United Nations Environment Goodwill Ambassador and actor Adrian Grenier, who starred in Netflix’s Clickbait, HBO’s Entourage and 20^th Century Fox’s The Devil Wears Prada, has joined a panel discussion about Bitcoin energy consumption and sustainability at the recently concluded CoinGeek Conference New York.

Grenier is also known as a strong environmental activist who helped launch UN’s Clean Seas campaign in 2017 and co-founded the Lonely Whale Foundation, which aims to increase awareness and educate people about the status of the globe’s oceans and marine life.

Grenier also has an impact fund called DuContra Ventures, where he is a co-founder and the chief experience officer, that is focused on four categories: the betterment of humans, investing in communities, the future of finance (where his interest in blockchain comes in), and sustainable consumer goods. The actor has also invested in Blueland, which produces plastic-free consumer cleaning products.

The presence of a renowned environmentalist at a Bitcoin event is somewhat of irony as Bitcoin has been touted by the media in the past months as unsustainable and not environmentally friendly with the massive amount of energy Bitcoin mining consumes.

“I think people that want to dismiss crypto as being unsustainable don’t fully understand the complexity of the opportunity that crypto has for society across the board. It’s not just about mining efficiency, it’s also about how it’s going to improve every industry,” Grenier said.

Grenier’s presence means that he has finally found a Green Bitcoin he can support in BSV. The BSV blockchain is the largest public blockchain that can scale unlimitedly to accommodate the data the world is generating.

“If you had a crypto technology that could actually track the exchange of goods and services within the community and keep the value very hyper-local, there’s a lot less loss. I mean, when you put your money in a centralized banking system, you’re losing a lot of money, especially with inflation and the printing of money. And suddenly, they’re stealing your little value. But when you have a hyperlocal currency, you know what’s being shared, and you keep it serving your community,” Grenier explained.

Unlike BTC that has no other utility except as a speculative investment due to its price volatility, small data blocks at only 1MB in size and low throughput at seven transactions per second (tps), a 2GB block has already been mined on the BSV blockchain and the network is preparing to increase its throughput to over 50,000 tps at transaction fees of less than a penny, rivalling the capacity of the VISA network. These numbers are what make BSV the Green Bitcoin and what make BTC simply unsustainable.

“I think it’s really going to transform media. In my business, like filmmaking [and] communications, it’s going to empower artists to have exchange directly with consumers, get commercialization out of that relationship unless chosen. Even just the social media networks. Like what’s happening with Facebook, they’re literally selling our data for profit, and we don’t see any of that money. I like to see social media networks that allow both users and content creators to have a more autonomous exchange of value,” Grenier pointed out.

As BSV continues to scale, millions and even billions of tps can be realized in the future. And with this kind of powerful technology, can usher in a fully on-chain world—improving business systems and processes and maximizing profits—much like how the Internet Protocol has created the online life people are enjoying today. This kind of benefit to mankind is what more than justifies the huge energy consumption of BSV mining.

By Adedapo Adesanya

At its virtual MacBook event on Monday, tech giant, Apple, launched the new generation AirPods which will support spatial audio, thanks to new sensors that support features like spatial audio.

The new Airpods sport a new design, closer to the AirPods Pro, but they lack the rubber in-ear tip. The case also charges magnetically using Apple’s magnetic charger MagSafe.

Apple says the third-generation AirPods have more powerful bass than previous models and that the AirPods now have six hours of battery life for listening to audio.

The new AirPods cost $179 (N102,388) and will hit the shelves next week.

Apple launched its first AirPods in 2016 and turned the wireless earphone market on its head.

Apple is the largest AirPods brand as it holds 29 per cent of the market share in the third quarter of 2020, three times that of its closest competitor, Xiaomi.

Also at the event, the company announced new chips, M1 Pro and M1 Max, for new high-end MacBook Pro laptops.

The M1 Max is a more powerful version of the M1 and M1 Pro. It has 57 billion transistors, Apple said, and a 32-core graphics processor, saying that its graphics processor compares favourably to current laptop graphics processors, especially when using less power.

Apple said the new MacBook Pro laptops are completely reimagined as they will come with Apple’s M1 Pro chip, a new processor Apple says has a 10-core processing unit that is 70 per cent faster than its current M1 chip.

The new models have an HDMI port to connect to displays and TVs, an SD card slot for photographers. It also uses a MagSafe magnetic connector, bringing back a beloved feature from older MacBooks.

Users can still charge using the USB-C ports, of which there are three, which support Thunderbolt connections.

It comes in 16-inch and 14-inch sizes with denser screens and ProMotion screens with a higher refresh rate, a feature that landed on the iPhone 13 this year. The displays are using MiniLED technology, the company said.

The new models do not have a Touch Bar touchscreen on the keyboard but have a fingerprint sensor on the power button.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 (N1.1 million). The 16-inch model starts at $2,499 (N1.4 million), representing a slight price increase from previous models.

Apple’s $99 (N56,628) smart speaker, HomePod Mini, will also be available in a variety of new colours including orange, yellow, and blue. Previously, it was only available in white and dark grey.

** FX rates were calculated at N572 per Dollar, the black market rates.

By Dipo Olowookere and Adedapo Adesanya

Fidelity Bank Plc has announced its intention to approach the international capital market again for a fresh Eurobond worth $500 million.

A notice to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited signed by the company secretary, Ezinwa Unuigboje, disclosed that the unsecured and unsubordinated notes would carry a maturity of five years and would rank parri passu with all other previous papers sold by the lender.

In the disclosure, Fidelity Bank said the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has given its approval for the transaction to go ahead as it “has no objection” to it.

The lender said it was requesting the fresh capital “for general corporate purposes, including supporting its trade finance business” and that after issuing the Eurobond, it would be listed on the Irish Stock Exchange to allow it to be traded on “its regulated market.”

Already, Fidelity Bank commenced the planned investor meetings concerning the notes on Monday, October 18, 2021, though the final decision to issue the papers is “subject to finalising the necessary transaction documentation and prevailing market conditions.”

Business Post reports that this development is coming after the Nigerian government raised $4 billion from the debt market last month. Also, another lender in the country, Access Bank Plc, which is listed on the nation’s stock exchange like Fidelity Bank, raised $500 million from the same market at 6.13 per cent. This sale was oversubscribed by investors because of the strong confidence they have in the bank.

Recall that in 2017, about this month, Fidelity Bank, a tier-two financial institution, issued $500 million Eurobond to investors.

Stocks of the company closed flat at the bourse on Monday at N2.74 each. The bank, since the assumption of office of Mrs Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe as the Chief Executive some months ago, has witnessed a rising profile in the Nigerian banking industry.

One of her ambitions is to ensure that the lender attains a tier-one status by 2025. At the moment, only five of the over 20 banks in the country are in the category and they are Zenith Bank, Access Bank, GTCO, UBA and First Bank, altogether known as ZAGUF banks.