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These Are the Crypto Economy’s 10 Most Expensive Assets per Unit in 2022 Markets and Prices Bitcoin News – Bitcoin News

A lot has changed in regard to the prices of various crypto assets throughout 2021, as todays top crypto assets look a lot different than they did 12 months ago. Moreover, the most valuable cryptocurrencies in terms of U.S. dollars per unit have also changed, and the top ten most expensive coins have shifted. The following is a look at the top ten most expensive crypto assets in 2022, in terms of USD per unit.

At the time of writing, the top four most expensive digital currencies today are worth 5-digits in value against the U.S. dollar. For instance, the price of bitcoin (BTC) is around $38K per unit, and BTC, WBTC, and Huobi BTC (HBTC) are the top three most expensive crypto assets.

Of course, HBTC and WBTC are tokenized forms of bitcoin, which means give or take a few percentages they are all roughly the same price per token. Meanwhile, the fourth-most expensive crypto-asset, which is also 5-digits in USD value, is the token yearn finance (YFI).

Currently, YFI is changing hands for $28,425 per unit. The next two tokens are ethereum (ETH) and a tokenized ethereum coin called lido staked ether (STETH). Similar to the tokenized BTC projects, ETH and STETH are roughly the same price.

However, ETH is trading for $2.7K per unit which is only four digits in USD value. Another four-digit contender following ETH and STETH is maker (MKR), which is swapping hands for $1,800 per unit.

The aforementioned digital currencies represent the top seven most expensive crypto assets today. Below maker (MKR) is binance coin (BNB), trading for three digits in USD value at $417 per unit, bitcoin cash (BCH) at $337 per coin, and kusama (KSM) at $228 per unit.

While BNB, BCH, and KSM represent the last of the top ten most expensive, ten more coins below KSM are trading for three digits in USD value. These include aave, monero, elrond, compound, quant, litecoin, solana, dash, zcash, and bitcoinsv. Every coin below bitcoinsv (BSV) is trading for under $100 per coin.

What do you think about the top ten most expensive crypto assets and the triple-digit coins below the top ten? What do you think about looking at the crypto economy from this perspective? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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These Are the Crypto Economy's 10 Most Expensive Assets per Unit in 2022 Markets and Prices Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

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Google Cards To Store Bitcoin And Crypto: Report – Bitcoin Magazine

Google is tiptoeing into Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as the companys payments division struggles to gain significant market share in the payments industry and touts adding custody capabilities of such assets to its digital cards, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to, said Bill Ready, Googles president of commerce, per the report. As user demand and merchant demand evolves, well evolve with it.

According to the report, Google has formed partnerships with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Inc. and cryptocurrency payment processor BitPay to enable the new functionality. The executive told Bloomberg that his team is looking for additional partnership opportunities, though the company still isn't accepting bitcoin for transactions.

Googles cryptocurrency integrations allow its customers to hold BTC in their digital cards while spending fiat currency, an arrangement that doesnt precisely use the peer-to-peer asset as a medium of exchange but enables users to spend their bitcoin holdings.

Given Bitcoins astronomical rise in purchasing power over the past decade, it is hard to conceive a scenario where Bitcoiners would want to get rid of part of their BTC stack, as the opportunity cost to hold it and spend fiat currency directly instead rises.

The news comes after the company in October turned its back on a previous push into banking, hiring former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg to run its payments division. According to Ready, Google wants to become a connective tissue for the entire consumer finance industry.

Were not a bankwe have no intention of being a bank, Ready told Bloomberg. Some past efforts, at times, would unwittingly wade into those spaces.

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‘Black Swan’ author says bitcoin is a worthless, speculative bubble – Markets Insider

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has posted a bunch of incendiary tweets about bitcoin over the past six months. The author of "The Black Swan" and "Antifragile" has compared the most valuable cryptocurrency to an infectious disease, dismissed it as worthless, and said it doesn't serve as a hedge against anything.

In the summer, Taleb said in an analysis dubbed the "Bitcoin Black Paper" that bitcoin wasn't a currency, a store of value, an inflation hedge, or a haven from government tyranny or catastrophe. He has used Twitter to amplify his view that bitcoin is a fragile bubble built on speculation instead of genuine value.

