Martin, real name Enrique José Martin Morales, then proceeded to call the petitioner frequently and was also seen loitering near his residence at least three times, the newspaper quoted the document as saying. The petitioner “fears for his safety,” the document alleges, per El Vocero.
A hearing has been scheduled for July 21.
After the restraining order was filed, Martin’s lawyer said in a statement, “The allegations against Ricky Martin that lead to a protection order are completely false and fabricated. We are very confident that when the true facts come out in this matter our client Ricky Martin will be fully vindicated.”
In addition, Martin himself posted on social media at the time, “The protection order entered against me is based on completely false allegations, so I will respond through the judicial process with the facts and the dignity that characterize me. Because it is an ongoing legal matter, I cannot make detailed statements at this time. I am grateful for the countless messages of solidarity, and I receive them with all my heart.”
In late 2012, the best-selling author and journalist Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) was at a dinner party in Berkeley, Calif. Among his fellow diners was a prominent developmental psychiatrist, in her 60s, who spoke at some length about a recent LSD trip. This pricked up Pollan’s ears.
His first thought, as he shared during a recent video interview: “People like that are taking LSD?” The psychiatrist went on to explain that the drug gave her a better understanding of the way children think.
“Her hypothesis,” Pollan said, “was that the effects of psychedelics, LSD in that case, give us a taste of what child consciousness would be like — this kind of 360-degree taking-in of information, not particularly focused, fascinated by everything.”
Pollan had already heard about clinical trials in which doctors were giving cancer patients psilocybin to help them deal with their fear of death. Now, he was really curious about psychedelic therapy. That curiosity became an article in The New Yorker (“The Trip Treatment,” 2015). The article became a book, “How to Change Your Mind” (2019).
And now the book has become a four-part Netflix series of the same name, which debuted Tuesday. Pollan is an executive producer (along with the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney) and the primary on-camera presence.
A thoughtful and wide-ranging look at psychedelic therapy, the series is grounded in accounts of their centuries-long sacramental use and of their uneasy history in modern society, especially in the United States. In particular, it focuses on four substances — LSD, mescaline, MDMA (known as Ecstasy or Molly) and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) — and the ways in which they are being used to treat patients with maladies including post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
One of those patients is Lori Tipton, a New Orleans woman who endured a Job-like run of ill fortune. Her brother died of an overdose. Her mother murdered two people and then killed herself; Tipton found the bodies. She was raped by an acquaintance. Not surprisingly, she developed severe PTSD.
“I really felt like I couldn’t access joy in my life, even when it was right in front of me,” Tipton said in a video interview. She thought about suicide constantly. When she heard about a clinical trial for MDMA, held in 2018, she figured she had nothing to lose.
I can relate to some of this. A few years back I was diagnosed with PTSD and clinical depression after my life partner, Kate, was diagnosed with a terminal brain disease and died about 18 months later, in 2020. I didn’t have much interest in living. Running out of options, my doctor prescribed me a weekly regimen of esketamine, which is a close relative of the dissociative hallucinogen ketamine.
Like many, I had experimented with hallucinogens, including mushrooms and LSD, in my youth. I was partying, not seeking. I never planned to go back there. But the treatment started helping me almost immediately.
Pollan, 67, never did the youthful experimenting. Known primarily as an expert in plants and healthy eating — his latest book, “This is Your Mind on Plants,” comes out in paperback on July 19 — he came to psychedelics late in life. He was too young to indulge in the Summer of Love, and by the 1970s, the war on drugs and anti-LSD hysteria had quashed what had been a fertile period of scientific research in the ’50s.
But once he began studying, and experimenting, he became a convert rather quickly.
“At this age sometimes you need to be shaken out of your grooves,” he says in the Netflix series. “We have to think about these substances in a very cleareyed way and throw out the inherited thinking about it and ask, ‘What is this good for?’”
Tall and bald with the build of a swimmer, Pollan is no Timothy Leary — he isn’t asking anyone to drop out — and the medical trials described and shown in “How to Change Your Mind” shouldn’t be confused with Ken Kesey’s freewheeling acid tests of the ’60s. Back then, when psychedelics left the laboratory and entered the counterculture, the power structure freaked out.
