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LIVING ON PURPOSE: Being thankful is a state of mind – Times Tribune of Corbin

I was thinking this week (while in the midst of complaining about the frustrations of life), that being thankful is more of a state of mind than a celebration. Im sure you will agree its truly a blessing to wake up each morning and not be in agony. When we swing our bodies over onto the side of the bed and stand on our feet, this is nothing less than a miracle! So often, we become so busy thinking about what we are going to do that we forget how God is providing our good health which enables us to enjoy our life. I realize its easy to take our blessings for granted and since being grateful is an attitude of appreciation, let us remember to tell Jesus how much we love Him for paying the ransom for our soul.

What does Thanksgiving mean to you? Someone might reply, It means a delicious feast and we can relate as who does not enjoy a great meal? Others may say, Thanksgiving means a day off from work or school and this is always something to look forward to. Nonetheless, holidays are not only to be a celebration of indulgence but a spiritual sensitivity that recognizes all that we have and who gave it to us. As the word Thanksgiving suggests, we talk about thanks but rarely hear about the giving. Last week we considered the beauty of worship and praise as the deeper meaning of gratitude to God. Giving thanks is also more than an expression of gratitude because we can say thank you to someone and not really mean it. Genuine appreciation is not just words, but more of a sincere awareness of a particular thing or person, and then demonstrating that gratitude with honesty and sincerity. This year between the turkey, dressing, and the pumpkin pie, may we give praise to the one who made it all possible. Its more than just saying a prayer at the table, its living a life that is pleasing unto the Lord.

One of our good friends is battling a serious health issue and trust me, she is seeing life through a different perspective this Thanksgiving. Shes been taking morning walks lately and has shared with me about how quiet and peaceful the world is right before the sun rises. In these times, its the little things like hearing the birds sing and the colors of the leaves that are majestic and awe-inspiring. Have you considered lately how glorious it is to be able to take a deep breath? Breathing seems so natural but to many, it is a constant battle. The feeling of being underwater is not pleasant and yet many live in this situation every day. The heart is another involuntary function that God has designed to keep a constant rhythm without us having to think about it, but many people are not so fortunate. How often do we thank God for all of the medications and treatments He provides to maintain our health?

Franklin Roosevelt is quoted as saying, It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. Across the uncertain ways of space and time, our hearts echo those words, for the days are with us again when, at the gathering of the harvest, we solemnly express our dependence upon Almighty God. Occasionally I will take a short nap on my cozy leather sofa while our English bulldog wedges his way in between me and the back of the couch and lets out a sigh of enjoyment that sounds more like the grunt of a hog. What a blessing it is to have a place called home. Im sure most of you feel the same way about your sanctuary of peace and security. I thank God that I can go to the refrigerator and find something to eat, then go out into the garage and get into a nice vehicle and travel wherever I need to go. We usually do not pay any attention to these luxuries but they are amazing blessings. May we remember there are many people that do not have a home, a vehicle, a couch, or any food at all. First Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to be Thankful in everything, and in all circumstances. Whether in lack or abundance we will look to God and thank Him for all He has given, and more importantly, we will worship and love Him just for who He is.

Dr. Holland lives in Central Kentucky with his wife Cheryl, where he is a Christian minister, author and community chaplain. To learn more visit: billyhollandministries.com or email him at psalmz103@gmail.com.

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LIVING ON PURPOSE: Being thankful is a state of mind - Times Tribune of Corbin

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Being thankful is a state of mind | Opinion – Athens Daily Review

I was thinking this week (while in the midst of complaining about the frustrations of life), that being thankful is more of a state of mind than a celebration. Im sure you will agree its truly a blessing to wake up each morning and not be in agony. When we swing our bodies over onto the side of the bed and stand on our feet, this is nothing less than a miracle! So often, we become so busy thinking about what we are going to do that we forget how God is providing our good health which enables us to enjoy our life. I realize its easy to take our blessings for granted and since being grateful is an attitude of appreciation, let us remember to tell Jesus how much we love Him for paying the ransom for our soul.

