Monthly Archives: July 2019

When rain starts pouring in May, rivers and dams in China fill up pretty quickly. Hydroelectric stations reach their peak capacity producing more than local industry and households need. That prompts authorities and utilities in provinces such as the southwestern Sichuan to bring down electricity rates to as low as 0.2 yuan (around $0.03) per kilowatt-hour (kWh), stimulating the consumption of cheap and green energy produced by hydroelectric plants.Beijing-based Bitmain is among the companies taking advantage of lower electricity prices by utilizing surplus hydro power generated in Sichuan during the spring and summer months. Back in March, Chinese media reported that the mining giant had deployed around 100,000 mining rigs in the region before the start of the rainy season, with plans to install another 200,000 devices within the next few months.Using hydro power for coin minting, when water levels are at their highest, is a win-win situation for both crypto miners and electricity producers. The cooperation can be highly profitable not only for the bitcoin mining facilities but also for energy companies as it allows them to raise the efficiency of their power generating capacities and ultimately increase their revenue.Hydropower Plants and Cryptocurrency Miners Mint Coins for Mutual BenefitHydroelectric generation provides a great way to use excess power for cryptocurrency mining and also fund renewable energy, commented Shaun Chong, mining product manager at Bitcoin.com. He also acknowledged that mining profitability has improved significantly with rising crypto prices. “Cloud mining sales do a lot better during bull markets,” he said. The Bitcoin.com Pool is in partnership with mining datacenters in the U.S., Sweden and China. Chong noted:All of them are using hydro power. All our cloud mining is powered by hydroelectricity.Most mining companies working in Sichuan have direct contractual relations with the hydropower plants they build their farms at, Kirk Su, business development manager responsible for Bitcoin.com’s operations in China, told news.Bitcoin.com. The contracts do provide lower electricity prices for crypto miners. “Everyone gets different rates but they are typically around 0.2 RMB,” Su added. That’s around $0.03 per kWh.Kirk Su himself runs a mining farm operating in Aba, Sichuan using electrical energy from a 150MW state-owned hydropower plant. His 10MW facility is considered a midsized farm in the province, which is home to 50MW and even bigger farms. “During the wet season, typically from April through November, these power plants will generate much more electricity than the grid needs. Hence, the excess power eventually goes to waste,” the miner explained.

G7 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Chantilly. “Ministers and governors acknowledged that while innovation in the financial sector can bring substantial benefits, it can also entail risks,” the statement reads. “They agreed that stablecoins and other various new products currently being developed, including projects with global and potentially systemic footprint such as Libra, raise serious regulatory and systemic concerns, as well as wider policy issues, which both need to be addressed before such projects can be implemented.” The summary details:Regarding regulatory concerns, ministers and governors agreed that possible ‘stablecoin’ initiatives and their operators would in any case need to meet the highest standards of financial regulation.“Regarding systemic concerns, ministers and governors agreed that projects such as Libra may affect monetary sovereignty and the functioning of the international monetary system,” the Chair’s Summary continues.“On Libra, we had a very constructive and detailed discussion with a very large and shared consensus on the need for action,” a French official told the AFP news agency. After chairing the first day’s meeting, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was quoted by Reuters as saying:The sovereignty of nations cannot be jeopardised … The overall mood around the table was clearly one of important concerns about the recent Libra announcements, and a shared view that action is needed urgently.“The issuance of a currency does not belong in the hands of a private company because it is a core feature of a sovereign state,” German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz proclaimed. Asserting that Facebook’s plans do not “seem to be fully thought through,” he is convinced Libra “cannot go ahead without all legal and regulatory questions being resolved,” the news outlet added. A senior Japanese finance ministry official who was at the meeting told the press:Most G7 members saw Libra as posing a serious problem from the perspective of consumer data protection and the impact on monetary policy.Facebook recently unveiled its plans for Calibra, a new subsidiary aimed at providing financial services via the Libra network. “The first product Calibra will introduce is a digital wallet for Libra, a new global currency powered by blockchain technology,” the company described.The G7 has set up a working group on stablecoins, coordinated by Benoit Coeure, Chair of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). Its preliminary findings were provided at the meeting.The group consists initially of senior officials from the G7 central banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the Chair’s Summary reveals, adding that it will be expanded to representatives from G7 ministries of finance. The group will also coordinate with the G20 and other relevant standard-setting bodies. Its final report and recommendations are expected by the time of the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in October.Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda believes that, given the potential impact of Libra on the global economy, the G7 working group would evolve over time to include a broader range of regulators, elaborating:If the Libra is aspiring to be used globally, countries must seek a globally coordinated response … This is not something that can be discussed among G7 central banks alone.Central bankers have emphasized that Facebook needs a banking license if it wants to take deposits, with some expressing concerns about allowing people to transact anonymously.

