The metaverse, a digital space that allows users to communicate and move virtually in their three-dimensional avatars or digital representations, is being seen as the future of business and human interaction.

Last month, Chipotle Mexican Grill offered free burritos to customers who visited the restaurant virtually on Roblox an online gaming platform.

Each day from October 28 to 31, the first 30,000 Roblox users who visited the virtual Chipotle restaurant in a Halloween-themed costume received a code for a free burrito.

As a digital innovator, we are always experimenting on new platforms to meet our guests where they are, said Chris Brandt, chief marketing officer at Chipotle.

Roblox's popularity has boomed over the past year and we know our fans will be excited to celebrate the next evolution of burrito in the metaverse, Mr Brandt said.

A man tries VR goggles during the Cop26 conference in Glasgow. Getty

Here is a look at the history of the metaverse and its potential opportunities.

The term was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, which covered subjects such as computer science, politics, cryptography and philosophy.

Hailed as a successor to the internet, the metaverse is a set of immersive spaces shared by users, where they can interact, innovate and engage other people who are not in the same physical space. They do it by creating 3D avatars.

Based on augmented reality principles, it merges physical and virtual existences in a shared online space.

A journalist poses for a 360-degree image during a demonstration to create a 3D avatar at the Jump Studio in the SK Telecom headquarters in Seoul. Bloomberg

It is a mix of work and play.

With the metaverse, users can create their digital representation and use it while attending virtual family gatherings or office meetings. They can also attend the virtual streaming of a music concert where their 3D avatar will appear among the audience. Their digital representation can shop online, lend their belongings to colleagues or friends, try new products, such as clothes and shoes, at virtual shops and pay for them using digital currencies.

But we are still in the initial stages of the development of the metaverse. Industry experts say it might take 10 to 15 years to fully realise metaverse products and it will work well when all stakeholders create a compatible digital ecosystem.

Social networking site Meta, formerly Facebook, plans to spend $10 billion this year on Reality Labs its metaverse division despite the platform facing controversies that have led to calls for tighter regulation.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg fencing in the metaverse with an Olympic gold medal fencer during a live-streamed conference to announce the rebranding of Facebook as Meta. Reuters

Industry analysts say despite the recent hype, the metaverse is Facebooks most potent and underappreciated innovation opportunity.

About every decade we believe companies need to reinvent themselves to address large new markets and satisfy investors for the long term, the US venture capital company Loup Ventures said in a note to clients.

For a company the size of Facebook, with an expected $150 billion in revenue next year, maintaining growth requires a massive, greenfield opportunity we believe the metaverse is a sufficiently large opportunity for a company the size of Facebook to chase.

Technology giant Microsoft aims to allow avatars to share PowerPoint presentations and Excel files in Teams an app that offers workspace chat, videoconferencing and file storage next year.

Software maker Unity is developing a concept called digital twins a virtual copy of the real world. Graphics chip maker Nvidia is developing a technology called Omniverse that will link 3D virtual worlds in the metaverse.

Tencent Holdings, the world's largest gaming company by revenue, is reportedly developing an advanced gaming studio to focus on the metaverse.

A software engineer explores a detailed 3D map of the universe with the virtual reality software VIRUP, developed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. AP

In September, the Chinese company filed to register nearly 100 metaverse-related trademarks. They include QQ Metaverse, QQ Music Metaverse and Kings Metaverse, similar to the names of the companys messaging app, music-streaming service and mobile game Honour of Kings.

In March, Gucci released branded virtual trainers, allowing users to wear them on social media only.

UK start-up Auroboros has launched what it calls a biomimicry digital collection, which allows users to buy looks to wear on Snapchat. Buyers submit an image of themselves, on to which high-quality sci-fi fantasy digital wear is added. This image can then be uploaded to Snapchat through a filter.

While building the metaverse, companies need to minimise the amount of data that is used and build a parallel digital world that gives users control over their data.

Employees create a 3D avatar in the Jump Studio at the SK Telecom headquarters in Seoul. Bloomberg

Industry experts say developers need to make sure these technologies are designed inclusively and in a way that is accessible.

It is essential to keep people safe online and give them tools to act or get help if they see something they are not comfortable with, Facebook said.

Updated: November 5th 2021, 4:00 AM

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Quicktake: what is the metaverse and why does it matter? - The National

Researchers at Kennesaw State University in Georgia developed virtual reality-based lessons and gamified learning software to help K-12 students develop cybersecurity skills.