What does Thanksgiving mean to you? Someone might reply, It means a delicious feast and we can relate as who does not enjoy a great meal? Others may say, Thanksgiving means a day off from work or school and this is always something to look forward to. Nonetheless, holidays are not only to be a celebration of indulgence but a spiritual sensitivity that recognizes all that we have and who gave it to us. As the word Thanksgiving suggests, we talk about thanks but rarely hear about the giving. Last week we considered the beauty of worship and praise as the deeper meaning of gratitude to God. Giving thanks is also more than an expression of gratitude because we can say thank you to someone and not really mean it. Genuine appreciation is not just words, but more of a sincere awareness of a particular thing or person, and then demonstrating that gratitude with honesty and sincerity. This year between the turkey, dressing, and the pumpkin pie, may we give praise to the one who made it all possible. Its more than just saying a prayer at the table, its living a life that is pleasing unto the Lord.

One of our good friends is battling a serious health issue and trust me, she is seeing life through a different perspective this Thanksgiving. Shes been taking morning walks lately and has shared with me about how quiet and peaceful the world is right before the sun rises. In these times, its the little things like hearing the birds sing and the colors of the leaves that are majestic and awe-inspiring. Have you considered lately how glorious it is to be able to take a deep breath? Breathing seems so natural but to many, it is a constant battle. The feeling of being underwater is not pleasant and yet many live in this situation every day. The heart is another involuntary function that God has designed to keep a constant rhythm without us having to think about it, but many people are not so fortunate. How often do we thank God for all of the medications and treatments He provides to maintain our health?

Franklin Roosevelt is quoted as saying, It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. Across the uncertain ways of space and time, our hearts echo those words, for the days are with us again when, at the gathering of the harvest, we solemnly express our dependence upon Almighty God. Occasionally I will take a short nap on my cozy leather sofa while our English bulldog wedges his way in between me and the back of the couch and lets out a sigh of enjoyment that sounds more like the grunt of a hog. What a blessing it is to have a place called home. Im sure most of you feel the same way about your sanctuary of peace and security. I thank God that I can go to the refrigerator and find something to eat, then go out into the garage and get into a nice vehicle and travel wherever I need to go. We usually do not pay any attention to these luxuries but they are amazing blessings. May we remember there are many people that do not have a home, a vehicle, a couch, or any food at all. First Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to be Thankful in everything, and in all circumstances. Whether in lack or abundance we will look to God and thank Him for all He has given, and more importantly, we will worship and love Him just for who He is.

Check outBillys new book, Convictions and Considerations at billyhollandministries.com

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Can Synthetic Biology Inspire The Next Wave of AI? – SynBioBeta

What children and AI systems have in common

Similar to child learning, reinforcement learning is based on the AI systems interaction with its environment. It performs actions that seek to maximize the reward and avoid punishments. Driven by curiosity, children are active learners that simultaneously explore their surrounding environment and predict their actions outcomes, allowing them to build mental models to think causally. If, for example, they decide to push the red car, spill the flower vase, or crawl the other direction, they will adjust their behavior based on the outcomes of their actions.

Children experience different environments in which they find themselves navigating and interacting with various contexts and objects dispositions, often in unusual manners. Just as child brain development could inspire the development of AI systems, the RL agents learning mechanisms are parallel to the brains learning mechanisms driven by the release of dopamine a neurotransmitter key to the central nervous system which trains the prefrontal cortex in response to experiences and thus shapes stimulus-response associations as well as outcome predictions.

Biology is one of the most promising beneficiaries of artificial intelligence. From investigating mind-boggling combinations of genetic mutations that contribute to obesity to examining the byzantine pathways that lead some cells to go haywire and produce cancer, biology produces an inordinate amount of complex, convoluted data. But the information contained within these datasets often offers valuable insights that could be used to improve our health.

In the field of synthetic biology, where engineers seek to rewire living organisms and program them with new functions, many scientists are harnessing AI to design more effective experiments, analyze their data, and use it to create groundbreaking therapeutics. I recently highlighted five companies that are integrating machine learning with synthetic biology to pave the way for better science and better engineering.

