Page 3,339«..1020..3,3383,3393,3403,341..3,3503,360..»

Seven Key Takeaways From The Department Of Justices Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework – Forbes

October 15, 2020 | Author: admin

US Attorney General William Barr speaks on Operation Legend, the federal law enforcement operation, ... [+] during a press conference in Chicago, Illinois, on September 9, 2020. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP) (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

The Department of Justice recently released a report that served as a Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework as part of the Attorney Generals Cyber Digital Task Force. The full contents can be read here. What follows are some key takeaways from the report and some additional context.

1- Distributed ledger technology and even cryptocurrency itself is regarded as a potential positive technological force by the Department of Justice

At the outset, it bears emphasizing that distributed ledger technology, upon which all cryptocurrencies build, raises breathtaking possibilities for human flourishing. in almost the beginning of the report this key point stands out almost right away a somewhat positive attitude to DLT and blockchain.

The report then brings up case studies of DLT usage in the federal government, from the FDAs pilot of a machine learning and blockchain-based system to modernize food safety to the Department of Defenses consideration of blockchain to provide increased effectiveness, efficiency, and security.

Even cryptocurrencies, often shorn by states and condemned by European financial institutions and Chinese ones alike, get some light credit in the first section though its in the context of the Federal Reserve piloting digital currencies, not in the context of independent peers arriving to a global consensus in other words, cryptocurrency concepts without the governance and political choices that make cryptocurrency special.

2- Three categories of crime involving cryptocurrency fall into special scrutiny by the Department of Justice: financial transactions involved with criminal activity (such as buying illegal drugs with cryptocurrencies), money laundering/evading tax laws, and crime such as theft of cryptocurrencies that directly affect cryptocurrency markets

Very early on (in the first ten pages), its clear that the Department of Justice is uniquely focused on specific times of crime associated with cryptocurrencies mostly ones that involve either crimes committed in cryptocurrency markets or criminals using cryptocurrency to hide information or financial flows that can be associated with criminal activity.

Two difficulties for the Department of Justice come up often in this discussion: the technical know-how to understand what is going on, and the global nature of the distribution of cryptocurrencies. Theres a commitment to dedicate resources and tap long-standing international partnerships to help allay some of those issues, but its clear that these are regarded as fundamental challenges in the scope of what the Department of Justice seems most interested in: direct criminal activity in cryptocurrency markets, or information that can tie financial flows to criminal activity.

3- The Department of Justice tries to make clear, at least on a broad level, that its tracking key terms and innovations in cryptocurrency, especially privacy-preserving ones

Early on, a section is devoted to the Departments view on Web 3.0, which seems to combine an awkward mash-up of strong Web 2.0 concepts (algorithmic personalization of content) vs. Web 3.0s effects (less reliance on centralized service providers, whether ISPs or cloud services).

It seems to ignore the central thrust of Web 3.0 and mesh networks as one being oriented towards independent peer-to-peer communication and hosted services on self-owned and self-managed instances. Yet the message is clear: the Department of Justice is trying to figure out what these new ideas and technologies mean for its enforcement of the law. This appears largely because the report is a skimmed summary of Binances summary of Web 3.0 with important context removed, one of the few times and perhaps the only time the report cites a cryptocurrency source that is quasi-official.

Privacy-preserving technologies or cryptocurrencies such as Monero and mixing are specifically name-checked and expanded upon. In fact, the Department of Justice specifically cites even just the usage of what they describe as anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrencies (specifically citing Dash, Monero and ZCash) as a high-risk activity that is indicative of potential criminal activity on page 41 of the report.

Decentralized finance is also briefly mentioned in a way that suggests that the Department of Justice is aware of the trend though is not yet ready to dedicate pages of case studies. ICOs have their own spotlight when it comes to cooperation with the SEC. Yet the central focus is very much on privacy-focused cryptocurrency chains and methods of privacy-enhancement for now.

4- The Department of Justice is very focused on pre-defined rogue states, terrorist groups, and individuals using cryptocurrencies on Darknet markets

Most of the case studies cited are either individuals operating on the Darknet with cryptocurrencies (ex: DeepDotWeb), terrorist groups in Syria asking for bitcoin donations or rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran, with a specific case study on the SamSam ransomware the Department of Justice claims was created by Iranian hackers. Interestingly, despite the rise of the digital yuan (DCEP) and heavy burdensome restrictions on cryptocurrency exchanges and users, and the Department of Justices increasingly China-centric focus, China was not mentioned once in the report as either an example or counter-example.

Clearly, for now, the Department of Justice sees the upholding of the traditional financial order and the definition of rogue states as its framework for how to comprehend cryptocurrency, rather than great power conflict frameworks it has read into other parts of its enforcement powers.

5- The Department of Justices relationship and architecture with other government agencies with regards to cryptocurrency is fully sketched out, and occupies large parts of the report

A large part of the report is spent on case studies and specific examples/instances of the Department of Justice collaborating with different government agencies on cryptocurrencies and the way it thinks about those relationships, from FinCENs settlement with Ripple (which mitigated possible criminal charges from the Department of Justices parallel investigation with FinCEN) to how the SEC and the Department of Justice worked together to tackle the Telegram ICO.

Emphasis is placed on the Department of Justices long-standing relationships with regulatory agencies within the federal US government, as well as its surprising cooperation with state attorneys in New York state as well as international collaboration with the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), especially surrounding antimoney laundering provisions.

6- Most of the sources it cites are from the Wall Street Journal or internal government references

It appears that the Department of Justice is most comfortable citing the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and an array of internal sources or other government agencies.

The only external source of note the author noted was a reference to Binance Academys Wiki section of Web 3.0, to make an adjacent point about Web 3.0 that was not central to the thurst of the article. This suggests an unwillingness to cite if not consult sources that might be closer to the ground on cryptocurrency terms and innovations, and which might have a slightly different or diverse perspective than the Department of Justice.

7- While potential for distributed ledger technologies is mentioned, it still feels like the Department of Justice sees cryptocurrencies as more threat than opportunity

The overwhelming part of the report is filled with case studies and specific statutes and crimes that were or could be committed with cryptocurrencies. Despite some encouraging and more balanced words at the beginning of the report, it seems that for the most part, the Department of Justice sees cryptocurrencies as more threat than opportunity. This is especially the case with regards to its opinion on privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies such as Dash, Monero and ZCash the line that even usage of them might be considered suspicion of committing crimes is a strong one, and would be akin to pre-suspecting anybody using end-to-end encryption of possible criminal activity.

Follow this link:
Seven Key Takeaways From The Department Of Justices Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework - Forbes

Read More..
Posted in Cryptocurrency | Leave a Comment

Cryptocurrency has the power to revolutionise a corrupt banking system – The Independent

October 15, 2020 | Author: admin

If you are unfamiliar with cryptocurrency it is unlikely you will know what Decentralised Finance (DeFi) is. Those who do, know that today anyone can exchange their money for a stablecoin (a cryptocurrency backed by a reserve asset), invest them in a promising project and hopefully watch their investment grow.