Cybersecurity is not yet an official part of school curriculums, yet we are living in an increasingly digital world, Kennesaw professor Joy Li said in a press release. This presented us a wonderful opportunity to make an impact on education by using games, which has become one of the most efficient ways to grab their attention. On a secondary level, we hope that this kind of exposure will encourage kids to pursue careers in cybersecurity.

The University of Texas at San Antonios cybersecurity center developed games for K-12 students, both in digital and physical card formats. The games, designed for children as young as five years old, teach vocabulary and general cybersecurity concepts, like cryptography. One of the games introduces cybersecurity using bear mascots, called the CyBear family, which is complete with four bear characters named after famous computer scientists: Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Augusta Ada King and Vint Cerf.

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From Tiktok to bear mascots 7 ways education is recruiting cyber talent - EdScoop

When you think about blockchains, probably the first thing that comes to mind is Bitcoin or cryptos.

But actually, the technology is extremely versatile and has potential far beyond cryptocurrencies.

Blockchains have become popular over the past few years because they allow us to secure and verify all kinds of data in a decentralised network that cannot be altered.

The idea has its roots as far back as 1991, when two computer scientists, Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta, proposed a system to protect timestamps on documents from being interfered with.

Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous Bitcoin inventor, then built on this system and referenced the two scientists in his Bitcoin whitepaper.

He successfully deployed the first public blockchain in 2009.

Put simply, a blockchain is a database in the form of a distributed ledger that uses cryptography to secure any kind of information.

This ledger takes the form of a series of records or blocks that are each added onto the previous block in the chain, hence the name blockchain.

Each block contains a timestamp, data, and a hash. This is a unique identifier for all the contents of the block, sort of like a digital fingerprint.

Crucially, once data has been recorded and verified in a block, it cannot be altered. Instead, if a change has to be made, this is recorded and verified in a new block which is then added to the chain.

Each new block reinforces the verification of the previous block and hence the entire blockchain.

The block also contains the hash of the previous block in the chain. These are the backbone of a public blockchain.

Its how all the participants in a public, decentralised network can come to a consensus on how a block is verified and added to the chain.

A cryptographic hash function is basically a mathematical algorithm that maps data of arbitrary length to an output of fixed length.

So, if you want to represent, for example, a list of names of varying lengths, a hash function would output each of these names (the data) into a unique string of numbers of a fixed length. This string of numbers is known as the hash.

The hash function will return the same hash no matter how many times you input the same data.

If you even slightly change the inputted data, the hash will change completely.

Hashing is considered a function that only works one-way. Thats because its highly infeasible - but not impossible - to reverse engineer the data that outputs a given hash without a huge, huge amount of computational power.

The fastest way to guess the data that produces a given hash is simply to guess and check, over and over again.

In the Bitcoin blockchain, which uses a proof of work consensus mechanism, computers in the network join in this elaborate guessing game hoping to solve the puzzle first.

The computer with higher computational power - meaning the capability to run through more guesses faster - is more likely to win the race and therefore verify the block for the reward of Bitcoin.

Its important to remember that the word blockchain doesnt describe any single database or network. Rather, its a type of technology and there are different kinds of blockchains that work in different ways.

A public blockchain like Bitcoin, allows anyone to join the network and access the distributed ledger.

A private blockchain is a closed network. It still uses some decentralisation and a peer to peer system, but overall this kind is controlled by a single entity and access is restricted to a defined network.

A hybrid blockchain is a combination of a public and private blockchain. This kind of blockchain allows an entity to distribute a ledger with some publicly accessible data but also restrict access to more sensitive data within the network.

A consortium blockchain has similarities with a private blockchain only. This type of ledger is controlled by multiple entities rather than a single one.

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Blockchain explained: Breaking down the technology thats transforming the world of finance - Euronews

The Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) price has retreated from Wednesdays new all-time highs of US$66,930 (AU$89,240).

The digital tokens lost 6% since then, currently trading for US$62,845.

Interest in the worlds biggest crypto remains elevated, with more than US$45 billion worth changing virtual hands over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

With that level of interest in mind, the Motley Fool reached out to 3 crypto experts for their take on BITO, the new US listed, futures-based Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF), and their forecasts for where the Bitcoin price could be heading next.

(For details on the launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF(NYSE: BITO), go here.)

Now, on to our expert panel:

The Motley Fool: The launch of BITO garnered a lot of investor excitement and looks to have helped drive the Bitcoin price to new highs. What are your thoughts on a futures-based Bitcoin ETF, and will we ever see something similar on the ASX?

