to declare mental health services unaffordable.</li><li>Those reporting having a mental illness said they were less likely to pursue education or additional training.</li></ul>

McKinsey Survey Findings

The lower sense of financial security reported by those with mental illness underscores the importance of holistic care for behavioral health—not just treating mental illness symptoms but considering the broader needs an individual with mental illness may have. 
<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/a-holistic-approach-to-addressing-the-us-behavioral-health-crisis-in-the-face-of-the-global-covid-19-pandemic">Holistic approaches</a>, such as supportive housing and supportive employment, can improve outcomes across both healthcare and broader functioning in society

Financial Security

Twenty percent of respondents who report mental illness disclose not being on track to meet short-term financial obligations (such as rent/mortgage, groceries, transportation) compared with 12 percent of respondents who did not report mental illness. 
The disparity worsens when considering long-term financial goals with a 14 percentage point difference in respondents with mental illness reporting they feel off track.

The Money Factor

Respondents who report mental illness were on average 66 percent more likely to report debt across all categories than respondents who did not report mental illness.
An association exists between mental illness and higher levels of debt and debt-related stress. This association may arise from initial debt leading to stress and triggering an underlying susceptibility for mental illness.

Mental Illness And Debt

Mental health services and childcare were listed by respondents as the least affordable among essential services (for example, nutritious food, internet, health insurance, reliable transportation). 
Respondents who report mental illness were two times more likely to perceive mental health services as unaffordable. Other studies have indicated that consumers are up to 40 percent less willing to pay for mental health services than services for generic physical health conditions.

Unaffordability Of Mental Health Services

Those who report having a mental health condition but have not sought treatment for it are 60 percent more likely to declare mental health services unaffordable. 
This holds true when controlling for reported household income, as those who reported mental illness but have not sought treatment were still approximately 1.7 times more likely to report mental health services were unaffordable on average.

The Main Barrier

A study published by Mental Health America found nearly nine in ten employees report that workplace stress affects their mental health, and that nearly three in five employees feel their employer does not provide a safe environment for employees who live with mental illness, demonstrating the workplace could be a challenging setting.

Impact On Work And Education

Easy to implement strategies to revamp work practices in ways that benefit employees’ health

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Health

timemanagement

Time Management

Wellbeing at Work

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Mental Health

How affordable is mental healthcare? The long-term impact on financial health

A digital coin is an asset native to its own blockchain. For example, Bitcoin exists on the Bitcoin blockchain, Ether operates and functions on the Ethereum blockchain, etc. Digital coins don't move physically when you send and receive them. They exist as data on a database (or blockchain) and are tracked and verified by computers around the world. Coinmarketcap lists over 900 different examples of coins, such as Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and Cardano (ADA).

Digital coin definition and examples

Digital coins are generally used the same way as real-life money in your wallet. For example, Bitcoin can be used to pay for goods and services all over the internet and often in real-world places too. You can store it for a long time or swap it for something of equal value. Other digital coins, such as Ether, NEO, and DASH, can be used in different ways than just as a form of money. For example, Ether (ETH) is used for transactions on the Ethereum network. It is needed to send a token and fund the mining costs.

Digital coin uses

Token are not digital coins. Tokens are created on existing blockchains. The most common blockchain token platform is Ethereum and tokens from this platform are known as ERC-20 tokens.There are also other tokens such as NEO, Waves, Lisk, and Stratis. NEO uses tokens known as NEP-5 tokens.

Tokens

Creating a token takes little technical ability, but it requires the developer to spend some native coins to the blockchain on which the token is being created. For example, a creator will need to spend some Ether to create a token on Ethereum. This is used to get the miners to validate the token transaction.

How tokens are created

Most tokens are used with decentralised applications (dApps). When developers create their tokens, they can be used to activate features of the application they were designed for. Some tokens are created to represent a physical thing. If you want to sell your house using a smart contract, you can't physically put your house into the smart contract, but you can use a token that represents your house. For example, WePower (WPR) uses a token that represents electricity. Users can buy and sell electricity on the blockchain using smart contracts.

The purpose of tokens

Tokens are used to interact with decentralised applications that are built on top of different blockchains. For example, Civic (CVC) is an application that keeps track of encrypted identities on the Ethereum blockchain. If you were to go on a foreign holiday, you'd need to confirm your identity repeatedly along the way, such as the airline, hotel, etc. If they are a partner of Civic, they can quickly identify you at various points. The CVC token is used for the transaction.

Understanding how tokens work

<ul><li>Security Tokens. Most tokens issued by Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) are security tokens. This is because the buyer invests their money in the ICO expecting a profit.</li><li>Equity Tokens. It represents some stock or equity in the company that issues it.</li><li>Utility Tokens are also known as application tokens. They are used to give people access to either a product or service. They are rare as most tokens are expected to gain in value.</li><li>Payment Tokens only serves to pay for goods and services.</li></ul>

Security Token, Equity Token, or Utility Token

People who are new to cryptocurrency often confuse the term "token" and "coin". This guide defines the two terms and provides some examples for a better understanding.

Token vs Coin: learn the token and coin definitions & the differences between security token, utility token & equity token in this Token vs Coin guide.

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