Is this a variation on the classic pyramid scheme? Not in the sense of Charles Ponzi. But it is clear that the explosive growth of DeFi platforms is driven by a rapid influx of liquidity into the new market, and cannot continue indefinitely. Nevertheless, the technologies embedded in this infrastructure open up tremendous opportunities for rebuilding the global financial system.

The author of this column has devoted 25 years of his life to banking. Having bought the dwarf National Reserve Bank in Moscow in 1995, I sold it this year as one of the most reliable banks in Russia. It is a shadow of its former self, 20 times smaller, but with no liabilities or obligations.

For a quarter of a century I was the CEO of the third largest private bank in Russia in equity capital terms, after Sberbank and VTB. I was also the constant target of corporate raiders backed by corrupt werewolves from the FSB, which destroyed my business.

Modern bankers ruin their banks by pocketing clients money. Since the late 90s, thousands of Russian "banksters" (a portmanteau of "banker" and "gangster") from thousands of banks, appropriated more than $100 billion of their clients money and left the country with their stolen money. Or they opened a new "business" at home, depending on the thickness of the krysha [roof" in Russian, signifying criminal protection] in government.

The social function of banks is to serve as the circulatory system of the economy. They allow transactions in exchange for goods and services, they are engaged in lending, ensuring production, and accumulation of resources. However, the world banking community has turned into an anti-bank, whose function is to misappropriate customers assets and launder dirty money, the volume of which is increasing globally by $1 trillion every year.

Further confirmation of this can be found in the recent publication by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) of the leaked reports of Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN a division of the US Treasury). According to these documents, the five largest international banks laundered $2 trillion even after US authorities had already fined them for previous misconduct.

As a result, a huge parasitic class has been formed, made of bankers, fake investors, lawyers, auditors and service personnel, who rule entire states called "offshores" and the countries that are invented in them. This class produces nothing but "dirty money".

Alas, national law enforcement structures and courts are not able to resist this evil on a systemic level they only provide palliative care, by fighting against individual scams. My appeal for the creation of new international structures remains a lonely one.

Meanwhile, people who really add or invent tangible value in society, by furthering scientific and technological progress or culture, are less and less able to access financial resources. Their income is incomparable with the wealth of those who are involved in the global oligarchy, which has no physical or intellectual labour at its source.

Billions of people are completely cut off from banking services partially due to their high cost and lack of interest in the poor clients on the part of the banksters, who have nothing to steal from them. A system of financial apartheid drives nations and entire continents into poverty.

This conflict is becoming especially obvious now, amid the backdrop of a recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Now money itself, which is printed in huge and unsecured quantities by national financial institutions, is increasingly devaluing.

Sooner or later, this upside-down pyramid must collapse, and the bubble inflated in the stock markets must burst. Excess liquidity from the stock market will inevitably rush into the real world, turning the depreciating money into dust, regardless of their denomination. This will lead to another apocalypse-scale heist.

Fortunately, the human mind does not stand still. Cryptocurrencies, which 10 years ago were perceived as a joke and a toy, are today an important part of the international financial system. The next step will be the "digitalisation" of real assets, including production facilities, real estate, goods and services, with their holding in distributed ledgers.

Many governments that foresee the benefits of these technologies are beginning to implement them. In March, the German Federal Financial Supervision Authority (BaFin) recognised cryptocurrencies as financial instruments. On 11 August, the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) and the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) presented a bill on blockchain-based digital securities. Xi Jinping, the leader of the most populous and second richest country in the world, said a year ago that the development of blockchain is one of the most urgent tasks for the state.

Last April, the Central Bank of China, as part of a pilot program, introduced a national cryptocurrency (DCEP) in four major cities in the country. The site for the 2022 Winter Olympics, to be held in Beijing, will also be the basis for exploring opportunities with DCEP.

The latest news, on 3 September, is that the Swiss canton of Zug began accepting tax payments in Bitcoin and Ethereum. n 21 September, the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a stablecoin guide, which provides the first detailed national guidance on how fiat-backed cryptocurrencies should be treated in accordance with the law. Thus, the regulators gave the green light to work with the issuers (or founders) of stablecoins.

Take a look around: tools that until recently were the dreams of science fiction are becoming reality. Artificial intelligence is already driving vehicles, and the profession of driver may die within the next decade. In the same way, blockchain technologies and smart contracts will make it unnecessary to employ the vast majority of people in the financial sector, and will thus eliminate "banksters" as a social phenomenon.

With Decentralized Finance (DeFi), it became possible to directly connect clients of traditional banks without the participation of an intermediary in the form of the bank itself, the functionality of which in this case is performed by a so-called smart contract. At the same time, no one will be able to steal a clients money, because the DeFi system protects them from greedy bankers. A smart contract obeys only the laws of mathematics and, aside from the risk of computer hacking which also exists in conventional banking, it is incorruptible and it does not need villas on the French Riviera, nor private jets or yachts.

The current DeFi projects are based on the exchange of liquid tokens (mainly decentralised cryptocurrencies) on the principles of collateralised lending. They are quite primitive and serve either for simple mortgage lending, or for the so-called Yield Farming empty inflation of liquidity for the sake of stock growth with their subsequent sale on the free market. For example, I have invested $100,000 in one such DeFi platform licensed in Estonia, just out of curiosity. Three days later I checked my digital wallet and found out that I had already earned over $300, which I easily transferred to my bank account via crypto exchange. (I should point out this isnt investment advice and people should check before putting their money in any particular crypto-currency or platform).

The Independent Decentralized Financial Ecosystem (some might call it a "bank 2.0"), which I am looking to set up with some partners, represents a new generation of bank in which all participants are simultaneously beneficiaries. It would offer customers the full range of services of traditional banks. Those include currency exchange, deposits, lending, settlement and cash services, local and international transfers. The fundamental distinctness of this platform comes from its supranationality.

The system for the execution of smart contracts based on blockchain technology is located on the network simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Whatever happens to the people who manage the system, all obligations will be fulfilled, since they are not dependent on personal decency, rather they are enshrined in smart contracts. In this case, of course, it is necessary to monitor the full legal compliance of the issue of credit-collateral tokens with the legislation of the country in which it is carried out.

The most significant aspect of this project will be to provide a working platform for a huge number of third-party start-ups and innovation. This is a mechanism that will ultimately connect a Thai-based IT creator in need of funding, or a waste recycling entrepreneur in Zimbabwe, with a potential investor from Norway or Japan. The system will include hundreds and thousands of projects of talented people, each of which will become part of the global infrastructure just like any major bank has hundreds and thousands of projects, related to a financial institution.

Besides, this system will provide additional opportunities for financial transparency in the implementation of non-profit projects for example environmental protection. Or charity, which, alas, suffers from the fact that half of the hundreds of billions USD donations allocated annually around the world are simply stolen directly or through so-called "management expenses".