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) describes a system that is capable of mimicking human-like abilities such as planning, reasoning, or emotions. Billions of dollars have been invested in this exciting and potentially lucrative area, leading some to make claims like data is the new oil.

Among the many companies working on general artificial intelligence are Googles DeepMind, the Swiss AI lab IDSIA, Nnaisense, Vicarious, Maluuba, the OpenCog Foundation, Adaptive AI, LIDA, and Numenta. Organizations such as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and OpenAI also state AGI as their main goal. One of the goals of the international Human Brain Project is to simulate the human brain.

Despite a growing body of talent, tools, and high-quality data needed to achieve AGI, we still have a long way to go to achieve this.

Today, AI techniques such as Machine Learning (ML) are ubiquitous in our society, reaching from healthcare and manufacturing to transportation and warfare but are qualified as narrow AI. They indeed process and learn powerfully large amounts of data to identify insightful and informative patterns for a single task, such as predicting airline ticket prices, distinguishing dogs from cats in images, and generating your movie recommendations on Netflix.

In biology, AI is also changing your health care. It is generating more and better drug candidates (Insitro), sequencing your genome (Veritas Genetics), and detecting your cancer earlier and earlier (Freenom).

As humans, we are able to quickly acquire knowledge in one context and generalize it to another environment across novel multiple situations and tasks, which would allow us to develop more efficient self-driving car systems as they need to perform many tasks on the road concurrently. In AI research, this concept is known as transfer learning. It assists an AI system in learning from just a few examples instead of the millions that traditional computing systems usually need to build a system that learns from first principles, abstracts the acquired knowledge, and generalizes it to new tasks and contexts.

To produce more advanced AI, we need to better understand the brains inner workings that allow us to portray the world around us. There is a synergistic mission between understanding biological intelligence and creating an artificial one, seeking inspiration from our brain might help us bridge that gap.

Acknowledgment: Thank you to Louis N. Andre for additional research and reporting in this article. Im the founder of SynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write about including some named in this article are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference (click here for a full list of sponsors).

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Can Synthetic Biology Inspire The Next Wave of AI? - SynBioBeta

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Altcoin Apocalypse: The Number of Dying Crypto Currencies Is Rising – newsBTC

The big crypto boom of late 2017 is a long distant memory today. Pretty much every altcoin out there was surging by ridiculous proportions as the wave of FOMO swept the scene. Today the majority of crypto currencies are melting down and many simply will not survive another winter.

Total crypto market capitalization today is around $200 billion. It blasted through this level in November 2018 on its way up to top $800 billion but tumbled through it again in November 2018 in a dump to $100 billion. Another push this year sent total cap up to $380 billion but it has since collapsed 50% again as the altcoins begin to die off.

Very few of them have held on to their gains this year and some have collapsed back to levels before the big pump two years ago. Looking at the current scene it appears very unlikely that this will ever happen again. The only positive thing at the moment is that total cap is up 60% since the beginning of the year but that is virtually all Bitcoins doing.

Taking anonymous crypto Zcash as an example, trader DonAlt has pointed out that it has virtually collapsed to zero compared to prices at token launch.

If you invested 10 000 BTC into ZEC at the open of the 2nd trading day (God forbid) youd be left with less than two today.

ZEC is not the only altcoin that has dumped over 90%. Ripples XRP token is also in a bad way despite a number of partnerships and solid fundamentals from the San Francisco based fintech firm. It seems that the crypto community doesnt want to invest in a centralized token that the company can manipulate.

XRP is currently trading at $0.225 and its market cap has dumped below $10 billion. The cross border payments token has not been this low since before the big pump in November 2017. It spent most of that year hovering around $0.20 and appears to be heading back there. Since its peak XRP has dumped 94%.

Bitcoin Cash it another altcoin that has failed to gain any momentum despite constant efforts to pump it by project leaders. BCH market cap is now under $4 billion and it too has dumped 94% since its giddy height of $4,000 in December 2017.

Other 90 percent plus losers include Stellar, Tron, NEO, Iota, Dash, VeChain, Ethereum Classic, Ontology, NEM, Qtum, Augur, Nano, Bitcoin Gold and even more further down the coin cap list.