1. "View BTC is as a contagious disease. It will spread, spread & its price will rally until saturation, that is ~every sucker stupid enough to buy the story is invested. When all suckers are in, the prevailing belief will make it an 'obvious' investment. That's maximal fragility." (January 17)

2. "Almost nothing in financial history has been more fragile than bitcoin." (July 3)

3. "Bitcoin has been a magnet for imbeciles." (He was blasting critics who accused him of being too rigid in his views about bitcoin, even though he shifted from being excited about its potential to deciding it was worthless in 2020.) (July 30)

4. "Bitcoin may interest some for speculative purposes but anyone who claims that #bitcoin is a hedgeagainst anything, financial or otherwise, is a certified fraud." (September 20)

5. "1- Bitcoin is no hedge for adversity 2- Bitcoin is no hedge for inflation 3- Bitcoin is no hedge for deflation 4- Bitcoin is no currency 5- Bitcoin is nothing." (December 4)

6. "It is an awkward, clunky & already obsolete product of low interest rates. It should collapse with inflation." (December 28)

7. "If after this morning you still think that #BTC is a hedge against world events, or represents 'diversification', you must stay out of finance, & take up some other hobby s.a. stamp collecting, bird watching or something less harmful to yourself & others." (November 26)

8. "I am not 'bearish' on #BTC. It is a tulip-bubble (without the aesthetics & disguized as a "currency"), hence it is as irrational to buy it as it is to SHORT it, perhaps even more. Gabish?" (October 21)

Read more: A 30-year market vet shares 5 indicators that show stocks are in dangerous territory as the Fed tightens and economic growth gets set to slow all while valuations sit at historic highs

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Achieving Network Privacy In Bitcoin: VPNs And Tor Help, But Mixnets Are Needed – Bitcoin Magazine

Source: Nym Technologies SA

Bitcoin was initially thought by many to be anonymous digital cash due to the fact that all transactions are conducted as peer-to-peer transfers between wallet addresses which serve as pseudonyms. However, the public nature of Bitcoins ledger of transactions (the blockchain) means anyone can observe the flow of coins. This means that pseudonymous addresses do not provide any meaningful level of anonymity, since anyone can harvest the counterparty addresses of any given transaction and reconstruct the chain of transactions.

This lack of privacy in Bitcoin has led to an important stream of work to make Bitcoins blockchain ledger itself private: ranging from centralized tumblers that mix coins in order to obscure their origin for a small service fee and extra delay; to sidechains with Confidential Transactions (as deployed by Blockstreams Liquid) that hide the amount of a transaction on-chain using homomorphic encryption; to non-custodial mixing softwares like CoinJoin, in which a large group of users cooperates to combine multiple Bitcoin payments into a single transaction, to obfuscate the information of which spender paid to whom.

One simple solution is to get rid of self-surveillance of transactions by getting rid of the blockchain as much as possible. So another solution are the Layer 2 protocols, like the Lightning Network, a payment channel network where users can make, arbitrarily, many off-chain payments between themselves without the need to broadcast these individual transactions to blocks included in the Bitcoin blockchain.

However, the Achilles heel of Bitcoin privacy is actually its peer-to-peer broadcast. In detail, Bitcoin is built on top of a peer-to-peer broadcast at the level of TCP/IP packets, where both new transactions and blocks are announced to the rest of the Bitcoin network, making Bitcoin resilient against censorship. Yet, being resilient against censorship does not make one resistant against surveillance. Your IP (Internet Protocol) address leaks your approximate geolocation with every packet.

When a Bitcoin transaction is broadcast by a full node, an attacker can link transactions to the IP addresses of the originating user, as well as the timing and size of the transactions of the user. Anyone can do this by simply running a full supernode that connects to all of the thousands of Bitcoin nodes as well and simply observing the network traffic. Randomized delays in the P2P traffic as implemented by Bitcoin help a bit, but ultimately are capable of being defeated.

Similarly, an IP footprint is left at crypto exchanges and bitcoin payment providers. In fact, this kind of traffic analysis can even be applied to the Lightning Network. Not only can government agencies like the NSA commit these kinds of attacks, but even a local Internet Service Provider (ISP) can do traffic analysis on your connection to the internet from your home.

Without the network-level privacy of the peer-to-peer broadcast, any privacy solution for Bitcoin is like building a castle on top of sand, using fancy cryptography on the blockchain itself including through so-called privacy coins like Zcash, and even Monero when the fundamental peer-to-peer broadcast of Bitcoin is exposed for the whole world to see.

What can be done to provide privacy for your peer-to-peer broadcast on Bitcoin?

One solution to obfuscate the IP address is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network, but better thought of as an encrypted internet proxy). In a nutshell, VPN software builds an encrypted tunnel between a client device and a server run by a VPN provider, which acts as a proxy that forwards the network communications. Thus, your local IP address doesnt get linked to your wallet address or your identity on a KYC-supporting crypto exchange.

