When asked to comment on digital currencies in the wake of the Terra/Luna algorithmic “stablecoin” crash that precipitated the broader crypto market crash, the director made sure to separate digital currencies into 3 groups, which she went on to give her position on each group:

1. Central Bank Digital Currencies
2. Asset-backed Stablecoins
3. Non-backed coins

Presumably responding to the Terra/Luna crash that occurred a few weeks prior to her comments, she stated:

When somebody promises you 20% return on something that is not backed by any assets how would we normally call this thing? We would call it a pyramid. In other words this is pyramid in the digital age, but we should not be mistaken to immediately classify everything in the digital world in a negative way because there are three categories. The first one is Central Bank Digital Currencies, they are backed by the state and they offer finality when transactions are settled.

On the topic of CBDCs, she remarked “90% of central banks are exploring CBDCs” and “[digital currencies are] moving so fast the International Monetary Fund has to embrace it.” before going on to discuss some of the CBDC pilot projects that are already underway “China has a pilot with 128 million participants”. From Kristina’s perspective, it seems clear that with countries already implementing pilot projects, there should be some level of global coordination through a body such as the IMF.

Next on her list, the director addressed stablecoins specifically, saying “Stable coins backed by assets are OK. They look a lot like money market funds, but funds in this digital space”.

Last on the list were what she termed non-backed coins and spoke some words of empathy and caution for those investing in these risky coins: “I want to be very direct that I do feel for the people that lost money because part of the reason they lost money is not being educated in this new investment world.”

The director made some intriguing comments on bitcoin itself, saying:

Bitcoin may be called coin but it is not money. Why? Because a prerequisite for something to be money is to be a stable store of value so you can actually plan around it.

Ending on a positive note and encouraging her colleagues not to throw in the towel after the recent digital currency panic, she states:

I would beg you not to pull out of the importance of this world because of what Julia said. It offers us all faster service, much lower cost, and more inclusion, but only if we separate apples from oranges and bananas

Watch this video to see Director Georgieva’s comments:

The post IMF Managing Director Embraces CryptoCurrency and CBDC at WEF first appeared on MetaverseWatcher.

Starting off we hear from Peggy Johnson, CEO of Magic Leap, as she describes the view of the metaverse from Magic Leap’s headquarters in this clip:

Later on in the disucssion, Peggy sheds light on who she sees as the first corporate adopters of metaverse technology: medical devices and industrial training.

Magic Leap is working with industrial plants and factories to develop training systems where a new employee can put on an Augmented Reality headset and learn how to operate a piece of complex machinery or get expert advice and tech support if an existing machine has broken down.

Perhaps more interesting is the near term product they are developing for brain surgeons. This is an actual product that will be approved to be in the actual operating room to help assist with brain surgery. Watch this clip to here more about industry applications in the metaverse:

Switching directions, we hear from Ed Lewin of Lego Group discuss Lego’s partnership with Epic Games. Ed sees tremendous opportunity in immersive educational experiences as you can see in this clip:

And to cap it all off, we get some fascinating insight from famed Swiss Neuroscientists Pascal Kaufmann as he discusses his ideal predictions for how the metaverse can help revolutionize the scientific process by providing AI lab assistants capable of doing the laborious research and solution generation and free up the scientists to focus on asking the right questions that guide the scientific process and create progress.

It’s clear that the metaverse is getting serious attention from industry. As we covered yesterday, it’s one of Microsoft’s areas they expect a 10x-100x change and are investing heavily in it. It will be interesting to see the progress the industry makes in 2022 and 2023 and how that may shape discussions at the next World Economic Forum 2023 in Davos.

The post Practical Metaverse Applications from World Economic Forum 2022 first appeared on MetaverseWatcher.

We’ll review the highlights of the discussion and report on some great quotes from the panelists: Peggy Johnson from Magic Leap, Omar Sultan Al Olama from the United Arab Emirates, Chris Cox from Facebook (now Meta), and Philip Rosedale from Second Life.

Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, started the session off with a great description of how Meta thinks of the metaverse it is building:

“I at least think about it as the next chapter, the next evolution of the internet, except where it gets less flat. If you think about the primary metaphors for the internet to date have been about web pages and literally two-dimensional objects that we peer at through screens. One of the most trends in computing is that the computer moves from the basement to the desktop to our pocket, as has happened over the last 50 years. And we believe, I think we as an industry believe that it ultimately gets closer to the senses, to the eyes, to the hands, to speech. So keyboard input goes away and peering at everything through a screen in our pockets eventually goes away. The metaverse is a way of describing a transition to a three-dimensional environment.”

Chris Cox – Chief Product Officer, Meta

Before we get to the other highlights, watch Chris give his description from 02:09 – 02:55 in this video:

Chris also discusses how hyperlinks were the foundational primitives of the internet, and forecasts that the primitives of the metaverse will be what he calls “complex hyperlinks” and functionally provide the links to navigate directly from one Web3 experience to another.

“If you think about the hyperlink just as a really brutalist simple metaphor for the structure of portability that made the original internet work. I click on a blue word and you will go from one service to another service. That was the structure that enabled Google, that enabled sort of the first generation web services to build utility because we had some agreement on what the primitives were of the internet. The primitives in the metaverse are going to be more complicated because travel. The equivalent of the hyperlink in the metaverse is I can go from Second Life into a work meeting and I can go from there into an educational experience where I”m visiting the colosseum, and then I can turn it all off and be in an A/R (augmented reality) experience where I can just pull my messages up or I can translate the person who is speaking a different language next to me. These are the kinds of things I think we’re all envisioning.”

Chris Cox – Chief Product Officer, Meta

The event is wrapped up with a discussion over rating content in the metaverse and some debate about what sort of revenue model will succeed.

The post Making the Metaverse in Davos – World Economic Forum 2022 first appeared on MetaverseWatcher.