Category Archives: Roulette

For the special primary election to choose a new congressional representative for Alaska, 48 names will be on the June 11 ballot. How will you find your favorite candidate among the 48?

Alaska voters will be tasked with choosing just one name among the sea of choices.

Where that candidate is on the ballot depends on what district you live in.

The Division of Elections will print a different ballot for each state House district. The candidates will be rotated because that is what statute requires.

Candidates for the vacant U.S. House seat are listed alphabetically in House District 1, which, using the old district maps, is Fairbanks. Then the candidate at the top of the list drops to the bottom of the list in House District 2. The process repeats through House District 40.

See all the ballots at this link.

Ballots will be mailed to registered Alaska voters on April 27. This is a mail-in election with few options for in-person voting. Not planning to be home? To change the address where your ballot is mailed, visit this page.

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Suzanne Downing had careers in business and journalism before serving as the Director of Faith and Community-based Initiatives for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and returning to Alaska to serve as speechwriter for Gov. Sean Parnell. Born on the Oregon coast, she moved to Alaska in 1969.

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Ballot roulette: What will your special election ballot look like for the congressional race? - Must Read Alaska

By: Luke Kerr-Dineen April 10, 2022

Cameron Smith had an ironclad putting routine that was the same every time to the second.

Stephen Denton / GOLF.com

AUGUSTA, Ga. Scottie Scheffler had earned his lead, but for large parts of the day, it never felt as comfortable as it perhaps deserved to.

How could it? After all, its the moment you can relax that the sniper pulls the trigger on the dot circling on your back. And Cam Smith, one of best putters on Masters Sunday, was going hunting.

Ultimately it wasnt to be. It wasnt his putter that failed him, but the rest of his game. A series of poor drives, culminating in what he called a terrible swing on the 12th send his hopes of of a green jacket into Raes Creek. When he hit good shots, he made birdies like on the 11th hole, the most difficult of the tournament. His putter couldnt make up for when he didnt.

Yet like Ben Crenshaw before him, Cam Smith seems like one of those generational putters thats going to keep contending at this tournament.

Im frustrated not to walk away with a win yet, he said after his third top three, and fourth top 10, in his last five starts here. I love it here, and I look forward to the challenge of coming back here next year.

When he does, it will be his magical putter that leads the charge. Watching Cam Smith up close on Sunday as he attempted the impossible catching the best player in the field may not have yielded a green jacket for the Australian, but I walked away from what felt like a masterclass in putting.

Heres what I learned along the way.

Moving from tee-to-green feels like a bit of a game of roulette with Cam Smith. But the moment he walks into the green, he looks entirely in his element. The crowd feels it, and he knows it. Comfortable, confident, and composed.

Gametime starts and ends with his routine, which runs like clockwork. He marks his ball then walks behind the hole, looking at the entire length of the putt as he does.

When he gets to the hole, he stands behind it and crouches down to get a closer look at it. Then he walks back to the ball from the other side. He stops at the mid point of each putt as he does, sets up and takes his stroke, then back to his ball. At that point, he steps into the putt.

It may sound like a lot, but Cam Smith actually plays quite quickly. He glides through each step without delay and doesnt linger on any of them. Hes entirely focused on the process, and he does the same thing every time. Just because hes taking in a lot of information doesnt mean its an excuse to play slowly.

With his ball placed on the ground, Smith steps into the putt and spends 10 seconds over the ball. Trust me, I timed it, and on each putt it stays true to the second.

The steps dont waver, either: He takes three quick looks at the hole, while shuffling his feet and regripping the club. Then when he settles in, takes one long look at the hole and hits his putt.

Nothing changes, regardless of putt. The only thing that changes is whether he uses the line on the ball, which changes based on whatever feels most comfortable on the given putt.

My favorite part of Cam Smiths putting routine is the final moment before he hits the putt. All the movement comes to a subtle stop, and he takes one, long, deliberate look at the hole. It takes about six seconds, by my count, and it Smith says its the most important part of his entire routine.