Yet, weve pointed out that VPNs are not actually anonymous. Although VPNs can hide your IP address, they suffer from inherent weaknesses due to their centralized trust model. A VPN provider acts as a trusted proxy and hence can easily link all of your activities at the network layer. The VPN itself also doesnt need to monitor you, as anyone watching a VPN carefully can also link your transactions. Such network eavesdroppers can observe the network traffic flowing to and from the VPN proxy and simply track the routed network traffic based on the size and timing of the data packets, and thus easily infer your IP address even when the VPN is hiding your IP address from the website or Bitcoin full node you are accessing.

Most people dont run a full Bitcoin node. Many people use exchanges, and even hardcore Bitcoin users who tend to use self-custodial wallets run light clients, where a full node acts like a trusted proxy like a VPN. However, dont be fooled into thinking this full node provides privacy. The full node, and anyone watching the full node, can correlate your Bitcoin broadcasts and your transactions with your light wallet and thus your IP address and transactions to you!

In contrast to centralized VPNs, Tor builds a decentralized network of nodes so that no single node knows both the sender and receiver of any network packet. Tor forwards traffic via a long-lived multi-hop circuit as follows: Each connected user opens a long-lived circuit, comprising three successive, randomly-selected relays: entry guard, middle relay and exit relay, and negotiates symmetric keys which are then used to encrypt each of the communication packets. While the message travels along the circuit, each relay strips off its layer of encryption, giving Tor its name as The Onion Router. If a Bitcoin transaction was sent over Tor, it appears to have the IP address of the last Tor exit relay.

Although much better than any VPN, Tor was designed to defeat local adversaries that observe only small parts of the network. Since packets still come out of Tor in the same order they came in, a more powerful adversary that can watch the entire network can use machine-learning to successfully correlate the pattern of internet traffic so the sender and receiver of a transaction can be discovered. This kind of attack can easily be applied to Bitcoin transactions over Tor, and recently, there has been evidence that large amounts of exit nodes have been compromised by a single entity. In fact, early Bitcoin developers preferred a pure peer-to-peer broadcast over using Tor for precisely this reason. Circuits in Tor also last ten minutes, so if more than one Bitcoin transaction is sent via Tor in this period, these transactions will all have the same IP address of the last Tor exit relay. New circuits can be built with every transaction, but this behavior stands out from Tors default and so is easily identified using machine learning.

Techniques like Dandelion that are used by Bitcoin resemble Tor, with each new packet being sent a multiple number of hops before being broadcast, where the hops are a stem and the broadcast are the flower, and so resembling a dandelion. Although it is much better to use Dandelion than to not use it, a powerful adversary can simply observe the building of the randomized Dandelion circuit and use that to de-anonymize the sender and receiver.

Unlike Tor and VPNs, a mixnet mixes packets. This means that, rather than packets coming out of a node in the mixnet in the same order the packets came in, packets are delayed and then mixed with other packets, so the packets leave the mixnet in a different order.

As pioneered by David Chaum in his pre-Tor paper that invented mixnets in 1981, one way to think about them is that at each hop in the mix network, the mix node shuffles the packets like a deck of cards. Like Tor, a form of onion encryption is used and the packets are all made the same size using the Sphinx packet format. This is the same Sphinx packet that is used in the Lightning Network, but was originally built for mixnets.

Nym is a kind of mixnet where the packets are delayed using a statistical process that both allows an estimate of the average delay of a packet but provides maximum anonymity as it is unknown when any given packet is finished mixing. Packets are sent from a program like a Bitcoin wallet through a gateway, then three mix nodes, and finally out of a gateway. Unlike Tor and VPNs, the packets are each sent routed through the network individually. With Nym, dummy packets are added to increase the anonymity of packets.

Compared to Tor and VPNs, mixnets are well-suited for Bitcoin. Bitcoin packets naturally fit within Sphinx packets, as weve seen with the Lightning Network, and it makes more sense to route Bitcoin packets individually rather than through a circuit needed for a webpage.

Like VPNs and Tor, mixnets hide the IP address of the packet, but unlike Tor and VPN, each packet can be given a new route and exit IP address. Due to packets being sent out of order and fake packets being added, it is likely harder for machine learning to identify the sender and receiver of a packet. Bitcoin connections from wallets to full nodes would benefit from using a mixnet, as the broadcast would be much more thoroughly defended against attackers than just using Dandelion.