This year my son Evgeny and I visited Chad to support the local national park. At N'Djamena International Airport, against the backdrop of several dilapidated ancient Cessnas, sat a new Bombardier Global Express jet white with blue letters UN OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). I once had one, it costs $60m.

And when we flew away, there was a similarly "branded" Embraer Legacy worth $30m. There are cargo planes for the transportation of humanitarian aid, which are much cheaper and more spacious. I wondered how many hungry Chadians could be helped with this money from the international community, spent by UN officials for their own comfort?

Crypto-economics allows a donor of any amount, even one pound, to follow their donation to a poor child in Bosnia in need of an expensive operation, to a farmer in Uganda in need of new technology, or to a particular elephant in Gabon. All this information can be completely opened up to the relevant parties through the charity token blockchain.

Perhaps we are on the verge of a real revolution in the international financial system, and the end of the bankster. I do not pretend to be the ultimate oracle of truth; there is much to debate in my piece. Yet one thing is indisputable: in the form in which this system exists now, it is leading the world economy to disaster.

Alexander Lebedevs family co-own The Independent and Evening Standard titles

See original here:
Cryptocurrency has the power to revolutionise a corrupt banking system - The Independent

Read More..
Posted in Cryptocurrency | Leave a Comment

Cryptocurrency Exchange and its Executives Face Allegations of Failing to Maintain an Adequate AML Program – Lexology

October 15, 2020 | Author: admin

Two U.S. authorities recently announced actions against four individuals and numerous entities associated with BitMEX, an online trading platform for futures contracts and other derivative products tied to the value of cryptocurrencies. Both actions allege that BitMEX failed to put in place required anti-money laundering programs and procedures, and serve as a reminder that institutions offering new and innovative financial products should assess the potential applicability of and compliance with U.S. anti-money laundering laws and regulations.

BitMEXs Background

According to the court filings, BitMEX has described itself as the worlds largest cryptocurrency derivatives platform in the world. Among other offerings, BitMEX offered commodity futures, options, and swaps on digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin.

Department of Justice Criminal Case

The U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) charged four individuals with causing a financial institution to violate the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). The indictment asserts that BitMEX served customers located in the United States, and therefore was a futures commission merchant (FCM) that had to comply with the BSA. The defendants, all executives of BitMEX, allegedly failed to establish, implement, and maintain an adequate AML program, including adequate customer identification and Know Your Customer (KYC) programs. The BSA and its implementing regulations require FCMs to establish AML programs that include, at a minimum, the following:

(1) policies, procedures, and internal controls to prevent the FCM from being used for money laundering or terrorist financing;

(2) independent testing;

(3) designation of an individual or individuals responsible for implementing and monitoring the internal controls;

(4) ongoing training for appropriate persons; and

(5) appropriate risk based procedures for conducting ongoing customer due diligence.[1]

Other relevant requirements for FCMs under the BSAs implementing regulations include, but are not limited to, filing suspicious activity reports (SARs) and implementing a written KYC program that includes procedures for verifying the identify of each customer to the extent reasonable and practicable.

The indictment asserts that the individual defendants knew that BitMEX had to comply with AML and KYC requirements if it served U.S. customers or operated within the United States. The defendants allegedly took steps to exempt the company from the application of U.S. laws and regulations; for example, the indictment claims that the defendants incorporated BitMEX in the Seychelles, believing they could still serve U.S. customers but avoid having to adopt BSA-compliant AML and KYC programs. According to the indictment, BitMEX did not adopt a formal compliance program, processes, or internal controls; could not and did not monitor its customer transactions for money laundering and sanctions violations; and did not file any SARs between its launch in November 2014 and September 2020.

The indictment also focuses on BitMEXs alleged failure to know the true identities of its customers. Customers could register to trade anonymously without providing any identifying information or documentation, and BitMEXs initial marketing advertised that it did not require advanced verification. Moreover, the government alleged that the steps that BitMEX did take, such as implementing an internet protocol (IP) address check in response to CFTC public enforcement orders, were intentionally designed to be ineffective. The IP address check only prevented using a U.S. IP address to register with BitMEX. After successfully registering, a customer could freely access BitMEXs platform from U.S. IP addresses or by using a virtual private network (VPN), which permitted the customer to circumvent the IP address check and which BitMEX took no steps to preclude.

The indictment asserts that, because of its failure to implement AML and KYC programs, BitMEX made itself available as a vehicle for money laundering and sanctions violations, and that some of the individual defendants knew that money laundering and sanctions violations occurred on the platform, including servicing sanctioned customers located in Iran.

CFTC Action

Similarly, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) brought a civil enforcement action charging three individuals and five entities doing business as BitMEX with operating an unregistered trading platform and violating multiple CFTC regulations, including failing to implement required AML or KYC procedures or a customer information program (CIP). The CFTC complaint alleges that BitMEX did not collect any documents to verify the identity or location of the vast majority of its users, and advertised that customers could register to trade in minutes. The complaint continues that BitMEX deleted records for numerous accounts in cases where a user was found to be in the U.S. or another restricted jurisdiction. A 2015 investor presentation asserted that bitcoin derivatives are completely unregulated worldwide, despite receiving guidance from a compliance consultant that informed BitMEXs founders of the need to know the identity of BitMEXs customers.

The complaint states that in August 2020, BitMEX announced plans to begin conducting KYC on customer accounts, but that, until that point, executives had made deliberate decisions to refrain from implementing KYC and AML procedures. For example, in 2016, in responding to a U.S.-based exchanges query about BitMEXs policies, BitMEX asserted that it blocked U.S. residents from using the platform, but performed no other KYC as we are not required to under Seychelles law for the products that we offer. However, according to the complaint, thousands of U.S. persons were in fact trading on BitMEXs platforms. The CFTCs release announcing the complaint emphasized BitMEXs operation of the platform from the U.S. and its extensive solicitation of and access to U.S. customers.

These actions contain at least two key takeaways for cryptocurrency companies. First, companies incorporated in jurisdictions outside the U.S. may be subject to U.S. laws and regulations based on, among other factors, marketing to U.S. persons, where their customers are located, and whether any of their business is conducted from the U.S., as was the case with BitMEX. The SDNY and FBI, when announcing the indictment of the four executives, derided BitMEXs efforts to establish itself as an off-shore exchange. On this point, the indictment is in keeping with prior enforcement actions, such as the 2013 action against Costa Rican digital currency company Liberty Reserve.[2] Second, cryptocurrency companies should examine their obligations under the BSA and its implementing regulations, which require that certain financial institutions have AML and KYC programs in place. Cryptocurrency companies should carefully balance the desire to provide relatively easy and quick access to their platforms with the need to meet applicable regulatory standards so as not to risk enforcement action by criminal authorities, the CFTC, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), or the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), among others.

