Ethereum Reaches New All-time High Of $2,200

Ethereum Reaches New All-time High Of $2,200

National Review

As antitrust regulators and members of Congress trained their sights on tech companies last year, Mark Zuckerberg reached for the ultimate rhetorical shield in Washington today: China. Before a congressional panel in August, the Facebook CEO made sure to dispel any confusion about where his loyalties lie. “Facebook is a proudly American company,” he declared, leaving his audience to determine whether he was speaking genuinely or offering a cynical talking point to get out of a jam. We now have a clearer answer. Earlier this week, Peter Thiel — the firebrand billionaire, Palantir co-founder, one-time Trump ally, and Facebook investor — undercut Zuckerberg’s effort to wrap himself in the American flag. Speaking at the Nixon Foundation’s seminar on foreign policy, a monthly gathering of former Trump officials convened by Mike Pompeo and Robert O’Brien, Thiel explained that “the woke politics inside these companies” prevented them from viewing themselves as American. Although Thiel’s remarks to the group about Bitcoin made headlines this week, an important disclosure about Facebook’s internal dynamics flew under the radar, and it shows why, absent significant reform, Zuckerberg’s talk about standing up to the Chinese Communist Party will remain hollow. During the mass demonstrations in Hong Kong over a year ago, Thiel said: Employees from Hong Kong were all in favor of the protests and free speech. But there were more employees at Facebook who were born in China than who were born in Hong Kong. And the Chinese nationals actually said that it was just Western arrogance and we shouldn’t be taking Hong Kong’s side, and things like that. And then the rest of the employees at Facebook sort of stayed out of it. But the internal debate felt like people were actually more anti-Hong Kong than pro-Hong Kong. It seems that since then, the internal schisms within Facebook have only intensified. According to a Wall Street Journal report, one employee took to an internal Facebook discussion group to call for a stronger effort to fight disinformation about the Uyghur genocide on the platform. But although a senior executive responded, promising to look into the matter, no concrete change seems to have materialized yet. Chinese-government and state-media accounts continue to share false posts whitewashing the CCP’s conduct toward the Uyghurs and outright denying key evidence of the atrocities. Facebook’s not the only platform facing a deluge of CCP disinformation concerning everything from Hong Kong to the Uyghur genocide. Since 2019, Chinese-state accounts on Facebook and Twitter have approached their disinformation efforts with new zeal, according to an analysis released last month by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI): “Since the end of 2019, there’s been an increase in the use of Facebook and Twitter accounts by Chinese Government and state media to push alternative narratives and disinformation about the situation.” It should come as no surprise that these posts focus on pushing false data about minority birthrates in Xinjiang, the region at the center of the genocide, as part of an effort to hide the forced-sterilization campaign Uyghurs are being subjected to there. Especially in the aftermath of the acrimonious U.S.–China summit meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, last month and a multilateral sanctions campaign undertaken in response to the genocide, CCP-linked accounts have routinely spread cringe-inducing false equivalences between the Party’s mass atrocities and historical Western wrongs, such as slavery and the Holocaust. (It seems not to have occurred to the CCP that comparing the Xinjiang campaign to other countries’ historical atrocities constituted an implicit admission that the Uyghurs are being subjected to atrocities, too.) It’s easy to view the Party’s awkward social-media posts as a bizarre thing to laugh off — after all, what normal person would take a transparently brutal regime’s online musings seriously? But failing to address Beijing’s propaganda on U.S. platforms makes it easier for the CCP to spread its message. Though China’s spin might not convince an American audience, social-media platforms still constitute a megaphone capable of granting plausible deniability to foreign officials seeking an excuse to turn a blind eye to the CCP’s activities. It’s not as though Facebook has done nothing about the Party’s attempts to weaponize the global platform, which includes over 2 billion users and is banned in China (though it brings in $5 billion per year from advertisers in the country). Last year, it announced that it would label “state-controlled media” pages, and more recently, it took down accounts involved in hacking Uyghur dissidents. For its part, Twitter has also started to label government and media accounts sponsored by the five permanent U.N. Security Council countries, of which China is one. In January, it took down a post by the Chinese embassy in the United States that labeled Uyghur women “baby-making machines” whom the CCP had “emancipated” from extremism and affixed fact-check notices to a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s assertions that COVID originated in the United States. On Thursday, it even launched a special emoji for the hashtag MilkTeaAlliance, the transnational cohort of pro-democracy activists across Asia, in a move hailed by human-rights defenders. But neither company’s policies are foolproof. When National Review looked this week, the Facebook page for T-House — an off-shoot of Chinese state broadcaster CGTN styled to resemble a buzzy Western social-media news site — didn’t have a state-media label. And, crucially, as the ASPI report points out, pro-Beijing talking points are often laundered through other sources, including fringe media outlets that are friendly to but not directly sponsored by the CCP. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Lijian Zhao, hasn’t been cowed by Twitter’s fact check. On Thursday, he again tweeted misleading information about COVID’s origins. And by the count of one researcher, some 150 other Chinese Foreign Ministry officials and diplomatic missions maintain Twitter accounts. The frequency of these accounts’ tweets varies, as does the degree to which they spread false Chinese talking points on human-rights abuses. But the posts of those that are active regularly garner hundreds of likes and retweets. The good news is that ASPI says the amount of content on the website critical of the CCP’s conduct in Xinjiang recently surpassed the amount of content supportive of it. But until Facebook and Twitter ban accounts with clear CCP links, the party-state will continue to have free rein to assert its legitimacy before an international audience. And that is a state of affairs no “proudly American company” would uphold.