Still, marketers have expressed uncertainty about Facebook's future, citing concerns over consumer privacy, data security and drops in engagement. Some have even shifted their ad spend to other platforms, and a select few have severed ties with Facebook completely.The Clorox Company, however, has remained an outspoken partner with Facebook. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica revelations, Clorox’s then-CMO Eric Reynolds expressed public support for Facebook, stating that the consumer goods company was confident that Facebook was taking steps to address its mishandling of consumer data.

Amazon managed to hold its most successful Prime Day yet. Though the company did not disclose its sales figures—or how many new Prime members were added—Amazon announced that it sold 175 million items during the two-day event and surpassed its combined sales total from Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2018.“While Amazon is famously oblique regarding Prime Day performance—heavy on the superlatives and light on the stats—it’s pretty clear from the evidence pouring in that it was a massive success,” eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman said. “With the site and app avoiding major hiccups this year and the deals seemingly improving in quality, shoppers are responding with a flurry of activity unlike anything we’ve ever seen online during the summer months.”Here's why Prime Day 2019 was a success:A longer Prime Day wasn’t the only reason for more sales.Record sales weren’t just the result of Amazon extending Prime Day from a 36-hour event in 2018 to 48 hours this year. Ecommerce intelligence company Edison Trends analyzed 120,000 online transactions on Prime Day and found the average hourly spend of US Amazon customers this year was up 35% compared with Prime Day 2018 and 55% higher than Prime Day 2017. (Editor's Note: Edison Trends' data has been scaled so that the highest average hourly spend is set to 100%.)Load times slowed slightly, but there were no major outages.Last year, Prime Day temporarily faltered when Amazon’s website crashed due to the uptick in traffic. eBay even poked fun at the hiccup this year with its own 24-hour “crash sale” that took place during the first day of Prime Day 2019. But, fortunately for Amazon, the website didn't experience any major outages, and according to digital monitoring platform Catchpoint, average website load times during Prime Day were only 0.12 seconds slower than the week leading up to Prime Day. Walmart, which had a rival sale overlapping Prime Day, had an average website load time that was 1.08 seconds slower during the 48-hour Prime Day window compared with the week leading up to Prime Day.

Germany is already taking its place as a regional ecommerce powerhouse, thanks to its large population, excellent infrastructure and generally high standard of living."For consumers and retailers, any fundamental doubts about the viability of online buying and selling are long past," said Karin von Abrams, principal analyst at eMarketer and author of our recent "Germany Ecommerce 2019" report.When it comes to the number of ecommerce buyers and average annual spend per buyer, Germany ranks above the European average, according to PostNord. (PostNord delivers mail to individuals and businesses in Denmark and Sweden, and also provides logistics solutions to business customers in the Nordic region.) However, in its report, “Ecommerce in Europe 2018,” PostNord calculated that the growth rate in digital buyers since 2014 was less than half the European average, at just 11%. This reflects the online data sharing and digital transaction security concerns that many consumers in Germany still have.Research firms agree that within Europe, Germany is second only to the UK in the value of business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce sales. For example, a study by Cross-Border Commerce Europe, a community and knowledge platform focused on cross-border retail, estimated UK ecommerce sales in 2018 at €165 billion ($195 billion), compared with €98 billion ($116 billion) in Germany and €84 billion ($99 billion) in France.