Taking that last look, seeing the ball roll over the the front with the pace that you like, doesnt matter with its two feet of 100 feet, he says. Its something Ive always done and I think its key.

Its interesting and telling that Cam Smith mentioned pace when visualizing his putt, because all day, Cam Smith seemed to roll the putt with perfect speed. They didnt all go in, but did they all seemed to end with a tight radius around the hole. Hitting with the right speed is even more important than hitting it with the right line, he says, and he visualizes that by looking at a side of the hole, instead of the center.

I love seeing the ball going in the side of the hole, he says. Thats my focus.

And finally, for as great a putter as Cameron Smith is, its important to note that not every putt went in. He badly under-read a putt on the 11th hole, and after a mental error on the 12th hole, he was visibly angry. He clearly let it affect his nine-foot putt for double bogey, which he hit too hard and through the break. A basic mental error that one of the best putters in golf couldve shouldve avoided.

It just goes to show that putting (in the least surprising news ever) is really difficult. Cam Smith may be the best putter on the planet today, and yet he even makes multiple mistakes during a high-pressure round. The secret isnt avoiding them altogether, its accepting them and bouncing back.

Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Director of Service Journalism at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brands game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLFs multimedia platforms.

An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South CarolinaBeaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University and in 2017 was named News Media Alliances Rising Star. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

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What I learned watching golfs best putter chase the Masters lead - Golf.com

By Col Rajinder Singh (Retd)

Cloaked in the garb of Neutrality, Pakistan army has played its age-old game of causing political instability in Pakistan. Sending a message of Neutrality to opposition parties , it allowed Imran Khan to play the game of threat to national security through a forged threat from the United States to topple the Imran Khan Government. In the process, the constitution of Pakistan was blown to pieces.

The so-called threat letter was actually an assessment byPakistans outgoing ambassador to the USA. It seems, in his conversation with a third or fourth grade Secretary , Donald Lewis, of US foreign office , the ambassador gathered the impression that US Pakistan relations cannot improve , as long as Imran Khan was the head of the Government. Accordingly, Pakistans ambassador had sent a routine cabal to Pakistans foreign Minister, Shah Mohammed Qureshi, who further tempered it to suit the political purpose of the Imran Khan Government. This became a ground for alleged Threat to Pakistans stability.

This was used by the Deputy Speaker of National Assembly to dismiss the No Confidence Motion against the Imran Khan Government, moved by combined opposition, who had claimed a support of 197 members of the National Assembly against the simple majority of 172. Thus, the defeat of Imran Khan was certain . So, he preempted the opposition move by getting the motion rejected and then dissolved the National Assembly.

Point of issue is the so called cabal, alleging a foreign Conspiracy, nay US plan to topple Imran Khan. It is laughable . But the surprise is of Pakistan Armys stoned silence, custodian of Pakistans security, on such an alleged attempt by a foreign Power to destabilise Pakistan. It allowed things to drift so as to create political chaos , when people of Pakistan would cry for the Pakistan Army to intervene.

Though the issue is in the supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan , yet nothing worthwhile is expected. There are claims by some Pakistani analysts that some of the members of the five judge bench of SC might be hand in gloves with the Imran Khan Government. Some say that the daughter of a senior most judge has been employed in a lucrative post on a very high salary by the Imran Khan Government . Therefore there might be another shock for the opposition.

All said and done, Pakistan army is cleverly using the courts and the politicians to create conditions favourable for its intervention. This is how it had got Nawaz Sharif, as Prime Minister removed in 2018 , on a flimsy charge of IKAMA - for not disclosing his salary , as employee of his sons company in UAE. Similarly , Imran khan , its own protege , though proven incompetent and incapable , was getting too big gor his boots . Therefore opposition was encouraged to rise against Imran Khan, with the promise of Neutrality. Actually , it was a double game . Behind the curtains , it supported Imran on alleged security threats .