“Kids were going to communes, and American boys were refusing to go to war,” Pollan said. “President Nixon certainly believed that LSD was responsible for a lot of this, and he may well have been right. It was a very disruptive force in society, and that is why I think the media after 1965 turns against it after being incredibly enthusiastic before 1965.”
Junk science spread nonsense about LSD scrambling chromosomes. The drug was made illegal in California in 1966, and then nationally in 1970. Researchers weren’t forbidden from continuing their work with psychedelics, but the stigma made such work very rare until it re-emerged in the 2000s. Today, clinical trials are approved by the F.D.A. and D.E.A.
“From the early ’70s to the early ’90s, there was no approved psychedelic research in human subjects,” said Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at U.C.L.A., who has written widely about psychedelic therapy. “Since then, research development has re-emerged and slowly evolved, until the last few years when professional and public interest in the topic appears to have exploded.”
Given evolving attitudes, one challenge facing the filmmakers, including the directors Alison Ellwood and Lucy Walker, was how to depict the psychedelic experience in a sophisticated way, without stumbling into the territory of a ’60s exploitation movie.
“We didn’t want to fall into the trap of using psychedelic visual tropes — wild colors, rainbow streaks, morphing images,” Ellwood wrote in an email. “We wanted to keep the visual style more personal, intimate and experiential. We wanted people watching the series who have not had their own psychedelic experiences to be able to relate to the visuals.”
One imaginative scene recreates the famous bicycle ride taken by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who first synthesized LSD in 1936 but didn’t discover its psychedelic effects until 1943 (accidentally). Feeling strange after ingesting 250 micrograms, Hofmann rode his bike during the peak of his trip. In “How to Change Your Mind,” we see the buildings around him bend and waver as he rides. The road beneath him blurs. The tombstones in a graveyard sway.
Tipton’s experience in her clinical MDMA trials was more controlled but no less profound. The results after three sessions, she said, were beyond what she could have imagined.
“As the sessions progressed, I worked with the therapists to remain embodied and fully present to my emotions as I recalled some of the most difficult experiences of my life,” Tipton said. “In doing this, I was able to find a new perspective, one that had eluded me for years. And from this place I could find empathy, forgiveness and understanding for many people in my life, but most importantly for myself.”
Her descriptions sounded familiar. In 2020, I began going to my doctor’s office once a week to ingest three nasal spray inhalers and sit for two hours, pausing only to have my blood pressure taken halfway through. I didn’t hallucinate, but I found myself conversing with Kate as if she were in the room.
I saw my grief as something separate from my being, something more akin to love than death. I didn’t identify with my pain in the same way.
It was, without question, a spiritual experience. Then, two hours later, a bit groggy but otherwise back to normal, I was ready to go home. After a few such sessions, combined with talk therapy, I started to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Esketamine is technically not a psychedelic, but it had certainly changed my mind.
It’s safe to say Pollan’s has changed, too. He recently became a co-founder of the University of California Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. A portion of his author website now serves as an informational clearinghouse for people looking to learn more. Word of his effort appears to be spreading. His book on the subject was name-checked on a recent episode of the HBO Max series “Hacks.” The Netflix series has already cracked the streamer’s Top 10 in the United States.
Bit by bit, the country’s laws are beginning to reflect evolving attitudes. Last year, Oregon voters approved a ballot initiative that directs the Oregon Health Authority to license and regulate “psilocybin products and the provision of psilocybin services.” Colorado appears likely to vote on a similar initiative this fall.
For Pollan, such efforts strike a personal nerve.
“The ego is a membrane between you and the world,” he said. “It’s defensive and it’s very useful. It gets a lot done, but it also stands between us and other things and gives us this subject-object duality. When the ego is gone, there is nothing between you and the world.”
“Getting perspective on your ego is something you work at in psychotherapy,” he added. “But this happened for me in the course of an afternoon, and that’s what’s remarkable about it.”
The alert comes just hours after UN humanitarians said they were ready to provide all the assistance they could to communities caught in the crossfire of gang violence, once they can gain safe access to those impacted.
A recent upsurge in fighting between rival gangs in the Cité Soleil neighbourhood of the capital, has led to the deaths of 99 people with 135 injured according to data reported by the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office (OCHA) in Haiti.
