Virtual Reality is now solving real world problems

When you think of VR you think gaming, you think simulators at family fun parks – certainly you don’t think medicine, military, or addiction.  That’s all changing.  VR started out as a toy and has moved to being a very real technology that has applications as far ranging as Rehabilitation or “Rehab.”  It may sound crazy, but it actually works!  A company has created an application for Virtual Rehab, the hot new application in VR.  It’s real, and they call it Psychological Rehabilitation For Vulnerable Populations.  The company is called aptly Virtual Rehab.

Virtual Rehab allows you to confront and to overcome your fears while maintaining your complete privacy. The solution is in your hands. #MentalHealthMatters

That’s how simple it is.  What’s really the problem this solves?  The answer is fairly long so we’ll just summarize here.  It solves a number of problems including but not limited to mental disease, depression, alcoholism, Autism (ASD), drug addiction, and more.  And this isn’t any laughing matter, many of these unresolved cases end up in death or worse.  What can be worse than death?  There are many examples, one being mass shootings – an untreated psychopath goes into a WalMart and shoots 20 or 30 people before killing himself.  We don’t have a solid and stable mental health care system in America, so we are relying on innovative companies like Virtual Rehab to come up with solutions.

In the whole world, $136 Billion is spent on Prevention & Treatment, all inclusive of all related disorders.  That’s a huge amount.  Just in the US alone, 13% of Americans take some form of anti-depressants, according to Time.com:

As TIME reported in a recent cover story, clinical depression affects about 16 million people in the U.S. and is estimated to cost the U.S. about $210 billion a year in productivity loss and health care needs. Global revenue for antidepressants is projected to grow to nearly $17 billion by 2020.

The problem is out of control, and few clinical solutions present a real practical solution.  We’re not here to say that VR is the alternative that’s going to wipe out depression.  However, traditional methods clearly do not work.  This is a new type of treatment, and a new type of therapy.  It isn’t going to harm anyone to try it.  If it takes off, we’ve just solved a major health crisis. 

Think about this.  Treatment of any such ailment whether depression or addiction always involves monitoring by a case worker, healthcare professional, or social worker.  Do you really think someone who is addicted wants to be honest about their addiction, to the point that they admit that they can’t shake the addiction?  The reality is that treatment is not easy and involves a bit of hand-holding, there is no ‘magic pill’ to make someone kick a debilitating habit like Alcohol or pain killers.

But how does it work?  Here’s a snapshot from the provided materials:

The program is presenting users with real-life situations (in a virtual world) where they need to make difficult decisions or challenging choices about certain aspects of their lives or their surroundings.  The Virtual Rehab solution is used as a preventative tool from relapsing back into addiction (for example). Using real-life virtual simulation, users are subjected heads-on with their cravings. Leveraging cognitive behavior and exposure therapy, users are presented with stimuli (i.e. cues or triggers), such as an alcohol bottle or a drug syringe or similar stimuli, where a physician, a psychologist, or a therapist, can monitor the patients’ behavior and decision-making accordingly.  Different from one-on-one or group therapy sessions, where a patient may not be comfortable sharing all his/her information since they are afraid of repercussions, the Virtual Rehab solution allows and forces a patient into making certain decisions and confronting their cravings accordingly. Therefore, what may not be realized within a traditional therapy session, can be observed and monitored as part of the virtual simulation.  Using Virtual Rehab’s patented artificial intelligence solution, throughout the virtual simulation, and through the use of certain APIs, the solution gathers data relevant to the decisions being made by the user along with their actions and their reactions to the scenarios they are subjected to. In addition, the solution collects biometrics (heart rate, blood pressure, and biodermal activity) as well as eye-tracking activity, which are leveraged to detect the actual impact that the virtual simulation has on the patient.

So here we can see the real value of the ‘virtual’ approach.  Doctors and being in a hospital environment can be intimidating to begin with.  Patients can react differently in an institutionalized setting vs. the comfort of your own home.  Most patients who suffer from addiction, depression, and related ailments do want to get better, they just don’t know how.  So even if this only helps a marginal number of patients, the impact can be groundbreaking.  And the best part, this is all built on Blockchain technology using artificial intelligence. 

Who knows, perhaps VR treatments can change behavior modification in many unknown ways.  There is something in the US called “Troubled Teen Industry” which at the end of the day is a fraud, perpetrated on desperate parents to help unruly teens.  One NYTimes article notes how the ‘schools’ are run like bad prisons:

Several former students at schools operated by Mr. Robinson, a former amateur boxer, said in interviews — some dating back to the 1990s — that he had physically harmed them while disciplining them, and that they remained psychologically damaged.

