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Emerging Digital Asset Trends in Africa: A Closer Look | IDOs News
Leading industry experts are discussing the growing adoption of cryptocurrencies throughout Africa. From the drivers behind it to the opportunities that asset tokenization can bring, various trends are shaping the digital asset landscape in the region, according to Ripple (XRP).
More Investors Jump into Digital Assets
Retail participation in cryptocurrency markets is soaring exponentially across Africa. Major sub-custodians estimate that roughly 8.5% of Kenya’s population currently own cryptocurrencies, as do 10% of all South Africans—approximately 5.8 million people. Meanwhile, a 2022 report by crypto exchange KuCoin reveals that 33.4 million people in Nigeria, corresponding to roughly 35% of the population aged between 18 and 60, either own cryptocurrencies or have traded them in the previous six months.
In contrast to cryptocurrencies, inflows into tokenized assets have been somewhat muted. However, experts believe these financial instruments could bring major benefits to investors in Africa. Tokenization allows assets to become more accessible to a wider range of participants, including those in frontier or emerging African markets.
“We recently saw BlackRock launch a tokenized money market fund, lowering the barrier to entry for investors,” said Maximilian Ruf, Director of Global Client Solutions at Ripple. Within a week of its debut, BlackRock’s tokenized fund had already attracted $240 million.
Cryptocurrencies Show No Sign of Slowing Down
Cryptocurrencies are being used extensively as a risk mitigation tool. As cryptocurrency price movements are broadly uncorrelated with those of equities and bonds, these assets have become a safe haven for many in Africa and elsewhere.
“Some, including BlackRock, have said that Bitcoin could be an effective hedge against inflation risk. Bitcoin could potentially complement gold as a store of value,” Ruf continued.
There are other reasons for these inflows beyond returns and hedging, particularly in Africa. A lack of liquidity in certain African equity and fixed-income markets is pushing many towards alternatives, including cryptocurrencies. The practical benefits of holding cryptocurrencies are also more obvious in Africa than in developed markets.
Regulators in Africa Go on the Front Foot
The rollout of crypto and digital asset regulation is helping to accelerate flows, especially from institutions, into cryptocurrencies. A handful of African markets are making significant headway in regulation.
“Having confirmed that crypto assets such as cryptocurrencies are financial products and subject to regulations aimed at protecting customers and preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) recently approved licenses for 75 Crypto Asset Service Providers (CASP), including the likes of Luno and VALR,” said Bradley Johnson, Custody Sales Director for Africa at Ripple.
Mauritius is also at the forefront of digital asset regulation. The country’s Virtual Assets and Initial Token Offering Act (VAITOS) came into play in February 2022, creating a regulatory framework for digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, and virtual asset service providers.
Meanwhile, other countries in the region, including Kenya, are in the early stages of developing cryptocurrency regulation. As countries increasingly introduce constructive regulations, institutions historically risk-averse about the asset class may become more comfortable.
Custody Drives the Institutional Inflows
Institutions are upping their digital asset game thanks to more enterprise-grade service providers and global digital asset custodians operating in the market today.
“Custody is the foundation of everything. When you speak to institutions about their conditions for entering the digital asset market, the first thing they want is a robust custody network,” explained Johnson.
High-profile examples include Societe Generale FORGE, the first and only bank in France to obtain a full Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) license, and HSBC, which announced plans to develop an institutional custody solution for tokenized securities.
Technology Providers are Shaping Digital Asset Trading
Technology providers play an instrumental role in facilitating the institutional adoption of blockchain and crypto technology.
Although some banks may choose to build their digital asset technology stacks in-house, others leverage the expertise of external digital asset custody providers like Ripple. Ripple’s crypto custody solution is used by some of the world’s largest global custodians to establish digital asset custody platforms and provide necessary tokenization infrastructure.
“Through Ripple, institutional investors can benefit from the company’s payment capabilities, its big network of liquidity, and sizable balance sheet,” said Johnson.
For more regional insights and digital asset trends shaping the finance industry, download the latest Trends in Regional Payments eBook from Ripple.
