From DSC:
Hmmm…another interesting item:

Ranking 4,500 Colleges by ROI (2022) — from cew.georgetown.edu

Excerpt:

Using new data from the College Scorecard, we ranked 4,500 colleges and universities by return on investment. The rankings follow the methodology of our 2019 report, A First Try at ROI: Ranking 4,500 Colleges.

The rankings include a new metric that measures the share of students at an institution whose earnings 10 years after enrollment are higher than those of workers with a high school diploma as their highest level of education. An average of 60 percent of college students across institutions earn more than a high school graduate after 10 years. However, at 1,233 postsecondary institutions (30 percent), more than half of their students 10 years after enrollment are earning less than a high school graduate. Our previous research indicates that these low earnings may relate to low graduation rates and disparities in earnings by gender and race and ethnicity.

 

 

Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 and 6 Invest in Many Ventures; as written by King Solomon

11 Ship your grain across the sea;
    after many days you may receive a return.
Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight;
    you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.

Sow your seed in the morning,
    and at evening let your hands not be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed,
    whether this or that,
    or whether both will do equally well.


From DSC:
Perhaps Solomon should get more credit as one of the first wise investment advisors. If he lived today, he would likely support diversification and support the concepts behind using index funds! 


 

The DOJ’s $3.6B Bitcoin Seizure Shows How Hard It Is to Launder Crypto — from wired.com by Andy Greenberg
A couple allegedly used a “laundry list” of technical measures to cover their tracks. They didn’t work.

Excerpt:

“What was amazing about this case is the laundry list of obfuscation techniques [Lichtenstein and Morgan allegedly] used,” says Ari Redbord, the head of legal and government affairs for TRM Labs, a cryptocurrency tracing and forensics firm. Redbord points to the couple’s alleged use of “chain-hopping”— transferring funds from one cryptocurrency to another to make them more difficult to follow—including exchanging bitcoins for “privacy coins” like monero and dash, both designed to foil blockchain analysis. Court documents say the couple also allegedly moved their money through the Alphabay dark web market—the biggest of its kind at the time—in an attempt to stymie detectives.

From DSC:
Easy to follow/understand, isn’t it!?! Not.

 
 

NFTs, DeFi & Metaverse To Rule Crypto Space In 2022 — from 101blockchains.com by Georgia Weston

Excerpt:

The year 2021 has been an exceptional milestone in the world of cryptocurrencies for various reasons. In 2021, the crypto market hit the $3 trillion dollar market cap while China imposed a complete ban on crypto trading and mining. In a dramatic year for cryptocurrencies, new trends such as non-fungible tokens, decentralized finance (DeFi), and the metaverse emerged as prominent highlights in the crypto space.

The discussions around NFTs, DeFi, and the ever-growing hype surrounding the web 3.0 and metaverse have been making the rounds of online communities. How would these technologies evolve in 2022? What will be the state of NFT in 2022? What will DeFi or the metaverse look like in 2022? How will they influence the larger picture of the crypto industry? Let us discover the answers to your questions by reflecting the prominent trends for NFTs, DeFi, and the metaverse in 2022 in the following discussion.

From DSC:
Perhaps these topics could also be addressed in that discussion I was wondering about for Economics classes.

 

From DSC:
Should Economics classes be looking at the idea of a digital dollar?


The battle for control of the digital dollar — from protocol.com

Excerpt:

After months of delay, the Federal Reserve’s much-awaited report on a digital dollar could be out soon. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday that the white paper on a planned central bank digital currency (CBDC) is “ready to go,” possibly in weeks.

But don’t expect a detailed blueprint for an American CBDC. The white paper will be more of “an exercise in asking questions” about how the digital dollar should work, Powell said.

And there are plenty of questions. Some have already sparked a heated debate: How should consumers gain access to the digital dollar? And how much control should the Fed have?

Will a digital dollar lead to “digital authoritarianism”? That’s one of the biggest fears about a digital currency: a Big Brother future where the Fed has the power to track how people spend their money.

