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Move over DOGE as Tiger King star launches CAT

Dogecoin’s status as the top memecoin may be (but almost certainly isn’t) under threat following the news that controversial Tiger King star Carole Baskin has launched her CAT coin.

In a blog post via Baskin’s non-profit Big Cat Rescue on May 4, she revealed her social token had been launched on Rally, an open network that enables creators to launch their own coins on the Ethereum blockchain. However, she emphasized her coin is not an investment tool, it’s actually a terrible pun:

“Our new $CAT coin is not a currency for investment, but rather is a purr-ency of our fans to show their love for the cats and to reap the benefits of being our most forward-thinking partners in creating a world where all wild cats live free.”

However Baskin’s interest in cryptocurrency seems to have some basis to it, with the reality TV star explaining she had concerns surrounding money printing fueled inflation and that: “I like the idea of putting the power of money in the hands of the people, rather than banks and governments.”

Despite her newfound bullishness, Baskin appears to have misunderstood the different attributes of Bitcoin versus many altcoins as she said: “At this point, both the USD and Bitcoin are fiat currencies, but at least Bitcoin and other altcoins have scarcity built in and now there is much more broad adoption of them in our everyday lives.”

Baskin’s CAT currently has 123,600 coins in circulation and is sitting at a price of $8.20 per coin. Since launch, $CAT has seen 492 transactions, with a total USD support volume of $206,000.

Holders of CAT will be eligible for rewards such as “elite access to LIVE walkabouts and conversations with Carole Baskin and her crew of big cat lovers and keepers, discounts and first access to new merchandise and activities.”

Baskin has teased future plans for the CAT community, which include shared access to big cat metaverse world called ARzoo, a virtual reality collectible game called Big Cat Rescue VR and a new set of unspecified, but presumably cat-centric NFTs set to drop in two weeks.

This is not Carole Baskin’s first move in crypto. In April last year, she began accepting donations in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum via Bitpay.

It is yet to be seen if her arch-nemesis Joe Exotic or better known as the Tiger King has woken up to the significance of blockchain technology behind bars.

Move over DOGE as Tiger King star launches CAT

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We Love You, Moms: Our Favorite Mom-Related Campaigns for Mother’s Day

Here at Indiegogo, we love Mother’s Day. The hard work of being a mother often goes unnoticed, and we relish the chance to honor the world’s moms for the tireless work they put in. In a normal year, this barely enough. But this year, moms around the world deserve extra recognition for the herculean efforts they’ve put in during the pandemic to care for their families.

In an effort to support the campaigns that help support moms thrive, we picked our top 11 favorite mom-related campaigns (and one bonus campaign too!). If you want to see these campaigns go to market and make them a reality, show your support by backing these campaigns and helping their visions come to life.

Here are our 10 favorite mom-related campaigns of the year:

1. Letters to My Brown Mother: Stories on Mental Health in the South Asian Diaspora

Letters to My Brown Mother is about the struggles with mental health in the South Asian (desi) diaspora. The book details experiences of everyday South Asian immigrants and children of immigrants. Written by Muzna Abbas, Letters to My Brown Mother aims to dismantle the stigma surrounding mental health in the South Asian community. Mental wellbeing is rarely prioritized or discussed in South Asian households, causing many to suffer in silence without any help and support. This book will outline how to overcome cultural factors in an effort to prioritize mental health.

2. Ceres Chill: The World’s First Breastmilk Chiller

Ceres Chill is the World’s First Breastmilk Chiller and the only grab-and-go solution for busy parents and caregivers. Safely store breastmilk for over 20 hours with style and convenience no matter where life takes you. It’s truly a cutting-edge, patent-pending design that will keep up with the demanding lives of modern parents. By backing this campaign, you’ll bring the Ceres Chill closer to being available to mother near you.

3. Lomi: Turn Waste To Compost With A Single Button

Food waste doesn’t have to be nasty. The team behind the Lomi compost system is changing composting from a grimy, smelly affair into a hands-off, odor-free one by turning food scraps into compost at the press of a button, perfect for any eco-conscious mom’s kitchen.

4. Zumy: Quality Light For Video Meetings

Moms are asked to do a lot these days, and working mothers in particular often find themselves running between attending the kids and Zoom meetings — not always a recipe for looking presentable on video calls. Enter Zumy, the portable, clip-on light that helps you look brilliant in Zoom meetings, videos, and photos. No more fussy mounting hardware, just clip and go. Support Zumy so you can see this product come to life and help working mothers, no matter which home they’re working from.

5. ORIMEI: The First Packable Coat for On-The-Go Women

The Orimei UME Packable Coat is a compact, wrinkle-resistant coat created to be  minimalist, timeless, and fashionable. The Orimei coat folds compactly into an over-the-shoulder purse and is designed to aesthetically and functionally meet the modern-day woman’s everyday on-the-go needs. 