There are only a handful of crypto currencies that have only lost 60 percent or so and Bitcoin is among them. According to Livecoinwatch others include Binance Coin, Bitcoin SV, Cardano, Cosmos, LEO, Chainlink, and Huobi Token. Three of those are exchange based crypto assets.

There has been no altseason this year or last, and the future for the majority of them is not looking too good. Many of the top altcoins are still being actively developed but investors just dont seem that interested at the moment as another crypto winter looms.

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Altcoin Apocalypse: The Number of Dying Crypto Currencies Is Rising - newsBTC

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The Worst Is Yet To Come For Altcoin Market Cap – newsBTC

Following Bitcoins meteoric rise in 2017, retail investors searching for the next Bitcoin loaded up on altcoins and other crypto assets hoping to get in early and strike it rich.

But the bubble popped, and now altcoins are down in some cases as much as 99% from their all-time high prices set back during the peak euphoria of the bull cycle. However, one crypto analyst says that the worst is still yet to come for the altcoin market, and a much deeper drop could be ahead.

Bitcoin and altcoins have an unusual relationship, oftentimes diverging in price showing uncorrelated price action, while other times the two asset types rise and fall together in a correlated manner.

2019 kicked off with both asset types bottoming out and going on to rally shortly thereafter. But once April 2019 hit, the two crypto asset types diverged and have yet to become correlated once again. Bitcoin went parabolic, gaining as much as 350% at the first-ever cryptocurrencys local 2019 high, meanwhile, most altcoins suffered huge losses in their BTC ratios, and some even went on to set new bear market lows.

Related Reading | Crypto Market Carnage: Altcoins A Sea of Red As Bitcoin Breaks Down

Many were calling the capitulation event the altcoin apocalypse, and talk about the asset classes demise became commonplace.

Alts have since begun to rebound once again, reviving some of the bullish sentiment the asset class once enjoyed, even despite still being down as much as 80% or more in many cases.

However, even though altcoins have taken an extreme beating, second only to altcoin investors themselves stuck holding increasingly heavy bags, one crypto analyst believes that the worst is yet to come for the altcoin market, with a deep fall to lower support a strong possibility in the weeks ahead.

According to one prominent crypto analyst, the altcoin market cap failed to break back above former support turned resistance, was rejected, and is now heading back to support dating back to the 2017 crypto bull market. In fact, the analyst believes that if that support level fails, the altcoin market cap, which includes all crypto assets in the market sans Bitcoin, could fall to support from 2013, essentially wiping out the last five years of gains these assets have experienced.

While many altcoins are already down 99% from their all-time high prices, it doesnt mean that the price of these assets cannot fall further if any remaining value is sucked out of the market in a massive sell-off.

Related Reading | Crypto Analyst: Altcoin Apocalypse Caused Bitcoin Bear Market

If the altcoin market falls to such depths, the cryptocurrency industry and technology may be considered a failed experiment, possibly only leaving Bitcoin and a select few others standing as a result. However, if the total altcoin market cap can break out of downtrend resistance and reclaim former horizontal support turned resistance, such a sell-off would turn into FOMO, and possibly a full-blown alt season.

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Altcoin Dominance Steadily Increases While Bitcoin Takes a Dive – BeInCrypto

The altcoin market dominance has consistently been increasing since the beginning of September. If it breaks out above the current resistance area, it is likely that many could continue outperforming Bitcoin.

As the Bitcoin price decreased by 20% last week alone, the panic and fear in the markets have been growing. What has been interesting to watch since the beginning of September, is the fact that altcoins have been constantly outperforming Bitcoin which is unusual in times when BTC tanks.

However, the USD value of the total altcoin market cap does not look as great. While it has reached a significant support level which could initiate a reversal, there is no confirmation of an upward trend just yet.

Cryptocurrency trader and analyst @cryptoMichNL stated that the current altcoin rally began once BTC retracted from $13,700 and found some support.