 

Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT theft shows the ease of hacking crypto — from protocol.com by Tomio Geron
The blockchain puts power in the hands of individual crypto owners — which also makes them targets for criminals.

Excerpt:

The story of an art gallery owner who had $2.2 million worth of Bored Ape Yacht Club and other NFTs stolen is just the latest example of crypto theft, illustrating the vulnerability of buyers as a broader set of consumers venture into the field.

With NFTs, the issue has grown in importance as the market has transformed from a niche hobby to an active market filled with speculators and investors.

Todd Kramer of New York’s Ross+Kramer gallery fell victim to a phishing scam in late December, according to a now-deleted tweet. He stored his NFTs using an internet-connected hot wallet — a less secure method — and a thief made off with 15 digital tokens worth $2.2 million.

From DSC:
How’s the legal field doing here? Law enforcement? Governments? The banking systems?

 

Web 3.0 vs Metaverse: What’s the difference? — from homo-digitalis.net by Fabian Schmidt

Excerpt:

So what is Web 3.0?

On Twitter, a user asked if someone could explain the term in baby talk. I thought one answer was good:

    • Web 1.0 = Read
    • Web 2.0 = Read/Write
    • Web 3.0 = Read/Write/Own

This is a sufficient simplification to gain an initial understanding. Yet a bit more information is still important.

Let’s get one thing straight right away. As with all things in the making, there is not yet a clear-cut definition of Web 3.0. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the classic web, thinks of the semantic web as the next big step.

Since 2020/2021, there is another idea of Web3, and it is inspired by a new form of technology: Blockchains. At its core is a new wave of decentralization.

Besides decentralization, other key topics related to Web 3.0 include Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), Non-fungible-tokens (NFT), and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

The metaverse is a digital world that is meant to feel as real as possible and can represent all concerns of human existence. From leisure to work.

Fabian Schmidt, Homo Digitalis, 2021


Bill Gates: Most Work Meetings Will Happen In The Metaverse In 3 Years — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

Excerpt:

“Within the next two or three years, I predict most virtual meetings will move from 2D camera image grids—which I call the Hollywood Squares model, although I know that probably dates me—to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars,” said Gates in the post. “Both Facebook and Microsoft recently unveiled their visions for this, which gave most people their first view of what it will look like”.


Adidas to enter the metaverse with first NFT products — from dezeen.com by Rima Sabina Aouf

Excerpt:

Adidas has announced its next collection will be a mix of digital and physical items, and will be sold as NFTs produced with collaborators such as Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Titled Into the Metaverse, the collection will comprise virtual wearables that buyers can use in online platforms, but also the physical clothing to match.

It is Adidas’ first collection of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens – essentially, digital collectibles with proven authenticity. NFTs act as a blockchain-based certificate of ownership, allowing pieces to be authenticated, bought and collected.


How Coinbase thinks about the Metaverse — from blog.coinbase.com by Brian Armstrong & Alex Reeve

Excerpt:

Primitive Metaverse platforms are selling virtual land for millions of dollars. Billions more are being invested in Metaverse startups. And Mark Zuckerberg recently renamed his entire company to reflect a focus on building the Metaverse.

Recently, our team put together an internal presentation about the Metaverse, who’s working on it, and how crypto will help make it real. I thought the presentation was well done, so I’m sharing most of the slides here.

Like Matt[hew Ball], we define the Metaverse as:

The future of the internet: A massively-scaled, persistent, interactive, and interoperable real-time platform comprised of interconnected virtual worlds where people can socialize, work, transact, play, and create.

The Metaverse is the distant evolution of Web3. In its most complete form, it will be a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with a fully functioning economy where people can do just about anything they can do in the physical world.

Who is building the Metaverse today?

 

From DSC:
I’m not saying not to go there…but one has to be very careful when dealing with cryptocurrencies. As the items below show, you can mess up…big time.

From DSC:
And that bit about the decimal point is key! I tried to locate an article that I recently read that described how one person lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because he misplaced the decimal in his asking price for a cryptocurrency. It was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he said that his big thumbs got in the way. He mistyped the asking price and hit the Enter key before he recognized his mistake. He sold the cryptocurrency for a fraction of its real value. In that case, one would hope that the buyer would extend some grace and readjust the price. But that didn’t happen in this case. Ouch!