Continue reading here:
Cryptocurrency Exchange and its Executives Face Allegations of Failing to Maintain an Adequate AML Program - Lexology

Read More..
Posted in Cryptocurrency | Leave a Comment

Cryptocurrency This Week: After Raising Fresh Fund From Tim Draper, Unocoin Looks To Launch Lending Featur … – Inc42 Media

October 15, 2020 | Author: admin

Bengaluru-based crypto exchange startup Unocoin looks to launch lending and interest-earning features on its platform

Indias crypto community joins hand to push regulatory sandbox, headed by crypto exchange BuyUCoin

UK-based crypto banking platform Cashaa expands into India to offer deposits and withdrawals of cryptocurrencies

Last week, American venture capital investor Tim Draper announced that he has invested an undisclosed amount in a Bengaluru-based crypto exchange startup Unocoin, in a Series A funding. The round also witnessed participation from XBTO Ventures and 2020 Ventures among other investors in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Unocoin said that it will be using the fund to scale its business and enable it to further expand its team and enhance its product. Backed by FundersClub, Blume Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Mumbai Angels and ah! Ventures among others, the company has raised up to $3.6 Mn in funding.

Founded in 2013, Unocoin was founded by Sunny Ray, Abhinand Kaseti, Harish BV and Sathvik Viswanath. The exchange claims to have about 1.3 Mn users, of which 350K accounts are KYC verified.

Sharing the business strategy with Inc42, Unocoin CEO and cofounder Viswanath said that there are some interesting features in the pipeline, including lending and interest-earning features to its users.

Elaborating on the same, he said:

Our customers can use their Bitcoin as collateral and get money to their bank account. Here, they will be paying some percentage of interest to us, and eventually can pay their principal amount to get the collateral Bitcoin release. This is on the lending side of things.

Similarly, on the interesting-earning feature, Viswanath said that their customers can also do the fixed deposit of USDT (stable coin), and earn some interest on top of that.

These are some of the two new features that Unocoin is looking to release in the coming months, which are both similar to how banks operate, where customer can keep the fixed deposit on one side and give loans on the other and percentage of the difference between the two goes to the banks as part of the revenue for their operations, he explained.

With a lot of commotion already happening around cryptocurrency in relation to the lost Bitcoins, crypto ban and at the same time, announcements of crypto platforms releasing new tokens, Viswanath said that until the regulations come out these things will continue to make noise in the ecosystem. We are staying away from these things as much as possible, he added.

However, sharing the opportunities in the space, Vishwanath said that many companies have been working on creating de-centralised financing which is really fascinating. Also, when it comes to the non-fungible token, there isnt any company in India which is working towards developing this technology.

Non-fungible tokens are a form of tokens which could hold value in the physical world. For those unaware, fungibility is one of the features of the currency, but not a feature of a commodity.

For instance, when a consumer buys a limited edition Rolex watch, using this technology, a token can be generated on the blockchain which represents the ownership of the object and its value. Now, when this limited edition Rolex watch is sold in the market in the near future, it not only represents the authenticity of the product, but also the ownership gets transferred to the new customers, and so does the value.

In another update, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) at the time of writing was $11,369 with a market cap of 210 Bn, compared to last week (October 6, 2020) which stood at $10.760, with a market cap of $198 Bn.

Ethereum (ETH), on the other hand, was priced at $319.17, with a market cap of $42.6 Bn at the time of writing, compared to last week (October 6, 2020), where the price of the cryptocurrency was $349.47, with a market cap of $39.45 Bn.

Amid the noise around cryptocurrency ban, Indias crypto community have come together to propose an alternative. Headed by crypto exchange BuyUCoin, the sandbox proposes a regulatory framework to bring crypto assets under existing regulations while also setting up a supervised space for startups to develop products in the sector. Accordingly, the community has suggested developing an open-source interface to track crypto transactions and trace anti-money laundering and know-your-customer (KYC) compliance.

UK-based crypto banking platform Cashaa to launch its own crypto pro internet bank in India soon. According to CryptoDaily, the founder Kuman Gaurav said that this expansion will allow companies in India as well as other individual entities to open a savings account which will provide access to save and store cryptocurrencies. For lending, we will be adding crypto assets class together with gold and real estate as collateral, he added.

Further, the founder claimed that Cashaa will be the first registered bank to allow for deposits and withdrawals of cryptocurrencies. It also said that it was able to get the approval from lawmakers within the country to operate as a crypto-friendly internet banking platform.

Go here to read the rest:
Cryptocurrency This Week: After Raising Fresh Fund From Tim Draper, Unocoin Looks To Launch Lending Featur ... - Inc42 Media

Read More..
Posted in Cryptocurrency | Leave a Comment

A Guide to Cryptocurrency Trading Tools – Legal Reader

October 15, 2020 | Author: admin

As an emerging and continually evolving sector of the financial markets, cryptocurrency

offers huge potential to traders of all levels. Only a few years ago, crypto trading was largely limited to the spot markets, with little opportunity to short trade and profit from bear markets.

These days, cryptocurrency traders can choose from an array of different ways to gain exposure to digital assets. Cryptocurrency futures are booming, with open interest having reached an all-time high in late August. Options are also a fast-growing market, while decentralized finance has opened up a whole new sub-sector of yield farming.

However, no matter how you choose to trade or invest in crypto, a certain amount of risk is inevitable. Therefore, rather than getting blinded by the possibilities of profits, the most successful traders focus on how to mitigate the downside. The best way to do this is by making use of the multitude of trading tools available, either via exchanges or via external sites.

Exchange trading tools to offset risk

In the 24/7 cryptocurrency markets, where volatility is the norm, it can be a risky proposition to walk away from an open position. A flash crash or sudden price spike could wipe out your profits in seconds. Therefore, many exchanges offer conditional ordering, enabling you to configure an optimal exit point where youll either take profit or stop loss.

HollaEx is the first open-source exchange that gives traders the ability to make their own order warning pop ups that will trigger when a trade goes beyond your predetermined set amount. This simple but effective measure helps prevent small typos from turning into big losses.

Phemex is the first exchange to pioneer bracket ordering, allowing traders to place a limit order, with take-profit and stop-loss orders that only become active once the primary limit order is fully filled. They effectively serve as a One Cancels the Other (OCO) order.

A feature like this can help a trader to maximize profits and decrease losses within the same order. It reduces the risk that if they arent keeping an eye on the markets, they may risk missing the optimal exit price.

Perhaps not quite as automated, but in a similar vein, Bybit recently rolled out its strategy alerts feature. This is a customizable feature that will send an alert to users, via the exchanges app, when a particular market event occurs. Along with specific price alerts, it can also notify traders regarding particular market trends, or if theres a turning point from bull to bear markets.

Trading bots

Many traders prefer to go full-on with the hands-off approach and automate their trading using bots. Using a bot can reduce the burden of repetitive tasks, achieve pinpoint precision in timing a trade, and simplify complicated sequences of trades.

Deciding which bot is right for you very much depends on your trading style. For example, if youre trading relatively infrequently and just want a bot to rebalance your portfolio, then Shrimpy is a solid choice.