Pakistan army had played the similar game in 1971, when it widened the gulf between Zulfiqar Bhutto and Mujibar Rehman and thus broke up Pakistan. Ironically , the public in Pakistan still does not think that its army was the real culprit for the creation of Bangladesh . It would do anything to retain its hold on Pakistans corridor of power. A Pakistani political commentator had once said that Generals were not fools to get out of business by ensuring political stability in the country . It seems Pakistan Public was once again getting ready to play a political game of Russian Roulette by begging the army to intervene.

The situation in Pakistan is really volatile. It could explode if SC does not ensure the sanctity of its constitution. If SC favours Imran Khan Government, which is the apprehension of many Pakistani analysts, it will only prepare grounds for the intervention of Army. Rafia Zakaria , a columnist for The Dawn, had lamented in 2014, on the Early death of MA JINNAH, Quaid E Azam and founding father of Pakistan, in her blog , If Jinnah Had lived

-Pakistans loss was the untimely early death of its leader, the man with the plan, without which a country already born had to face questions it did not yet know how to answer. Islam or democracy, security or welfare, education or defense, South Asian or Middle Eastern, too many conundrums, all of them too hard, too confusing even at the ripe age of sixty three. The death of one man should not mean so much, but perhaps the death of some men, leading men, doom the futures of too many more.

Mark her words on the Oscillating pendulum of Pakistan between:-

USA and China Civilian rule and military Rule Islam or Democracy; Security or Welfare; Education or Defence; South Asia and Middle East.

What she did not say but did sound indirectly: Had Jinnah been alive, Pakistan military would not have taken her on the path of catastrophe that it faces today in the form of TTP. Despite the looming danger, its military is still reluctant to take on fundamentalism, which in reality led to the separation of Bangladesh.

Today, KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA / Balochistan are on the boil- why blame Afghanistan or Iran for what happens there? Pak Militarys Strategic Asset is out to devour its creator. This is the key issue. The survivability of Pakistan is subject to Pak armys reduced role in governance of Pakistan. It cannot be a sole custodian of its foreign and defence policy. The unshackled army would be the real cause of Pakistans disintegration as was in the case of East Pakistan. Then, who takes advantage of volatile situations is immaterial.

It should learn from the Indian army to be subordinate to civil leadership. To do so, it has to seek divorce from politics and leave the job of governance to politicians, however corrupt and ineffective they are. Will it do so, is a trillion dollar question?

(The author is a renowned author and a defence analyst. His bestselling books are on Kashmir- A Different Perspective and The ULFA Insurgency besides being a contribution on two other books. Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited).

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Political game of Russian Roulette in Pakistan: What its future portends - The Financial Express

UFC has created many superstars, who have transcended the sport of mixed martial arts and become global superstars. However, none can match the rise and superstardom of Irish mixed martial artist Conor McGregor.

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The 33-year-old martial artist enjoys a luxurious life, all thanks to his hard work both inside the ring and in the world of business. With a multi-million dollar net worth, the MMA fighter loves to live life like a king and he surely spends like one too.

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In a similar fashion to his rival Floyd Money Mayweather, the UFC superstar was spotted wearing a half a million-dollar watch. This costly ornament contains an 18k rose gold, along with a special casino theme featuring a game of Roulette.

This can be played anywhere, anytime by pressing a button, which will make the clock spin much like the famous WWE title introduced by John Cena. The watch carries a retail price of $625k and heres a brief description of the watch and everything it offers, along with an image.

Conor Mcgregors wrist game close-up of his @jacobandco Astronomia Casino in 18k rose gold, a watch that features a roulette complication that can be activated pushing the button at eight oclock. This masterpiece is the first grand complication timepiece with a roulette wheel that spins, allowing the owners to play their favorite game of chance at any time.

In other news, McGregor has been eyeing his return to the octagon for a few months. The outspoken superstar made his plans clear that upon his return he wants to go up a weight class to challenge welterweight champion, Kamaru Usman.

The Nigerian Nightmare is currently recuperating from an injury that will keep him out of action for the major part of 2022.