From DSC:
Again, I’m not saying that this area may not represent an enormous new, impactful, prosperous wave to ride. But I need to do a whole lot more learning before I feel comfortable jumping into this ocean.

That said when I read the quote below…I wondered:


 

 

Why It’s so Difficult to Recruit Diverse Teachers in Early Childhood — from edsurge.com by Meredith Whye

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Wisconsin mandates that student teachers experience one semester, approximately 18 weeks, of full-time work in the classroom. That means during the final semester of their senior year, students are working full-time without pay. The university advises student teachers to save up money and not work another job during this semester. However, the majority of the students I work with simply cannot stop working for 18 weeks.

 

From DSC:
When I ran across the items below, I couldn’t help but wonder…”What does the legal realm need to know here?”

The Ultimate List Of Crypto Lending Platforms — from 101blockchains.com by Diego Geroni

The Ultimate List Of Crypto Lending Platforms

Know The Vulnerabilities And Security Concerns Associated With NFT — from 101blockchains.com by Diego Geroni

Know The Vulnerabilities And Security Concerns Associated With NFT

Radar trends to watch: December 2021 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Programming, Quantum Computing, Cryptocurrency, and More

Radar trends to watch: December 2021

NFT sales reached $27 billion this year — from protocol.com by Nat Rubio-Licht
OpenSea dominated the business.

UNISWAP – Know Everything About The Largest Decentralized Exchange (DEX) — from 101blockchains.com by Diego Geroni

UNISWAP – Know Everything About The Largest Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

 

Report Finds US Workers Lagging in Digital Skills — from technewsworld.com by John P. Mello Jr.

Excerpt:

Many Americans lack the digital skills needed to be productive members of the workforce in the 21st century, according to a report released Monday by a Washington, D.C. think tank.

One-third of U.S. workers lack digital skills, with 13 percent having no digital skills and 18 percent having, at best, limited digital skills, noted the report by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a science and technology institute.

In essence, the ITIF reported, one in six working-age Americans are unable to use email, web search, or other basic online tools.

Also see:

Even though we may not be able to predict the jobs of the future, we can begin to crack the labor market code in today’s economy and home in on the hybrid, or human and technical skills that will help working-age adults prepare for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

 

All aboard: Bitcoin’s rise inspires even big banks to staff up on crypto talent — from linkedin.com by George Anders

Excerpt:

That’s according to a new analysis by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team, which finds that major financial services firms will add more than three times as many staff steeped in digital-asset experience this year than in 2015. That pace jumped 40% in the first half of 2021 alone, compared with the same period last year.

“The opportunities in digital assets are plentiful,” BNY Mellon’s Roman Regelman, the bank’s CEO of asset servicing and head of digital, told LinkedIn News. “We can now attract talent in a very different way.”

Also relevant, see:

  • Wharton’s New Crypto Course to Take Crypto for Tuition Fees — from insidehighered.com by Suzanne Smalley
    Excerpt:
    The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania last week announced it would become the first Ivy League school and the first American business school to accept enrollment payments in cryptocurrency via Coinbase. The announcement came alongside news that the prestigious business school also has launched an online certificate program focused on the economics of blockchain and digital assets.
 

From DSC:
The articles below made me wonder…what will lawyers, judges, and legislators need to know about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies? (#EmergingTechnologies)

 

National Disability Employment Awareness Month 2021 — from dol.gov

Excerpt:

The theme for NDEAM 2021, “America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion,” reflects the importance of ensuring that people with disabilities have full access to employment and community involvement during the national recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

NDEAM is held each October to commemorate the many and varied contributions of people with disabilities to America’s workplaces and economy. Browse our website for ideas and resources for employers, community organizations, state and local governments, advocacy groups and schools to participate in celebrating NDEAM through events and activities centered around the theme of “America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion.”

The 2021 NDEAM poster is available now!

 
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