Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified.

Two weeks ago we said that the regulatory crackdown against WallStreetBets had begun when the SEC suspended trading in pennystock Spectra Science (SCIE). Well, today we got the clearest confirmation yet that the SEC will do everything in its power to make sure that are no more Melvin Capitals and will seek to put a resolute end to the reddit bull raids when it announced that it "suspended trading in the securities of 15 companies because of questionable trading and social media activity."

After being cancelled last year, the annual culling of the underperformers is underway once again at BofA.

Following a slowdown in layoffs during the pandemic as a coterie of megabanks (including BofA and Deutsche Bank) announced plans to suspend layoffs, Wall Street's talent-churning machine is firing back up. Bank of America's Global Banking and Markets division is reportedly preparing to move ahead with layoffs now that 2020 is finally over. Last year, BofA CEO Brian Moynihan promised that BofA would hold off on any further layoffs until 2021, even as other Wall Street banks started handing out pink slips again once the fall months arrived.

The Bretton Woods conference of 1944 set the global financial system that still prevails today.

The period 1969-1971 can be regarded as the First Reset, which involved the creation of Special Drawing Rights (SDR, ticker:XDR), the devaluation of the dollar and the end of the gold standard.

For years, commentators (myself included) have discussed the next global monetary realignment, which is sometimes called The Big Reset or The Great Reset.

Now, it looks like the long-expected Great Reset is finally here.

Details vary depending on the source, but the basic idea is that the current global monetary system centered around the dollar is inherently unstable and needs to be reformed.

Solar panels. Wind turbines. Electric vehicle batteries and motors. These are just four of the things that need one or more of a group of minerals known as rare earths. Incidentally, these are also four of the things the EU is basing its future on. And it produces next to none of these critical rare earths.

Like lithium, rare earths are abundant. Deposits large enough to make economic sense, however, are only found in a limited number of areas around the world, with the largest deposits discovered so far in China. Rare earth exports are a lucrative business for Asia’s biggest economy, where it has virtually established world domination. And this domination is not good news for Europe—or the United States, for that matter.

In 2020, China mined 140,000 tons of rare earths. The United States was a distant second with an output of 38,000 tons, and Burma was third with 30,000 tons. Europe doesn’t even figure in the list of rare earth producers globally.

It really has not been a good year for Boeing. Or a good decade for that matter.

Just days after a Boeing-777 became the latest symbol of all that is wrong with the once almighty aircraft maker, when the plane's right engine exploded (with debris striking houses below it in a scene right out of Breaking Bad) and only a miracle prevented a tragedy, moments ago another Boeing-777 made an emergency landing in Russia's Sheremetyevo airport outside of Moscow, Interfax reports, adding that the plane crew requested the landing after one of left engine control channels failed

The news service doesn’t name the airline operator; but said that the plane was flying from Hong Kong to Madrid. Luckily, no injuries were reported.

Polar winds scream out of Canada in seeming revenge for Joe Biden canceling the Keystone XL pipeline.

Texas’ power grid collapsed as temperatures more likely in Sioux Falls than San Antonio roared in plunging more than 4 million people into darkness and without heat.

How can this have possibly happened in a place whose entire cultural identity revolves around producing energy?

Simple.

Texas’ deregulated energy market went green over the past decade. In the past ten years, according to the EIA, Texas retired more than 5,000 MW of coal-supplied power while spinning up more than that in windmills.

Wind produces the marginal, or last, megawatt in Texas, in this case the last 17%. Nuclear provides the first megawatt, less than 10%.

Natural Gas provides most of the megawatts.

How much energy, water and food will the "money" created out of thin air in the future buy?

Finance is often cloaked in arcane terminology and math, but the one dynamic that governs the future is actually very simple.

Here it is: all debt is borrowed against future supplies of affordable hydrocarbons (oil, coal and natural gas). Since global economic activity is ultimately dependent on a continued abundance of affordable energy, it follows that all money borrowed against future income is actually being borrowed against future supplies of affordable energy.

Many people believe that alternative "green" energy will soon replace most or all hydrocarbon energy sources, but the chart below shows why this belief is not realistic: all the "renewable" energy sources are about 3% of all energy consumed, with hydropower providing another few percent.

The Texas energy crisis has morphed from a power grid failure to a humanitarian emergency to a credit crisis as billions of dollars in power bills come due.

According to FT, electricity retailers, municipal utilities, and power generation companies were purchasing wholesale energy during the crisis when rates surged to a cap of $9,000 a megawatt-hour last week, owe a whopping $50 billion.

ERCOT, the state's grid operator, warns that some market participants have yet to post collateral to cover some of the bills as defaults begin.

Kenan Ogelman, ERCOT's vice-president of commercial operations, said market participants who buy power from them have to post collateral as a down payment on energy purchases. He said some entities have "failed to deliver it."

"Defaults are possible, and some have already happened," Ogelman warned.

