Agregador de canales de noticias

Al mismo tiempo, ambos socios afines mantienen fuertes lazos sobre la base de economías complementarias, indicó Lai, citando el comercio bilateral de 10.850 millones de dólares estadounidenses en 2020, así como la posición de Taiwan como el 14º mayor socio comercial de Australia y de este país como el 11º de Taiwan.

El vicepresidente también señaló que existen numerosas oportunidades de cooperación entre Taiwan y Australia en áreas clave como la energía y los minerales. Además, la nación espera trabajar estrechamente con Australia a fin de impulsar el desarrollo colaborativo en el campo de la energía del hidrógeno, añadió Lai.

Lai, quien también recibió con beneplácito la renovación de un memorando de entendimiento de cinco años sobre cooperación energética conjunta el año pasado, aprovechó la ocasión para agradecer al ministro de Sanidad y Asistencia a la Tercera Edad, Greg Hunt, su apoyo a la participación de Taiwan en la Organización Mundial de la Salud.

Este espíritu de cooperación y amistad señaló Lai, queda ilustrado por las acciones de Bloomfield al obsequiar recientemente productos alimenticios y recuerdos australianos al personal médico de Taiwan en agradecimiento por su servicio desinteresado en la lucha contra la COVID-19.

En el futuro, indicó Lai, el Gobierno espera asociarse con Bloomfield y la Oficina Australiana en Taipei a fin de profundizar la amistad y ampliar los intercambios entre Taiwan y Australia.

La estrategia Piotroski High F-Score de AAII explora acciones con precios bajos de las acciones en relación con su valor en libros para ver si es posible establecer criterios financieros básicos para separar a los ganadores de los perdedores. El sistema de puntuación financiera de Piotroski se ha...

In the first two parts of this series on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), I have focused on why central banks are looking into launching digital currencies and the trade-offs that have to be made to launch one. In this third part, I will look at the risks involved with a CBDC, focussing mostly on the risks for users.

From a technology perspective, there are two ways to prove that you rightfully own a unit of CBDC. You either have stored them in an account like a bank account or a crypto exchange, or you stored them in an e-wallet that contains the ‘anonymous’ private keys to the tokens of the CBDC (or any other cryptocurrency, for that matter).

The two basic forms of ownership of a CBDC

a.image2.image-link.image2-577-1378 { padding-bottom: 41.872278664731496%; padding-bottom: min(41.872278664731496%, 577px); width: 100%; height: 0; } a.image2.image-link.image2-577-1378 img { max-width: 1378px; max-height: 577px; }

Source: BIS.

If CBDC are stored in an account, the distributor of the account (typically a commercial bank or a cryptocurrency exchange) needs to verify your identity before they can open the account. These KYC rules are designed to prevent money laundering, terrorism financing, etc. The big advantage of account-based ownership is that it reduces criminal activities and we by now know quite well how to effectively protect these accounts from hackers. Furthermore – and this is generally an underappreciated advantage – if an account owner forgets the password to the account, the money isn’t lost. Access to the account can be restored once the rightful owner has been identified beyond doubt.

But of course, the problem with account-based ownership of CBDC is that it is not anonymous and that especially in emerging markets, millions of people do not have access to banks. There are legitimate reasons, why people want or have to use physical cash as a medium of exchange and if we want to introduce CBDC as a true alternative (or substitute) of physical cash, there needs to be some form of privacy protection. 

This is where tokenisation comes in. Tokens are anonymous by design, and owners of these tokens prove their ownership by showing a private encryption key. In theory, these private keys can be stored anonymously on e-wallets. But as always, nothing is anonymous on the internet. Every transaction ever made with the token is recorded in the blockchain of cryptocurrencies and if one can link an encryption key with an individual, everything becomes traceable and identifiable. A couple of months ago, the FBI showed the world that it can trace Bitcoin and identify the owners of each Bitcoin. And if they can do it with sophisticated criminals that presumably are better at hiding their identities than most, then they can do it with everyone. 

Now, some crypto fans will say that there are zerocoins that are extensions of traditional cryptocurrencies designed to preserve anonymity. Well, you might not have heard, but in 2018 it was shown how these zerocoins can be hacked and destroyed. Hackers cannot steal the zerocoins, but they can definitely destroy them and thus cause enormous damage.

Finally, if we leave the privacy concerns behind, there are the usual security concerns of digital coins being stolen. The Bank of Canada has done a very good job of summarizing all the risks to a token-based CBDC. In essence, the problem is that criminals typically don’t know how much money is stored in individual wallets. Thus, they flock to the biggest pool of money and tend to focus their attacks on the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, the largest banks, or in the case of CBDC, the central bank itself. In particular state-sponsored hackers from countries like North Korea that have already successfully hacked into the central bank of Bangladesh in the past, will be targeting CBDC networks. 