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However, this hasnt stopped the Notorious one from taking shots at the pound-for-pound king. This will be his second foray into the 170 lbs division and likely his last-ditch attempt to pick up a world title.

Watch this story: Conor McGregor, SeanO Malley, and Other UFC Fighters Reactions to Khabib Nurmagomedovs Boycott Colby Covington Comments

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The only other way would be to go through the roster of contenders and pick up key victories to become the next challenger.

Will Conor McGregor create history again by beating Kamaru Usman? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Conor McGregor Takes a Page Out of His Rival Floyd Mayweathers Book as He Flaunts a $600K Watch - EssentiallySports

Heroin, cocaine and cannabis were found on Marcus Ford when he was searched by officers at Mansfield Police Station, on July 30, 2019, said prosecutor Lauren Fisher at Nottingham Crown Court.

Nothing was recovered from an analysis of his mobile phone but he was also carrying 243 in cash.

"In a prepared statement he said he bought the drugs in bulk because it was cheaper and the cash was from his benefits money," Ms Fisher said.

But a police expert concluded the quantites involved means Ford was charged with possession with intent to supply the class A drugs.

The court heard that Ford, now aged 21, has no previous convictions, but was cautioned twice for dissimilar matters.

David Watts, mitigating, said Ford was run over and suffered "life-changing injuries.

"He proposes to move to Manchester to make a fresh start, he said. His mother died. He has suffered a lot. He has changed a lot."

Recorder Michael Auty QC said Ford would have faced a three-and-half-year prison sentence, but "his world has changed" after he was "targeted and attacked.

Recorder Auty told him: "You need to understand that you chose to involve yourself in a wicked and pernicious trade. People are left bereft because the baby that they once cradled in their arms lies dead as a result of drugs.

"Anyone who takes class A drugs plays Russian roulette with their lives. Anyone who trafficks in class A drugs plays Russian roulette with their lives."

Ford, of Brayton Crescent, Bulwell, pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and heroin with intent to supply and possession of cannabis.

The judge said that Ford pleaded guilty "not knowing whether you would go to prison today or not," and the offences were committed "some appreciable time ago."

He imposed a two-year sentence, suspended for two years, with 30 rehabilitation days.

"You really don't want to commit any further offences," he told Ford. "Because you won't survive inside."

The rest is here:

Bulwell drug dealer hopes for fresh start after he was run down by a car in a targeted attack and left with life-changing injuries - Hucknall Dispatch

A SENIOR GP who stole more than 1million of NHS money to fund his desperate addiction to online gambling has been struck off.

Dr Rumi Chhapia tried to hit the jackpot on slot machines and roulette.

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The 45-year-old who earned nearly 200,000 a year began his fraud after being put in charge of the accounts of a group of 16 surgeries.

He embezzled 1.13million over 41 days in 2020.

When colleagues in Portsmouth, Hants, grew suspicious he claimed that his accounts had been hacked.

Chhapia, of Southsea jailed for 40 months at the citys crown court last year has now been struck off by a Medical Practitioners Tribunal.

Gambling firms were understood to have agreed to pay back 904,000 after Chhapia wrote grovelling letters to them.

He gambled away a total of 2.5 million, of which he recouped 1.2 million.

The funds were stolen while the NHS was struggling to deal with the Covid 19 pandemic.

Medical Practitioners Tribunal Chair Ian Comfort said: "Dr Chhapia placed patients at risk of harm and breached a fundamental tenet of the profession by taking funds that were necessary for patient care.

"The Tribunal took into account that this was not a single incident of fraud, but 64 separate transactions over 41 days, totalling a significant amount of money."

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GP who stole more than 1million of NHS money to fund desperate addiction to online gambling is struck of... - The Sun

There are many ways to entertain yourself online. Playing games is definitely one of those ways. The best casino games out there these days are roulette, and they come in various permutations. You may enjoy French, American, and European roulette which will make the experience a lot more fun than you expect at first blush. Players who wish to try these versions of the game are advised to turn to the top roulette casinos.