He stated that he is enthusiastic about the future prospects of altcoins, especially since several of them have been performing surprisingly well.

Altcoin dominance found support at 30% in September, initiating the current upward move.

Its worth noting that the RSI briefly reached oversold values close to 20. A low of 19, set at the beginning of September, was the lowest value ever recorded.

Looking at the daily chart, we can see a resistance area at 34%, which the price has failed to break above on two occasions.

Additionally, while the price is not following an ascending trendline, the 50 and 100-day moving averages (MA) have made a bullish cross. The price is currently trading above both of these lines, having possibly found support above the 50-day MA.

If it continues to hold this level, it will likely break out above the resistance area. Therefore, it looks as if altcoins could outperform BTC during the upcoming months.

The total market cap has decreased back to the 0.786 fib level at 65 billion. This is the final fib support before the price retraces fully.

While the price has made a bullish hammer, there are no other signs indicating a reversal. Therefore, while a reversal is possible, it cannot be confirmed by the current market movements.

Disclaimer: This article is not trading advice and should not be construed as such. Always consult a trained financial professional before investing in cryptocurrencies, as the market is particularly volatile.

Images courtesy of Twitter, TradingView.

Did you know you can trade sign-up to trade Bitcoin and many leading altcoins with a multiplier of up to 100x on a safe and secure exchange with the lowest fees with only an email address? Well, now you do!Click here to get started on StormGain!

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Learn The Basics of Masternode Investments: An Exclusive Interview with Iakov Trevor Levin of Midas – Coinfomania

Beyond the cusp of the crypto markets are powerful computing devices (nodes) that maintain the integrity of the cryptocurrency network by ensuring that transactions are processed seamlessly

A masternode forms part of the governing hub of a cryptocurrency network and presents an income-earning opportunity that many in the crypto world do not even know about.

In this exclusive interview, Coinfomania gets the thoughts of Iakov Levin, regarding the masternodes investment ecosystem, and Bitcoin.

Iakov, more fondly known as Trevor, is the founder of Midas.Investments, a platform that makes it possible for anyone to invest in and earn on masternodes powering various cryptocurrency networks.

Trevor explained masternode as just an algorithm that is similar to proof-of-stake (PoS), where holders of specific cryptocurrencies receive rewards for staking them over a specified period.

However, because of our platforms like Midas, investors are not required to buy the whole masternode to make a profit from it. Instead, they can focus on precisely choosing what masternodes and altcoins they want to buy, with little attention on diversification.

Trevor noted why diversification is not a good strategy when it comes to masternode investments.

The main diversification rule does not work here because there is only around one project in 20 that can actually make money for you. There is a dream of passive income, but this dream is highly correlated with the projects you pick.

He then recommended that new investors bear in mind that while there are still a lot of projects that do not get a lot of attention, 80% of masternode projects are basically a scam.

That figure was even higher during the altcoin boom as 95% of the masternode projects were scammy, although investors could still make money on them.

The current market, however, is a little bit more favorable as only the most dedicated teams that are doing real products stayed through the bear market and have launched actual products.

Before investing in masternode, Trevor suggests digging deeper into the projects and not throwing money into every listed project.

You need to get the part of your masternode portfolio low in this current state of the market because there is no new cash flow into Bitcoin, which will result in Bitcoin growth, and there will be no spare money for altcoins, he said in the interview.

Asking questions such as what is the team doing, does there project has any meaning in the long term, and can their product onboard users, should help masternode investors analyze their portfolio carefully.

Meanwhile, a pro-tip shared by Trevor is that masternodes whose tokens do not have sufficient liquidity are most likely to fail.

For the ones with real utility, however, he predicts that if they survive to the next altcoin market (altcoin rise), launch their products, and grow their user based, then holders would receive all the rewards.

Despite having a background in development, science, and finance. Trevor noted that his first encounter with Bitcoin came in June 2017 when 1BTC was priced around $3400.

I just had earned some money and I was searching for different ways of investing. So I came up with Bitcoin and started to buy into this.

He also narrated his altcoin involvement, where it was only the markets extensive growth (not knowledge) that allowed him to get his investments back and make lots of profits.