Progressives are feeling shafted by Joe Biden, after the president shied away from fighting the Senate for a minimum wage hike, but launched missiles at Syria.

The Democrats’ proposed $15 national minimum wage increase cannot be included in President Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus bill, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled on Thursday. MacDonough, a Democrat who serves as a referee of sorts in the upper house, declared that the bill does not fall under budget rules, and as such cannot be passed with a simple majority, unlike the rest of the stimulus package.

Those betting on GameStop stock’s price decline, or short-sellers, lost around $1.9 billion in just two days as the Reddit crowd’s favorite “meme stock” renewed its enormous rally.

Shares of the video game retailer skyrocketed over 100 percent on Wednesday, with the enormous volatility even prompting trading halts. The sudden rally brought $664 million in mark-to-market losses for investors betting against GameStop, according to financial analytics firm S3 Partners.

The frenzied buying continued on Thursday, with GameStop stock surging as high as 84 percent in intraday trading and closing with 19 percent gains. Thursday’s intraday moves booked another $1.19 billion in losses for short-sellers, S3 Partners’ calculations show.

Racial strife in the US today is not a ‘grassroots phenomenon’ born out of exasperated relations between blacks and whites. It is a manufactured crisis being foisted upon the public at a time when populist ideas are in the air.

Ask the average person on Main Street to describe the biggest news story of 2020 and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests will probably take a close second place just behind the Covid-19 pandemic. That answer, however, is more of a reflection of the US media’s unmatched power for shaping the public narrative than an honest assessment of the real problems confronting Americans. Indeed, far more worrisome than racial tensions, and a virus with a 99.75 percent survival rate, is the colossal transfer of wealth to the golden 0.01 percent.

Boeing had been working to strengthen engine covers on the 777 for two years before the United Airlines flight last weekend where a cowling broke apart over Denver, according to a report Thursday.

The aerospace giant was working with the Federal Aviation Administration to strengthen protective engine covers following similar problems on earlier flights preceding Saturday's emergency landing, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Investigators have attributed Saturday's mid-air incident in Denver to a fan blade that broke off soon after takeoff due to metal fatigue and apparently breached the engine cowling.

Former US diplomat Chas Freeman urged Washington to focus on making “serious repairs” at home to effectively compete with China, as US President Joe Biden’s administration reviews US policy towards China amid increasingly strained relations.

Freeman is a well-known China hand who was the principal interpreter for Richard Nixon during the 1972 China trip that paved the way for normalised diplomatic relations.

In an online address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs this month he argued that the US needed to avoid defining its China policy as a fight against authoritarianism and to focus instead on renewing its competitive capacity given its “unprecedented state of domestic disarray and demoralisation”.

Having made many headlines earlier in the year with his rightly apocalyptic perspective on the pandemic, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman pocketed a tidy $2.6 billion in profits on a massive (credit) hedge he placed amid stock market complacency ahead of its March collapse.

On March 23rd, we completed the exit of our hedges generating proceeds of $2.6 billion for the Pershing Square funds ($2.1 billion for PSH), compared with premiums paid and commissions totaling $27 million, which offset the mark-to-market losses in our equity portfolio. Our hedges were in the form of purchases of credit protection on various global investment grade and high yield credit indices. Because we were able to purchase these instruments at near-all-time tight levels of credit spreads, the risk of loss from this investment was minimal at the time of purchase.

Economic crises shine a spotlight on a society’s inequities and hierarchies, as well as its commitment to support those who are most vulnerable in such grievous moments. The calamity created by Covid-19 is no exception. The economic fallout from that pandemic has tested the nation’s social safety net as never before.

Between February and May 2020, the number of unemployed workers soared more than threefold — from 6.2 million to 20.5 million. The jobless rate spiked in a similar fashion from 3.8% to 13.0%. In late March, weekly unemployment claims reached 6.9 million, obliterating the previous record of 695,000, set in October 1982. Within three months, the pandemic-produced slump proved far worse than the three-year Great Recession of 2007-2009.

Just as Cathie Wood at ARK Invest was buying the dip in Tesla earlier this week, shares of the electric car company are down again, this time due to a temporary halt in production at its California factory.

Sources told Bloomberg that workers at the Model 3 production line in Fremont said production would be down from Feb. 22 until Mar. 7. During the down period, employees would be paid between Feb. 22 and Feb. 23 and not paid for Feb. 28, March 1, 2, and 3. Many employees were advised to use vacation time during the downtime.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) office in Ogdensburg, N.Y., says it's no longer able to hold on to an overflowing amount of Canadian mail — and customers north of the border are now scrambling to make alternate arrangements.

The office recently sent an email to its Canadian customers telling them that their PO box locations "have limited capacity to hold mail, including packages, for extended periods of time."

Canadians now have until March 15 to have someone get their mail, or it will be classified as "unclaimed" and returned to the sender.

Many people in eastern Ontario use postal boxes at the Ogdensburg post office to have items delivered that are usually only available in the United States.