Jonathon Miller: The launch of a Bitcoin ETF is an exciting moment for the maturation of the digital assets industry and a good measure of where Bitcoin is in its adoption journey.

The timing of the BITO launch is also significant in that it went live when the Bitcoin price was reaching all-time highs. We saw US$1 billion in trading volume on the first day which is a great achievement, and another of the many positive news stories we have seen lately for crypto adoption.

We can expect that Australian regulators are watching what happens in the US and will use this as a framework for decisions on local products. Its hard to predict when this will happen, but the success of BITO so far is a very positive thing.

Peter Kazacos: Anything that makes it easier for investors to get exposure to an asset is a good thing for that asset. In the case of BITO, its a good thing for Bitcoin. The ETF means large institutional investors and investment houses can easily participate in a very traditional sense in the fortunes of BTC. A futures-based ETF like BITO paves the way to a spot ETF in the near term, which would be a significant milestone and have a positive impact on the Bitcoin price.

It is likely that we will one day see an Australian Bitcoin ETF as demand for the asset continues globally.

Simon Peters: While ProShares (BITO) is not an ETF holding the underlying asset that many in the crypto community want to see, its still a step forward in the right direction.

ABitcoin futures ETF now provides a convenient way for investors to get exposure to the Bitcoin price movement. However, investors who plan to hold for the longer term would need to take into account hidden fees within the futures ETF. Contracts will have to roll every month, and this could erode potential gains.

BITO saw a strong first day of trading. However, with more Bitcoin futures ETFs in the approval pipeline, whether this particular ProShares Bitcoin futures ETF can carry this momentum forward, well see.

Motley Fool: After posting a new all-time high this week, what is your outlook for the Bitcoin price movement?

Jonathon Miller: This rally has been driven by an incredible year of crypto adoption news for Bitcoin as well as Ethereum. The two coins have both shared leading roles in the news cycle, dragging each other down and bringing each other up in the market.

The all-time Bitcoin price high earlier this year was largely due to institutional interest where we saw adoption from big names such as Fidelity, Tesla and PayPal.

There is no way to predict the market, but its important to highlight that Bitcoin has scarcity with only 21 million in total in supply. And there are a lot more people in the world than that. The space is moving very quickly, and we know from Kraken Intelligence reports that the final quarter of the year has historically been the most bullish.

However, after price hikes, there is always the risk that we will see price drops as people look to take a profit.

Peter Kazacos: Mass adoption is the buzz word for any Bitcoin maximalist. If we see more mass adoption, which we define as BTC entering the traditional financial system, we will see more demand for the asset, which will fuel Bitcoin price increases.

If Bitcoin finds more champions like Jack Dorsey from Twitter and President Bukele from El Salvador we could very well see a US$100,000 Bitcoin price in the near future.

Advances in technology are the biggest risk for Bitcoin. Specifically the advent of quantum computing, which could break current cryptography. Kaz has a solution which uses quantum technology to upgrade the cryptography of existing protocols like BTC.

Quantum Assets on the Binance Smart Chain are the first crypto to adopt our quantum technology and are using it to launch Quantum Bitcoin in a bid to ensure the cryptography of Bitcoin remains safe and secure.

Simon Peters: Now that weve seen a new all-time Bitcoin price high, the question is turning to whether well see a pull back or will the price carry on. Given the price run in the last few weeks, the Bitcoin price is somewhat overextended and we could (very soon) see a pullback in the short term as some investors and traders take some profit off the table.

Long term, on-chain metrics continue to be bullish. More of the circulating Bitcoin supply is continuing to migrate from short-term holders to long-termholders, which is squeezingsupply. Simultaneously, inflation concerns could increase demand, with institutional and retail investors exploring alternative assets like Bitcoin rather than traditional inflation hedges or holding cash.

Also taking into account seasonality, the fourth quarter tends to be a strong time of the year for crypto bull markets. Refer back to 2017 for example. So, I wouldnt rule out higher prices than where we are currently by the end of 2021, possibly into the six-figure zone.

The Motley Fool will end with a recap of Jonathon Millers words, There is no way to predict the market.

While the Bitcoin price could head into the six-figure range from here, it could also go the other way.

Invest with care.

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Heres whats next for the Bitcoin price: expert panel - The Motley Fool Australia

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New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - October 21, 2021) - Hillsu is a trusted digital asset exchange that enables consumers to buy, sell, store and exchange digital assets. Hillsu's consumer platform is now available through the recently-released the Hillsu app.