Image source: Shutterstock
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Advantages of Mobile Apps in Gambling: The Example of Pin Up App | IDOs News
By Terry Ashton, updated August 31, 2024
Online gambling is going mobile — over 50% of players are already playing casino games on their mobile devices, and their number is expected to grow further. But does a mobile app have actual advantages over browser-based play? We decided to do more profound research by accessing and trying gambling on a desktop browser, mobile browser, and the app. That allowed us to distinguish casino mobile applications’ key benefits and drawbacks. If you’re considering using one, just keep reading — we will share some helpful insights below.
Benefits of Mobile Play at Pin Up Casino
The rise of online gambling happens for multiple reasons, including the following ones:
- Ultimate accessibility. You can access the app anywhere, even on the go. You don’t need to take additional actions — the casino opens with just one click.
- Lower Internet requirements, offline play. If you play for fun, you can do it even without an Internet connection. If you prefer to play real money, the requirements for an Internet connection will still be much lower because most data is already downloaded to your device.
- Push notifications. You can immediately learn about the new top promotions and the hottest games without checking your email.
- Special bonuses. Sometimes, special bonuses are granted to mobile players. Some casinos may add them occasionally to encourage players to play on apps.
- The same game selection. If a casino is modern and cooperates with top providers, all games will be compatible with mobile devices. For instance, if you play at Pin Up casino online, you can access the same collection of games. That goes not only for slots but also for live games, table games, etc.
- Higher security standards. The app is protected even better than the site. Data is encrypted, and the chance that anyone will access your account is close to zero.
Registration also goes smoothly. Once you sign up on the browser or app, you can access the platform with just one click by entering your Pin Up login and password.
Considering the Cons: Potential Drawbacks of Using a Pin-Up Mobile App
Nothing is perfect, and neither are casino apps. Gamblers should also consider the drawbacks, and the most common ones are as follows:
- Installing software is a must. You need to install the software on your phone. It’s safe if it’s the official casino site and a good product. However, clicking on the wrong link and downloading the wrong APK file may result in problems.
- Battery drain and storage space. It’s no secret that charging the phone all the time is annoying, and innovative slots with top graphics may drain your battery quickly. Also, though most apps don’t take much space (in the case of Pin Up, it’s just about 100 Mb), they still require more effort to manage it.
- Compatibility requirements. Any app will have technical requirements, and most aren’t compatible with old mobile devices and tablets. Also, you’ll need to install updates quite regularly.
- Smaller screen. This is a disadvantage for those who prefer playing on larger screens, particularly those who prefer live dealer games.
Do the pros outweigh the cons for you? If yes, the mobile app will boost your experience. If not, browser play may be a better option.
Final Thoughts: The App vs. Browser Play at Pin-Up Casino
Technology is shaping the industry. Nowadays, there’s no such significant difference between playing on a mobile app and a mobile or desktop browser. You get the same game selection, the same bonuses, and the same smooth experience. So, it’s a matter of taste. Choose what will work best for you and enjoy your play.
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NVIDIA Introduces Fast Inversion Technique for Real-Time Image Editing | IDOs News
NVIDIA has unveiled an innovative method called Regularized Newton-Raphson Inversion (RNRI) aimed at enhancing real-time image editing capabilities based on text prompts. This breakthrough, highlighted on the NVIDIA Technical Blog, promises to balance speed and accuracy, making it a significant advancement in the field of text-to-image diffusion models.
Understanding Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
Text-to-image diffusion models generate high-fidelity images from user-provided text prompts by mapping random samples from a high-dimensional space. These models undergo a series of denoising steps to create a representation of the corresponding image. The technology has applications beyond simple image generation, including personalized concept depiction and semantic data augmentation.
The Role of Inversion in Image Editing
Inversion involves finding a noise seed that, when processed through the denoising steps, reconstructs the original image. This process is crucial for tasks like making local changes to an image based on a text prompt while keeping other parts unchanged. Traditional inversion methods often struggle with balancing computational efficiency and accuracy.
Introducing Regularized Newton-Raphson Inversion (RNRI)
RNRI is a novel inversion technique that outperforms existing methods by offering rapid convergence, superior accuracy, reduced execution time, and improved memory efficiency. It achieves this by solving an implicit equation using the Newton-Raphson iterative method, enhanced with a regularization term to ensure the solutions are well-distributed and accurate.
