Gadgets
Elon Musk’s Bitcoin Turnaround Pleases Some Tesla Investors
The Tesla boss’ tweets, which had helped drive some of the gains in Bitcoin (price in India) in recent months, this week triggered a 17 percent slide in the value of the cryptocurrency when he said his company’s customers would no longer be able to use bitcoin to buy its cars.
Driving the decision, Musk said, was concern over the amount of energy it takes to “mine” Bitcoin, with much of it done in China using cheap, climate-destroying thermal coal. Tesla could revisit the decision if the situation changes, he added.
Bitcoin is created when high-powered computers compete against other machines to solve complex mathematical puzzles, an energy-intensive process.
More than half a dozen investors in the electric vehicle maker contacted by Reuters said they were happy with Musk’s decision on Bitcoin.
“The energy waste should be avoided regardless of its color. And Tesla should focus on its core business. Drop the bitcoin position and move on,” said APG Asset Management Chief Investment Officer Peter Branner, a Tesla investor.
Bitcoin mining uses about the same amount of energy annually as the Netherlands did in 2019, data from the University of Cambridge and the International Energy Agency showed, generating between 22 million and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, according to a 2019 study in scientific journal Joule.
Guillaume Mascotto, head of ESG and Investment Stewardship at American Century Investments, a top-40 Tesla investor according to Refinitiv, said any move into bitcoin by a company would impact the way they were viewed.
“It would affect our ESG risk views on payment companies and other firms taking large positions in crypto especially if it contributes to ‘engineering’ their bottom-lines like we saw with Tesla,” he said.
Warning shot
A UK-based investor, who declined to be named, said Musk’s reversal showed the ability of consumer and investor discontent to push through change, raising broader recognition of the carbon footprint embedded in cryptocurrencies.
“Tesla decided to make a big statement about bitcoin in February and it did not pan out that well, so this is a warning shot to those who might be considering integrating some cryptocurrency into their strategy,” the investor said.
Several investors pointed to the need for ESG ratings agencies to do more to highlight the risks associated with cryptocurrencies.
The UK-based investor said leading agency MSCI had given Tesla a strong 9.3 score out of a maximum 10 for environmental risk and referred to the Bitcoin foray as only a minor controversy in a February report. MSCI declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
Jennifer Bishop, senior portfolio manager at UK-based Coal Pension Trustee Services, said she would also like more insight from the ratings agencies.
“What would be most helpful is ensuring use of digital currency gets picked up by the likes of MSCI and Sustainalytics in emissions intensity,” she said, referring to a measure of emissions produced per unit of revenue.
David Sneyd, vice president in the Responsible Investment team at BMO Global Asset Management, said that overall, the firm viewed bitcoin and other currencies as “net negative from an ESG standpoint”.
“As it currently stands, the positive potential of bitcoin remains unproven, but the negatives are very real and present,” he said, citing the environmental concerns as well as those over the use of the currency in financing crime.
Criminals increasingly demand payment via untraceable electronic means to avoid detection. On Friday, for instance, Bloomberg News reported Colonial Pipeline paid hackers a ransom of nearly $5 million in cryptocurrency.
For Miranda Beacham, head of ESG – Equity and Multi-Asset Group at Aegon Asset Management, which recently sold out of Tesla, accepting bitcoin raises governance risks given its speculative, volatile nature and lack of regulation.
“I think a lot of investors have picked up on the environmental side … but I personally don’t think that’s the biggest problem. I think that the governance and the risk surrounding cryptocurrency is far higher.”
“There’s a lot of shareholders that have really focused in on ‘how dare Tesla, the darling of the ESG world suddenly start dabbling in something as dirty as cryptocurrency.’ I think that’s a red herring.”
© Thomson Reuters 2021
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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