Amazon isn't the only one making use of its valuable real estate. In May 2019, Target said it was remodeling its ad business to resemble something reminiscent of Amazon. Earlier this year, Walmart announced it would bring its digital ad business in-house—just as eBay did in 2017—in order to take advantage of first-party shopper data. While the biggest players in ecommerce are in-housing these efforts, ad tech companies have facilitated partnerships that link brands with networks of smaller retailers across the web.

While clearly dominant on the commerce pillar, Amazon was just a blip on the media and advertising side of things—until recently. With the surge in Prime Video viewership along with its fast-growing advertising business, Amazon now seems better positioned to synchronize the three digital currencies. Amazon’s newfound position gives it yet another flywheel effect to fuel its growth going forward—and Prime Day is the perfect accelerant.Prime Day is first and foremost about commerce, a day of huge discounts and attractive deals designed to reward Prime members and get them to spend. That’s why, during each of the past few years, Amazon has boasted of Prime Day generating record levels of new Prime memberships. We expect that Prime will reach 65.0 million households this year, surpassing 50% penetration for the first time.And Prime membership is the fulcrum on which Amazon’s commerce flywheel spins. By financially—and psychologically—committing to Amazon, customers are more likely to turn to Amazon to fulfill their shopping needs. According to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners’ (CIRP) Q1 2019 report, US Prime members spend an average of $1,400 annually on Amazon vs. $600 for nonmembers. Prime members’ habitual shopping and buying behavior only adds more fuel to the fire.

Le réchauffement dont nous constatons les effets brûlants aujourd’hui est inédit. Au cours des 2 000 dernières années, aucun événement n’est comparable. Jamais les températures mondiales n'avaient augmenté aussi rapidement que maintenant, selon des données publiées mercredi 24 juillet. Un constat alarmant à l’échelle planétaire qui, selon les experts, devrait définitivement faire taire les climatosceptiques les plus obstinés. Alors qu'une bonne partie de l'Europe subit son deuxième épisode de fortes chaleurs en un mois, deux études distinctes analysent 2 000 ans de tendances de l'histoire climatique récente de notre planète.Les chercheurs en paléoclimatologie ont utilisé des données de température compilées à partir de près de 700 indicateurs : des anneaux d'arbres, des carottes de glace, des sédiments lacustres et des coraux ainsi que des technologies météorologiques modernes.Le constat est clair : non seulement le réchauffement climatique actuel est inédit du fait de son amplitude et de sa vitesse, mais il est également sans précédent en raison de son caractère universel. La base de données que les chercheurs ont utilisée pour leurs analyses – publiées mercredi 24 juillet dans les revues Nature et Nature Geoscience – est « ce qui se fait de plus complet aujourd’hui », confie au Monde Valérie Masson-Delmotte, paléoclimatologue et coordinatrice du chapitre sur les climats passés dans le dernier rapport du Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat (GIEC), qui n’a pas participé à ces recherches. La première étude, publiée dans la revue Nature, met, par exemple, en évidence que lors du "petit âge glaciaire" (de 1300 à 1850), s'il a fait extraordinairement froid en Europe et aux Etats-Unis pendant plusieurs siècles, il n'a pas fait froid partout sur la planète.Par exemple, au Moyen Age, l’Europe a traversé une période chaude et sèche, appelée optimum climatique médiéval. Les températures ont en revanche plongé entre les XVI et XIXe siècles, au cours de ce que les spécialistes nomment le Petit Age glaciaire. « On a longtemps considéré qu’il s’agissait de phénomènes globaux, touchant l’ensemble de la planète de manière simultanée. Mais notre analyse montre qu’il y avait en fait de nettes disparités régionales », indique le climatologue Nathan Steiger, de l’Université américaine Columbia. « Lorsque nous retournons dans le passé, nous trouvons des phénomènes régionaux, mais aucun n'est mondial », explique-t-il. « Alors qu'actuellement, le réchauffement est global. 98% du globe s'est réchauffé après la révolution industrielle », ajoute-t-il. Un deuxième article, dans Nature Geoscience, examine la moyenne des variations de température sur de courtes périodes, de quelques décennies chacune.Les conclusions sont claires : à aucun moment depuis le début de notre ère, les températures n'ont augmenté aussi rapidement et aussi régulièrement qu'à la fin du XXe siècle. Quand après-guerre, la production (alimentée par les combustibles fossiles) et la consommation ont atteint des niveaux sans précédent. « Même quand on repousse notre perspective jusqu’aux débuts de l’Empire romain, nous ne pouvons retrouver un événement qui se rapprocherait un tant soit peu – que ce soit en degrés ou en étendue – du réchauffement des dernières décennies. Le climat actuel se distingue par sa synchronie torride et globale », écrit le géographe de l’Université du Minnesota Scott George dans un commentaire de l’étude. « Notre analyse montre que le réchauffement actuel ne peut être expliqué par aucun facteur naturel, ce qui indique implicitement que les activités humaines en sont la cause », affirme Raphael Neukom. Des activités qui occasionnent beaucoup trop d’émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Et qui ont ainsi donné naissance à un « monstre climatique » à nul autre pareil. Ce résultat « souligne le caractère extraordinaire du changement climatique actuel », explique Raphael Neukom de l'Université de Berne en Suisse, coauteur de l'étude. Ces études « devraient enfin stopper les climatosceptiques qui prétendent que le réchauffement climatique observé récemment s'inscrit dans un cycle climatique naturel », souligne Mark Maslin de l'University College de Londres, commentant les travaux.