Comparative Performance
Figure 2 on the NVIDIA Technical Blog compares the quality of reconstructed images using different inversion methods. RNRI shows significant improvements in PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and run time over recent methods, tested on a single NVIDIA A100 GPU. The method excels in maintaining image fidelity while adhering closely to the text prompt.
Real-World Applications and Evaluation
RNRI has been evaluated on 100 MS-COCO images, showing superior performance in both CLIP-based scores (for text prompt compliance) and LPIPS scores (for structure preservation). Figure 3 demonstrates RNRI’s capability to edit images naturally while preserving their original structure, outperforming other state-of-the-art methods.
Conclusion
The introduction of RNRI marks a significant advancement in text-to-image diffusion models, enabling real-time image editing with unprecedented accuracy and efficiency. This method holds promise for a wide range of applications, from semantic data augmentation to generating rare-concept images.
For more detailed information, visit the NVIDIA Technical Blog.
Image source: Shutterstock
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AMD Radeon PRO GPUs and ROCm Software Expand LLM Inference Capabilities | IDOs News
AMD has announced advancements in its Radeon PRO GPUs and ROCm software, enabling small enterprises to leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) like Meta’s Llama 2 and 3, including the newly released Llama 3.1, according to AMD.com.
New Capabilities for Small Enterprises
With dedicated AI accelerators and substantial on-board memory, AMD’s Radeon PRO W7900 Dual Slot GPU offers market-leading performance per dollar, making it feasible for small firms to run custom AI tools locally. This includes applications such as chatbots, technical documentation retrieval, and personalized sales pitches. The specialized Code Llama models further enable programmers to generate and optimize code for new digital products.
The latest release of AMD’s open software stack, ROCm 6.1.3, supports running AI tools on multiple Radeon PRO GPUs. This enhancement allows small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to handle larger and more complex LLMs, supporting more users simultaneously.
Expanding Use Cases for LLMs
While AI techniques are already prevalent in data analysis, computer vision, and generative design, the potential use cases for AI extend far beyond these areas. Specialized LLMs like Meta’s Code Llama enable app developers and web designers to generate working code from simple text prompts or debug existing code bases. The parent model, Llama, offers extensive applications in customer service, information retrieval, and product personalization.
Small enterprises can utilize retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to make AI models aware of their internal data, such as product documentation or customer records. This customization results in more accurate AI-generated outputs with less need for manual editing.
Local Hosting Benefits
Despite the availability of cloud-based AI services, local hosting of LLMs offers significant advantages:
- Data Security: Running AI models locally eliminates the need to upload sensitive data to the cloud, addressing major concerns about data sharing.
- Lower Latency: Local hosting reduces lag, providing instant feedback in applications like chatbots and real-time support.
- Control Over Tasks: Local deployment allows technical staff to troubleshoot and update AI tools without relying on remote service providers.
- Sandbox Environment: Local workstations can serve as sandbox environments for prototyping and testing new AI tools before full-scale deployment.
AMD’s AI Performance
For SMEs, hosting custom AI tools need not be complex or expensive. Applications like LM Studio facilitate running LLMs on standard Windows laptops and desktop systems. LM Studio is optimized to run on AMD GPUs via the HIP runtime API, leveraging the dedicated AI Accelerators in current AMD graphics cards to boost performance.
Professional GPUs like the 32GB Radeon PRO W7800 and 48GB Radeon PRO W7900 offer sufficient memory to run larger models, such as the 30-billion-parameter Llama-2-30B-Q8. ROCm 6.1.3 introduces support for multiple Radeon PRO GPUs, enabling enterprises to deploy systems with multiple GPUs to serve requests from numerous users simultaneously.
Performance tests with Llama 2 indicate that the Radeon PRO W7900 offers up to 38% higher performance-per-dollar compared to NVIDIA’s RTX 6000 Ada Generation, making it a cost-effective solution for SMEs.
With the evolving capabilities of AMD’s hardware and software, even small enterprises can now deploy and customize LLMs to enhance various business and coding tasks, avoiding the need to upload sensitive data to the cloud.
Image source: Shutterstock
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