6. The Book of Cultures: Stories to Explore the World

The Book of Cultures is a picture book with 30 fictional stories featuring characters from different countries around the globe. The stories are lovingly created to introduce children to the wonders of our world and encourage them to embrace diverse perspectives. It’s an educational experience for young readers to not only discover the differences that make our planet so special, but also to uncover the similarities we often overlook. 

7. Snorble: For Imagining A Better Bedtime

Snorbles. Flutterflies. The Rainbow River. These are all part of the imaginary land of Lullaboo the Snorble team has created to address a serious issue: developing healthy, consistent, customized bedtime routines for children. If you’ve ever found it difficult to get your child calmed down and relaxed by bedtime, Snorble understands. What about getting them to sleep in their own bed instead of yours? Check. Brushing their teeth? Putting their pajamas on? Check, and check. Snorble gets it, and he’s ready to make bedtime fun.

8. 360 Robot Vacuum Cleaner S10: Two-in-One Mop & Carpet Cleaning

It’s 2021. Time to start thinking about cleaning your home in 3D. Most robot vacuum cleaners today are living in 2D, but the team behind S10 Robot Cleaner has different ideas.

Triple-eye LiDAR sensors put the S10 ahead of its class, allowing it to 3D scan your home in ways other cleaners can only dream of. It detects objects as slim as .04 inches, then decides in real-time to steer clear or hoover it up, ensuring a thorough clean without any surprises. 

And it never asks for a day off.

9. Monument 2: Smart Photo Storage and Organization

Monument is a smart photo storage device that automatically backs up and organizes all of your photos and videos while protecting your privacy and security. Monument is smart enough to organize all of your memories by people, scenery, location, camera and more while automatically eliminating duplicates. It’s more intuitive than what you’re doing, and without clutter. With built-in SSD, Monument provides you the reliability that you can trust for your precious memories. SSD is the fastest, most reliable storage technology. That’s what any mom needs for her photos. 

10. MamaP: The Game-Changing Sustainable Dish Brush

Meet MamaP’s newest creation, the Do the Dishes brush. It’s the eco-friendly brush you didn’t know you were waiting for. What makes the MamaP different? A replaceable brush head, made out of natural wood and sisal fibers, replaces unsustainable products in your kitchen. And the plastic handle is made of post-consumer recycled plastic, diverting waste from landfills. The best part? Its ergonomically designed handle makes for a better more comfortable grip. Back this campaign to bring it to life!

11. PastedPaper: Reimagining Wallpaper

Imagine gorgeous, easy-to-use, organic sheets of removable high-quality wallpaper. Imagine no more, with PastedPaper. With the help of its backers, PastedPaper will be available in an assortment of historic designs based on antique artwork, allowing you to easily bring timeless, unique, and affordable elegance into your home.

Honorable mention (for all the dog moms out there): Monch Bar

After delivering over half a million meals to dogs, the team behind Monch Bar stumbled on a new problem: keeping your dog’s energy topped off during their daily dose of exercise. If you’ve ever tricked packing kibble in a plastic bag, and left a mess in your backpack? Or maybe even just finding crumbled treats in your pockets? Monch Bar aims to have you covered. Creating individually wrapped bars for easy to grab and go, keeping it affordable, without any fillers, artificial coloring, and preservatives! Back it today before it hits the shelves, your dog will thank you later!

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Accenture and Digital Dollar Foundation to trial United States CBDC this year

Fortune 500 company Accenture has teamed up with Digital Dollar Foundation to conduct Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC, trials in the United States.

Announced on Monday, May 3, the newly formed Digital Dollar Project will carry out five CBDC pilot programs over the next 12 months. The project’s objective is to generate data to inform U.S. policymakers on how to develop a domestic digital currency.

The Digital Dollar Project will launch three pilot programs in the next two months, generating data on the functional, sociological, and business benefits of a digital greenback.

Al Jazeera reports that former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and co-founder of the Digital Dollar Foundation, Christopher Giancarlo, emphasized the lack of U.S. data regarding CBDC:

“There are conferences and papers coming out every week around the world on CBDCs based on data from other countries. What there is not, is any real data and testing from the United States to inform that debate. We’re seeking to generate that real-world data.”

However, the Fed is taking a cautious approach as the guardian of the world’s reserve currency, the report added, with chairman Jerome Powell responding that it is far more important to get a digital dollar right than it is to be fast.

Giancarlo countered that Powell was correct to be cautious, but warned that the U.S. could fall further behind as China pushes ahead with its own CBDC testing and deployment.

While the U.S. Federal Reserve has been conducting research into the technology and applications for a CBDC, the United States lags behind the digital currency initiatives currently ongoing in numerous other jurisdictions.

China’s central bank and leading state banks have recently been preparing to test the digital yuan for a shopping festival on May 5.

Accenture has also worked on a number of CBDC projects in other countries, including Canada, Singapore, France, and Sweden — which has already completed the first phase of its pilot.