Can Cardano displace Ethereum?

Cardano is one of the preferred cryptocurrencies with long-lasting staying power. Its ADA coin sits comfortably in the top ten cryptocurrencies ranked by market capitalisation. It’s actually been in this top ten ranking since its launch in 2015. Today it’s in sixth place after Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, XRP and Tether. But the landscape is volatile, and only a few weeks ago it was in third place. So things change rapidly.

Cardano blockchain – Photographer: fabio | Source: Unsplash

What is Cardano?

Cardano certainly has several good things going for it. Its technology is superior to many of its peers, and it has strong community backing.

ADA is the digital currency associated with the Cardano platform. It’s named after Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer.

IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong) is the research lab behind Cardano. Its focus is on decentralization and the challenges it poses to existing global financial systems. The Cardano development team are academics and scientists, and they work closely with academia to have everything peer-reviewed and transparently shared. The Cardano Foundation and EMURGO, along with IOHK govern Cardano.

Is ADA a coin or a token?

ADA coin is the name of the cryptocurrency that’s used on the Cardano platform. But ADA tokens can be used to vote or for staking in the Cardano ecosystem.

Within digital currency wallets, such as Exodus or Daedalus, you can easily stake Cardano ADA for rewards. Once you stake your ADA coin, it becomes an ADA token, which is then used to mine for ADA. If you find some, you’re rewarded with a stake.

Staking is a popular practice among altcoin owners. It is the proof-of-stake (PoS) part of the blockchain network that Cardano is striving for. And this is being developed into a decentralised application (DApp) development platform, complete with multi-asset ledger and verifiable smart contracts.

Last month Graph Blockchain Inc. (CSE: GBLC) invested $300,000 into Cardano for the purpose of staking the ADA coin.

Meanwhile, over half a billion US dollars worth of ADA is currently being delegated to charity-focused initiatives on Cardano through mission-driven stake pools.

Cardano is for the greater good! We are delighted to share that over US$500,000,000, yes, half a billion U.S. dollar worth of ada is currently being delegated to charity-focused initiatives on Cardano through mission-driven stake pools.

