The vaquita is the world’s most endangered marine mammal. Studies estimate there may be as few as eight vaquitas remaining in the Gulf of California, the only place they exist and where they often become entangled in illegal gill nets and drown.
Mexico faces sanctions from the international wildlife body known as CITES for not doing enough to protect the vaquita. The sanctions are designed to compel Mexico to to save the vaquita where all other efforts have failed.
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The recent crypto market crash has the markings of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and had FTX fallout written all over it.
So, what role did FTX have in the 2022 crypto crash?
FTX’s bankruptcy, following a spat with Binance, resulted in a massive sell-off. This sliced the lion’s share off the cryptocurrency market liquidity. The consequences were dire. But what happened with FTX?
While the buyout of FTX was all set, Binance chose to walk away from the deal. This stunned the investors and caused one of the biggest crypto market stumbles. The failed deal led to a high level of skepticism and distrust in the market as questions about the survival of other cryptocurrency businesses amplified.
FTX’s bankruptcy filing resulted in many investors having their assets frozen. According to The U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the missing FTX customer funds are over $8 billion.
So, is the crypto winter just a temporary setback, or is it the beginning of the end of digital currencies?
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Money and Banking is a required economics course in most business colleges. Banks were a large problem with the Great Depression (1929 to 1938 to those of you who didn’t pay attention in history class). There was a great economic downturn again in 2008,or, as it is called, “The Great Recession.” Fast forward to 2023, and the sixteenth largest bank in the U.S., the Silicon Valley Bank failed, (from here on referred to as SVB) with a considerable amount of help from Twitter, which influenced a great number of depositors to withdraw their money from SVB. The Silicon Valley millionaires have great belief in their inventions, but apparently little belief in the bank that helped them get wealthy. According to The Wall Street Journal of March 17, 2023: “It is now apparent that the ruination of this 40-year-old institution was, in a sense, an inside job, initiated by the very startups and investors who had previously been so devoted to it.”
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Let’s face it; everything we do is interconnected with our email and digital identity in 2023. The cost of email loss can vary depending on several factors, i.e. the specific type of data lost, the business or individuals quantity of records compromised, the difficulty of recovering or recreating the lost data, etc.
There are other underlying costs to information loss as well, for example:
In August 2022, California Air Resources Board passed the Advanced Clean Cars II rule that fast-tracks the state to zero-emission transportation. This new rule establishes a roadmap that gradually ushers in a 100% emission-free sale of motor vehicles by 2035.
While many states and countries have set goals and targets to phase out the sale of fossil-fueled vehicles, California has the most aggressive regulation. The plans may be ambitious but are achievable.
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The United States has been described as “the melting pot” because between 1820 and 1920, 80 million people emigrated to the U.S. and became citizens. Certain prejudices are beginning to rear their ugly heads. The city of Seattle became the first city to outlaw caste-based discrimination on February 1, 2023.
To offer some explanation, we quote Forbes of February 3, 2023: “The caste system is a social hierarchy structure that divides people at birth into social classes—it has roots in South Asia and Hinduism but also impacts African, Middle Eastern and Pacific communities.” Dalits, also known as “Untouchables” are the lowest of Hindu culture, and have been for several thousand years. Several universities have already adopted policies that forbid discrimination based on the caste system.
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