Although the re-ordering of packets naturally tends to make mixnets like Nym slower than Tor, the delay can still achieve reasonable anonymity as long as enough people are using the mixnet! within seconds to minutes. One way to view mixnets is as a slower, but more anonymous version of the Lightning Network.

Lastly, mixnets are not only for Bitcoin. Just as Tor is suitable for web browsing using synchronous circuits, mixnets are suitable for any kind of traffic that naturally fits into asynchronous messages such as instant messaging. One killer use-case of mixnets before Bitcoin was email remailers that forwarded email anonymously.

Early cypherpunks like Adam Back tried to bring mixnets to market to allow anonymous email in the Freedom Network. Back invented proof of work via Hashcash in part to prevent anonymous email spam, where even a small amount of work like solving a hash puzzle would prevent a malicious spammer from flooding people with anonymous email.

Cypherpunks ended up using mixnets like Mixmaster, co-created by Len Sassman, and Mixminion, co-created by George Danezis and the founders of Tor (before they started working on Tor), in order to hide their identities online. So, it should come as no surprise that concepts like proof of work that originated with attempts to create anonymous email with mixnets ended up in Bitcoin. It would not be surprising at all if Satoshi Nakamoto used a mixnet to hide their own identity on email discussion lists when releasing Bitcoin.

Right now, Tor and Dandelion are the best solutions we have for network-level privacy for Bitcoin, yet the return of mixnets will be necessary in order to allow Bitcoin to achieve true privacy and security against powerful even nation-state level adversaries.

Len Sassaman, cypherpunk co-creator of Mixmaster mixnet, immortalized in the blockchain. Source.

This is a guest post by Harry Halpin And Ania Piotrowska. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Why bitcoin just crashed – and crypto index is down 30pc this year – New Zealand Herald

Business

22 Jan, 2022 08:00 PM3 minutes to read

Bitcoin dropped to a six-month low on Saturday, extending a steep fall recorded in the previous session as the cryptocurrency market was swept up in a powerful shift by investors out of speculative assets.

The price of the biggest digital token by market value fell 4.3 per cent in the European morning on Saturday to US$35,127, the lowest level since July 2021. Bitcoin has now lost almost a quarter of its value this year.

Other cryptocurrencies have also come under intense selling pressure, with an FT Wilshire index of the top five tokens excluding bitcoin down 30 per cent in the first month of 2022.

The cryptocurrency rout comes as investors have dumped shares in tech companies on expectations the US Federal Reserve will move to rein in loose pandemic monetary policy to combat inflation. Global stock markets posted their biggest declines in more than a year this week, with the fast-growing companies that powered the rally from the depths of the coronavirus crisis enduring intense falls.

Investors now forecast the Fed, the world's most influential central bank, will raise interest rates three to four times this year, something that has sent bond yields surging. Higher yields on low-risk assets like US government bonds make the potential returns that can be earned through speculative investments like cryptocurrencies look less appealing, analysts say.

Andrew Sullivan, managing director at Outset Global in Hong Kong, said Asia was seeing "huge volumes going through in a number of markets as investors move to cash" on Friday, as technology shares in the region fell.

The sharp sell-off in digital assets also came a day after the Russian central bank announced on Thursday draft proposals seeking to ban all cryptocurrency trading and mining. The proposed regulations would also block cryptocurrency investment by banks and forbid any exchange of cryptocurrency for traditional currencies in Russia, one of the world's largest centres for crypto mining.

The central bank said in its 36-page report that the rapidly rising value of cryptocurrencies "is defined primarily by speculative demand for future growth, which creates bubbles", adding they "also have aspects of financial pyramids, because their price growth is largely supported by demand from new entrants to the market".

The announcement initially had little impact on bitcoin, which rose as much as 3.7 per cent against the dollar on Thursday. But by Friday afternoon in Asia the cryptocurrency had dropped more than 10 per cent from the previous day's high to hit its lowest level since August.

"The Russian regulators have been frustrated [with the cryptocurrency industry] for several years and none of their warnings have been heeded," said Vince Turcotte, Asia-Pacific sales director at Eventus Systems.

10 Aug, 2021 05:00 PMQuick Read

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He added that while the Russian proposal was "relatively harsher", it was only the latest in a slew of announcements on cryptocurrencies by regulators across the globe focused mainly on protecting retail investors.