Read more https://t.co/9l55kBRGtv — Cardano Foundation (@CardanoStiftung) March 31, 2021 Cardano’s charitable focus – Staking ADA for charity

Why Cardano could replace Ethereum

Cardano is a smart contract platform, as is Ethereum and Polkadot. Many die-hard Cardano fans believe it will eventually displace Ethereum thanks to its high-speed tech and fee free transaction setup.

Ethereum’s value has soared this past year as more high-profile clients jump aboard. Ethereum is also the backbone of the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, which has been subject to NFT mania this year, further boosting the Ethereum price.

And Ethereum is also profiting from notable decentralized finance (DeFi) projects which are built on its blockchain. However, Ethereum is expensive to use, and its transaction times suffer from lag. Cardano intends to beat it on both these counts, due to its lightweight design.

Cardano recently undertook a major update called ‘Mary’ which took it a step closer to emulating Ethereum. The Mary upgrade is a hard fork, transitioning the Cardano ledger. This changes its capabilities from simply holding ADA on its blockchain to allowing multiple tokens to be created and exchanged.

WE’RE ON!! We can today confirm that the ‘Mary’ #Cardano protocol update is now fully confirmed for March 1st.

Another key milestone in the #Goguen rollout, the update introduces native tokens & multi-asset support, bringing exciting new use cases for #Cardano 1/3 pic.twitter.com/FFK0cGNbmD — Input Output (@InputOutputHK) February 24, 2021 Cardano’s Mary hard-fork Goguen rollout

This allows it to support stablecoins and users to create NFTs.

Who founded Cardano?

Cardano was in fact founded by none other than one of Ethereum’s original co-founders. Charles Hoskinson stepped out on his own a year after Ethereum was launched in 2013.

He believes Cardano has the potential to help billions of people thanks to its laser focus on the vision of helping people achieve a better quality of life. By building Cardano on DeFi, it’s targeting some of the poorest, hardest hit regions of the world. Hoskinson believes that proving the technology works in places that are close to being deemed a lost cause, will allow its success to speak for itself. This should naturally bring mass adoption elsewhere.

Access to fair and transparent banking has the power to lift millions of people out of poverty to a sustainable level of living. However, with no access to electricity or smart phones then using crypto is impossible. That said, there are many areas of the world where it could make a real difference. So, the kind of customer Cardano is targeting may be a farmer in Ethiopia looking for a way to pay for fertiliser. Or on a larger scale, implementing a fair election process in Senegal. The company has people in these African countries working with the locals to move forward with its vision.

ADA’s price fluctuations

ADA’s price is up 16% in a month and an eye-popping 3,557% in a year.

So what makes its popularity stick? There are three principal reasons. Being widely available to trade is a big one. Coinbase began supporting Cardano (ADA) in mid-March and around the same time, it appeared on the Bloomberg Terminal. This has certainly helped boost its popularity. With a market cap above £40m, it’s also a highly liquid market and institutional investor interest is readily growing.

Ethereum is up 115% year-to-date. Meanwhile, ADA is up 517% year-to-date.

Cardano is operating a low fee, secure, trusted, blockchain system. It aims to provide a balanced and sustainable ecosystem. So, while this continues, Cardano’s ADA is likely to remain a popular cryptocurrency easily rivaling Ethereum and Polkadot.

Latest Ethereum price and analysis (ETH to USD)