"Today, Hillsu's vision - to connect the digital economy - reaches new heights, and we're excited to continue our momentum as a public exchange," said Leonard M. Adleman, CEO of Hillsu. "Our platform sits at the intersection of cryptocurrency exchange, payments, and safety. We look forward to accelerating the plan that is already underway: building out a broader partner network, expanding the access and utility of digital assets, and gaining momentum in a space that is continuing to grow."

The Hillsu platform has seen strong growth since its founding in 2020. Last month, the company announced that more than millions of users have been using the Hillsu app, only one year after its public launch.

Hillsu Integrates Bitcoin's Lightning Network

Hillsu has now integrated Bitcoin's Lightning Network after first announcing its plan to do so in April, 2020.

Hillsu users can now use the Lightning Network, a Layer-2 scaling solution for bitcoin, for deposits and withdrawals. The feature is currently live on Hillsu's mobile app.

Figure 1

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7987/100457_84d3108ba4b53b44_001full.jpg

With the Lightning Network, the average cost of bitcoin transactions will come down to "less than 0.01 cents," Hillsu CEO Leonard M. Adleman told us in September. Whereas the average transaction confirmation time will reduce to "1-3 seconds," Adleman said at the time.

The Lightning Network was launched in 2018. Several crypto exchanges currently support the network, including OKCoin, Bitfinex, and Bitstamp. Earlier this year, Kraken also announced its plan to integrate the network. Other U.S. based exchanges, such as Coinbase and Gemini, do not currently support the network.

The Encrypt Coin is Listing on Hillsu

The price of the Encrypt Coin otherwise known as "ECPC," has continued to skyrocket in value capturing fresh new price highs; it skyrocketed more than 160% in the past week amid the overall momentum happening across the crypto markets.

The notion that a quantum computer might someday break bitcoin is quickly gaining ground. That is because quantum computers are becoming powerful enough to factor large prime numbers, a critical component of bitcoin's public key cryptography. Within a decade, quantum computing is expected to be able to hack into cell phones, bank accounts, email addresses, and bitcoin wallets.

Quantum cryptography, also called quantum encryption is used in Encrypt Coin; it applies the principles of quantum mechanics to encrypt messages in a way that is never read by anyone outside of the intended recipient. It takes advantage of quantum's multiple states, coupled with its "no change theory," which means it cannot be unknowingly interrupted. The Encrypt Coin aims to become the safest digital asset in the future.

Hillsu has developed rapidly. This cooperation has a great effect on ECPC's exposure and promotion. Hillsu can obtain a better development platform and strive to find more business opportunities inside and outside the industry, which has caused the price of ECPC to skyrocket.

Website: http://www.Hillsu.com

Media ContactContact: Leonard MCompany Name: Hillsu Technology co.,ltd.Website: http://hillsu.comEmail: cs@hillsu.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/100457

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Hillsu Debuts as a Public Crypto Exchange in the United States - StreetInsider.com

For centuries, cryptography was the exclusive preserve of the state. Then, in 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman came up with a practical method for establishing a shared secret key over an authenticated (but not confidential) communications channel without using a prior shared secret. The following year, three MIT scholars Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman came up with the RSA algorithm (named after their initials) for implementing it. It was the beginning of public-key cryptography at least in the public domain.

From the very beginning, state authorities were not amused by this development. They were even less amused when in 1991 Phil Zimmermann created Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, emails, files and other things. PGP raised the spectre of ordinary citizens or at any rate the more geeky of them being able to wrap their electronic communications in an envelope that not even the most powerful state could open. In fact, the US government was so enraged by Zimmermanns work that it defined PGP as a munition, which meant that it was a crime to export it to Warsaw Pact countries. (The cold war was still relatively hot then.)

In the four decades since then, theres been a conflict between the desire of citizens to have communications that are unreadable by state and other agencies and the desire of those agencies to be able to read them. The aftermath of 9/11, which gave states carte blanche to snoop on everything people did online, and the explosion in online communication via the internet and (since 2007) smartphones, has intensified the conflict. During the Clinton years, US authorities tried (and failed) to ensure that all electronic devices should have a secret backdoor, while the Snowden revelations in 2013 put pressure on internet companies to offer end-to-end encryption for their users communications that would make them unreadable by either security services or the tech companies themselves. The result was a kind of standoff: between tech companies facilitating unreadable communications and law enforcement and security agencies unable to access evidence to which they had a legitimate entitlement.

