The world’s biggest internet messaging companies and financial firms hope to succeed where cryptocurrency start-ups have failed by introducing mainstream consumers to the alternative world of digital coins.

Blockchain technologies are being deployed in a controlled fashion in many industries (including shipping, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, financial services).

Last week, JP Morgan announced that the firm is working on a JPM Coin “designed to make instantaneous payments using blockchain technology.”

Comments by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, investor Roger McNamee and Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff

Comments from 4 former U.S. Federal Reserve chairs (Paul Volcker, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Janet Yellen); 3 former U.S. Treasury secretaries and 27 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

As a non-electronic offering received significant media attention at the Consumer Electronics Show - Impossible Foods’ next-generation, plant-based meat.

Views on Apple CEO’s “Letter from Tim Cook to Apple investors” on slower growth

We present one film and three books to consider: Free Solo directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky, Principles by Ray Dalio, and The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli.

Comments from Microsoft President Brad Smith - “Facial recognition: It’s time for action”; researchers from Google, Microsoft and New York University - “AI Now Report 2018” and U.S. Department of Homeland Security - “Privacy Impact Assessment for the Facial Recognition Pilot”

Observations on commercial uses of blockchain technology, some challenges it faces and new offerings. 

Air quality has improved significantly since the worst fire in California history, and the worst U.S. fire since 1918. The fire’s impact: 1) about 160,000 acres burned, 2) over 17,000 structures destroyed, 3) at least 84 fatalities, 4) over 600 people are still missing and 5) over $7.5 billion in insured damages.

Views from “Winds of Change: The Case for New Digital Currency” by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and the IMF’s report “Casting Light on Central Bank Digital Currency.”

China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency introduced automated news anchors that combine the images and voices of their human counterparts with artificial intelligence technology.

Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web), Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the report “The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism" present views on the current state of the Internet.