Turcotte likened the situation in Russia to that of China before Beijing began a more forceful crackdown on the industry. "Nobody listened to [Chinese officials] until they actually brought the hammer down," he said. Last year, China declared that all crypto activities were illegal.

Financial Times

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Dask-ML dask-ml 2021.11.31 documentation

Dask-ML provides scalable machine learning in Python using Dask alongsidepopular machine learning libraries like Scikit-Learn, XGBoost, and others.

People may run into scaling challenges along a couple dimensions, and Dask-MLoffers tools for addressing each.

The first kind of scaling challenge comes when from your models growing solarge or complex that it affects your workflow (shown along the vertical axisabove). Under this scaling challenge tasks like model training, prediction, orevaluation steps will (eventually) complete, they just take too long. Youvebecome compute bound.

To address these challenges youd continue to use the collections you know andlove (like the NumPy ndarray, pandas DataFrame, or XGBoost DMatrix)and use a Dask Cluster to parallelize the workload on many machines. Theparallelization can occur through one of our integrations (like Dasksjoblib backend to parallelize Scikit-Learn directly) or one ofDask-MLs estimators (like our hyper-parameter optimizers).

The second type of scaling challenge people face is when their datasets growlarger than RAM (shown along the horizontal axis above). Under this scalingchallenge, even loading the data into NumPy or pandas becomes impossible.

To address these challenges, youd use Dasks one of Dasks high-levelcollections like(Dask Array, Dask DataFrame or Dask Bag) combined with one of Dask-MLsestimators that are designed to work with Dask collections. For example youmight use Dask Array and one of our preprocessing estimators indask_ml.preprocessing, or one of our ensemble methods indask_ml.ensemble.

Its worth emphasizing that not everyone needs scalable machine learning. Toolslike sampling can be effective. Always plot your learning curve.

In all cases Dask-ML endeavors to provide a single unified interface around thefamiliar NumPy, Pandas, and Scikit-Learn APIs. Users familiar withScikit-Learn should feel at home with Dask-ML.

Other machine learning libraries like XGBoost already havedistributed solutions that work quite well. Dask-ML makes no attempt tore-implement these systems. Instead, Dask-ML makes it easy to use normal Daskworkflows to prepare and set up data, then it deploys XGBoostalongside Dask, and hands the data over.

See Dask-ML + XGBoost for more information.

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How Snapchat Is Using AI And Machine Learning To Thwart Drug Deals – Hot Hardware

Snapchat is taking a proactive approach in fighting drug deals taking place on its social media platform. The company shared an update concerning its most recent efforts to halt the push to sell drugs through connections on its app.Snapchat typically makes the news when the social media platform goes dark, sending users in a frenzy wondering when their beloved app will be back up and running. But the extremely popular app, especially among teenagers and young adults, found itself in a different type of spotlight last October when NBC News did a story about the troubling drug deals presumably taking place on the app.

The report examined the death of teens and young adults who were suspected of buying fentanyl-laced drugs using Snapchat. In the report, it spoke about teens and young adults who had bought what they believed to be a prescription pill, but turned out to be a counterfeit pill containing deadly doses of fentanyl. Since that report, Snapchat has been ramping up its efforts to thwart drug deals on its platform.

Snap stated that it has a zero tolerance for drug dealing on Snapchat. It says it has made significant operational improvements over the past year toward its goal of completely eradicating drug dealers from its platform. It claims to take a holistic approach, which includes "deploying tools that proactively detect drug-related content, working with law enforcement to support their investigations, and provide in-app information and support to Snapchatters who search for drug-related terms through a new educational portal, Heads Up."

The social media company announced that it is adding two new partners to its Heads Up portal in order to provide important in-app resources to its users. Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), is a nonprofit organization that focuses on creating safe, healthy and drug-free communities. Truth Initiative is the second addition, and is an organization that strives to steer teens and young adults away from smoking, vaping and nicotine in general. Along with these two new organizations being added, Snap will soon be releasing its next episode of it special Good Luck America series which will focus on fentanyl.

Snapchat is also updating its Quick Add suggestion feature in order to reduce interactions between kids and strangers. The company states, "In order to be discoverable in Quick Add by someone else, users under 18 will need to have a certain number of friends in common with that person." In the past, users would be given a list of recommended friends based on mutual connections, regardless if you knew the person in real life or not. Work is also being done on additional parental tools that it will roll out in the coming months.