In August, Apple opened a chink in the industrys armour, announcing that it would be adding new features to its iOS operating system that were designed to combat child sexual exploitation and the distribution of abuse imagery. The most controversial measure scans photos on an iPhone, compares them with a database of known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and notifies Apple if a match is found. The technology is known as client-side scanning or CSS.

Powerful forces in government and the tech industry are now lobbying hard for CSS to become mandatory on all smartphones. Their argument is that instead of weakening encryption or providing law enforcement with backdoor keys, CSS would enable on-device analysis of data in the clear (ie before it becomes encrypted by an app such as WhatsApp or iMessage). If targeted information were detected, its existence and, potentially, its source would be revealed to the agencies; otherwise, little or no information would leave the client device.

CSS evangelists claim that its a win-win proposition: providing a solution to the encryption v public safety debate by offering privacy (unimpeded end-to-end encryption) and the ability to successfully investigate serious crime. Whats not to like? Plenty, says an academic paper by some of the worlds leading computer security experts published last week.

The drive behind the CSS lobbying is that the scanning software be installed on all smartphones rather than installed covertly on the devices of suspects or by court order on those of ex-offenders. Such universal deployment would threaten the security of law-abiding citizens as well as lawbreakers. And even though CSS still allows end-to-end encryption, this is moot if the message has already been scanned for targeted content before it was dispatched. Similarly, while Apples implementation of the technology simply scans for images, it doesnt take much to imagine political regimes scanning text for names, memes, political views and so on.

In reality, CSS is a technology for what in the security world is called bulk interception. Because it would give government agencies access to private content, it should really be treated like wiretapping and regulated accordingly. And in jurisdictions where bulk interception is already prohibited, bulk CSS should be prohibited as well.

In the longer view of the evolution of digital technology, though, CSS is just the latest step in the inexorable intrusion of surveillance devices into our lives. The trend that started with reading our emails, moved on to logging our searches and our browsing clickstreams, mining our online activity to create profiles for targeting advertising at us and using facial recognition to allow us into our offices now continues by breaching the home with smart devices relaying everything back to motherships in the cloud and, if CSS were to be sanctioned, penetrating right into our pockets, purses and handbags. That leaves only one remaining barrier: the human skull. But, rest assured, Elon Musk undoubtedly has a plan for that too.

Wheels within wheelsIm not an indoor cyclist but if I were, The Counterintuitive Mechanics of Peloton Addiction, a confessional blogpost by Anne Helen Petersen, might give me pause.

Get out of hereThe Last Days of Intervention is a long and thoughtful essay in Foreign Affairs by Rory Stewart, one of the few British politicians who always talked sense about Afghanistan.

The insiderBlowing the Whistle on Facebook Is Just the First Step is a bracing piece by Maria Farrell in the Conversationalist about the Facebook whistleblower.

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Apples plan to scan images will allow governments into smartphones - The Guardian

Bianca Lewis, or as she is known in the hacker world: BiaSciLab, is part of the next generation of hackers. At 14 years old, she has already made a name for herself in hacker conference circles when a few years ago, she was among a group of kids that hacked into an election reporting system. This inspired her to start her Secure Open Vote project, where she plans to build a secure end-to-end election system.

Lewis also started Girls Who Hack, where she focuses on teaching girls the skills they need to get into hacking, starting at a very basic level. Women aren't really taken as seriously in the cybersecurity field, and I've noticed that with most of my girlfriends, they don't really get opportunities to work with a community of girls to learn, she says. And just working in this field, being younger and having a new perspective makes me want to teach a different way and showcase things in a different way. And it makes it feel easier to teach to kids who are my age. Kids don't really want to learn from an adult who's super technical, but someone their age who's just explaining it to them as a friend.

I love to learn new things and stretch my brain to solve different puzzles and challenges, she added. So I started to go to more and more conferences. After that, I decided, hey, I learned so much stuff. I want to teach all the stuff to people. So I started presenting and doing talks. My first talk was on cryptography and since then, anything that I learn, I make a talk on.

Lewis knows that new threats and problems arise every single day in the cyber security field, and that she has to keep learning to keep up, but shes up for the task and looking forward to what the future holds for her. I feel like what I'm doing now is the path to a bunch of different careers. If Girls Who Hack really takes off then I can go focus on that, or Secure Open Vote, I can focus on that and put all my energy into that. Or if I decide that presenting really is my lifelong passion, I can keep presenting. The cybersecurity field is so wide that I feel like there's endless options for different jobs and things I could do.

