Bitcoin saw its value plunge to $17,592 USD in mid-June – the first time since December 2020 that the value had dropped below $20,000. Similarly, Ethereum has also crashed along with Bitcoin and was down more than 70% from its all-time high pricing in November last year. One explanation is that cryptocurrencies have become “mainstream” and are subject to the same fluctuations as everything else. We may have burst a “bubble”. For example, when people get excited about something, they rush to purchase it and the value increases. It then becomes overinflated and can come crashing down when the enthusiasm dies down. However, it is too early to tell if crypto is a bubble, how long the fall will continue and when/if it will rebound.
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A Google engineer has created an artificial intelligence-driven facial recognition platform that can scan through photos from World War II and the Holocaust, linking them to people living today.
The program, called From Numbers to Names (N2N) was developed by 40-year-old software engineer Daniel Patt. N2N can return the 10 best potential matches found in the database. The software has already been used to search through hundreds of thousands of photos to identify faces for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as well as individual survivors and descendants of survivors.
Solana unveiled its own mobile phone “Saga,” an Android Web3-focused smartphone available in early 2023 for around $1,000.This device is for those interested in the crypto, web3, and NFT world. The smartphone will feature a Web3 decentralised app store, a mobile wallet called “Solana Pay,” created to facilitate transactions via QR codes, and a “seed vault” that will securely store the phone’s private keys.
Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has raised $500 million to establish a fund that will invest in Web 3 and blockchain companies. The goal of the newly closed investment fund is to discover and support projects and founders with the potential to build and lead Web 3 across Defi, NFTs gaming, metaverse, social and more.
June had a ton of amazing web3 events, such as Consensus by Coindesk, Dcentral and NFT.NYC. I was fortunate to attend Consensus 2022 and Dcentral in Austin, Texas.
Consensus 2022 had 80+ Australians rocking up – and it was amazing to connect, chat and learn about the latest trends, technologies and trends in web3, NFTs, blockchain, crypto, the metaverse and DAOs! Learned from tons of inspiring talks from world-class speakers.