He then moved into masternodes when the market came and was able to grow his portfolio by 15x with two months starting from Nov 2017. He then invested the proceeds in the development of the Midas platform, which we asked him about next.

We started as a shared masternode service, with Google Sheets as the platform, so there was a lot of manual work, Trevor began.

However, I just wanted to create something that I saw potential in and I came up with two groundbreaking features at that moment, the first one called instant share. The market of shared masternodes platforms before this was only starting to develop.

Among the barriers to masternode investments was that investors needed to reserve a seat, from 5% of the masternode and also send their coins to the validator of the shared platform, and then waiting for other positions to be filled.

There was no room for instant withdraw or deposits.

Midass instant share features solved this problem by rewarding investors instantly for deposits. Such immediate reward is possible as the investors are awarded a percentage of working masternodes and can also withdraw immediately, and eventually, other big masternode platforms now use the instant share mechanism.

Trevor also explained that the instant share feature represents Midas prominent monetization strategy. Before a coin is listed, the developer had to give a masternode, which Midas sales some rewards from it to help finance development and marketing.

The other feature was Reinvestment which meant that investors no longer had to withdraw all the rewards from shared platforms before reinvesting.

With Instant share, you could choose if you want to reinvest your profits, which means it adds compound interest rate on your income for the masternodes. It allows users to increase their mid-term income, the Midas founder explained.

He also highlighted that the reinvestment features It helped Midas become one of the top platforms in two or three months, and the team started to develop the platform itself instead of using Google Documents to keep all the balances straight.

Notably, Midas is now preparing to launch an exchange alongside its masternode hosting features, which made it the first and only platform that allows free masternode hosting by locking coins.

The new exchange purportedly will allow users to trade and mine coins at the same time, rather than selling their investment profits on third-party exchanges.

In the long-term, within one year, we want to move from the masternode market to the big POS coins like Cosmos, and Tezos [], and those coins will be added as mineable on our platform, Trevor explained on their long-term objectives.

The team also wants to create a nice and interesting investment instrument that is not bound to only masternode PoS.

Tokens such as the Midas coin, which powers the teams investment platform reported, has enormous potential for investors with Trevor saying in the interview that Midas boasts an open team, a real product, a development plan really low market cap.

Trevor sees a correlation between masternode coins and startups and recommends investing in projects that have products.

The product should be relevant to the crypto market. If you invest in some random startup (productive app, marketplace using utility token) with a little token, it will most likely not work, he said.

Investors would also need to analyze many things in the long-term, including the team, product, and the usage of the token. However, he singled out projects such as the Celsius and Binance as some that have a real utility token because theyre related to crypto.

Another tip for choosing the right masternode coin is asking questions to the team or its representatives directly, and also investing at a time when such high potential projects are at their lows.

Trevor believes it is hard to predict how crucial masternode investments will become in the long-term, although he sees a future for already established utility tokens like Dash and Pivx.

Masternodes market will grow up in nature, not capitalization. Every rule on the altcoin market should apply to the masternode market.

He specifically recommended staying Bitcoin or masternodes (altcoins) proved by time.

Bitcoin is digital gold because it is not money as many think it is. It is the instrument of accumulation of wealth. Each time there will be some crisis in the real economy, there will be growth for Bitcoin because it doesnt belong to anyone, Trevor said.

He also highlighted the fact that Bitcoin holders know the exact amount of inflation as depicted by the upcoming halving, which will bring inflation lower. He also recommends playing with the whales as they only focus on accumulating bitcoins in the short term by influencing prices.

The main issue of crypto being popularized according to Trevor is that the average guy doesnt think about Bitcoin as money or digital gold, and must dive deep to understand its essence.

While fiat currencies are fragile and suffer from crises, inflation, government, and human mistakes, he noted that Bitcoin gains from chaos and could thus be considered anti-fragile.

On the success of the entire industry, Trevor said,

Infrastructure around Bitcoin such as altcoins will most likely die out. Projects like Ethereum will reward their investors really hard by becoming a winner and taking their part on this establishing market.