Its specifically designed for portfolio management and allows you to configure your ideal asset balance. You can set a tolerance threshold for movements, and how often youd like the portfolio to rebalance. It will then automatically buy or sell assets based on price movements to achieve your desired portfolio allocation.

At the other end of the scale is HaasOnline, one of the most advanced automated trading bots. It uses its own scripting language so that traders can design and configure complex algorithms as they wish. Theres also the option to take advantage of the platforms own pre-built bots, and everything can be back-tested before executing in a live trading environment.

If you are looking for a more heavy duty solution, then bitHolla offers a range of liquidity bots that gradually allows big traders to accumulate crypto at the best prices across a range of different exchanges.

Analytical tools

Coinmarketcap might be the go-to aggregator for checking a spot price, but there are plenty more sophisticated aggregators and tools available for traders looking for deeper market insights.

One of the most popular is TradingView, which has become the de-facto platform for charting and technical analysis. With a free account, you get access to basic charting, plus some research and analysis regarding particular assets.

However, more advanced traders are usually willing to stump up the monthly fee for access to extra features. These include the ability to apply multiple indicators per chart, show multiple charts in one window to compare performance, and get rid of advertisements.

Beyond the technicals, many traders also like to keep abreast of news and developments in the cryptocurrency space, which can provide insights into the fundamental factors driving the price. However, there are dozens, if not hundreds of news outlets covering crypto, which is where crypto panic comes in.

Its a news aggregator site that allows you to configure your preferences so you can follow the stories related to assets in your portfolio. It also offers a pro feature giving access to instant alerts about news stories.

With the crypto markets becoming ever-more complex, its more important than ever to pick the right trading tools that work for you. Which ones you choose will depend on the type of trader you are, how much youre willing to spend, which exchanges you like to use, and much more. As with any decision in cryptocurrency, do plenty of research to find a suite of tools that will serve you best.

Go here to see the original:
A Guide to Cryptocurrency Trading Tools - Legal Reader

Read More..
Posted in Cryptocurrency | Leave a Comment

What is Quantum Computing, and How does it Help Us? – Analytics Insight

October 13, 2020 | Author: admin

The term quantum computing gained momentum in the late 20thcentury. These systems aim to utilize these capabilities to become highly-efficient. They use quantum bits or qubits instead of the simple manipulation of ones and zeros in existing binary-based computers. These qubits also have a third state called superposition that simultaneously represents a one or a zero. Instead of analyzing a one or a zero sequentially, superposition allows two qubits in superposition to represent four scenarios at the same time. So we are at the cusp of a computing revolution where future systems have capability beyond mathematical calculations and algorithms.

Quantum computers also follow the principle of entanglement, which Albert Einstein had referred to as spooky action at a distance. Entanglement refers to the observation that the state of particles from the same quantum system cannot be described independently of each other. Even when they are separated by great distances, they are still part of the same system.

Several nations, giant tech firms, universities, and startups are currently exploring quantum computing and its range of potential applications. IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and other companies are investing heavilyin developing large-scale quantum computing hardware and software. Google and UCSB have a partnership to develop a 50 qubits computer, as it would represent 10,000,000,000,000,000 numbers that would take a modern computer petabyte-scale memory to store. A petabyte is the unit above a terabyte and represents 1,024 terabytes. It is also equivalent to 4,000 digital photos taken every day. Meanwhile, names like Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Systems, 1Qbit Information Technologies, Inc., Quantum Circuits, Inc., QC Ware, Zapata Computing, Inc. are emerging as bigger players in quantum computing.

IEEE Standards Association Quantum Computing Working Group is developing two technical standards for quantum computing. One is for quantum computing definitions and nomenclature, so we can all speak the same language. The other addresses performance metrics and performance benchmarking to measure quantum computers performance against classical computers and, ultimately, each other. If required, new standards will also be added with time.

The rapid growth in the quantum tech sector over the past five years has been exciting. This is because quantum computing presents immense potential. For instance, a quantum system can be useful for scientists for conducting virtual experiments and sifting through vast amounts of data. Quantum algorithms like quantum parallelism can perform a large number of computations simultaneously. In contrast, quantum interference will combine their results into something meaningful and can be measured according to quantum mechanics laws. Even Chinese scientists are looking to developquantum internet, which shall be a more secure communication system in which information is stored and transmitted withadvanced cryptography.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University used quantum algorithms to transform MRI scans for cancer, allowing the scans to be performed three times faster and to improve their quality by 30%. In practice, this can mean patients wont need to be sedated to stay still for the length of an MRI, and physicians could track the success of chemotherapy at the earliest stages of treatment.

Laboratoire de Photonique Numrique et Nanosciences of France has built a hybrid device that pairs a quantum accelerometer with a classical one and uses a high-pass filter to subtract the classical data from the quantum data. This has the potential to offer an highly precise quantum compass that would eliminate the bias and scale factor drifts commonly associated with gyroscopic components. Meanwhile, the University of Bristolhas founded a quantum solution for increasing security threats. Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine are working to uncover the potential quantum computers hold to help understand genetic diseases.Scientists are also using quantum computing to find a vaccine for COVID and other life-threatening diseases.

In July 2017, in collaboration with commercial photonics tools providerM Squared, QuantIC demonstrated how a quantum gravimeter detects the presence of deeply hidden objects by measuring disturbances in the gravitational field. If such a device becomes practical and portable, the team believes it could become invaluable in an early warning system for predicting seismic events and tsunamis.

Go here to read the rest:
What is Quantum Computing, and How does it Help Us? - Analytics Insight

Read More..
Posted in Quantum Computer | Leave a Comment

QCE20: Here’s what you can expect from Intel’s new quantum computing research this week – Neowin

October 13, 2020 | Author: admin

The IEEE Quantum Week (QCE20) is a conference where academics, newcomers, and enthusiasts alike come together to discuss new developments and challenges in the field of quantum computing and engineering. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, this year's conference will be held virtually, starting today and running till October 16.

Throughout the course of the event, QCE20 will host parallel tracks of workshops, tutorials, keynotes, and networking sessions by industry front-runners like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and Zapata. From the pack, today well peek into what Intel has in store for the IEEE Quantum Week. Particularly, well be previewing Intels array of new papers on developing commercial-grade quantum systems.

Starting off, Intel will be presenting a paper in which researchers have employed a deep learning framework to simulate and design high-fidelity multi-qubit gates for quantum dot qubit systems. This research is interesting because quantum dot silicon qubits can potentially improve the scalability of quantum computers due to their small size. This paper also indicates that machine learning is a powerful technique in optimizing the design and implementation of quantum gates. A similar insight was used by another team at the University of Melbourne back in March in which the researchers used machine learning to pinpoint the spatial locations of phosphorus atoms in a silicon lattice to design better quantum chips and subsequently reduce errors in computations.

