Decentral Block Post

Hong Kong partners with 16 companies to build CBDCs

On May 18, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced the launch of the cyber Hong Kong dollar pilot project. According to officials, 16 selected companies from the financial payment and technology sectors will conduct the first round of trials this year on the feasibility of a Hong Kong dollar central bank digital currency (e-HKD). Companies included in the pilot include Alibaba Group’s Alipay Financial, Mastercard Asia, Ripple Labs, Visa, and HSBC.

The digital Hong Kong dollar will start off with six potential uses cases; comprehensive payments, programmable payments, offline payments, tokenized deposits, Web 3.0 transaction settlements, and tokenized asset settlements. The CBDC is scheduled for a three-stage approach, with the novel pilot program being an important aspect of the second stage.

However, the HKMA has not yet decided whether to officially launch the CBDC. It expects to share the results of the trials at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2023 in Q4. Yue Wai-man, chief executive of the HKMA, commented:

“Although the HKMA has not decided whether or when the CBDC will be launched, we are pleased to launch the Cyber Hong Kong Dollar Pilot Scheme. This is a good opportunity for the HKMA to join hands with the industry to explore innovative use cases and prepare for the possible launch of the CBDC in the future”

Back in Oct. 2021, Mastercard said that it would be preparing its payment infrastructure for integration with CBDCs. Likewise, Visa believes that stablecoins and CBDCs will play meaningful roles in payments and has an ongoing blockchain interoperability project related to the matter.

Most technological revolutions come with an unforeseen darker side.

When Austrian-born physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch first split the atom in the late 1930s, they probably didn’t anticipate their discovery would lead a few years later to the atomic bomb. The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is arguably no different. 

AI algorithms have been around for decades. The first artificial neural network, the perceptron, was invented in 1958. But the recent pace of development has been breathtaking, and with voice recognition devices like Alexa and chatbots like ChatGPT, AI appears to have gained a new public awareness.

On the positive side, AI could dramatically raise the planet’s general education level and help to find cures for devastating diseases like Alzheimer’s. But it could also displace jobs and bolster authoritarian states that can use it to surveil their populations. Moreover, if machines ever achieve “general” intelligence, they might even be trained to overturn elections and prosecute wars, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton recently warned.

“Enormous potential and enormous danger” is how United States President Joe Biden recently described AI. This followed an open letter in March from more than 1,000 tech leaders, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, calling for a moratorium on AI developments like ChatGPT. The technology, they said, presents “profound risks to society and humanity.” 

With a total artwork value of $24 million Trevor Jones is one of the Top 10 most successful crypto artists worldwide.

Trevor Jones’ journey to crypto art stardom started the same way as many crypto noobs: His portfolio went way up, he failed to take profits, and the price came crashing down wiping out the paper gains.

A traditional painter, Jones always wanted to explore the intersection of art and technology, and he experimented with QR code oil paintings in 2012 and dived into AR art in 2013. 

But it was his 2017 investment in Bitcoin that sparked deep curiosity in what this new world of crypto and blockchain was about. After getting rekt in 2018’s crypto winter, Jones turned his attention from crypto trader to crypto painter. He says:

“I caught that bull run and made a lot of money and then lost a lot of money in 2018. It all went up and all came crashing down.