There you will discover numerous versions of the game but also learn why some games tend to be more generous than others. Roulette games give a lot of fun, and while they do have a gambling element to them, you can use your knowledge to minimize chances of loss.

Roulette is dubbed a gambling game, and this is understandable. After all, it takes luck to end a gaming session with a net win. However, roulette for all the chance the game has is also a game of skill where you can use your knowledge of the game to make the best and smartest decisions.

For one, you can bet in a way that is consistent with a good strategy. Whether this is Martingale or Fibonacci will be down to you, but the truth is that both strategies offer some leeway, and you will have no trouble adjusting your bets in real time. Whats so special about these two strategies, you may wonder?

Well, as things stand, Fibonacci and Martingale still depend on chance, but the fact is that you can use smart bet sizes and consistency to incrementally expand your bankroll. Martingale essentially works by placing a bet, and if that bet loses, you double up your stake. You keep doubling up until you have recovered your loss and then return to the basic unit.

Fibonacci is a fixed sequence of numbers. You place one number in the sequence and then go to the next and to the next one. You will similarly move down the sequence depending on whether you win or lose your selection.

There are many roulette games to try out there as well, but which are the best, you may wonder? Well, this depends on what you are looking for. In terms of pure return to player, you may want to stick with the French version of the game as it will provide you with the best returns. French roulette can push the house significantly down and run a small 1.36% house edge at all times. This is because the game has two rules called Le Partage and En Prison. Effectively, they negate the negative impact of your roll ending up on zero by either returning your stake or giving you a second chance to roll.

So, French roulette is best, but finding one that features all the additional rules that make it such is not easy as well. That is why most people are sticking with European roulette. The European version is also called a single-zero version. Here the house edge is 2.70%, and its considered the best base version (with 37 total numbers) to play.

Another one is the American roulette which has two zeros, and here the house edge increases a bit. On the flip side, you have a small advantage because you may place your wagers on a new special type of bet.

The first thing to remember is that roulette should be fun. If you want to play the game, you should only do so because you want to enjoy yourself first and to win money next. The game of roulette is not created to make you richer, but its certainly created to offer you a chance to win some money in a surprising and satisfying way.

For example, French roulette is obviously the most beneficial one from an RTP point of view, but when you consider entertainment value, then you would probably want to play Immersive or Lightning Roulette by companies such as Evolution Gaming. It all comes down to personal choice so what is yours?

Continued here:

Find the Best Online Roulette Gambling Games Today - Bettors Insider

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The odds of winning at a casino are not very good at all. And for roulette, it's even worse. As financial author J.B. Maverick reports in Investopedia, the house has a 5.26 % edge on an American roulette wheel, a percentage that's much higher than other games like blackjack. What does this mean?

"A roulette wheel is numbered from one to 36, so you might think this puts the odds for winning a single number bet at 36 to one," Maverick writes. "However, roulette wheels also have a zero, and sometimes they have a double zero and even a triple zero. The actual odds of winning are thus 37 to one, 38 to one, or 39 to one, not 36 to one."

Maverick reports that a casino wins about $50,000 for every $1 million played, and the house winnings get bigger the longer the player participates. If person is making $5 bets on every spin of the wheel and the wheel spins 50 times an hour, they'll wind up losing 5% of their money over four hours. Only 13.5% of gamblers actually wind up winning at the roulette wheel, according to Maverick's research.

Dr. Richard Jarecki, a medical professor at the University of Heidelberg, was one of the 13.5%. But the professor didn't just win. He won big. In fact, over a five-year period between 1964 and 1969,Jarecki won $8 million from roulette at various casinos. How?

Related:A Bakery's 'Vulva-Nut' Doughnut Brings Pleasure to Its Customers

By noticing a flaw ... and then painstakingly working at exploiting it. According to this great story in The Hustle, Jarecki found that roulette wheels, like all other mechanical devices, demonstrated wear and tear after a period of time. These tiny defects "chips, dents, scratches, unlevel surfaces might cause certain wheels to land on certain numbers more frequently than randomicity prescribed."