The simplest way to steal CBDC would be to take over the majority of nodes in a distributed ledger which would allow the criminals to control all the tokens. This is a key reason, why CBDC will likely not use a public network but be restricted to a permissioned network of participating banks and institutions that are heavily regulated and have the means to protect their computers.

Even so, computing power constantly increases, and thus what appears unhackable today may not be unhackable in a few years. In fact, we are at the cusp of quantum computing becoming reality. Quantum computing would deliver a true revolution in computing power and enable us to perform calculations in a few minutes that currently would take hundreds or thousands of years. No cryptographic protocol currently in use in any digital currency could withstand quantum computing attacks. Thus, with the emergence of quantum computers, all digital currencies will immediately become unsafe (including any CBDC), or CBDC will need to be designed in such a way that they can be made ‘quantum safe’ in no time or that they will be ‘quantum safe’ by design. But making a digital currency ‘quantum safe’ will almost inevitably reduce the number of transactions that can be made per second and thus reduce its efficacy as a medium of exchange (see last week’s discussion).

But for now, quantum computing is science fiction, yet the key security gap for any CBDC already exists. It’s you.

I tell people that modern cryptographic protocols are so safe that I am not worried they will be hacked all the time to steal digital currencies. Criminals simply don’t need to go through all that hard work when the biggest security risk to digital currencies sits in front of the computer. E-wallets and accounts of cryptocurrencies and any CBDC will be owned by normal people and secured by passwords. And people use rubbish passwords all the time. Or they forget their passwords which is not so bad if they own an account with a bank, but if they forget the password to their e-wallet where all the highly secure cryptographic keys to their CBDC are stored, then, well, they are out of luck and have lost all their money forever.

People have told me that this is the same as carrying physical cash in a wallet and then having that wallet stolen by a pickpocket. And we accept that risk as well without complaining. Yes, but the analogy is not quite the same. If you go shopping in a mall with your physical cash in a wallet there may be one or two pickpockets around that will try to steal your wallet. If you use an e-wallet to pay on the internet it is as if you are walking in a shopping mall where every pickpocket in the entire world is hanging around, ready to steal your wallet given the opportunity. How likely do you think it is that your wallet will be stolen in that environment?

And this security risk is innate in every digital currency, and it means that no matter how the CBDC is designed, it will always be less secure than physical cash for a user because it can be stolen much more easily. It will be a security risk we will have to live with.

Análisis sobre las mejores opciones para saber dónde invertir ahora y cuáles son las inversiones más rentables del momento.

I'm building a new metal building, I am going to section off a woodshop area I'm planning on 20x30 (full depth of building, 20 ft of width) I want to have a loft to store lumber, plywood etc. Is then any realistic cost way to do this? I have some 10x10 barn beams that are long enough (20ft) if I cut them in half with mill would that give me enough strength? Or would I need engineered trusses etc? Won't be walking around etc very often but I have probably 2,000-3,000lbs of lumber I need to store.

My other idea is to try and find some cheap used I beams... any better ideas? (.-.)

The effects of a hotter planet are visible around the world

But America is refusing to try

Decelerating used-car prices suggest that the surge may be transitory

The pandemic has highlighted the promise of clever new drugs—and the firms developing them

The Tokyo games illustrate a puzzle: as audiences decline, the TV-ad market is holding up

La avalancha de contratos para revitalizar la economía puede beneficiar especialmente a seis empresas españolas. Leer

Aunque los precios eléctricos suben con fuerza en toda Europa, golpean con mayor dureza a empresas y hogares españoles por su sistema de precios y su rápido traslado al consumo. Leer

Tras ser adquirido por RVU, el comparador se prepara para ofrecer financiación al consumo. Leer

Varios miembros de la Fed han anticipado ya que la institución podría comenzar a retirar sus compras de deuda este año, algo que ha impactado en el mercado de divisas y en los bonos. Leer

El despegue de la banca de inversión impulsará los pagos, que pueden crecer a doble dígito. Leer

El grupo presidido por Francisco J. Riberas gana rentabilidad y dará la batalla en el coche eléctrico. Leer

Mientras el consumidor busca cómo recortar su factura en 'streaming', la batalla entre marcas se recrudece ante la entrada de nuevos 'players'. Leer

El Indicador Adelantado Compuesto se eleva en 34 centésimas, el triple que el resto de los grandes países desarrollados. Sin embargo, todavía sigue por debajo de los 100 puntos que marcan la media a largo plazo. Leer

Hay que aprovechar que el viento sopla a favor para efectuar reformas que den continuidad al avance. Leer