Encouraging: The Security Council has unanimously extended @BINUH_UN for a year. I urge Haiti’s leaders to heed the Council’s call for a political process leading to inclusive, transparent elections in good time. Haitians also need immediate relief from gang violence and crime.
— Rosemary A. DiCarlo (@DicarloRosemary) July 15, 2022
On Friday night, the Security Council provided a boost to UN operations in the crisis-wracked Caribbean island nation by extending the mandate of the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, for a further year, through resolution 2645.
Strengthen rights monitoring
Jeremy Laurence, Spokesperson for OHCHR, urged the authorities in Haiti to ensure fundamental rights are protected, and “placed at the front and centre of their responses to the crisis. The fight against impunity and sexual violence, along with the strengthening of human rights monitoring and reporting, must remain a priority”, he said.
“We have so far documented, from January to the end of June, 934 killings, 684 injuries and 680 kidnappings across the capital. Over a five-day period, from 8-12 July, at least 234 more people were killed or injured in gang-related violence in the Cité Soleil area of the city.”
“Most of the victims were not directly involved in gangs and were directly targeted by gang elements. We have also received new reports of sexual violence.”
OHCHR is calling on gang members and those supporting the violence, to immediately cease their activities, which are impacting many of the most vulnerable citizens, living in extreme poverty.
“The heavily armed gangs are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their actions, conducting simultaneous, coordinated and organized attacks in different areas”, said Mr. Laurence. “The right to life is the supreme right under international human rights law, and the State has a duty to protect that right, including from threats emanating from private individuals and entities.”
Denied food and water
Some gangs are resorting to extreme tactics to control locals such as denying them access to drinking water and food. This has simply made malnutrition worse.
The violence has also exacerbated fuel shortages, as the main fuel depot is located in Cité Soleil, and transportation costs have risen sharply.
For months now, the desperate socioeconomic situation coupled with political gridlock, has sparked street protests, adding to the deteriorating security situation, and many residents and businesses have shuttered themselves indoors out of fear, said OHCHR.
OHCHR welcomed the extension of BINUH’s mandate, “which will further buoy the collective international response to the human rights crisis unfolding in the country and assist with flow of humanitarian assistance.”
Daily suffering
In less than one week and according to a report released by OCHA, at least 2,500 people have also been forced to flee their homes because of the fighting. Twenty people have been reported missing. Every day, with continued fighting, more people will suffer and be forced to flee, often risking their lives, the agency said in a news release on Friday.
Cité Soleil, with a population of around 300,000 is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the Haitian capital, where gangs have gained more influence over the past several years.
OCHA said that “a large proportion of the population are trapped in Cité Soleil as gangs attempt to exert their influence,” adding that “the people in some areas have not had access to food or water since July 8.” One child in five is suffering from severe malnutrition “a rate well above emergency thresholds.”
“As people continue to suffer in Cité Soleil, insecurity is preventing humanitarian agencies from entering the area,” said Ulrika Richardson, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, the organization’s most senior humanitarian official in Haiti.
“The UN is ready to provide assistance to the many children, women and men caught in the crossfire of gang violence as soon as humanitarian partners can gain access to the affected zones.”
Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call.
The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president. Mr. Olson later conceded some of them could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and could even invite comparisons with Watergate. The plan included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order,” describing their discussions.
“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”
The document highlights the previously unreported role of Mr. Olson in advising Mr. Trump as the president was increasingly turning to extreme, far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or unlawful, in an effort to cling to power.
The involvement of a person like Mr. Olson, who now represents the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, underscores how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside of official channels had broken down within weeks after the 2020 election.
That left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people who promoted conspiracy theories or questionable legal ideas, telling him not only what he wanted to hear, but also that they — not the public servants advising him — were the only ones he could trust.
“In our long conversation earlier this week, I could hear the shameful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally — but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.”
It was not immediately clear how Mr. Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, arrived in Mr. Trump’s orbit. Mr. Olson previously worked with Republican super PACs and promoted a conspiracy theory that Vice President Kamala Harris is not eligible to be vice president, falsely claiming she is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. He and his firm have long represented Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group.
His memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever held in the Trump White House, during which three of the president’s White House advisers vied — at one point almost physically — with outside actors to influence Mr. Trump. In that meeting, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
But the document suggests that, even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.
And, the memo indicates that Mr. Trump was acting on the outside advice. At one point, it refers to the president urging Mr. Olson to contact the acting attorney general directly about having the Justice Department lend its credibility to Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to invalidate the election results.
A person familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said the committee was aware that Mr. Olson was in contact with Mr. Trump and that it was exploring Mr. Olson’s role in pushing forward plans to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Olson did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about the former president’s relationship with Mr. Olson.
According to his memo, Mr. Olson was discussing with Mr. Trump the notion that the Justice Department would intercede directly with the Supreme Court to reverse his electoral defeat.
The court had declined to hear a case that allies of Mr. Trump in Texas had brought challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing.
Mr. Olson told Mr. Trump that he believed the Justice Department “will do nothing except continue to run out the clock.”
“While time to act was short when we spoke on Christmas Day, time is about to run out,” he wrote.
It was unclear which White House lawyer Mr. Olson referred to in his memo. At the time, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone; Patrick Philbin, his deputy; and another lawyer who did not work for the counsel’s office, Eric Herschmann, were working in tandem to push back on some of the more outlandish ideas being recommended. Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Herschmann had taken lead roles during the Dec. 18 White House meeting in countering Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn.
“The feeling I had was that not just was he not offering you any options, but that he was there to make certain you did not consider any,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to the unnamed White House lawyer. “But you do have options.”
Among those whom Mr. Olson mentioned as speaking to Mr. Trump about the Justice Department getting involved was Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. White House officials believed at the time that Mr. Martin was brought in through Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff.
Mr. Olson urged Mr. Trump to hire another lawyer, Kurt Olsen, who had worked on the Texas case.
“As I emailed Molly Saturday morning,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to Mr. Trump’s assistant, “we began acting on your question about our team revising the complaint filed by Texas into what could be the first draft of a complaint filed by the United States. The lawyers with whom I have been working took on that task, and we now have a draft that could be presented to you to review, and by you to Mr. Rosen to edit, improve and file.”
That was a reference to Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general. In his memo, Mr. Olson recounted that during their discussions, he had told Mr. Trump that he had followed the president’s suggestion to call Mr. Rosen a few hours earlier requesting that the acting attorney general file a lawsuit to try to block Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory.
Mr. Trump, based on Mr. Olson’s memo, was aware that Mr. Rosen was slow-walking his request. The suit was never filed; Mr. Rosen testified last month before the Jan. 6 committee that doing so was out of the bounds of the law.
A spokesman for Mr. Rosen said that he did not recall speaking with Mr. Olson, but that it was accurate that the acting attorney general was against filing any lawsuits to interfere with the election results.
At the time of the memo, Mr. Trump had decamped to Mar-a-Lago, but Mr. Olson encouraged him to return to Washington to fight the election results from his perch in the White House. Mr. Trump did so shortly thereafter, working through the holidays on challenging the election results.
“I do not believe you can do what is required to be done from Florida,” Mr. Olson wrote to the president. “And, it would send a message about your commitment to the task, to leave Mar-a-Lago to take charge at the White House. I urge you to return as soon as it can be arranged.”
Mr. Olson also encouraged Mr. Trump to fire or reassign Mr. Rosen should he not go along with the plans to use the Justice Department to challenge the election in court, though Mr. Olson acknowledged such action would draw negative news coverage.
“This step will likely bring on a thousand stories making an analogy to ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ in 1973 when President Nixon ordered AG Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox as a special counsel investigating Watergate,” he wrote.
Mr. Olson said a new White House counsel should take steps to ensure a “fair election count,” though he conceded that would be seen by many as “martial law.”
He filed suit against the Jan. 6 committee seeking to block the panel’s subpoena to Verizon for Mr. Lindell’s call logs. The suit, which Mr. Olson filed along with other lawyers, argued that Mr. Lindell’s communications about his objections to the 2020 election were protected speech, in part because they were tied to his religious beliefs.
“Mr. Lindell has widely publicized that his 2020 election integrity activities are motivated, in part, by his strongly held religious beliefs,” the lawyers wrote in Mr. Lindell’s suit.
