Six crypto leaders appeared at a House Financial Services Committee hearing that "explored how the government should oversee and improve regulation of the industry." The "general sentiment of the hearing was positive towards the cryptocurrency industry, a dramatic shift from past years. This disposition surprised some, but it reflects an evolving view of the benefits of cryptocurrency technology and the fear that the US is falling behind other countries such as China that have made noticeable progress towards launching a sovereign digital currency." The piece notes that the Senate Banking "has a hearing on stablecoins next Tuesday and it will likely be more skeptical towards this emerging asset class." The witnesses include Alexis Goldstein, Director of Financial Policy, Open Markets Institute; and Professor Hilary J. Allen, American University Washington College of Law.

President Biden "says his administration is focused on policing cryptocurrency crimes to combat corruption globally and is taking advantage of a newly formed Department of Justice task force, according to an anti-graft report released Monday." The White House is "particularly focused on crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services - platforms that obscure owners and recipients in Bitcoin transactions - and bad actors who facilitate money laundering, according to the report from U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption, which includes the State Department, Treasury and Justice Department."

The Economist reports on the pipeline of former American regulatory officials becoming lobbyists or advisers to the cryptocurrency industry. Perhaps the most prominent is Jay Clayton, former head of the SEC, but others include Brian Brooks, who until January was the acting Comptroller of the Currency, and Chris Giancarlo, head of the CFTC between 2017 and 2019. In Britain, Philip Hammond, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, joined Copper, a crypto startup, in October. The Economist notes that, worldwide, "reams of regulations are now in play," and people who know the enforcement systems intimately are in high demand, and paid accordingly. The magazine adds, "The rewards for walking through the revolving doors are only going up.

Regulators struggle to determine oversight approach and Crypto CEOs of course already lobbying on the side of less regulation.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has listed a bill for the upcoming Parliament session that reportedly seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies with certain exceptions in India and to create a centrally controlled cryptocurrency under the control of the national bank.

Realistic humanoid facial expression and body movement from Engineered Arts in the UK. Ameca will be at CES 2022.

Redefining robots. Scientists say they've witnessed a never-before-seen type of replication in organic robots created in the lab using frog cells. Among other things, the findings could have implications for regenerative medicine.

The Treasury Department is moving to rein in a new class of cryptocurrencies whose popularity as a payment method is skyrocketing, citing a need to head off potential risks to consumers and to the financial system. So-called stablecoins - payment tokens that differ from other cryptocurrencies because their value is often pegged to the U.S. dollar - are drawing scrutiny because they have already been used in trillions of dollars' worth of lightning-fast transactions and could transform the way Americans pay for things. Treasury and other regulators want to ensure that they're reliable, even during financial panics.

As crypto evolves into a mainstream consumer product, complaints to the CFPB about the sector have already exceeded 1,700 this year, compared with 982 all of last year and 488 in 2019. With the industry's growth have come calls for regulatory checks. Many in the regulatory community believe the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is gearing up to launch enforcement actions against cryptocurrency firms. But that could revive a debate about the limits of CFPB power.

U.S. cryptocurrency markets and related platforms will "not end well" if they stay outside the purview of regulators, according to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.

New York's attorney general ordered two unlicensed cryptocurrency lending platforms to cease operating in the state as authorities continue to clamp down on crypto firms over fraud concerns.

The new National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) that the Department of Justice is forming will focus on investigating and prosecuting criminal misuse of cryptocurrency, but DOJ's history of working with federal regulatory agencies on high-profile civil enforcement actions shows that crypto businesses willfully violating regulatory requirements should be wary of the NCET as well.

As top federal officials like Janet Yellen, Jerome Powell and Gary Gensler debate how cryptocurrency and the companies involved in it should be regulated, and members of Congress consider 18 bills tied to digital assets, states are quietly enacting their own laws and issuing charters for crypto companies.

In neuromorphic hardware, calculations are performed by lots of small units that communicate with each other through bursts of activity called spikes and adjust their behavior based on the spikes they receive from others, roughly similar to the biological neural behavior in the brain.

The price of the ETF won't be pegged to bitcoin There will be additional costs attached Any exposure to crypto is risky

Will the metaverse be decentralized or will it be dominated by players like Meta/Facebook?

This week I'm talking to Dr. Amy Cuddy, social psychologist, best-selling author, award-winning Harvard lecturer, and expert on the behavioral science of power, presence, and prejudice. We discuss her recently published Washington Post article, "Why This Stage of the Pandemic Makes Us So Anxious," and how working through this collective, constant pandemic flux affects us as individuals and as leaders. We also talk about developing a flux mindset and how important it is to facilitate a sense of agency as we make decisions about how we return to work.

After a crackdown on Binance and other cryptocurrency firms, regulators are now turning attention to the world of decentralized finance. Decentralized finance, or "DeFi," lets users take part in traditional financial activities like lending but with no middle men involved. Regulators are concerned about DeFi services marketing themselves as decentralized when that may not be the case.

Child care costs are unrealistic even for middle-income earners