DIGITAL CURRENCY

Debuting Currency / Expediting Payments

China’s quest to dethrone $$$ as the world’s reserve currency will rely on digital yuan denominations. 

The People’s Bank of China, which is piloting the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DC/EP), recently said it’s processed more than 1.1 billion yuan (over $160 million) across 3.1+ million transactions. And since trials began earlier this year, the PBOC has disbursed over 113,000 personal digital wallets and 8,000+ corporate ones. 

Growth phase

On Friday, Chinese officials announced a giveaway of 10 million digital yuan (~$1.5 million) to 50,000 Shenzhen residents. The lucky winners received access to the Digital RMB app and could spend the money at over 3,000 participating shops. 

Immediate reactions: 1) Nice user acquisition strategy you got there 2) Choosing the bustling tech hub of Shenzhen for scaled-up DC/EP trials probably wasn’t coincidental. 

Rest of world = jelly 

If China’s on second base, others are just stepping up to the plate. 

Yesterday, the G20 said it’s working with the IMF, World Bank, and Bank for International Settlements to create guidance for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). As the international f’nance dream team studies stablecoins and the like, countries are considering their own projects.

• For example: Japan will start CBDC trials at some point next year.

And Libra, the Facebook nation-state’s stab at stablecoins, faces formidable regulatory resistance. FB has pared down Libra launch plans, but it wasn’t enough. G7 leaders say they’ll oppose the launch of the coin until it’s properly regulated. 

Back to DC/EP—it could be many things wrapped in one: 

• A tech-enabled scheme to wrest financial control from the West, and, potentially, Alibaba and Tencent.  
• A grim reaper for cash. 
• A tool to police financial transactions and monitor/surveil economic activity (DC/EP ≠ cryptocurrency).
• A proof of concept for the rest of the world. 

But none of that happens overnight. DC/EP pilots are scheduled to run through 2022, and by then, other countries could be launching their own digital payment rails.

BIG TECH

Cupertino, Condensed

Apple Events: Come for the new music finds, stay for the emerging tech tidbits. 

5G: The event showcased Apple’s first-ever 5G lineup. The iPhone 12 will come in four models, including the "world's smallest 5G phone." 

• Apple said it ran 5G performance tests in 30 regions with 100 carriers. 
• When your doomscrolling doesn’t require 5G speeds, you will be auto-switched to LTE to save battery. 

Chips: Apple said its new A14 Bionic chip's CPU and GPU are 50% faster than any competitor. It’ll affect all things processing power, from advanced gaming to streaming movies in the bathtub. 

• The chip’s capacity to perform 11 trillion operations per second should be a machine learning game changer, speeding up the iPhone’s neural engine and ML accelerators by 70-80%. 

Lidar: Apple’s Lidar scanner will act as the eyes of the iPhone 12’s camera, helping speed up auto-focus and capture time in low light. 

• Apple's new Lidar-powered depth mapping will also help with placing AR objects (e.g., planning furniture layout in a new office). 

Looking ahead: 5G has been all talk and limited action for a while, but Apple’s announcement will likely spur demand and faster network rollouts. Exhibit A: Verizon announced its 5G network launch during the event, including a wide band rollout in 55 cities. 

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CYBERSECURITY

The Public Eye

Moving on from 5G to Five Eyes: This past weekend, the aptly named transnational alliance of intelligence agencies called on tech companies to relax data encryption standards. 

Five Eyes’s rallying cry: Allow law enforcement agencies backdoor access to messages transmitted through end-to-end encryption (E2EE). 

• By the very nature of E2EE, no one can access transmitted data besides the sender and receiver.

Who they’re asking: Probably the company behind your “Haunting of Bly Manor” group chat. Major players include Apple’s iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Signal. 

In its statement, the secret-sharing consortium argued that these privacy protections come at the expense of public safety. Besides the U.S., club members include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK—though Japan and India also signed. 

• Privacy experts have long advocated against backdoors. Human Rights Watch's stance: Encryption protects people from bad actors and authoritarian regimes.

Bottom line: One recent survey suggested 94% of Americans believe that five years into the future, data privacy will be more critical than it is today. With tech giants already in near-constant hot water with the public, the odds don't look great for Five Eyes's request.

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BITS & BYTES

Stats: Segway launched a new e-moped with 50 miles of range, which costs $1,899 to preorder. Widening the aperture a bit, Bloomberg New Energy Fund analysts expect the global installed base for e-bikes to hit 600 million by 2040.

Quote: “Paul, it’s Bob Wilson. You’ve won the Nobel Prize!”—One Stanford economist knocked on another’s door around 2:15 a.m. on Monday to share the good news, captured via Nest camera. 

Read: Alphabet’s X has a new moonshot.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Pakistan banned TikTok. 
• SoftBank → SoftSPAC. 
• The Justice Department may force Google to offload Chrome and parts of its ad business, Politico reports. 
• Einride, a Swedish startup, has started taking preorders for its electric driverless Pod truck. 
• China’s state-subsidized push toward semiconductor self-sufficiency is taking off: More than 13,000 companies have registered as chip producers, the FT reports.

TRIVIA

The iPhone had a big day yesterday, but it’s been making headlines for more than a decade. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and test your retention of iPhone launches, feature additions, and everything in between. No green texts, we promise. 

Take today’s trivia quiz here.

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For bending space cost curves: See how “cheap” it’s become to launch cargo into low-Earth orbit over the last three decades. 

For history’s headlines: The Library of Congress’s “Innovator in Residence” used ML to search through more than 16 million pages of newspapers published between 1789 and 1963 for visual content. The resulting illustrations, maps, editorial cartoons, and more went into this data set and interactive search tool.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• AI advancements in Amazon Alexa: follow-up questions 
• Waymo expands driverless service in Phoenix
• Nvidia’s new AI supercomputer