The Atlanta Hawks today announced the team has signed Tyrese Martin, the No. 51 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, to a multi-year contract. Per team policy, the terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Through four NBA 2K23 Summer League contests for the Hawks, Martin is averaging 12.0 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 1.8 assists in 24.2 minutes (.475 FG%). He poured in a game-high 21 points on 9-14 shooting from the floor in Atlanta’s 95-88 win over Miami on July 12.
Atlanta acquired Martin’s draft rights, along with cash considerations, from the Golden State Warriors in exchange for the draft rights to Ryan Rollins, the No. 44 pick, on June 23.
Martin saw action in 29 games (all starts) for UConn during the 2021-22 campaign, tallying 13.6 points, 7.5 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 32.1 minutes (.449 FG%, .430 3FG%, .689 FT%).
Sigh, this one stung. Don’t you just hate it when the winning couple is one of the first ones to split? After getting together just weeks before the finale, with Greg being one of the last Islanders to join the villa, the fan-favorite pair managed to win season five. But they broke up just weeks later.
After some mild controversy and back and forth between the couple over how exactly the split went down (apparently Greg, a rugby player based in Ireland, ended it via text), Amber said on Loose Women, “I think the careers and the distance was always a factor. It was always something that we knew about, so I don’t know what changed. I kind of wanted to make it work, but it is what it is, really.”
As for Greg, he defended himself, saying on RTE’s The Late Late Show, “She lives in the UK, every brand wants to work with her, every event wants her there, of course, she deserves all of it and I decided to come back to Ireland and do my thing here.”
The pair thus preserved the majority of its comeback from the week’s lows, these following shock U.S. inflation data and sparking weakness across risk assets.
Now, out-of-hours trading meant that the classic scenario of breakouts and fakeouts on thin liquidity could accompany Bitcoin into the weekly close.
Eyeing order book data from Binance, the largest global exchange by volume, showed key resistance clustered around the $22,000 mark should bulls attempt to nudge the market higher.
For monitoring resource Material Indicators, however, there was a distinct possibility that Bitcoin could even challenge its 200-week moving average (WMA), a key bear market trendline lost as support over a month ago.
“It’s easy to become bullish on BTC on a green day & bearish on a red day,” popular trader and analyst Rekt Capital added in separate comments.
“But $BTC is still just ranging between $19K-$22K. This will continue until either of these levels is broken Intra-range moves aren’t substantial enough to dictate changes in sentiment.”
As Cointelegraph reported, that sentiment achieved an unenviable record this week, as crypto markets capped their longest-ever period in a state of “extreme fear” as per the Crypto Fear & Greed Index.
Miners feel the pinch
Monitoring miner behavior, meanwhile, one analyst at on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant sounded the alarm over a potential sell-off.
14,000 BTC was transferred from miner wallets on July 15, Binh Dang showed, and while not specifically indicative of selling, the phenomenon was worth tracking.
“At this point, we can not be sure that this distribution is positive or negative, so we should be careful to watch out for the next few days,” he summarized in one of CryptoQuant’s Quicktake market updates.
Separately, a new indicator, the Energy Gravity Model, covering Bitcoin production costs showed that miners were likely able to pay comparatively low amounts for energy in order to mine at a profit at current BTC spot prices.
“Bitcoin Energy Gravity is the maximum USD price ($ / kWh) modern mining rigs are willing to buy electricity at to make a profit. ie: breakeven electricity rate,” the model’s creator, BlockWare analyst Joe Burnett, explained in a Twitter thread.
“From this maximum bid price, it is possible to get a better understanding of when the price of Bitcoin is overextended and when the price may be approaching a bottom.”
Bitcoin Energy Gravity Model. Source: Joe Burnett/ Twitter
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
The price of Lido DAO (LDO) dropped heavily a day after its key momentum oscillator crossed into “overbought” territory.
LDO undergoes overbought correction
LDO’s price plunged to as low as $1.04 on July 16 from $1.32 on July 15, amounting to a 20%-plus decline. The token’s sharp downside move took its cues from multiple bearish technical indicators, including its daily relative strength index (RSI) and its 100-day exponential moving average (EMA).