AmazonFresh, Amazon Pantry and Amazon’s Whole Foods operation cater specifically to the consumer packaged goods (CPG) market. But almost none of the retail giant’s CPG sales come from Amazon-branded goods.An April 2019 Numerator report shows that only 1% of Amazon’s CPG sales come from private-label products. Other major retailers see 13% to 29% of their CPG sales come from their private-label brands.While Amazon-branded CPG products are growing at 81%, the business still has miles to go before reaching the private-label share that its competitors maintain.“As a more recent entrant into the grocery space, Amazon is still well behind the competition when it comes to private-label CPG,” said Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst at eMarketer. “With all the talk of Amazon competing with sellers on its platform, this is a good reminder that the situation isn’t especially unique. At the same time, it highlights Amazon’s massive opportunity as it wades deeper into online grocery—and why CPG brands already contending with tight margins won’t welcome the added competition.”Amazon has recently expanded its exclusive brands portfolio, which is now rapidly outpacing its number of private-label brands. March 2019 data from Gartner L2 found that Amazon had 52 exclusive grocery brands and just five private-label grocery brands. This discrepancy was similar for other CPG-heavy categories such as pet and beauty.

ELON MUSK DOESN’T think his newest endeavor, revealed Tuesday night after two years of relative secrecy, will end all human suffering. Just a lot of it. Eventually.At a presentation at the California Academy of Sciences, hastily announced via Twitter and beginning a half hour late, Musk presented the first product from his company Neuralink. It’s a tiny computer chip attached to ultrafine, electrode-studded wires, stitched into living brains by a clever robot. And depending on which part of the two-hour presentation you caught, it’s either a state-of-the-art tool for understanding the brain, a clinical advance for people with neurological disorders, or the next step in human evolution.The chip is custom-built to receive and process the electrical action potentials—“spikes”—that signal activity in the interconnected neurons that make up the brain. The wires embed into brain tissue and receive those spikes. And the robotic sewing machine places those wires with enviable precision, a “neural lace” straight out of science fiction that dodges the delicate blood vessels spreading across the brain’s surface like ivy.If Neuralink’s technologies work as Musk and his team intend, they’ll be able to pick up signals from across a person’s brain—first from the motor cortex that controls movement but eventually throughout your think-meat—and turn them into machine-readable code that a computer can understand. It might use them to control a computer or a prosthesis, to someday even feed information back to help the blind see, or to create entire virtual Matrixes inside your mind. “All this will occur I think quite slowly,” Musk said from the stage. “It’s not as if Neuralink will suddenly have this incredible neural lace and take over people’s brains. It will take a long time.” But after tests, and FDA approval, and more advances, this tech could be the thing that lets people commune with the ultrasmart artificial intelligences Musk is convinced are on the way. “Even in a benign AI scenario we will be left behind,” he said. “With a high-bandwidth brain-machine interface, we can actually go along for the ride. We can have the option of merging with AI.”