Crypto-crash

Crypto-crash PDF Author: Ian McKinley
Publisher: Fiction4All
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
In the mid 21st century, a Swiss cyber-security firm tasked with countering ransomware attacks on major financial institutions exposes a Russian criminal gang supported by a top North Korean hacker. This leads to the discovery of a much more dangerous plot to destroy economic databases, aimed at causing chaos on a global scale. The defence against this threat requires extending the abilities of neural networks run on an advanced quantum computer, creating a form of artificial intelligence which can compromise the cryptography forming the basis of the security of both computer networks and electronic communication. Not only does this tool exceed expectations, it opens a Pandora's Box of other possible applications that could risk destruction of civil liberties and the entire basis of free democracies. The team use this tool to combat threats from China, the USA and also criminal organisations who are competing to gain control of such power. Inevitably, this leads to inflicting punishments that are comparable with the impacts of conventional warfare. Recognising the dangers of wider access to this technological singularity, they decide to actively limit further developments in this direction elsewhere so that, for the near future, this small group are reluctantly placed in the position of a global oligarchy - with all the responsibilities and dangers that this entails.

Crypto-crash

Crypto-crash PDF Author: Ian McKinley
Publisher: Fiction4All
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the mid 21st century, a Swiss cyber-security firm tasked with countering ransomware attacks on major financial institutions exposes a Russian criminal gang supported by a top North Korean hacker. This leads to the discovery of a much more dangerous plot to destroy economic databases, aimed at causing chaos on a global scale. The defence against this threat requires extending the abilities of neural networks run on an advanced quantum computer, creating a form of artificial intelligence which can compromise the cryptography forming the basis of the security of both computer networks and electronic communication. Not only does this tool exceed expectations, it opens a Pandora's Box of other possible applications that could risk destruction of civil liberties and the entire basis of free democracies. The team use this tool to combat threats from China, the USA and also criminal organisations who are competing to gain control of such power. Inevitably, this leads to inflicting punishments that are comparable with the impacts of conventional warfare. Recognising the dangers of wider access to this technological singularity, they decide to actively limit further developments in this direction elsewhere so that, for the near future, this small group are reluctantly placed in the position of a global oligarchy - with all the responsibilities and dangers that this entails.

Hype Machine: How Greed, Fraud and Free Money Crashed Crypto

Hype Machine: How Greed, Fraud and Free Money Crashed Crypto PDF Author: Joshua Oliver
Publisher: Heligo Books
ISBN: 1785120980
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
'A gripping real-life financial thriller.' CLAER BARRETT, AUTHOR OF WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU ABOUT MONEY 'Anybody who wants to understand the cryptocurrency mania should read Hype Machine.' LIONEL BARBER, FORMER EDITOR OF THE FINANCIAL TIMES On 2 November 2023, in one of the largest fraud trials in history, Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of stealing billions of dollars from the customers of his crypto-exchange, FTX. How did this 31-year-old Californian in shorts and a T-shirt manage to become one of the most famous CEOs in the world? How did greed, fear and free money inflate the crypto bubble until it finally popped with devastating consequences for millions of people who lost money in the crash? Who were the enablers, investors and innovators who transformed the original promise of crypto into a digital Wild West? Hype Machine is the definitive story of the boom and bust of crypto, written by award-winning Financial Times journalist Joshua Oliver. Expansive, nuanced and eminently entertaining, it demystifies the crypto circus by following the journeys of its most influential participants and the trajectory of SBF, its enigmatic ringmaster. Oliver, who reported on the crypto crash with extensive access to SBF himself, introduces readers to the people and ideas that shaped crypto's wild rise and fall, including Arthur Hayes, Changpeng Zhao and the coterie of acolytes who surrounded FTX. Through exclusive interviews, compelling research and with ringside seats at the trial of the decade, he paints a vivid, detailed and tragi-comic picture of this defining financial moment of our times.