Iakov Trevor Levin Bitcoin prediction?

I would say bearish is like $20,000, like in 2023. The most bullish is like I think it can reach something like $100k-200k. In 2021, $50000 on average.

Original post:
Learn The Basics of Masternode Investments: An Exclusive Interview with Iakov Trevor Levin of Midas - Coinfomania

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How to Beat Bitcoin With Altcoins (Using the BMJ Crypto Portfolio Optimization Tool) – Bitcoin Market Journal

Investors have varied definitions of success, but no one can argue the significance of beating benchmarks such as the S&P 500. Since the index leveled off at 500 companies in 1957, the average annual return hovers around 8%. All investors consider beating the S&P 500 a massive win, especially if you can do so consistently.

The blockchain industry has yet to adopt an index that tracks the growth of the overall crypto landscape, but many investors see bitcoin as the leading indicator. As such, Bitcoin Market Journal has constructed a portfolio optimization tool to help you beat Bitcoin!

The model provides two separate portfolios, one with ten digital assets and the other with three. The model takes historical pricing into account to determine the optimal weights for each digital asset. If done correctly, investors can use historical data to predict the probability of beating Bitcoin returns on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis.

To help with setting up your optimal portfolio, BMJ has included detailed instructions throughout the rest of the article.

Its no secret that some of the top performing digital assets have little to do with bitcoin. Scores of altcoins have realized incredible gains in the past few years, surpassing even the most notable assets on the market.

The five coin portfolio uses historical price data from Ether (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Monero (XMR), Litecoin (LTC), and NEM (XEM) to demonstrate those impressive gains in comparison to bitcoin over the last few years.

An evenly weighted five coin portfolio, for example, would produce 3.5x the return of an all bitcoin portfolio, according to our historical data range of approximately three years.

Analyzing and experimenting with the evenly weighted portfolio is the first step in the process. Investors should prioritize their asset allocations based on personal investment goals. The portfolio optimizer can help by using historical pricing to establish trends and forecast future results.

Although an evenly weighted portfolio could outperfom bitcoin should the altcoin market continue its impressive increase in value there is still plenty of room for portfolio optimization.

The BMJ portfolio optimization model gives historical pricing for bitcoin and other digital assets from August 2, 2016 to October 14, 2019. Although the range is not ideal, the majority of altcoins have appeared over the last few years, so there isnt much price data available.

In the model, investors can construct portfolios using the five or three asset models that maximize their chances of beating bitcoin. The five asset model includes Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP), Monero (XMR), Litecoin (LTC), and NEM (XEM). The three asset model has only ETH, XRP, and XMR.

Investors have two options when it comes to optimizing their portfolios. The first will use 0s and 1s to indicate the weeks in which the constructed portfolio has a lesser return (marked by 0) and those weeks it has a higher return (marked by 1) than BTC. The average of all 0s and 1s yields the probability of beating bitcoin.

The other method uses the daily change in price to optimize the digital asset weights. The goal is to maximize the difference between the daily growth rate of the portfolio and that of bitcoin.

NOTE:You must download Evolver as an Excel add-on in order to use the portfolio optimizer. The following instructions are meant specifically for the five coin portfolio. The three coin model runs the same way but with data in different cells.

Step 1: Maximize Probability using Evolver

It is important to keep in mind that solutions may vary due to processing speed and quality of personal computer. The goal is to beat an equally weighted portfolio by optimizing the Validation and Estimation data probabilities of beating bitcoin.

Having said that, the 0s and 1s do not tell the whole story. Using 1 to indicate that we beat the Bitcoin does not tell us by how much. For example, the model might beat bitcoin over 50 percent of the time on a day-to-day basis but still have a lower return over those two years. To solve this issue, we can maximize the difference between the compound daily growth rates (CDGR) of Bitcoin and the portfolio.

Step 2: Maximize Difference in CDGRs

The portfolio will display the optimal weights of each asset to maximize the difference between the CDGR of both bitcoin and our portfolio. Investors should expect to see some assets with weights of 0 percent as the model has only one goal in mind: optimize our chances of beating bitcoin.

