Continued Rise of Home Assistant Devices

 My array of devices and their use continues to rise, despite the less that 'Smartness' still in evidence.  

Transactions With Voice Assistants on Smart Home Devices Will Hit $164B in 2025: Report

 Eric Hal Schwartz    in Voicebot.ai

Smart home devices will carry out more than $164 billion worth of transactions in 2025, according to a new report from Juniper Research. That’s more than 630% growth in five years from the $22 billion expected this year, the result of more opportunity to use voice assistants to purchase items.

SEEING AND SPEAKING

The enormous spike in transactions carried out with voice assistants can be attributed to a few factors. More people owning smart displays will help boost how comfortable people are with using their voice to make purchases because they can actually see what they are going to buy and observe the process. The report suggests that reaching that number will need connections between smart speakers and smart displays in case the purchase begins as an audio search before the user decides to take a look at the visual and confirm the purchase. Another major driver to voice commerce at home will be smart TVs, for similar reasons. Juniper predicts that more than a fifth of the 2025 value, almost $33 billion, will flow through smart televisions. In comparison, less than 1% of transactions will happen via connected appliances. That’s not surprising as any such appliance like a refrigerator would need to have all of the features of a smart speaker or display to compete with a smart TV.   .... " 

Tracking the Movement of Cryptocurrency

Quite an extensive look at the process and how it must be adapted to make sure monetary regulations are enforced.  And how will this further be be enforced under rules like GDPR and other standards?  Implications for the enforcement of smart contracts?

Inside the Standards Race for Implementing FATF’s  (Financial Activity Task Force) Travel Rule   By Ian Allison in Coindesk

The Takeaway:
- Crypto businesses are figuring out how to comply with the Financial Action Task Force’s “Travel Rule,” where all crypto transactions above a certain amount must be accompanied by identifying information.
- Competing visions for the technical implementation have emerged, though there appears to be general agreement on the need for messaging standards.
- Legal and operational issues will be as challenging as putting technical solutions in place.
- The FATF is set to kick the tires of a range of proposed tech solutions in June 2020.

Imagine SWIFT’s interbank messaging system but for crypto.

Hardcore blockchain libertarians would probably rather not. But firms that deal in cryptocurrency have been asked to abide by the so-called “Travel Rule,” and the clock is ticking.

Although it goes against the grain to shoehorn an identity layer onto a technology specifically designed to be pseudonymous, firms have no choice if they want to abide by the law. The shape and form this will take is something the industry must agree on, and fast.

In June 2019, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global anti-money laundering (AML) watchdog, updated its guidance to explicitly state that virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, must share sender (originator) and receiver (beneficiary) information in cryptocurrency transactions above a certain threshold.  .... "