The Dollar Trap

The Dollar Trap PDF Author: Eswar S. Prasad
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168520
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Why the dollar is—and will remain—the dominant global currency The U.S. dollar's dominance seems under threat. The near collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008–2009, political paralysis that has blocked effective policymaking, and emerging competitors such as the Chinese renminbi have heightened speculation about the dollar’s looming displacement as the main reserve currency. Yet, as The Dollar Trap powerfully argues, the financial crisis, a dysfunctional international monetary system, and U.S. policies have paradoxically strengthened the dollar’s importance. Eswar Prasad examines how the dollar came to have a central role in the world economy and demonstrates that it will remain the cornerstone of global finance for the foreseeable future. Marshaling a range of arguments and data, and drawing on the latest research, Prasad shows why it will be difficult to dislodge the dollar-centric system. With vast amounts of foreign financial capital locked up in dollar assets, including U.S. government securities, other countries now have a strong incentive to prevent a dollar crash. Prasad takes the reader through key contemporary issues in international finance—including the growing economic influence of emerging markets, the currency wars, the complexities of the China-U.S. relationship, and the role of institutions like the International Monetary Fund—and offers new ideas for fixing the flawed monetary system. Readers are also given a rare look into some of the intrigue and backdoor scheming in the corridors of international finance. The Dollar Trap offers a panoramic analysis of the fragile state of global finance and makes a compelling case that, despite all its flaws, the dollar will remain the ultimate safe-haven currency.

Bitcoin Widow

Bitcoin Widow PDF Author: Jennifer Robertson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1443463914
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
She met the man of her dreams and suddenly had it all. Then, in one fateful night, she lost everything, and the nightmare began Jennifer Robertson was working hard to build a life for herself from the ashes of her first marriage. Still only twenty-six, she swiped right on a dating app and met Gerry Cotten, a man she would not normally have considered—too young and not her type—but found she’d met her match. Eccentric but funny and kind, Cotten turned out to be a bitcoin wizard who quickly amassed substantial wealth through his company, Quadriga. The couple travelled the world, first class all the way, while Cotten worked on his multitude of encrypted laptops. Then, while the couple was on their honeymoon in India, opening an orphanage in their name, Gerry fell ill and died in a matter of hours. Jennifer was consumed by grief and guilt, but that was only the beginning. It turned out that Gerry owed $250 million to Quadriga customers, and all the passwords to his encrypted virtual vaults, hidden on his many laptops, had died with him. Jennifer was left with more than one hundred thousand investors looking for their money, and questions, suspicions and accusations spiralling dangerously out of control. The Quadriga scandal touched off major investment and criminal investigations, not to mention Internet rumours circulating on dark message boards, including claims that Gerry had faked his own death and that his wife was the real mastermind behind a sophisticated sting operation. While Jennifer waited for a dead man’s switch e-mail that would probably never come, it became clear that Cotten had gambled away about $100 million of the funds entrusted to him for investment in his many schemes, leaving Robertson holding the bag. Bitcoin Widow is Catch Me If You Can meets a widow betrayed, a life of fairy-tale romance and private jets torched by duplicity, as Jennifer Robertson tries to reset her life in the wake of one of the biggest investment scandals of the digital age.

Regional Integration in West Africa

Regional Integration in West Africa PDF Author: Eswar Prasad
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815738544
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
" Assessing the potential benefits and risks of a currency union Leaders of the fifteen-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have set a goal of achieving a monetary and currency union by late 2020. Although some progress has been made toward achieving this ambitious goal, major challenges remain if the region is to realize the necessary macroeconomic convergence and establish the required institutional framework in a relatively short period of time. The proposed union offers many potential benefits, especially for countries with historically high inflation rates and weak central banks. But, as implementation of the euro over the past two decades has shown, folding multiple currencies, representing disparate economies, into a common union comes with significant costs, along with operational challenges and transitional risks. All these potential negatives must be considered carefully by ECOWAS leaders seeking tomeet a self-imposed deadline. This book, by two leading experts on economics and Africa, makes a significant analytical contribution to the debates now under way about how ECOWAS could achieve and manage its currency union, andthe ramifications for the African continent. "