So what did Jarecki do? He went to work. He spent countless hours in numerous casinos, in addition to the hours he spent at his job, manually tracking tens of thousands of spins and analyzing the data for abnormalities.

I [experimented] until I had a rough outline of a system based on the previous winning numbers, he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1969. If numbers 1, 2 and 3 won the last 3 rounds, [I could determine] what was most likely to win the next 3.

Jarecki visited numerous casinos in Europe. He hired people to help him log the data. He spent days and nights analyzing that data. Then he did what any entrepreneur does when ready to take a risk: He borrowed 25,000 from a private investor, and over six months he quietly, slowly and cautiously placed his bets. The results were a net profit of 625,000 (roughly $6,700,000 today). By the end of 1969, Jarecki had made almost $8,000,000 in today's dollars.

Nothing he did was illegal, but it was annoying and costly to the gambling industry. Ultimately, Jarecki's highly publicized successes caused the industry to undertake a complete overhaul and digitization of their roulette tables. So sorry dont get any ideas.

Nevertheless, Jarecki noticed a flaw and he took advantage of it. He also proved three other very important things that every entrepreneur should know. The first is that making money is not easy. This was no get rich quick scheme. Jarecki had his successes over a number of years and after spending thousands of hours doing the research and collecting the data. He also invested his own money by hiring people to help. This took time and a lot of work.

Second, it really is all about the data. Collecting and then deeply analyzing the trends revealed from information about any business, activity, demographic, industry or geographic region will oftentimes reveal things to exploit. Most of us arent data driven people. We have romantic ideas about making money. Were usually not willing,or patient, enoughto do the research.

Related:I Know How To Easily Steal Money From Your Company's Bank Account

Finally, if you're going to make big money, you're going to have to risk big money. Jarecki couldn't do this on his own. He used his own money to hire people to help. Then when he was convinced of future success, he had to persuade an outside investor to make a significant investment, and you can only imagine how that pitch meeting went. But apparently he was convincing enough to sell his project. Im sure there were many sleepless nights during that time.

There are few people in this world that are willing to do all of the above, and even fewer that ultimately succeed the way Jarecki did. Are you one of those few people? If you are, then Im envious. If youre not, then join the crowd.

Link:

How Did a College Professor Win $8 Million At Roulette Over 5 Years? - Entrepreneur

THEY decided to play a game of "pregnancy roulette" as a bit of fun.

But two women were left speechless when they discovered during the game that they were BOTH pregnant.

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Jessica Oakes took to TikTok to share a video over which she wrote "POV: pregnancy roulette with the bestie".

In the clip, she and her pal were seen popping to the shops to buy two Clearblue pregnancy tests.

They then took it in turns to go into the toilet and take the test, after which they put the stick in a empty tissue box.

Once they'd both done the tests, they sat on the bed and reached into the box to pull one out.

Jessica went first, and kept the test close to her chest as she took a peek at the result and then nodded excitedly at her friend after apparently witnessing a positive.

However, the result didn't seem like much of a shock to Jessica - unlike her friend.

As she pulled out the stick and had a look, she couldn't hide the shock on her face as she realised that was positive too.

"Always trust your gut #pregnancyroulette," she captioned the video on TikTok.

In the comments section, people were quick to offer the pair their congratulations, as well as tagging friends to take part in the game with themselves.

"Get the tests ready were doing it!" one woman wrote.

While another added: "I wanna do it obviously they will both be negative but why not?"

As somebody else commented: "Lets make it an every month thing!"

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Original post:

I played pregnancy roulette with my best friend we did NOT get the results we were expecting... - The US Sun

Russias attack on Ukraine has upset all the well-integrated and familiar geopolitical, geo-economic pieces. The global order of the past 30 years resembled a giant jigsaw puzzle with many uneven fragmentssuch as, a rules-based global trade and financial system, or a unipolar global political systemwhich somehow fit snugly into one recognizable template. All these pieces are now up in the air.