No doubt that VR is going to have many applications, but how that impacts the market of “Vulnerable Populations” as they call it, can be profound.  That’s because vulnerable populations are open to be exploited, as in the above case with “Troubled Teens”  - desperate parents will do anything to ‘fix’ their kids even paying $40,000 a year to send them to an abuse camp that only has a few ‘deaths’ on the record, but overall good reviews.

Like any technology, the combination of Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) combined with Blockchain can be a real game changer, we just don’t know which industry will be disrupted most.

Get Pre IPO Unicorns @ www.preiposwap.com 

Lending stable coin threatens traditional banking

Crypto seems to look more and more like the banking sector, as more projects launch and mature that resemble bank activities.  Recently we have written about security service Blackwatch Digital and their secured and insured custody service.  Now we are researching a unique stable coin and lending platform known as MyConstant.

What we like about this is that it truly resembles a platform, the way Crypto was intended to be designed.  In the platform lenders can choose their own terms, no credit check, and no nonsense – and find borrowers.  It’s all backed by a stable coin like the US Dollar so there’s no volatility worries in loan calculation.  This is really a micro-finance product they are just using Crypto as the underlying technology.  Frankly, programming a system like this using the US banking system, would be expensive, cumbersome, time consuming, and who knows what it might look like after all the regulatory approvals.

We should note that Constant began as a stable coin and evolved into the lending platform it is now – a healthy and normal evolution.  Borrowers need money and lenders want return on their money.  The platform charges a reasonable 1% fee on all transactions.

Pre IPO companies like Circle are snapping up startups, according to Crunchbase Unicorn Circle has already purchased SeedInvest, Poloniex, and Trigger Finance.  Are companies like MyConstant next?  As the platform proves itself, it may be an easy acquisition target for some of the Crypto ‘big boys’ to integrate into their existing ecosystem.  That’s what companies like Circle are likely waiting on.  Why invest in R&D when you can let the market do that, and then swoop down with boatloads of cash for a quick sale and acquisition? 

That’s the Microsoft strategy, who bought more than 10,000 companies in their lifetime.  It may be the strategy used by many of the larger firms in Crypto, copying the success of Microsoft.  It has always been a big question, why don’t firms engage in more R&D.  Perhaps this is why.

In case you don’t know what are stable coins, here’s a great explanation from Coin Telegraph:

Stablecoins are a new type of cryptocurrency that often have their value pegged to another asset. These coins can be pegged to fiat currencies such as the United States dollar, other cryptocurrencies, precious metals or a combination of the three. Fiat seems to be the most popular option in the marketplace right now, meaning one unit of a stablecoin equals $1. Stablecoins are designed to tackle the inherent volatility seen in cryptocurrency prices. They are normally collateralized, meaning that the total number of stablecoins in circulation is backed by assets held in reserve. Put simply, if there are 500,000 USD-pegged coins in circulation, there should be at least $500,000 sitting in a bank.  With bitcoin suffering abrupt crashes and sudden gains, advocates believe stablecoins help eliminate doubt about conversion rates — making cryptocurrencies more practical for buying goods and services.  Examples of the best-known stablecoins include tether (USDT), trueUSD (TUSD), gemini dollar (GUSD), and USD coin by Circle and Coinbase (USDC). Demand for such coins has been growing. In December, Cointelegraph reported claims that four major stablecoins had clocked up $5 billion in on-chain transactions within just three months — enjoying a 1,032% surge in November compared with two months earlier.

The reasons to use stable coins are clear – and it’s also a logical obvious fit for a lending platform.  There’s no reason to mention that lending is a growth business; lending is the main service of the banking environment in the world.  Only in the US, personal loans equal $138 Billion with a “B” according to CNBC:

Total outstanding U.S. consumer loans hit a record last year, driven by digital-first lending options. Financial technology, or fintech, companies now make up 38 percent of the personal loan market — up from just 5 percent five years ago, according to new data from TransUnion. “The rapid growth in consumer loans sits squarely on the shoulders of fintechs,” says Jason Laky, senior vice president and leader of TransUnion’s consumer lending line of business.

Fintech makes up 38% of that, and Crypto certainly is Fintech.  So what’s next?  It’s a simple move, to start using Crypto for your borrowing needs.  Bitcoin has already been used to purchase real estate.  There are even services that will facilitate Crypto purchases of real assets.  So Crypto lending isn’t so far-fetched after all.  Perhaps, as explained in Splitting Bits in 2017, we are all just one byte away from a Blockchain based financial system.

Crypto market paradigm shift – Enterprise Grade projects enter the market

From Zero Hedge 8/27/2019:

The Crypto market has seen a dichotomy of change; on the surface, we’ve seen a drop in retail popularity and a general loss of hope in the Bitcoins of the world.  But in the background, in parallel, a number of companies are developing institutional grade products that are going to change Crypto forever.  We’ve outlined some of them in other articles here on Zero Hedge.