The Future of Money

The Future of Money PDF Author: Eswar S. Prasad
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674258444
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
A cutting-edge look at how accelerating financial change, from the end of cash to the rise of cryptocurrencies, will transform economies for better and worse. We think weÕve seen financial innovation. We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone. But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies. As Eswar Prasad explains, the world of finance is at the threshold of major disruption that will affect corporations, bankers, states, and indeed all of us. The transformation of money will fundamentally rewrite how ordinary people live. Above all, Prasad foresees the end of physical cash. The driving force wonÕt be phones or credit cards but rather central banks, spurred by the emergence of cryptocurrencies to develop their own, more stable digital currencies. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies themselves will evolve unpredictably as global corporations like Facebook and Amazon join the game. The changes will be accompanied by snowballing innovations that are reshaping finance and have already begun to revolutionize how we invest, trade, insure, and manage risk. Prasad shows how these and other changes will redefine the very concept of money, unbundling its traditional functions as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value. The promise lies in greater efficiency and flexibility, increased sensitivity to the needs of diverse consumers, and improved market access for the unbanked. The risk is instability, lack of accountability, and erosion of privacy. A lucid, visionary work, The Future of Money shows how to maximize the best and guard against the worst of what is to come.

The Bitcoin Dilemma

The Bitcoin Dilemma PDF Author: Colin L. Read
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031091388
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
There are few innovations that have the potential to revolutionize commerce and have evolved so quickly that there remain significant misunderstandings about their operation, opportunity, and challenges as has Bitcoin in the dozen years since its invention. The potential for banking, transacting, and public recording of important records is profound, but can be displacing if not done with appropriate care, and is downright dangerous if certain pitfalls are not noted and avoided. Among other things, this book proves the existence of a Bitcoin dilemma that challenges the conventional wisdom which mistakenly asserts the incredibly intensive energy consumption in Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining will be remedied by more efficient mining machines or sustainable power sources. It shows for the first time within a well-specified economic model of Bitcoin mining that the recent runup in electricity consumption has a simple and inevitable explanation. For a coin with almost completely inelastic supply and steadily increasing demand, the conditions for accelerating electricity demand is consistent with economic theory and may well characterize the future of Bitcoin. The book also demonstrates the counterintuitive result that improvements in mining efficiency, in terms of electricity consumption per terahash of processing power, or decreases in electricity costs as cheaper sustainable energy is diverted to this industry, merely exacerbates the acceleration of energy consumption because of a prisoner’s dilemma arms-race-to-the-bottom. The book proposes policy solutions to mitigate this Bitcoin dilemma but note that the mobility of industry capacity which needs but a ready supply of electricity and an Internet connection frustrates local regulation and warrants global solutions. The incredible opportunities of this industry will only be realized if our regulators, legislators, entrepreneurs, and general public garner a more complete and objective understanding of this and other Proof-of-Work mining techniques. The book provides this broader perspective based on the author’s research as an economist, his position as a director of a large regional bank, his understanding as a technologist and as an environmental and sustainability researcher, and his public policy experience as a mayor who has also written books and articles about public policy and public finance.