Next up, Intel's second paper proposes an algorithm that optimizes the loading of certain classes of functions, e.g. Gaussian and Probability distributions, which are frequently used for mapping real-world problems to quantum computers. By loading data faster in a quantum computer and increasing throughput, the researchers believe that we can save time and leverage the exponential compute power offered by quantum computers in practical applications.

One of the earliest and most useful applications of quantum computers is to simulate a quantum system of particles. Consider the scenario where the ground state of a particle is to be calculated to study a certain chemical process. Traditionally, this task usually involves obtaining the lowest eigenvalue from the corresponding eigenvectors of the states of a particle represented by a matrix known as the Hamiltonian. But this deceptively simple task grows exponentially for larger systems that have innumerable particles. Naturally, researchers have devised quantum algorithms for it. Intels paper highlights the development and research requirements of running such algorithms on small qubit systems. The firm believes that the insight garnered from these findings can have potential implications for designing qubit chips in the future while simultaneously making quantum computing more accessible.

While were still in the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) era of quantum computers, meaning that perfect quantum computers with thousands of qubits running Shors algorithm are still a thing of the future, firms have already started preparing for a quantum-safe future. One of the foreseeable threats posed by quantum computers is the ease with which they can factor large numbers, and hence threaten to break our existing standards of encryption. In this paper, researchers at Intel have aimed to address this concern. By presenting a design for a BIKE (Bit-flipping Key Encapsulation) hardware accelerator, todays cryptosystems can be made resilient to quantum attacks. Another thing to note here is that this approach is also currently under consideration by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), so a degree of adoption and standardization might be on the cards in the future.

Addressing the prevalent issues of the NISQ era once again, this paper debuts a novel technique that helps quantum-classical hybrid algorithms run efficiently on small qubit systems. This technique can be handy in this era since most practical uses of quantum computers involve a hybrid setup in which a quantum computer is paired with a classical computer. To illustrate, the aforementioned problem of finding the ground state of a quantum particle can be solved by a Variational-Quantum-Eigensolver (VQE), which uses both classical and quantum algorithms to estimate the lowest eigenvalue of a Hamiltonian. But running such hybrid algorithms is difficult. But the new method to engineer cost functions outlined in this paper could allow small qubit systems to run these algorithms efficiently.

Finally, on the penultimate day of the conference, Dr. Anne Matsuura, the Director of Quantum Applications and Architecture at Intel Labs, will be delivering a keynote titled Quantum Computing: A Scalable, Systems Approach. In it, Dr. Matsuura will be underscoring Intels strategy of taking a systems-oriented, workload-driven view of quantum computing to commercialize quantum computers in the NISQ era:

Quantum computing is steadily transitioning from the physics lab into the domain of engineering as we prepare to focus on useful, nearer-term applications for this disruptive technology. Quantum research within Intel Labs is making solid advances in every layer of the quantum computing stack from spin qubit hardware and cryo-CMOS technologies for qubit control to software and algorithms research that will put us on the path to a scalable quantum architecture for useful commercial applications. Taking this systems-level approach to quantum is critical in order to achieve quantum practicality.

The research works outlined above accentuate Intels efforts to develop useful applications that are ready to run on near-term, smaller qubit quantum machines. They also put the tech giant alongside the ranks of IBM and Zapata that are working on the commercialization of quantum computers as well.

Read the original here:
QCE20: Here's what you can expect from Intel's new quantum computing research this week - Neowin

Read More..
Posted in Quantum Computer | Leave a Comment

Canadian quantum computing firms partner to spread the technology – IT World Canada

October 13, 2020 | Author: admin

In a bid to accelerate this countrys efforts in quantum computing, 24 Canadian hardware and software companies specializing in the field are launching an association this week to help their work get commercialized.

Called Quantum Industry Canada, the group says they represent Canadas most commercial-ready technologies, covering applications in quantum computing, sensing, communications, and quantum-safe cryptography.

The group includes Burnaby, B.C., manufacturer D-Wave Systems, Vancouver software developer 1Qbit, Torontos photonic quantum computer maker Xanadu Quantum Technologies, the Canadian division of software maker Zapata Computing, Waterloo, Ont.,-based ISARA which makes quantum-safe solutions and others.

The quantum opportunity has been brewing for many years, association co-chair Michele Mosca of the University of Waterloos Institute for Quantum Computing and the co-founder of two quantum startups, said in an interview, explaining why the new group is starting now. Canadas been a global leader at building up the global opportunity, the science, the workforce, and we didnt want this chance to pass. Weve got over 24 innovative companies, and we wanted to work together to make these companies a commercial success globally.

Its also important to get Canada known as a leader in quantum-related products and services, he added. This will help assure a strong domestic quantum industry as we enter the final stages of quantum readiness.

And while quantum computing is a fundamental new tool, Mosca said, its also important for Canadian organizations to start planning for a quantum computing future, even if the real business value isnt obvious. We dont know exactly when youll get the real business advantage you want to be ready for when quantum computers can give you an advantage.

Adib Ghubril, research director at Toronto-based Info-Tech Research Group, said in an interview creation of such a group is needed. When you want to foster innovation you want to gain critical mass, a certain number of people working in different disciplines it will help motivate them, even maybe compete.

Researchers from startups and even giants like Google, Microsoft, Honeywell and IBM have been throwing billions at creating quantum computers. So are countries, especially China, but also Australia, the U.K., Germany and Switzerland. Many big-name firms are touting projects with experimental equipment, or hybrid hardware that does accelerated computations but dont meet the standard definition of a quantum computer.

True quantum computers may be a decade off, some suggest. Ghubril thinks were 15 years from what he calls reliable, effective quantum computing. Still, last December IDC predicted that by 2023, one-quarter of the Fortune Global 500 will gain a competitive advantage from emerging quantum computing solutions.

Among the recent signposts:

Briefly, quantum computers take the theory of quantum mechanics to change the world of traditional computation of bits represented by zeros and ones. Instead, a bit can be a zero or a one. In a quantum computer, such basic elements are called qubits. With their expected ability to do astonishing fast computations, quantum computers may be able to help pharmaceutical companies create new drugs and nation-states to break encryption protecting government secrets.

Companies are taking different approaches. D-Wave uses a quantum annealing process to make machines it says are suited to solving real-world computing problems today. Xanadu uses what Mosca calls a more circuit-type computing architecture. Theres certainly the potential that some of the nearer-term technologies will offer businesses advantage, especially as they scale.

We know the road towards a full-fledged quantum computer is long. But there are amazing milestones in that direction.

Ghubril says Canada is in the leading pack of countries working on quantum computing. The momentum out of China is enormous, he said, but it looks like the country will focus on using quantum for telecommunications and not business solutions.

From his point of view companies are taking two approaches to quantum computers. Some, like D-Wave, are trying to use quantum ideas to optimize solving modelling problems. The problem is not every problem is an optimization problem, he said. Other companies are trying for the Grand Poobah the real (quantum) computer. So the IBMs of the world are going for the gusto. They want the real deal. They want to solve the material chemistry and biosynthesis and so on. Theyve gone big, but by doing so theyve gone slower. You cant do much on the IBM platform. You can learn a lot, but you cant do much. You can do more on a D-Wave, but you can only do one thing.