National Review

On March 25, the undergraduate student assembly of Cornell University, where I am a senior, took a stand. The assembly unanimously passed a resolution calling on Cornell to revisit its partnerships with Chinese institutions and to halt its plans for a proposed dual-degree program with Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. The proposal would allow participants residing in China to earn a Master of Management in Hospitality degree from Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration as well as an M.B.A. degree from Peking University. Students have made their distaste for this known. But the university is, as of now, still considering what to do. The answer is obvious: It should heed Cornell students’ call to reconsider our university’s ties to Chinese institutions, starting with Peking University. If the university is wondering why to take such a step, the assembly’s resolution provides ample justification. It cites numerous violations of academic freedom at Peking University. One includes the case of Peking Professor Xia Yeliang, an outspoken advocate of freedom, democracy, and free markets, who was fired from Peking University in 2013 for his political views as part of a project of “ideological purification.” Another worrying instance was the November 2018 kidnapping of Zhang Shengye, a student at PKU who was beaten and pushed into a car by unidentified men for his activism in support of an unauthorized unionization drive by workers in the Guangdong province. In China, the Communist Party only permits the existence of one labor union, the ACFTU, which is led by the Party itself. The proposed reconsideration of Cornell ties to a Chinese institution would not be without precedent. In 2018, Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations ended a research-and-exchange program with Renmin University over similar concerns regarding the harassment and intimidation of student labor activists. At the time, Cornell’s provost, Michael Kotlikoff, told the New York Times that Cornell had “an overarching commitment to academic freedom.” But this time, Kotlikoff and other Cornell administrators have so far refused to acknowledge the suppression of academic freedom actively taking place on Chinese campuses. When asked how the partnership squares with university guidelines that prohibit partnerships with foreign groups accused of “serious legal or human rights violations,” a university spokesperson dodged the question, merely telling the Washington Free Beacon that the proposal is “under review.” Peking University’s behavior is hardly the only reason for Cornell to reconsider its ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Indeed, the resolution also drew attention to the Party’s ongoing genocide in Xinjiang. Under the guise of preventing terrorism, the Chinese government has interned over one million Uyghurs in “reeducation camps,” using them for slave labor, harvesting their organs, and systematically raping and sterilizing women without their knowledge or consent. The province of Xinjiang has also been turned into a “test project” for surveillance, using an artificial-intelligence system that deploys facial recognition and behavioral monitoring to flag its residents for “reeducation,” subjecting 25 million of the nation’s own citizens to the most comprehensive surveillance state in human history. It should come as no surprise that this new partnership has been brokered between the pre-professional wings of both universities. Rather than holding fast to the disinterested pursuit of truth that has long defined the institution of the university, Cornell is unambiguously declaring itself a degree factory, focused instead on churning out credentialed alumni to furnish the halls of top corporations. All the while, its almost $7 billion endowment grows from the spoils of wealthy socialites who pay top dollar to possess a degree that tells employers they are prepared to design the best PowerPoints in the wide world of consulting. In their pitch to skeptical faculty, the administration’s refrain was as monotonous as it was shameless: profit. Administrators told a meeting of the faculty senate that the partnership could net the university a payday to the tune of $1 million annually. During this faculty senate meeting, many professors raised concerns about the deal. Eli Friedman, a scholar of Chinese labor issues who oversaw the Renmin University program before its termination, likened the joint-degree program to partnering with a “Nazi university.” “It’s all part of the wholesale destruction of the Uyghur, Kazakh, and other peoples — part of the massive racist crimes that the Chinese government is committing,” Magnus Fiskesjö, an anthropology professor whose scholarship focuses heavily on Uyghurs, told National Review. “Beyond the concerns of academic freedom for ourselves, we should also consider the many Uyghur and Kazakh academics and other intellectuals who have been disappeared into concentration camps, sentenced to impossibly long prison terms, or even death.” Fiskesjö highlighted the case of Tashpolat Tiyip, a professor of geography and president of Xinjiang University who disappeared in 2017. His family and friends believe he was executed on charges of separatism after a secret trial. By following through with the proposed Peking partnership, Cornell would be sending the message that American institutions are willing to overlook atrocity in service of Mammon. Treating crackdowns on academic liberty as merely business as usual, the Ivy League university would demonstrate that its partners’ ability to write checks is more important than their willingness to promote free inquiry and open discourse. Worse still, the venture would serve to “[normalize] and [accept] the genocide that is currently ongoing,” as one representative on the student assembly put it. While resolutions passed by the student assembly are nonbinding, they mandate a response from the university within 30 days of being passed. Cornell’s president, Martha Pollack, has thus far been silent on the proposal. When she goes on the record, she should make it clear that America’s top universities are not for sale.