Savy Excel users can alter the model and add constraints such as minimum 5 percent for each asset. The more time spent tinkering with the model, the easier it becomes to manipulate it for optimal returns.

The blockchain investment world has always suffered from a major issue: its nearly impossible to evaluate altcoins. Investors choose their digital assets based on anything they see as significant to price movements. The randomness in crypto investing must end at some point, so why not today?

Using the crypto portfolio optimizer tool, investors can use real historical data to assist in their portfolio construction. Allocating the right amount of funds to each asset is one of the most important decisions when investing, so it is important to utilize Excel models to optimize your portfolio based on historic trends.

Having said that, past trends do not yield future results. That means that optimal portfolios that you construct using our model may not outperform bitcoin in the future, should your altcoin portfolio components not generate similar returns as in the past three years.

Download the BMJ Crypto Portfolio Optimization Tool here.

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How to Beat Bitcoin With Altcoins (Using the BMJ Crypto Portfolio Optimization Tool) - Bitcoin Market Journal

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Archer Materials invited to chair quantum computing session at London conference – Proactive Investors Australia

() chief executive officer Dr Mohammad Choucair updates Proactive on the company being invited to chair an entire session on quantum computing at a global conference in London during April 2010.

The April timing coincides with the important milestone of 12 months since the start of Archers 12CQ flagship quantum computing project and this project will feature strongly in the presentation.

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Here’s why machine learning is critical to success for banks of the future – Tech Wire Asia

HSBC Bank and others use machine learning to win big. Source: Shutterstock

MACHINE learning is a popular buzzword today, and has been heralded as one of the greatest innovations conceived by man.

A branch of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning is increasingly embedded in daily life, such as automatic email reply predictions, virtual assistants, and chatbots.

The technology is also expected to revolutionize the world of finance. While it is slower than other industries in embracing the technology, the impact of ML is already visibly significant.

Most recently, HSBC said that the bank was using the technology to combat financial crime.

We have 608 million transactions every month. Hence, with AI and machine learning we are able to identify a good transaction done by an innocent person versus transaction conducted by criminals, said HSBC Hong Kong Financial Crime Threat Mitigation Regional Head Paul Jevtovic.

Like HSBC, several other banks are beginning to deploy ML at scale. Here are the top three use cases in the banking and financial services space:

Prior to the advent of ML, decisions were made on a rule-based system, where the same criteria are applied across a broad customer segment, subjecting them to a one-size-fits-all solution.

With ML, bankers can approach customers in a more personalized way. ML algorithms can analyze volumes of consumer data in banks, tracing each customers digital footprint with a unified, omni-faceted view.

This footprint includes their financial status across multiple accounts, financial investments, and banking transactions.

With the relevant data and armed with the right analytical tools, ML can provide valuable insights that allow banks to create tailor-made solutions based on a specific customers behavior, preferences, and requirements.

With the wide tracking of a customers digital footprint that ML offers, banks can quickly and accurately assess a potential borrowers ability to repay better than with traditional methods.

Leveraging ML can eliminate biases, and can quickly help differentiate between applicants who are more credit-worthy from those who have a higher default risk even without an elaborate credit history. ML can also help banks forecast potential issues and rectify them before they occur.

With the assurance that risks are being mitigated, banks can focus on issues that can add value to their customers, increase productivity, and provide greater support to their employees.

ML can be greatly leveraged for fraud detection. Fraud is a pain point for many financial institutions, one which could potentially cause a bank to go out of business.

With ML, anomalies in customers behaviors can be quickly detected. By flagging and blocking transactions that are suspicious, banks can catch fraud in real-time, protecting customers and themselves.

ML is undoubtedly one of the greatest technological feats of the 21st century. With its laser precision in predicting behaviors and anticipating risks, we can be sure that the role of ML will only be more prominent in the future of banking.

Regardless of size, financial institutions or businesses looking to engage financial services must be aware of the uses of ML in banking. Should they wish to stay relevant, they must start exploring the technology now.

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Here's why machine learning is critical to success for banks of the future - Tech Wire Asia

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