LDO’s latest plunge came after it rallied over 150% in just two weeks, a move that simultaneously pushed its daily RSI above 70 on July 15, thus turning it overbought.
An overbought RSI signals that the rally may be nearing an end while readying for a short-term pullback.
Meanwhile, more downside cues for the Lido DAO token came from its 100-day EMA (the black wave in the chart above) near $1.30, which capped LDO from extending its 150% price rally.
LDO/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView
In its initial stages, the price action looked similar to LDO’s correction in April 2022, after its RSI crossed above 70 for the first time in history. Notably, the Lido DAO token had undergone a 90%-plus price decline to reach $0.39, its record low, by mid-June 2022.
That raises LDO’s potential to repeat the April-June 2022 correction, albeit with no exact bottom in sight. That said, the token’s interim downside target appears near its 50-day EMA (the red wave) at $0.90, down another 20% from today’s price.
On the other hand, a break below the 50-day EMA would risk crashing LDO to around $0.75, which coincides with the 0.618 Fib line of the Fibonacci retracement graph drawn from $0.39-swing low to $1.31-swing high.
Ethereum 2.0 expected in September
On July 15, Ethereum developers confirmed that their network’s much-awaited transition to proof-of-stake from proof-of-work, dubbed “the Merge” or “Ethereum 2.0,” would tentatively occur on September 19.
LDO surged nearly 25% on the day of the announcement due to its close ties to Ethereum.
In particular, LDO serves as a governance token at Lido, a liquid staking platform that has locked over 4.13 million ETH (worth around $5 billion) into Merge’s official smart contract on behalf of its users.
Ethereum 2.0 total value staked by provider. Source: Glassnode
With Lido currently the biggest provider by total value staked, a successful Merge launch could bring more users to Lido, which, in turn, could boost demand for LDO tokens.
Therefore, a technical correction in LDO’s price could follow up with a rebound toward the 100-day EMA if the Ethereum’s plans to become a proof-of-stake chain comes punctually.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Microsoft is reportedly switching to a new development schedule for Windows. It is expected that the company is going back to its traditional three-year cycle, which could mean that the next major version might get released in 2024. This version could be Windows 12 if the company chooses to stick with its current naming trend, according to the report. Microsoft is also expected to double down on releasing new features for the current version of Windows. The company recently finalised the 22H2 update for Windows 11 which is expected to arrive sometime in September or October.
According to a report by Windows Central, Microsoft is likely to release the next major version of Windows — believed to be Windows 12 — in 2024. The company has reportedly scrapped the planned 2023 version of Windows 11, codenamed ‘Sun Valley 3’, to adopt this new schedule. Only a year ago, Microsoft had announced that it plans to release one major feature update for Windows 11. It now plans to ship major versions of Windows every three years, as per the report.
In between the major releases, Microsoft is likely planning to increase the rollout of features for the latest version of Windows. Starting with the soon-to-be-released Windows 11 version 22H2 (Sun Valley 2), it is said to introduce new features up to four-five times a year. Previously, most Microsoft development teams had to reportedly wait for the annual release to bring out new features. But now, these teams are expected to be able to unveil these features sooner. Microsoft supposedly tested this ‘Moments’ approach earlier this year when it bundled the Taskbar improvements with several other features. Now, it is expected to bring several of the new features from the purportedly scrapped ‘Sun Valley 3′ as the aforementioned ‘Moments’ update for ‘Sun Valley 2’.
There is not much known regarding the 2024 version of Windows. It is rumoured that developers have dubbed this version as the ‘Next Valley’ client. Microsoft has not officially confirmed the existence of this version.
This week on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, we discuss the Surface Pro 8, Go 3, Duo 2, and Laptop Studio — as Microsoft sets a vision for Windows 11 hardware. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
A small light of progress shines from Andorra, a tiny European country nestled between France and Spain. The country’s government, the General Council of Andorra, recently approved the Digital Assets Act, a regulatory framework for digital currencies and blockchain technology.
The act is split into two parts. The first regards the creation of digital money, or “programmable digital sovereign money,” which can be exchanged in a closed system. In effect, this would allow the Andorran state to create its own token.