Also featured in this episode of FutureProof is Marc Maiffret, who got his start in cybersecurity by hacking as a teenager in the 90s, and honed his skills by breaking into the digital spaces and exploring.

Looking to the future of the field, Maiffret is encouraged by what he sees from the next generation of hackers like Lewis. The things that a teenager these days is coming up with in security versus 20 years ago. I mean, it's mind boggling things around like artificial intelligence, machine learning stuff that just couldn't even fathom back then. And so I'm I'm just extremely excited for where things are going.

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The 14-Year-Old Who Founded Girls Who Hack Is Inspiring the Next Generation of Hackers - VICE

The global business analytical report titled Crypto Health market has recently been published by Absolute Markets Insights to its extensive database. The global Crypto Health market is examined on the basis of technological advancements and recent trends of the healthcare sector. The market study has been evaluated on the basis of different aspects of the businesses such as drivers and restraints which will affect the progress of the companies. An informative data gathered from distinctive sources such as case studies from numerous industry experts, views and opinions of business leaders, among others further contribute to the authenticity of the report.

Across the globe, the Crypto Health market has been fragmented into several regions for studies of successful sales strategies implemented by top-level companies. The report also provides an effective analysis of investments and market shares for a better understanding of the market. The study includes an analysis of several segments along with its sub-segments. It also helps to analyze the several key factors such as pricing structure and manufacturing base of different companies.

The global Crypto Health Market is expected to grow at CAGR of +20.12% during the forecast period (2021-2030) year. Distinctive techniques such as primary and secondary research methods have been scrutinized in the report to discover, study and analyze the market information.

Get Sample Copy of this report: https://www.absolutemarketsinsights.com/request_sample.php?id=639

Government agencies across the globe are promoting and adopting advanced cryptography technologies for securing and raising the efficiency of healthcare sector. For instance, in September 2019 UAEs Ministry of Health and Prevention launched a blockchain platform for storing healthcare and pharmaceutical data which can be used for users searching health facilities and licensed medical personnel. Similarly, governments of U.S, Estonian India and many other nations have also deployed advanced cryptography technologies in the healthcare sector, hence, propelling the growth of global crypto health market.

COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of telehealth services which is expected to increase the demand for cryptographic techniques to safeguard interactions between doctor and patients. Based on component, coin is expected to witness highest compound annual growth rate in crypto market in future years owing to the increasing acceptance of cryptocurrency in various healthcare service platforms. Insurance companies are rapidly emerging in crypto health market with applications of cryptography to secure claims and payment processing and exchange of health data.

This report provides insights into the following pointers:

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List of Companies Covered in the Report: Abto Software, Guardtime, Hashed Health, IBM Corporation, iSolve, LLC, Medicalchain SA., Microsoft, NTT DATA, Inc., Patientory, Inc., PokitDok, Inc., Solve.Care, Tata Consultancy Services Limited and The Linux Foundation amongst others.

Report Scope & Segmentation:

Crypto Health industry -By Application:

Crypto Health industry By Product:

Geographical Analysis: Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Global Crypto Health Market these regions, from 2021 to 2030 (forecast), covering:

North America (United States, Canada, Mexico)

Asia-Pacific (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam)

Europe (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, Rest of Europe)

Central & South America (Brazil, Rest of South America)

Middle East & Africa (GCC Countries, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, Other)

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Future Trend of Crypto Health Market by Regions, Type and Application, Forecast till 2030 | Abto Software, Guardtime, Hashed Health, IBM Corporation,...

IBM and Raytheon Technologies have formed a partnership in order to establish advanced artificial intelligence, cryptographic and quantum solutions for the aerospace, defence and intelligence industries.

The partnership agreement will also include the federal government, as part of a strategic collaboration.

According to the official announcement, AI and quantum technologies give aerospace and government customers the ability to design systems in a faster manner and better secures their communications networks.

IBM was an early investor in cryptography and, 50 years later, it is following suit with blockchain technology.

By combining IBMs breakthrough commercial research with Raytheon Technologies own research, plus aerospace and defence expertise, the companies will be able to crack once-unsolvable challenges.

Dario Gil, senior vice president of IBM and director of Research, said the rapid advancement of quantum computing and its exponential capabilities have spawned one of the greatest technological races in recent history one that demands unprecedented agility and speed.

Our new collaboration with Raytheon Technologies will be a catalyst in advancing these state-of-the-art technologies combining their expertise in aerospace, defence and intelligence with IBMs next-generation technologies to make discovery faster, and the scope of that discovery larger than ever, he said.