Cryptomania

Cryptomania PDF Author: Andrew R Chow
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1668038188
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
For fans of Bad Blood and Too Big to Fail, an explosive, page-turning account of one of the largest financial frauds in US history, chronicling the utopian promises, human collateral, and incineration of billions of dollars in the 2022 crypto crash, by Time magazine’s technology correspondent. As cryptocurrency rose in popularity during the pandemic, new converts bought into the idea that crypto would not only make them rich, but would usher in imminent revolutions across art, finance, politics, and gaming. Cryptocurrency caught the zeitgeist through figures like FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who only two years later would be convicted of one of the most calamitous acts of financial fraud in US history. During his meteoric rise, Sam Bankman-Fried outflanked idealists in the movement like Vitalik Buterin, who sought to build fairer, more democratic systems through Ethereum. Bankman-Fried pursued a growth-obsessed, by-any-means approach to crypto, which proved seductive to those who just wanted to get rich. But this Silicon Valley-like approach also drove the creation of a spate of high-risk financial instruments that mirrored those of the 2008 financial crisis. Accused of misleading investors and mishandling funds, Bankman-Fried became a target of prosecutors. Now, Cryptomania unfolds the tumultuous twenty months inside this male-dominated, overhyped industry that led to its downfall. Drawing on exclusive reporting and an extensive network in the global NFT community, Andrew Chow chronicles the battle for crypto’s soul, and the human toll of its economic meltdown—from the conmen and eccentrics driving the bubble to the victims caught in its burst.

Snow Crash

Snow Crash PDF Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141924047
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
THE 30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH NEW, NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED MATERIAL After the Internet, what came next? Enter the Metaverse - cyberspace home to avatars and software daemons, where anything and just about everything goes. Newly available on the Street - the Metaverse's main drag - is Snow Crash. A cyberdrug that reduces avatars in the digital world to dust, but also infects users in real life, leaving them in a vegetative state. This is bad news for Hiro, a freelance hacker and the Metaverse's best swordfighter, and mouthy skateboard courier Y. T.. Together, investigating the Infocalypse, they trace back the roots of language itself to an ancient Sumerian priesthood and find they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination. In this special edition of the remarkably prescient modern classic, Neal Stephenson explores linguistics, computer science, politics and philosophy in the form of a break-neck adventure into the fast-approaching yet eerily recognizable future. 'Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the twenty-first century' William Gibson 'Brilliantly realized' New York Times Book Review 'Like a Pynchon novel with the brakes removed' Washington Post 'A remarkably prescient vision of today's tech landscape' Vanity Fair

Blockchain

Blockchain PDF Author: Kapil Sharma
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000829944
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Blockchain: A Hype or a Hoax? fills a gap in the book market to provide material that is not only technical but also caters to business readers. This book was written to keep in mind various stakeholders and the current gap in blockchain education as well as use case implementation. This book reviews blockchain technology, discusses why proof of concept fails, offers examples of use cases that have been successful and that have failed and articulates a framework that should be used before deciding whether blockchain is the right technology for transformation. It uses strategic models and frameworks to assist organisations to see a fit score for their specific use cases. This book provides guidance on how to create a blockchain strategy and a business case to pitch for the budget. It also includes a case study to apply the knowledge on practical use cases for blockchain and a technical overview of most of the blockchain use cases in the market including crypto, non-fungible tokens, decentralised finance, and decentralised autonomous organisations, as well as financial and non-financial industry use cases. This book also provides a detailed overview of most of the mainstream blockchain products currently available in the market. It also offers guidance on how readers can best educate themselves on blockchain technology that is available through commercial and free resources. It concludes with a clear direction on selecting blockchain to solve real-life use cases that are best fit. A financial and non-financial value-adding framework is discussed throughout this book to assist business leaders, programme managers, product managers and information technology leaders to make strategic choices, and business cases and develop strategies for digital transformation through the use of blockchain. The distinctive feature of this book is the critical analysis of blockchain from a technology and business perspective. This is the first book to focus on business, technology and blockchain selection framework. The most unique feature of this book would be to apply Michael Porter’s competitive advantage strategy theory on blockchain use cases and their impact on companies. This book is aimed at technology students, technology professionals, blockchain and fintech consultant and business leaders. It will also be useful for readers who are building a business case to adopt blockchain into an organisation or are seeking to grow their knowledge of blockchain and improve their fintech strategy.