Nobody can predict where the pieces will fall, whenever they fall, but one outcome seems quite likely: the new, emergent world order is likely to see accelerated acceptance of official cryptocurrency. Western economies, of necessity, will be in the vanguard as Russia weaponizes crypto-products to get around sanctions and precipitates cyber-warfare to implant measured chaos. According to US-based media outlets, 21 American companies, including gas producer Chevron, faced cyber-attacks days before Russian forces crossed into Ukraine. In this chaotic reordering of the global financial system, it will be interesting to see where and how India manages its cyber strategy, especially in erecting a regulatory framework for private crypto-products and rolling out a central bank digital currency (CBDC) with a design that is transparent, user-friendly, hack-proof and interoperable with other CBDCs. Speed will be key here.

The fast-transforming financial landscape has forced even the US to bring forward its CBDC plans. President Joe Biden has mandated government agencies and ministries to start developing a digital US dollar and to come out with a report highlighting the risks and advantages of such a move.

The US move comes after many months of debate over whether the worlds most powerful currency would bite the digital bullet. Whatever the outcome, an American CBDC is bound to be a crucial turning point for the global financial system. Bidens executive order is explicit: My Administration sees merit in showcasing United States leadership and participation in international fora related to CBDCs and in multi country conversations and pilot projects involving CBDCs. Any future dollar payment system should be designed in a way that is consistent with United States priorities and democratic values, including privacy protections, and that ensures the global financial system has appropriate transparency, connectivity, and platform and architecture interoperability or transferability, as appropriate."

It does look like a rear-guard action to maintain the dollars superior status as a global reserve currency. In an article for US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, analyst James Andrew Lewis writes: The end of American ascendancy undermines the architecture of global governance and security Rule of law and norms for responsible behavior, the themes that have guided digital governance, are now open to question and inadequate to guide policy in a confrontation."

Coincidentally, in January 2022, the US central bank, the Federal Reserve released a report titled Money and Payment: The US Dollar In The Age of Digital Transformation, seeking stakeholder feedback on the desired architecture for a digital dollar, including all its perceived risks and benefits. The idea behind seeking expert help is to minimize architectural flaws. This exercise is expected to continue independently, in parallel, while the US treasury department, headed by former Fed governor Janet Yellen, will also submit a report to Biden in September on the potential benefits and risks of a CBDC. Bidens executive order focuses heavily on inter-agency coordination for finalizing Yellens report, somewhat like a war-time effort, suggesting that the US government probably sees cryptos as the next battlefield.

India too has publicly announced a CBDC launch. But, so far, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has shared little information about its likely contours: whether priority will be for wholesale or retail modules, the choice of technology, whether external agencies will be involved, or how the design will incorporate special features suited for the Indian financial system.

Going by what RBI deputy governor T Rabi Sankar said during the February monetary policy media briefing, the central bank is seemingly handicapped by legislation: In the current Union budget, it has been proposed to amend the RBI Act which will enable RBI to issue the digital rupee. Once that is done, we can try releasing pilots, proofs of concepts of CBDC."

This cloak of secrecy extends to the government as well and muddies policy discussion on cryptos. The government promised to bring in legislation for regulating crypto-products in the country and publicly stated that a draft bill has been circulated for stakeholder feedback. But nobody knows the contents of the draft or among whom it has been circulated. The normal practice is to make the draft bill available to everybody and not to only a select group; a wider and universal circle of stakeholders improves input quality, minimizing opportunities for cronyism or surreptitious backdoors built into the CBDC design.

The government, though, has proposed a tax on profits from crypto trading, triggering speculation that taxation legalizes crypto products, adding to confusion. The Centre probably had its reasons for confidentiality but, post-Ukraine, the decks been reshuffled. This might require a change in strategy, one that blends domestic political compulsions with emerging geopolitical trends.

Rajrishi Singhal is a policy consultant, journalist and author. His Twitter handle is @rajrishisinghal.

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The Russian roulette of geopolitics will favour cryptos - Mint