Investment/Trends

BitShares P2P trading platform to offer dividends on bitcoins

"BitShares is the brainchild of Invictus Innovations. It will consist of a protocol and a piece of software called Hydra, which will offer three separate services: a decentralized identity management system called BitNames, a secure chat and messaging system codenamed BitCom, and a peer to peer trading exchange. Both the protocol and the software will be open source, said Charles Hoskinson, who is co-founder of the project. His co-founder Daniel Larimer is a software engineer with a background in networked C++ applications. They secured 'mid-six figure' funding from Chinese private equity firm BitFund.PE." Continue reading →

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An Idiot’s Guide to Bitcoin: the man behind the book

"He explains, 'Because I’m from Africa, I pay a lot of attention to what’s happening there. The developing world is absolutely poised to pioneer this revolution, if you want to call it that, because their national fiats are inflation-ridden, over-taxed and over-controlled; the places with the highest buy into bitcoin is the developing world. Then you have the western world, who are complacent, who are comfortable, who are kept that way and who don’t have an immediate, on the ground need for bitcoin, where the developing world do. If it can go viral in India then a sixth of the world’s population will accept bitcoin. That would be wonderful.'" Continue reading →

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Investors Nervous: Erdogan’s Witch Hunt Endangers Economy

"'Umut Keles,' a Turkish analyst with an American investment bank, removes the battery from his mobile phone, afraid of being wiretapped by the Turkish government. The investment banker believes that the government would take action against him if it knew his identity. 'There's a witch hunt underway here at the moment,' he says. Levent is Turkey's financial center, home to the offices of banks like HSBC and Deutsche Bank. They helped finance the Turkish economic boom in recent years, but now the government suspects them of supporting putschists and terrorists. 'We're all afraid,' says Keles. Some of his colleagues are thinking about leaving the country for good." Continue reading →

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Singapore firm launches in-flight Muslim prayer app

"A Singapore-based company has launched an iPhone app alerting Muslims when to pray and in which direction they should face even when they’re 35,000 feet in the air. Travellers input the flight details and are provided with prayer times during their journey, as well as the direction of the Muslim holy city of Mecca. Crescentrating, a firm that gives 'halal' or Islam-compliant ratings to hotels and other travel-related establishments, plans to make the free app, called Crescent Trips, available to Android smartphones within months. Spending by Muslim tourists is growing faster than the global rate and is forecast to reach $192 billion a year by 2020, up from $126 billion in 2011." Continue reading →

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Why are sales of non-alcoholic beer booming?

"For one thing, people are more aware than before of the damaging effects of alcohol. And better technology means that it is tastier than before, Mr Durkan claims. One chunk of the market is taking off for other reasons. The Middle East now accounts for almost a third of the worldwide sales by volume of non-alcoholic beer. In 2012 Iranians drank nearly four times as much of it as they did in 2007. It is popular in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where alcohol is either wholly or partially banned. Partly this is for religious reasons. But it also taps into growing consumer aspirations. As a statement of a globalised lifestyle beer, even if non-alcoholic, may be more potent than Coca-Cola." Continue reading →

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Learn Bobby Tay’s $2.7 Trillion Sigma Secret

"His company was so impressive to the Arabs that they sent Mr. Tay home with $100 million to invest in Singapore’s industrial-property market. Sabana is a shari’ah-compliant REIT, meaning it adheres to Islamic financial principles. That’s appealing to a large swath of the Middle East that is eager to find a place outside the U.S. and Europe to put money to work. Singapore is a natural destination because of the safety of the banking system and the surety of the legal system. In 2011, an estimated $2.7 trillion was looking for a shari’ah-compliant home, and with a shari’ah-compliant REIT kicking off a dividend of 10% at the time, well there was no question the Arabs would invest." Continue reading →

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Barnes & Noble Slides Toward Bankruptcy

"You may remember You’ve Got Mail (1998). It was a movie about a small bookstore that could not compete with a huge bookstore that was modeled after Barnes & Noble. Technology and capital wiped out the local bookstore. Now Amazon is wiping out Barnes & Noble. Same story: capital and technology. The free market benefits customers. Barnes & Noble is a dinosaur. It looked unstoppable to Hollywood 15 years ago. But the World Wide Web has brought it down. It will not recover. Its Nook reader is a bust. People prefer Kindle. My time is valuable. I don’t like driving. One click is all it takes to get me what I want." Continue reading →

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The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Starting And Running A Business

"No joke. This is going be a bullet FAQ on starting a business. If you're a lawyer, feel free to disagree with me so you can charge someone your BS fees to give the same advice. If you can think of anything to add, please do so. I might be missing things. If you want to argue with me, feel free. I might be wrong on any of the items below. There are many types of business. Depending on your business, some of these won't apply. All of these questions come from questions I've been asked. The rules are: I'm going to give no explanations. Just listen to me." Continue reading →

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World’s costliest auctioned car ‘in Swiss hands’

"The most valuable road car ever sold at auction, a candy red Ferrari convertible that fetched $27.5 million at a sale in the US last weekend, was acquired by a Swiss buyer, a report says. The unidentified successful bidder acquired the 300-horsepower NART Spider sports car, built in 1967, at an auction in Monterey, California. The car was previously owned by Eddie Smith Jr., the son of Eddie Smith Sr., an American multi-millionaire from North Carolina who bought the car new in 1968 after travelling to the Ferrari plant in Modena in northern Italy. With a 3,866cc V-12 engine and five-speed transmission, the two-seater was only one of 10 such models made." Continue reading →

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