The second half of the act refers to digital assets as financial instruments and intends to create an environment in which blockchain and distributed ledger technologies can be regulated. For Paul (who withheld his surname), CEO of local Bitcoin business 21Million, the new law could attract new business. He told Cointelegraph:
“The outcome they’re trying to achieve is to actually attract new businesses to locate in the country by offering some legal clarification making it easier and more transparent. They see this as a way to attract talents and entrepreneurs to the new economy.”
Note that cryptocurrencies and digital currencies are not legal tender in Andorra, and the Digital Assets Act makes no proposals surrounding means of exchange. That privilege is exclusively reserved for the preferred currency of the European Central Bank, the euro. It hasn’t stopped Paul, an avid Bitcoiner, from making the case for Bitcoin (BTC) adoption in Andorra:
I’ve been working on this one for a while but I’ve finally decided to share it ! Here’s the case I make for a bitcoin adoption in Andorra ! https://t.co/xHxl78YChO
In a blog post, Paul highlighted that Andorra could adopt a Bitcoin standard, mining Bitcoin with renewable energy, taking on Bitcoin as a reserve asset, and welcoming Bitcoin-centric companies from all around the world.
National newspaper Diari d’Andorra reported that the Digital Assets Act is a step toward “making cryptocurrencies a day-to-day reality.” From a business perspective, Paul said that the level of “crypto-friendliness” depends on the activity.
“I have a friend who runs a mining operation here — no problem —and electricity is cheap. If you do financial consulting, then the same: pretty friendly with a low tax rate. If you wanted to run an exchange, it could be a bit hard to find a bank that works with you; the government itself wouldn’t mind.”
In an interview in May, Andorran Minister of Economy and Enterprise Jordi Gallardo mentioned that blockchain was one of the top areas of investment for the tiny country. However, it is not clear if the minister referred to Bitcoin (the world’s foremost blockchain) or research into distributed ledger technologies that underpin blockchains.
There is some confusion regarding Bitcoin, blockchain and crypto in Andorra. Source: Shutterstock
Josselin Tonnellier, co-founder of StackinSat, told Cointelegraph that there is confusion regarding crypto, blockchain, nonfungible tokens and Bitcoin. StackinSat hosts a major European Bitcoin conference, Surfin’ Bitcoin, in Biarritz, France just outside Andorra where the group’s headquarters are also located.
Paul, who is a regular attendee of Surfin’ Bitcoin, confirms that in Andorra, the sentiment and confusion remain similar: “The regulator doesn’t make a differentiation between ‘crypto’ and Bitcoin. They haven’t been ‘orange-pilled’ yet.” To take the orange pill is Bitcoin parlance for when a novice to Bitcoin begins to understand the principles of the seminal cryptocurrency.
Tonnellier emphasized that awareness of digital currencies and technologies is on the rise, but there’s a risk of scams and losses without the right educational tools or frameworks in place:
“According to a recent report by KPMG, there are more French people exposed to ‘crypto’ than to the stock market […] France is known to be a hotbed of ‘shitcoinery.’”
Although there is no “shitcoin” classification chart, such coins are tokens other than Bitcoin, which, according to the latter’s proponents, are at risk of plummeting to zero. Squid Game Token was one of the most newsworthy shitcoins of 2021.
Back in Andorra, Tonnellier explained that the country is best placed to run with technologies such as Bitcoin. “Andorra is one of the few European countries outside the jurisdiction of the European Parliament.” Indeed, in many ways, it could be comparable to Switzerland on a smaller scale:
“Andorra is very attractive for entrepreneurs thanks to its low tax, but Switzerland has a great head start in promoting the development of activities around Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. This could change in the coming years thanks to this text of laws which frames Bitcoin and blockchain activities.”
At under 500 square kilometers of land, Andorra is among Europe’s smallest countries. Contrary to popular belief, Andorra is not a tax haven; the micro-state renounced banking secrecy in 2018. Nonetheless, taxes are considerably lower than in neighboring France or Spain, while financial services comprise up to 20% of the economy.
Andorra or Switzerland? Source: Kokono.com
While it’s unclear which digital assets the government intends to regulate with the Digital Assets Act, the economically motivated movement may help to diversify the Andorran economy and welcome blockchain- and crypto-based companies. For Paul, it’s a step closer to Andorra adopting Bitcoin.
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