Ghburil encourages companies to dabble in the emerging technology.

Thats Infotechs recommendation: Just learn about it. Join a forum, open an account, try a few things. Nobody is going to gain a (financial) competitive advantage. Its a learning advantage.

See the original post here:
Canadian quantum computing firms partner to spread the technology - IT World Canada

Read More..
Posted in Quantum Computer | Leave a Comment

Ten-year Forecasts for Quantum Networking Opportunities and Deployments Over the Coming Decade – WFMZ Allentown

October 13, 2020 | Author: admin

DUBLIN, Oct. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Quantum Networking: A Ten-year Forecast and Opportunity Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report presents detailed ten-year forecasts for quantum networking opportunities and deployments over the coming decade.

Today there increasing talk about the Quantum Internet. This network will have the same geographical breadth of coverage as today's Internet but where the Internet carries bits, the Quantum Internet will carry qubits, represented by quantum states. The Quantum Internet will provide a powerful platform for communications among quantum computers and other quantum devices. It will also further enable a quantum version of the Internet-of-Things. Finally, quantum networks can be the most secure networks ever built - completely invulnerable if constructed properly.

Already there are sophisticated roadmaps showing how the Quantum Internet will come to be. At the present time, however, quantum networking in the real world consists of three research programs and commercialization efforts: Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) adds unbreakable coding of key distribution to public-key encryption. Cloud/network access to quantum computers is core to the business strategies of leading quantum computer companies. Quantum sensor networks promise enhanced navigation and positioning; more sensitive medical imaging modalities, etc. This report provides power ten-year forecasts of all three of these sectors.

This report provides a detailed quantitative analysis of where the emerging opportunities can be found today and how they will emerge in the future:

With regard to the scope of the report, the focus is, of course, on quantum networking opportunities of all kinds. It looks especially, however, on three areas: quantum key distribution (QKD,) quantum computer networking/quantum clouds, and quantum sensor networks. The report also includes in the forecasts breakouts by all the end-user segments of this market including military and intelligence, law enforcement, banking and financial services, and general business applications, as well as niche applications. There are also breakouts by hardware, software and services as appropriate.

In addition, there is also some discussion of the latest research into quantum networking, including the critical work on quantum repeaters. Quantum repeaters allow entanglement between quantum devices over long distances. Most experts predict repeaters will start to prototype in real-world applications in about five years, but this is far from certain.

This report will be essential reading for equipment companies, service providers, telephone companies, data center managers, cybersecurity firms, IT companies and investors of various kinds.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive SummaryE.1 Goals, Scope and Methodology of this ReportE.1.1 A Definition of Quantum NetworkingE.2 Quantum Networks Today: QKD, Quantum Clouds and Quantum Networked SensorsE.2.1 Towards the Quantum Internet: Possible Business OpportunitiesE.2.2 Quantum Key DistributionE.2.3 Quantum Computer Networks/Quantum CloudsE.2.4 Quantum Sensor NetworksE.3 Summary of Quantum Networking Market by Type of NetworkE.4 The Need for Quantum Repeaters to Realize Quantum Networking's PotentialE.5 Plan of this Report

Chapter One: Ten-year Forecast of Quantum Key Distribution1.1 Opportunities and Drivers for Quantum Key Distribution Networks1.1.1 QKD vs. PQC1.1.2 Evolution of QKD1.1.3 Technology Assessment1.2 Ten-year Forecasts of QKD Markets1.2.1 QKD Equipment and Services1.2.2 A Note on Mobile QKD1.3 Key Takeaways from this Chapter

Chapter Two: Ten-Year Forecast of Quantum Computing Clouds2.1 Quantum Computing: State of the Art2.2 Current State of Quantum Clouds and Networks2.3 Commercialization of Cloud Access to Quantum Computers2.4 Ten-Year Forecast for Cloud Access to Quantum Computers2.4.1 Penetration of Clouds in the Quantum Computing Space2.4.2 Revenue from Network Equipment for Quantum Computer Networks by End-User Industry2.4.3 Revenue from Network Equipment Software by End-User Industry2.5 Key Takeaways from this Chapter

Chapter Three: Ten-Year Forecast of Quantum Sensor Networks3.1 The Emergence of Networked Sensors3.1.1 The Demand for Quantum Sensors Seems to be Real3.2 The Future of Networked Sensors3.3 Forecasts for Networked Quantum Sensors3.4 Five Companies that will Shape the Future of the Quantum Sensor Business: Some Speculations

Chapter Four: Towards the Quantum Internet4.1 A Roadmap for the Quantum Internet4.1.1 The Quantum Internet in Europe4.1.2 The Quantum Internet in China4.1.3 The Quantum Internet in the U.S.4.2 Evolution of Repeater Technology: Ten-year Forecast4.3 Evolution of the Quantum Network4.4 About the Analyst4.5 Acronyms and Abbreviations Used In this Report

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rksyxu

About ResearchAndMarkets.comResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

Media Contact:

Research and MarketsLaura Wood, Senior Managerpress@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Read this article:
Ten-year Forecasts for Quantum Networking Opportunities and Deployments Over the Coming Decade - WFMZ Allentown

Read More..
Posted in Quantum Computer | Leave a Comment

The Next Generation Of Artificial Intelligence – Forbes

October 13, 2020 | Author: admin

AI legend Yann LeCun, one of the godfathers of deep learning, sees self-supervised learning as the ... [+] key to AI's future.

The field of artificial intelligence moves fast. It has only been 8 years since the modern era of deep learning began at the 2012 ImageNet competition. Progress in the field since then has been breathtaking and relentless.

If anything, this breakneck pace is only accelerating. Five years from now, the field of AI will look very different than it does today. Methods that are currently considered cutting-edge will have become outdated; methods that today are nascent or on the fringes will be mainstream.

What will the next generation of artificial intelligence look like? Which novel AI approaches will unlock currently unimaginable possibilities in technology and business? This article highlights three emerging areas within AI that are poised to redefine the fieldand societyin the years ahead. Study up now.

The dominant paradigm in the world of AI today is supervised learning. In supervised learning, AI models learn from datasets that humans have curated and labeled according to predefined categories. (The term supervised learning comes from the fact that human supervisors prepare the data in advance.)

While supervised learning has driven remarkable progress in AI over the past decade, from autonomous vehicles to voice assistants, it has serious limitations.

The process of manually labeling thousands or millions of data points can be enormously expensive and cumbersome. The fact that humans must label data by hand before machine learning models can ingest it has become a major bottleneck in AI.

At a deeper level, supervised learning represents a narrow and circumscribed form of learning. Rather than being able to explore and absorb all the latent information, relationships and implications in a given dataset, supervised algorithms orient only to the concepts and categories that researchers have identified ahead of time.