Together with AI and quantum, the companies will jointly research and develop advanced cryptographic technologies that lie at the heart of some of the toughest problems faced by the aerospace industry and government agencies.

Mark E Russell, Raytheon Technologies chief technology officer, stressed that encrypted communications were at risk of becoming too exposed.

Take something as fundamental as encrypted communications. As computing and quantum technologies advance, existing cybersecurity and cryptography methods are at risk of becoming vulnerable, he said.

IBM and Raytheon Technologies will now be able to collaboratively help customers maintain secure communications and defend their networks better than previously possible.

Both companies said they would be building a technical collaboration team to quickly insert IBMs commercial technologies into active aerospace, crypto, defence and intelligence programs.

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IBM partners Raytheon Technologies on AI and cryptography - Yahoo Finance

The term decentralized finance, or DeFi, goes back to a Telegram chat in 2018. Thats when a group of software developers and entrepreneurs were trying to decide what to call their movement of new-breed financial services that would be automated, built on a blockchain, and capable of stripping out traditional banks.

Three years later and DeFi is big business. A user with a crypto wallet can trade digital assets, get loans, or take out insurance, among many other things. Some $90 billion of collateral is locked up in these services, and more than 10 million people have downloaded MetaMask, one of the most popular digital wallets used to open up access to these networks.

The roots of decentralized finance come from the 2008 bitcoin whitepaper that set out the framework for a novel system for digital cash; those creation exploded into something bigger when Ethereum was invented a few years later. Bitcoin wanted to be peer-to-peer money, Camila Russo, founder of the crypto news service The Defiant, wrote in her book The Infinite Machine. Etherum wanted to be peer-to-peer everything.

DeFi is an amalgam of cryptography, finance, and software development, and it tends to be shrouded with its own lexicon and jargon. Lets take it one piece at a time.

One of the core tenants of decentralized finance is that its, well, decentralized. Take bitcoin, for example: The original crypto asset is basically a ledger (its blockchain) that is decentralized because the transactions are recorded in databases on many different computers. That single record (stored across many databases) is secured with cryptography and the computers keep tabs on each other to make sure it hasnt been tampered with.

Decentralization is part of what makes bitcoin hard to kill. No single party is in charge, so its nearly impossible for someone to go rogue and change the rules that govern the virtual coin. Likewise, even if a government manages to prevent a bunch of computers from supporting bitcoin, the digital asset can continue functioning because other computers on the network retain a full record of transactions and can carry on running the show.

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DeFi takes this concept a step further. Decentralized exchanges and lending systems use blockchains like the Ethereum network, which was proposed by Canadian-Russian programmer Vitalik Buterin in 2013. Whereas the bitcoin blockchain was designed to keep track of bitcoin transactions, Ethereums blockchain was created to host programs. Think of Ethereum as a decentralized computer that software developers can make applications (dApps) for. The computers that provide processing power for Ethereum are rewarded with ether, which is now the second-most valuable crypto asset behind bitcoin.

Like bitcoin, the Ethereum network is hard to shut down or corrupt. Anyone with an internet connection can access it.

The decision making, or governance, at DeFi organizationsfrom the fees they charge users to the products they offeris often meant to be decentralized. (If the US political system is a representative democracy, think of DeFi as direct democracy.) A single person or a small group of people might be driving a decentralized application at inception, but they often seek to step away as the project gains momentum, handing control to the community that uses it. That transition could be in the form of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which has its rules and regulations embedded in programming code and may issue governance tokens, which gives holders of those coins say in decisions.

One of bitcoin's key innovations was the capacity for two users to make digital payments directly with one another. This is easy to do in the physical world using paper or metal money. But until bitcoin came along, the only way to do so electronically was through a bank or payment company like PayPal.

Going through these third parties leaves a digital footprint that can be surveilled, and those companies could potentially be "censored" by the governmenti.e. pressured to prevent transactions for political or other reasons. Bitcoin was envisioned to get around this, as a digital form of cash for peer-to-peer payments.

DeFi apps can also be peer-to-peer. In a traditional stock-trading transaction, an order might be processed through a series of intermediariesa broker and an exchange, among otherswhile the shares themselves are held at a custody bank, which is expected to keep the securities from getting lost or stolen.

By contrast, a DeFi exchange (DEX) doesn't have those intermediaries. If you use Uniswap, a decentralized exchange built on the Ethereum platform, to trade crypto tokens, those assets will end up right in your crypto wallet, facilitated by Uniswap's automated programs known as smart contracts. That means there are fewer parties taking a cut of your transaction.