Our hope is that these projects will create a solid foundation that will foster institutional investment in Crypto.  That’s the world we come from, the world we know – and when it happens it will legitimize Crypto.

Take a look at CPI Tech from Germany:

CPI Tech, based in Germany, was founded by Marvin Steinberg & Maximilian Schmidt, two successful entrepreneurs with leading roles within the blockchain industry.  The CPI Tech mission is to build the best possible solution for asset holders and companies by tokenizing the asset and to create a new and more advanced way for investors to invest in assets.   Apart from creating highly scalable and rock-solid blockchain software, CPI Tech also specializes in creating extremely lucrative software for their clients to sell on autopilot - without them having to worry about IT, promotion, or marketing. CPI Tech handles all of the process, providing a full solution from A to Z.

What’s revealing about this is that they are targeting the enterprise, not the consumer.  Let’s face it, Bitcoin was a consumer product, and a poor one at that.  With clients like CEOs, Entrepreneurs, Pre IPO founders, and others – we’re seeing a new audience for Crypto which is no longer the tire kickers with $10 to their name.  Bitcoin was cool and it provided the needed exposure to bring a real paradigm shift, but by itself, Bitcoin is not a store of value or an easy transactional currency.  Try paying your employees in Bitcoin and see their reaction (Action Item).

And of course, we’re assuming that many of these new startup coins will have robust security solutions for their Crypto that are insured, such as we have recently written about in articles.  There’s a simple reason that the Fidelity’s and the Schwab’s are not in the market: They are afraid of being hacked.  So if that is now ‘solved’ as it says in the above article, then what are we waiting for?  It’s not going to happen overnight, but it seems to be the beginning of the end of the Crypto-meltdown.  New coins may be more stable and less exciting than Bitcoin, but also more credible and sustainable.

One can make many statements about the Crypto bubble but there’s one we can all agree with – It just wasn’t sustainable.  There were too many fly by night ICO frauds, too many unscrupulous exchanges, too many projects that invested in marketing instead of R&D.  Overall, we learned lessons but from the ashes we are seeing the rise of companies that may last 100 or 1000 years.   Now, even banks are taking a deep look at Crypto:

Just as recently as March 2019, IBM announced 6 banks to issue stablecoins and use the Stellar XLM platform: Announced Monday, six international banks have signed letters of intent to issue stablecoins, or tokens backed by fiat currency, on World Wire, an IBM payment network that uses the Stellar public blockchain. The network promises to let regulated institutions move value across borders – remittances or foreign exchange – more quickly and cheaply than the legacy correspondent banking system.  So far three of the banks have been identified – Philippines-based RCBC, Brazil’s Banco Bradesco, and Bank Busan of South Korea – the rest, which are soon to be named, will offer digital versions of euros and Indonesian rupiah, “pending regulatory approvals and other reviews,” IBM said.

As explained in Splitting Bits, the US Dollar has been used and traded electronically since the 1990s.  So the idea of electronic currency is nothing new.  What’s new is currencies are no longer created exclusively by central banks.  Now many new currencies are being created almost on a daily basis.  Many of them will fail, but the ones that survive the test of the markets, may be the next G8 currencies traded on the Forex market.

That means as banks are getting into Crypto so are all their clients and friends.   Most people don’t know that IBM actually develops and maintains the hardware and software for a great majority of the banking sector.  Their Cryptocurrency, Stellar, is a major player in the Crypto space.  Although Stellar hasn’t received the media attention that Bitcoin has, it is being chosen as the underlying framework for many projects.

CPI Tech is making a plug-n-play solution for the enterprise.  The ramifications for such use are astounding.  Imagine for a moment if Bitcoin had the same momentum but with institutions behind it, not your small retail investors.  It would really be transformative, just like Bitcoin originally promised.  Perhaps one of the flaws of Bitcoin and it’s lack of success were the fact that it didn’t have the ecosystem attached to it.  They didn’t make a development environment, or something similar to how Ethereum has ‘dapps.’

Companies such as Circle can offer more stable coins and Enterprise grade services.  This will attract more investment capital into the companies like Circle offering these products, which will create a positive upward cycle (not a bubble.)  In that case, and only in that case – we will see a real bull run and not a bubble.  Here’s hoping!