Another way Snapchat is looking to deter drug dealers from using its platform, is in its cooperation with law enforcement. It has implemented measures using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to identify drug slang and content on the app, and then works with law enforcement to report potential cases and to comply with information requests. Snapchat has increased its law enforcement operations team by 74% since its creation. And remarkably, Snapchat claims that a whopping 88% of drug related content it uncovers is proactively detected by its AI and machine learning algorithms. That's up from 33% since its previous update.

"When we find drug dealing activity, we promptly ban the account, use technology to block the offender from creating new accounts on Snapchat, and in some cases proactively refer the account to law enforcement for investigation," Snapchat says.

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How Snapchat Is Using AI And Machine Learning To Thwart Drug Deals - Hot Hardware

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Application of ensemble machine learning algorithms on lifestyle factors and wearables for cardiovascular risk prediction | Scientific Reports -…

Data source and study population

Data used in this study was drawn from a SingHEART prospective longitudinal cohort study (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02791152). The study is a multi-ethnic population-based study conducted on healthy Asians, aged 2169years old without known diabetes mellitus or prior cardiovascular disease (Ischemic heart disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease). The study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki and written informed consent were given by participants. The study was approved by the SingHealth Centralized Institutional Review Board.

We included 600 volunteers, aged of 30years with valid calcium score, into the main analysis of this study. Two hundred volunteers under the age of 30years, who did not have a calcium score were excluded, as the calcium score was the main outcome of our analysis.

Subset analysis for activity tracker data was performed on 430 out of the 600 volunteers who had adequate data. Although subjects recruited were issued an activity tracker to be worn over a period of five days with first and last days of the study being partial days, there was inconsistent wearing of the activity. Discounting the partial days, each subject would yield an activity log for three complete tracking days (or equivalent to days with>20 valid hours of steps and sleep data)24,25. For data consistency and quality, subjects with improper activity tracker usage i.e. activity reading log less than five days and/or sleep reading log less than three days were censored.

Coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring was used as the modelling outcome. The coronary calcium is a specific marker of coronary atherosclerosis, a precursor for coronary artery disease26; it also reflects arterial age under the influence of underlying comorbidities and lifestyle. The CAC score was also regarded as the best marker for risk prediction of cardiovascular events27,28.

This study stratified subjects into two classes of CVD risk. Low risk if their coronary artery calcium score were 0, and high risk if calcium score were 100 and above. Subjects who did not fall into these 2 categories were considered intermediate risk.

The aim of this study is to look at how accurate the machine learning algorithm is in handling different data types, in the task of predicting high risk and low risk patients, based on calcium score.

Table 1 summarizes the data from SingHEART that was used in this study.

Data variables were categorized into four groups; lifestyle survey questionnaires, blood test data, 24-h ambulatory blood pressure, and activity tracking data by commercially available Fitbit Charge HR29.

Data pre-processing, transformation and imputation were performed on the raw data. Variables selected were based on their a priori knowledge from previous publications on cardiovascular risk assessment1,2,3, and physician expert advice. In total, there were 30, 17, 12 and 16 unique variables in the respective groups: survey questionnaire, 24h blood pressure and heart rate monitoring, blood tests and Fitbit data.

The Framingham 10-year risk score was computed using seven traditional risk factors: gender, age, single timepoint systolic blood pressure, Total Cholesterol (TC), High Density Lipoprotein (HDL), smoking status and presence of diabetes. A Framingham risk score of<10% is consider low risk, while20% is considered high risk30.

Figure1 shows the methodological framework of the present study. Exploratory analysis showed that ensemble MLA classifiers were superior at discriminating low risk individuals while ensemble MLA regressors performed better identifying individuals with high CVD risk. To leverage on the merits of both the classifiers and regressors MLA, we used both approaches for our model.

Modelling flow chart using ensemble MLA for cardiovascular risk prediction.

The ensemble classifiers produce a binary prediction outcome; low or non-low risk. The ensemble regressors makes a numerical prediction on the calcium score for individuals classified as non-low risk, and stratify into three bins of low, high, and intermediate risk. The predicted numerical values may range from negative to positive number. Negative predicted values were first converted to zero and subsequently the continuous predictions were converted to discrete bins using unique value percentile discretization ensuring records with the same numerical prediction are assigned the same risk category. Finally, the prediction outcome resides in a decision node build on a rule-based logic. The decision node assigns an outcome of low risk if classifiers predict an individual to be low in CVD risk, high risk if classifier predicts non-low risk and regressor predicts high risk. Patients with incongruent classifiers and regressor outcomes are considered unclassified.