Blockchain has enabled a series of digital gold rushes since it was invented 13 years ago. Two of them are initial coin offerings (ICOs) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs):

ICOs are a type of crowdfunding, and they're often used to raise money for open-source software projects. In exchange for capital, ICO investors get a unique token that might give them access to the software's special features... or might not give them access to much at all.

ICOs can sound a little bit like a stock offeringtoo much like stock offerings, in fact, for the US Securities and Exchange Commission; coin offerings may lack guardrails like disclosure and auditing that an initial public offering (IPO) would be expected to provide in the regulated stock market.

ICOs raised more than $7 billion in 2018, before plunging around 95% to $371 million in 2019, the latest year data was available, as regulators cracked down, according to CB Insights.

NFTs are kind of like a limited-edition trading cardonly online. Just as blockchain enables users to prove ownership of their bitcoin holdings, so too does it enable people to make unique digital assets like collectibles and art. One of the best known NFT sales was a work by Beeplethe artist also known as Mike Winkelmannwho sold a collage through an auction at Christie's for $69 million. Unlike a music MP3, which can be copy-and-pasted to infinity, NFTs are designed to be one of a kind, and to have one owner at a time.

A digital art fair in Hong Kong with works by Andy Warhol and Mike Winkelmann.

These acronyms are more than just a gold rush, says Matthew Leising, author of Out of the Ether. ICOs gave startups and software developers a way to raise money without the help of an investment bank or the backing of a venture capital firm. Likewise, NFTs can give musicians and visual artists a new way to monetize their work. "NFTs are really interesting because they've proven that a digital item can be scarce," Leising says.

DeFi's strength can also be its weakness:

Decentralization makes DeFi difficult to censor or stamp out, but it requires some heavy-duty computing. Maintaining a database and records across a network of many computers slows things down and can make transactions more expensive. Ethereum is the most popular blockchain for DeFi applications, but the sheer amount of computing now taking place is driving up fees and bogging down the network. As Ethereum developers try to find ways to make it more scalable, other chains like Solana and Avalanche are picking up momentum. "It's genuinely hard to get performance out of blockchains," says Emin Gn Sirer, a computer scientist at Cornell University and an advisor to Avalanche.

DeFi strips out intermediaries like custody banks, which are expected to keep assets (usually digital tokens) safe. That means you don't have to worry about a financial institution failing and taking your holdings with itor a government seizing your tokens and confiscating them. On the other hand, the only thing keeping your holdings safe is you and your passcode. If you lose that passcode (or someone steals it), your assets are gone for good.

The DeFi upstarts often purport to be available to anyone. You may be able to get a loan or trade virtual coins without traditional financial credentials like identification or a credit score. That freedom promises to extend financial services to parts of the world that haven't always had them, or where the services are expensive or prone to fraud or confiscation. But you can easily see the downside: If there's no entity keeping track of who is using a service or where they are located, the systems could be used by criminals or run counter to sanctions. The regulatory crackdown has already begun.

Blockchains have proven pretty tough to crackbut the smart contracts and apps that run on top of those chains are only as smart as the people who designed them. The code is typically open-source, which means it's there for everyone to see and to innovate with, but that also makes it easier for hackers to attack. Much more programming code these days is audited for bugs and vulnerabilities, and a growing number of people understand the need for formal verification (a process that uses algorithms to analyze other algorithms for glitches), but plenty of money is still going into code that hasn't been shored up in that way, Cornell's Sirer said.

Uniswap, a decentralized exchange (DEX), was created by Hayden Adams, a mechanical engineer from New York. The idea sprung from posts written by Ethereum founder Buterin about developing an automated market maker and decentralized exchange. These days, Uniswap facilitates $1 billion or more in daily crypto trading, and its governance tokens, UNI, have a market value of about $12 billion according to CoinGecko, a crypto-data website.

Aave was founded by law student Stani Kulechov in 2017 (originally called ETHLend). The platform lets users lend and borrow crypto tokens; users have put about $14 billion worth of collateral for loans on the network, according to Defi Pulse.

MakerDAO is a lending and borrowing platform that uses Dai, a stablecoin linked to the US dollar. MakerDAO was started in 2014 and co-founded by Rune Christensen. On its website, MakerDao says it's one of the largest decentralized applications on the Ethereum blockchain and the first DeFi application to get serious adoption. Users have put up about $6 billion of collateral on the system.

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