According to a study by the Bank for International Settlements, 80% of the world’s central banks are already researching central bank-issued digital currencies.

Accenture and Digital Dollar Foundation to trial United States CBDC this year

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Monetary Authority of Singapore Dedicates S$42 Million for Regtech Initiatives

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced a new grant program targeting Regulatory Technology or Regtech that is said to be an enhancement of the Digital Acceleration Grant (DAG) scheme to accelerate technology adoption.  In a public statement, MAS said it will commit S$42 million for the Regtech grant scheme and enhanced DAG scheme.

Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer at MAS, stated:

“MAS remains committed to the digital transformation of the Singapore financial sector. We expect the RegTech ecosystem to flourish with widespread use of innovative solutions to aid risk management and compliance. The Digital Acceleration Grant has enabled the smaller FIs and FinTech firms to adapt to the challenges in the past year and we will continue to support these firms as they accelerate their digital transformation journey. We encourage FIs to tap on these grants to embed technology into the firms’ DNA.”

The grant is being made available to Singapore-based financial institutions (FIs) and seeks to promote the adoption and integration of technology solutions in the risk management and compliance functions of financial services firms.

There will be two tracks for the grants including:

  • The pilot track: FIs can seek funding to pilot potential RegTech solutions before embarking on full-scale integration of the product into its operating environment. Funding for this track will be capped at S$75,000.
  • The production level project track: FIs can seek funding to develop larger-scale customised projects that can be fully integrated into the FI’s systems. Funding for such projects will be capped at S$300,000.

MAS states that both tracks can be used to support either in-house development or commercial partnerships with Regtech firms based in Singapore.

The DAG was launched in April 2020 to help smaller FIs and Fintech firms adopt digital solutions to better cope with the impact of COVID-19, and to position themselves for subsequent recovery and growth. As of 31 March 2021, MAS reports that it has received over 1,100 applications from both FIs and Fintech firms.

MAS said it will commit an additional S$30 million to the DAG until 31 December 2021 to encourage the industry to adopt digital solutions that enhance productivity, cybersecurity, and operational efficiency. This brings the total grants available under the DAG scheme to S$65 million.

Ian Lee, Vice President of Business Development at Merkle Science, a Singapore-based blockchain transaction risk monitoring and analytics platform, issued a comment on the new Regtech funding.

“Regtech solutions are having a difficult time gaining market share here in Singapore and abroad. Oftentimes, startups at their initial stages have to give away their solutions at a low cost — or sometimes even for free — in order to gain traction and receive feedback on their product. With startups’ limited resources, it is difficult for these innovative new startups to compete with larger legacy firms. With this new $42 million grant, the MAS is supporting the development of local Regtech startups and encouraging innovation in two ways. Firstly, the grant furthers the existing Digital Acceleration Grant (DAG) scheme, which is available to any startup that services financial institutions. Through the extension of the DAG, financial institutions can also use the grant to subsidize their cost of operation.”

Lee added that an interesting feature of the new Regtech grant is for providers to pilot their solutions and test for efficacy under a paid model.

“While the details on this feature have not been released yet, it sounds like there may be subsidies for established companies to use and test the solution before the startup moves the solution to full-scale production.”

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Australian senate committee calls for national blockchain land registry

An Australian senate committee has published a report calling for a blockchain-based national land registry, better clarity over laws relating to smart contracts, and continued efforts to establish international standards for DLT.

The Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre’s second interim report offers 23 recommendations spanning blockchain, consumer data, and corporate taxation.

Five recommendations deal specifically with blockchain and digital assets, including that the Council of Financial Regulators Cyber Working Group takes into account international data standards.

The committee recommended that National Cabinet consider supporting a blockchain-powered national land registry as a pilot project for Commonwealth-State cooperation on “RegTech’ to highlight ways to streamline administrative processes in both the public and private sectors.

“The committee was particularly impressed with the potential for blockchain to drive efficiencies in the area of land registries, and is recommending that this issue be further explored in the context of the National Cabinet.”

Zooming out, the committee noted there was a need for more clarity and certainty in digital asset regulations, and highlighted concerns from industry stakeholders regarding “the uncertain status” of smart contracts under Australian law.

Despite hearing about the concerns, the committee didn’t hear many solutions:

“While the committee heard extensive evidence on the need for such regulation, it heard less on concrete ideas for how this regulation should best be crafted.” 

Instead it recommended the Australian Government “consider how best to improve clarity with respect to the standing of smart contracts.”

The report called on the Department of Industry, Science, Energy, and Resources, or DISER, to publish regular updates on the progress of the National Blockchain Roadmap and to to review and update the roadmap as the space evolved. 

Moving forward, the committee plans to review how capital gains are applied to cryptocurrency transactions, and give deeper consideration to the regulatory implications of central bank digital currencies and stablecoins during the final phase of its inquiries.

Australian senate committee calls for national blockchain land registry

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