The ensemble models in both classification and regression phase each fit three base learners (naive bayes (NB), random forest (RF) and support vector classifier (SVC) for classification prediction, and generalized linear regression (GLM), support vector regressor (SVR) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for regression prediction). These base learners were chosen based on preliminary analysis, where these models showed efficiency in handling missing values and outliers.

The ensemble model then uses majority vote to determine the class label in classification phase. For the regression phase, the ensemble model averages the normalized predictions from the base regressor models to form a numerical outcome.

All models were trained on a stratified five-fold cross-validation. As SingHEART data had an imbalanced CVD risk distribution of risk based on the calcium score (low risk 63.4%, high risk 8.3%, intermediate risk 18.7%) we oversampled the training set for the minority class labels to allow model to better learn features from the under-represented classes31. The data were first partitioned into five mutually exclusive subsets, with each subset sharing the same proportion of class label as original dataset. At each iteration, the MLAs trained on four parts (80%) and validated on the fifth, the holdout set (20%). The process repeats five times, with five different but overlapping training sets. The resulting metrics from each fold were averaged to produce a single estimate.

To simulate access to the different variable groups as per clinical workflow and ease of information availability, we assessed the performance of individual variable group, and in combination as per the following:

Model 1: Survey Questionnaire.

Model 2: 24h ambulatory blood pressure and heart rate.

Model 3: Clinical blood results.

Model 4: Model 1+Model 2.

Model 5: Model 1+Model 3.

Model 6: Model 1 to Model 3.

Model 6*: Model 1 to Model 3 with feature selection.

Model 7: Physical activity and sleep trackers (exploratory subset analysis).

Variables in model 6* were reduced using SVC recursive feature elimination with cross-validation (SVC-RFECV) method to automatically select the best set of predictors that yield the highest area under Receiver Operating Characteristic curves (AUC). Model 16 were trained using 600 subjects.

We also performed exploratory analysis using MLA on the Fitbit Charge HR data (Model 7). Model 7 was trained on a subset of 430 subjects constrained by availability of valid activity tracking data.

Since no single metric can objectively evaluate the cardiovascular risk prediction, we evaluate the performance of our models at CVD risk class level using a panel of metrics; sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), F1-score and Area under Receiver Operating Characteristic curves (AUC). Overall discriminative ability of the model was described by the area under received operating characteristic curve (ROC). All AUC metrics were accompanied by 95% confidence interval (CI) and standard deviation (SD).

To better understand the relative importanceof different risk factors, we conduct a post-hoc approach to rank the variables by their contribution to CVD risk prediction. Feature importance were obtained from the SVC algorithm where the relative importance was determined by the absolute size of the coefficients in relation to others. All statistical analyses were conducted on Python version 3.7 environment and all MLAs and evaluation metrics were constructed using Scikit-learn libraries.

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Data Vault Holdings Expands Expertise In Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Big Data; Appoints Tony Evans of C3 AI To Advisory Board -…

NEW YORK, Jan. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Data Vault Holdings Inc., the emerging leader in metaverse data visualization, valuation, and monetization announced today the appointment of Tony Evans, General Manager of Financial Services for C3 AI (NYSE: AI), to its advisory board, fortifying Data Vault Holding's expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, fintech, e-commerce and security. A preeminent expert in business and sales, Mr. Evans has developed and executed transformative, customer-focused strategies across industries. From artificial intelligence to cybersecurity to e-commerce, he has managed global sales and partnership development, led global banking teams, driven growth, and developed customer big data and innovation strategies. As a member of the advisory board, Mr. Evans will advise Datavaultleadership on the automation and scale of their comprehensive crypto data solution.

"In my role at C3 AI, I witness daily the power data assets and tokenomics can play in the foundation for predictive technology that influences decisions and leads to disruption of incumbent markets. Data has now become both an indicator of business intelligence and a form of capital, and we can use this information to inform business innovation. Datavaultexpertly combines artificial intelligence, machine learning, and crypto-technology to transform data into salable business growth and revenues. I am honored to provide Datavault's leadership with perspective on emerging trends, market impact, and consumer issues in payments, AI, and data," says Tony Evans, General Manager of Financial Services for C3 AI.