Secure and Insured Crypto Custody

What the future of money will look like: Secured Gold Backed Crypto

Back a few years ago before Bitcoin was all the talk, as if Bitcoin is going to be the new money of the future, or a one world currency.  Obviously that hasn’t happened but the Crypto market is growing by leaps and bounds.  We’re going to take a look at a few exciting projects and let readers decide for themselves.  But at first glance, projects are taking shape they are just taking longer than usual.  We’re not going to get into a discussion about tZero, the first regulated securities token, which is still delayed.  But we are going to look at what some on the fringe have been doing, and their tokens and products are just launching.  We’re going to look at how these solutions solve major problems. 

First, the problem of Crypto not being ‘backed’ by anything.  A token is being launched called Kinesis (KVT) that is backed 1:1 by gold and silver.  By itself that’s not a new idea or so novel – but how they are doing it is looking that this launch can be successful.  The founder has explained more about this in a Forbes article:

Kinesis Money is fully operated by the Allocated Bullion Exchange (ABX), an institutional marketplace set up in 2011 for the trade of physical precious metals, gold and silver, being two of the most stable and definable stores of value, across seven global locations.  For the benefit of Kinesis Money, ABX provides the comprehensive infrastructure with the advent of blockchain technology - and the introduction of cryptocurrencies. This gives it a firm advantage over other cryptos in the gold space which simply do not have this backing.

So this isn’t just a couple of kids in the garage – this is a serious commodity backed exchange.  What other types of players have entertained the idea of Gold backed currency?  Russia’s Central Bank has even considered a gold backed Crypto Currency:

“As for mutual settlements, we will consider, of course, [the] proposal on … a gold-backed cryptocurrency.

As most people know, the fundamental difference between Crypto currency and fiat currency is that fiat currency is backed by banks, which are backed by central banks, so it’s notable to watch what central banks are doing in the crypto market.  And what’s ironic about a Gold backed currency – Gold is used as a reserve by some central banks as a physical commodity that always has value.  This has become unpopular in the last 10 years, but China and Russia are hoarding Gold.  In particular, Russia

There’s even a long list of Cryptocurrencies that are backed by gold in some form.  But also the fact that there are so many novel approaches to the same concept solidifies the idea. 

“There’s no monopoly on Great Ideas” Randall S.

Of course, this is all digital so the big risk is going to be getting hacked.  If your ‘digital’ gold get’s hacked it’s the equivalent of your Gold storage being looted.  That’s where Dark Vault comes into play, a new custodial and security service launched by Crypto startup Blackwatch.  Just like in the example with Gold tokens, there are secure custodial solutions out there, but this one seems to be unique.  If it’s as good as it looks, this can create a situation where once again fiat investment dollars will be flowing into Crypto. 

We interviewed a former employee of tZero who wishes to remain anonymous, and this is what he said:

“There’s an unknown number but in the billions of dollars waiting to invest in Crypto if someone can solve the security issue.  Everyone is afraid of being hacked.”

So as institutional investors feel safer, we believe they will start investing in coins like Kinesis, just like investors hold cash.  When you are holding cash you are actually in a Forex trade, that’s denominated in US Dollars (if you are in the US).  Stablecoins are the future, not wild volatile tokens like Bitcoin.   What Bitcoin did was attract attention of the world and get the Crypto market started, which was great – Bitcoin was the prime mover.  But you can’t pay your salaries in Bitcoin nor is it really a good ‘investment’ as due to the mining feature it requires more and more US Dollars to flood into it in order to support the price.

Actually banks and central banks have been thinking of issuing their own coins for a long time.  Just as recently as March 2019, IBM announced 6 banks to issue stablecoins and use the Stellar XLM platform (just as Kinesis):

Announced Monday, six international banks have signed letters of intent to issue stablecoins, or tokens backed by fiat currency, on World Wire, an IBM payment network that uses the Stellar public blockchain. The network promises to let regulated institutions move value across borders – remittances or foreign exchange – more quickly and cheaply than the legacy correspondent banking system.  So far three of the banks have been identified – Philippines-based RCBC, Brazil’s Banco Bradesco, and Bank Busan of South Korea – the rest, which are soon to be named, will offer digital versions of euros and Indonesian rupiah, “pending regulatory approvals and other reviews,” IBM said.

Clearly, Crypto is not just a fad – it’s changing the underlying architecture of the global financial system.  But this is something that’s been happening over a long time frame.  Crypto is a technology, not a form of money.  But that technology was utilized in the ultimate use case to be a form of money in a Crypto currency. 

As explained in Splitting Bits, the US Dollar has been used and traded electronically since the 1990s.  So the idea of electronic currency is nothing new.  What’s new is currencies are no longer created exclusively by central banks.  Now many new currencies are being created almost on a daily basis.  Many of them will fail, but the ones that survive the test of the markets, may be the next G8 currencies traded on the Forex market.

To learn more about money, checkout Splitting Pennies - Understanding Forex