In contrast, unsupervised learning is an approach to AI in which algorithms learn from data without human-provided labels or guidance.

Many AI leaders see unsupervised learning as the next great frontier in artificial intelligence. In the words of AI legend Yann LeCun: The next AI revolution will not be supervised. UC Berkeley professor Jitenda Malik put it even more colorfully: Labels are the opium of the machine learning researcher.

How does unsupervised learning work? In a nutshell, the system learns about some parts of the world based on other parts of the world. By observing the behavior of, patterns among, and relationships between entitiesfor example, words in a text or people in a videothe system bootstraps an overall understanding of its environment. Some researchers sum this up with the phrase predicting everything from everything else.

Unsupervised learning more closely mirrors the way that humans learn about the world: through open-ended exploration and inference, without a need for the training wheels of supervised learning. One of its fundamental advantages is that there will always be far more unlabeled data than labeled data in the world (and the former is much easier to come by).

In the words of LeCun, who prefers the closely related term self-supervised learning: In self-supervised learning, a portion of the input is used as a supervisory signal to predict the remaining portion of the input....More knowledge about the structure of the world can be learned through self-supervised learning than from [other AI paradigms], because the data is unlimited and the amount of feedback provided by each example is huge.

Unsupervised learning is already having a transformative impact in natural language processing. NLP has seen incredible progress recently thanks to a new unsupervised learning architecture known as the Transformer, which originated at Google about three years ago. (See #3 below for more on Transformers.)

Efforts to apply unsupervised learning to other areas of AI remain at earlier stages, but rapid progress is being made. To take one example, a startup named Helm.ai is seeking to use unsupervised learning to leapfrog the leaders in the autonomous vehicle industry.

Many researchers see unsupervised learning as the key to developing human-level AI. According to LeCun, mastering unsupervised learning is the greatest challenge in ML and AI of the next few years.

One of the overarching challenges of the digital era is data privacy. Because data is the lifeblood of modern artificial intelligence, data privacy issues play a significant (and often limiting) role in AIs trajectory.

Privacy-preserving artificial intelligencemethods that enable AI models to learn from datasets without compromising their privacyis thus becoming an increasingly important pursuit. Perhaps the most promising approach to privacy-preserving AI is federated learning.

The concept of federated learning was first formulated by researchers at Google in early 2017. Over the past year, interest in federated learning has exploded: more than 1,000 research papers on federated learning were published in the first six months of 2020, compared to just 180 in all 2018.

The standard approach to building machine learning models today is to gather all the training data in one place, often in the cloud, and then to train the model on the data. But this approach is not practicable for much of the worlds data, which for privacy and security reasons cannot be moved to a central data repository. This makes it off-limits to traditional AI techniques.

Federated learning solves this problem by flipping the conventional approach to AI on its head.

Rather than requiring one unified dataset to train a model, federated learning leaves the data where it is, distributed across numerous devices and servers on the edge. Instead, many versions of the model are sent outone to each device with training dataand trained locally on each subset of data. The resulting model parameters, but not the training data itself, are then sent back to the cloud. When all these mini-models are aggregated, the result is one overall model that functions as if it had been trained on the entire dataset at once.

The original federated learning use case was to train AI models on personal data distributed across billions of mobile devices. As those researchers summarized: Modern mobile devices have access to a wealth of data suitable for machine learning models....However, this rich data is often privacy sensitive, large in quantity, or both, which may preclude logging to the data center....We advocate an alternative that leaves the training data distributed on the mobile devices, and learns a shared model by aggregating locally-computed updates.

More recently, healthcare has emerged as a particularly promising field for the application of federated learning.

It is easy to see why. On one hand, there are an enormous number of valuable AI use cases in healthcare. On the other hand, healthcare data, especially patients personally identifiable information, is extremely sensitive; a thicket of regulations like HIPAA restrict its use and movement. Federated learning could enable researchers to develop life-saving healthcare AI tools without ever moving sensitive health records from their source or exposing them to privacy breaches.

A host of startups has emerged to pursue federated learning in healthcare. The most established is Paris-based Owkin; earlier-stage players include Lynx.MD, Ferrum Health and Secure AI Labs.

Beyond healthcare, federated learning may one day play a central role in the development of any AI application that involves sensitive data: from financial services to autonomous vehicles, from government use cases to consumer products of all kinds. Paired with other privacy-preserving techniques like differential privacy and homomorphic encryption, federated learning may provide the key to unlocking AIs vast potential while mitigating the thorny challenge of data privacy.

The wave of data privacy legislation being enacted worldwide today (starting with GDPR and CCPA, with many similar laws coming soon) will only accelerate the need for these privacy-preserving techniques. Expect federated learning to become an important part of the AI technology stack in the years ahead.

We have entered a golden era for natural language processing.

OpenAIs release of GPT-3, the most powerful language model ever built, captivated the technology world this summer. It has set a new standard in NLP: it can write impressive poetry, generate functioning code, compose thoughtful business memos, write articles about itself, and so much more.

GPT-3 is just the latest (and largest) in a string of similarly architected NLP modelsGoogles BERT, OpenAIs GPT-2, Facebooks RoBERTa and othersthat are redefining what is possible in NLP.

The key technology breakthrough underlying this revolution in language AI is the Transformer.

Transformers were introduced in a landmark 2017 research paper. Previously, state-of-the-art NLP methods had all been based on recurrent neural networks (e.g., LSTMs). By definition, recurrent neural networks process data sequentiallythat is, one word at a time, in the order that the words appear.

Transformers great innovation is to make language processing parallelized: all the tokens in a given body of text are analyzed at the same time rather than in sequence. In order to support this parallelization, Transformers rely heavily on an AI mechanism known as attention. Attention enables a model to consider the relationships between words regardless of how far apart they are and to determine which words and phrases in a passage are most important to pay attention to.

Why is parallelization so valuable? Because it makes Transformers vastly more computationally efficient than RNNs, meaning they can be trained on much larger datasets. GPT-3 was trained on roughly 500 billion words and consists of 175 billion parameters, dwarfing any RNN in existence.

Transformers have been associated almost exclusively with NLP to date, thanks to the success of models like GPT-3. But just this month, a groundbreaking new paper was released that successfully applies Transformers to computer vision. Many AI researchers believe this work could presage a new era in computer vision. (As well-known ML researcher Oriol Vinyals put it simply, My take is: farewell convolutions.)

While leading AI companies like Google and Facebook have begun to put Transformer-based models into production, most organizations remain in the early stages of productizing and commercializing this technology. OpenAI has announced plans to make GPT-3 commercially accessible via API, which could seed an entire ecosystem of startups building applications on top of it.

Expect Transformers to serve as the foundation for a whole new generation of AI capabilities in the years ahead, starting with natural language. As exciting as the past decade has been in the field of artificial intelligence, it may prove to be just a prelude to the decade ahead.

Excerpt from:
The Next Generation Of Artificial Intelligence - Forbes

Read More..
Posted in Artificial Intelligence | Leave a Comment