As General Manager of Financial Services of leading enterprise AI software provider C3 AI, Mr. Evans directs financial services strategy, global sales, and partnership development. His expertise supports the delivery of the cross-industries enterprise platform C3 AI Suite, which enables businesses to develop, deploy, and operate large-scale AI, predictive analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Mr. Evans' diversified background in the financial and technology sectors skillfully positions him to provide counsel to the executive team of Data Vault Holdings, as they develop and launch new products, design new revenue models, and simplify data visualization, valuation, and monetization processes layering effects through automation of their novel crypto-technologies. Additionally, Mr. Evans has served as Leader of Global Banking and Payments and Head of Financial Services (UK) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) (NASDAQ: AMZN); Head of Leonardo and Analytics (UK and Ireland) and SVP & Chief Operating Officer of Financial Services for SAP; and Managing Director (US) of BlackBerry. He has also served in leadership roles with Datawatch Corporation, Oracle, Applied Knowledge LTD, Visusol Consulting, and Smith Industries.

Mr. Evans holds an MBA specializing in business growth, change movement, and change strategy from the University of Brighton.

In coming weeks, Data Vault Holdings plans to announce additional members of its advisory board, with Ed Cushing, Global Account Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS),recently announced as its inaugural member. New advisory board members will further aid in providing market insights, analytics expertise, and business and data monetization strategies through the use of Datavault's patented, cloud-based SaaS platform.

About Data Vault Holdings Inc.

Data Vault Holdings Inc. is a technology holding company that provides a proprietary, cloud-based platform for the delivery of branded data-backed cryptocurrencies. Data Vault Holdings Inc. provides businesses with the tools to monetize data assets securely over its Information Data Exchange(IDE). The company is in the process of finalizing the consolidation of its affiliates Data Donate Technologies, Inc., ADIO LLC, and Datavault Inc. as wholly owned subsidiaries under one corporate structure. Learn more about Data Vault Holdings Inc. here.

SOURCE Data Vault Holdings Inc.

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Data Vault Holdings Expands Expertise In Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Big Data; Appoints Tony Evans of C3 AI To Advisory Board -...

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The 6 Best Deep Learning Tutorials on YouTube to Watch Right Now – Solutions Review

Learning deep learning can be a complicated process, and its not easy to know where to start. As a result, our editors have compiled this list of the best deep learning tutorials on YouTube to help you learn about the topic and hone your skills before you move on to mastering it. All of the videos here are free to access and feature guidance from some of the top minds and biggest brands in the online learning community. All of the best deep learning tutorials listed tout a minimum of 200,000 views.

Note: Dont forget to subscribe to Solutions Review on YouTube!

Author: Lex Fridman

Description: An introductory lecture for MIT course 6.S094 on the basics of deep learning including a few key ideas, subfields, and the big picture of why neural networks have inspired and energized an entirely new generation of researchers. The most popular result on YouTube touts nearly 1.2 million views.

Author: sentdex

Description: An updated deep learning introduction using Python, TensorFlow, and Keras, this tutorial tours more than a million views and is one of the most popular resources on the web. Students can access the text-tutorial and notes here, TensorFlow Docs here, and Keras docs here. There is also a community Discord server for those interested in the topic.

Author: Simplilearn

Description: This video provides a fun and simple introduction to deep learning concepts. Students learn about where deep learning is implemented and move on to how it is different from machine learning and artificial intelligence. Watchers will also look at what neural networks are and how they are trained to recognize digits written by hand.

Author: freeCodeCamp

Description: This course will teach you how to use Keras, a neural network API written in Python and integrated with TensorFlow. Students will learn how to prepare and process data for artificial neural networks, build and train artificial neural networks from scratch, build and train convolutional neural networks (CNNs), implement fine-tuning and transfer learning, and more.

Author: Edureka

Description: This Edureka deep learning full course video will help you understand and learn deep learning and TensorFlow are in detail. This deep learning tutorial is ideal for both beginners as well as professionals who want to master deep learning algorithms.

Author: Edureka

Description: This Edureka video will help you to understand the relationships between deep learning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. This tutorial discusses AI, machine learning and its limitations, and how deep learning overcame machine learning limitations. Additional topics include deep learning applications and TensorFlow.

Author: freeCodeCamp

Description: Learn the fundamental concepts and terminology of seep learning, a sub-branch of machine learning. This course is designed for absolute beginners with no experience in programming. You will learn the key ideas behind deep learning without any code. It also covers neural networks and various machine learning constructs.

Tim is Solutions Review's Editorial Director and leads coverage on big data, business intelligence, and data analytics. A 2017 and 2018 Most Influential Business Journalist and 2021 "Who's Who" in data management and data integration, Tim is a recognized influencer and thought leader in enterprise business software. Reach him via tking at solutionsreview dot com.

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The 6 Best Deep Learning Tutorials on YouTube to Watch Right Now - Solutions Review

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