Cryptocurrencies have gone from geek heaven to serious business By April 2020 Share The old billingsgate building by the Thames is both an incongruous and yet appropriate venue for a cryptocurrency conference. Incongruous because cryptocurrencies, running on computer chips that make trillions of calculations per second, couldn’t be further removed from those squamous quickly-expiring assets that the Billingsgate fishwives used to sell there. Appropriate because many cryptos are quickly-expiring assets that are often sold and debated with the proverbial vigour and profanity of the Billingsgate fishwives. In fitting homage to its piscine heritage, one halibut was actually sold, blockchain-style, on stage at the CoinGeek conference in February. Shilling and trolling, and good old-fashioned face-to-face abuse, are very much alive and well in crypto. Crypto is in fine form, despite regularly receiving its obituary from financial grandees and government officials. One of the luminaries of crypto who attracts much of the clamour is Dr Craig S. Wright, an Australian who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous author of the white paper that 11 years ago launched the first and to date mightiest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Many people in the crypto life, who should know what they’re talking about, view Craig Wright as a fraud, and refer to him as “Faketoshi”. And it’s true that Wright isn’t good on real-world detail when he makes pronouncements. But perhaps you could put that down to traditional mad professor absent-mindedness. But here in Old Billingsgate, the crowd that has gathered are his disciples. CoinGeek, one of the companies behind Wright, has merchandise, T-shirts and mugs on sale. The event is closer to a rock concert or religious ceremony than an academic consideration of the merits of Cassandra databases versus blockchain, or investment advice. Powerful, shoulder-jiving music blares out as Jimmy Nguyen, an American lawyer with a sharp suit and tie who looks as if he works out, bounces up onto the stage in front of one the largest screens I’ve ever seen, projecting text and images of him. His elated energy could sell you a used car or salvation. Nguyen is the MC of the event and the spin doctor of BitcoinSV, the coin and the blockchain that Craig Wright is now pushing. Nguyen starts by hailing Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto and explains that Wright was inspired by a Pokemon character, Satoshi, and Tominaga Nakamoto. Nakamoto, Nguyen informs us, was a Japanese philosopher and the Japanese “version” of Adam Smith. From his work Writings of an Old Man we get a quotation: Makoto no michi — the way of truthfulness. Nyguyen points out how often the word “honest” appears in the Bitcoin white paper, because honesty is a quality greatly valued by Wright. Nakamoto (1715-1746) was certainly a Japanese philosopher, but he ruminated on the shortcomings of Shintoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. Like Wright, he infuriated many of his contemporaries. I admit I’ve only been able to research him in English, but I haven’t found a single reference to him being an economist. Makoto no michi is also a slogan you’ll find on the walls or doors of many dojos, since the martial arts are at pains to emphasise they’re not only about breaking bones. Somehow this is typical of the rhetoric that swirls around crypto and Wrightworld — not quite right. Nguyen is followed by a couple of developers who praise the power of the BitcoinSV blockchain. The SV stands for Satoshi Vision, Wright’s insistence that he is returning to the original principles of the white paper. It’s interesting that throughout the conference there is much greater emphasis on the blockchain (a distributed public ledger maintained by a peer-to-peer system of computers) rather than the cryptocurrency that runs on it. The prominence of the blockchain rather than the currency is probably to do with Wright losing the so-called “hashwar”. The original Bitcoin, now often referred to as Bitcoin Core, was getting slow and expensive years ago, and Wright and others wanted bigger blocks to boost the system. There was a “hardfork”, a split, which resulted in the creation of Bitcoin Cash in 2017. Bitcoin Cash, with bigger block sizes, seemed to be gaining ground, and performing the function of cash, but then Wright and one of his principal backers, Calvin Ayre, a billionaire who had made money in the online gambling industry, wanted even bigger blocks and engineered another “hardfork” to create BitcoinSV in 2018. The miners and the crypto exchanges mostly stuck with Bitcoin Cash and cold-shouldered Wright. It looked as if Wright had lost. But he hadn’t lost a war, just one major battle. The irony is that if all the Bitcoin jihadis had stuck together, Bitcoin would now probably be a household feature. But the schisms and confusion put off merchants and investors. However, BitcoinSV has now climbed into the top ten of cryptocurrencies, often as high as number five, usually just behind Bitcoin Cash; both, however, a long way behind the supreme ruler, Bitcoin Core. All the big football clubs started off as ventures founded and played by local enthusiasts, before they became the vast corporations draining billionaires from around the world. The original Bitcoin came out of the largely Anglo-Saxon cypherpunk movement: coders on the left and right of politics who were distrustful of, or hostile to, banks, the government and the state. Peer-to-peer electronic cash at the beginning meant individuals mining bitcoin (or epigoni like Ethereum or Monero) on a desktop or laptop, with a Rage Against The Machine poster on the bedroom wall, pulling on a joint, and getting a sense of satisfaction from “sticking it to the man”. A fervent utopian message of justice was promulgated. This wasn’t just another currency; it would uplift the unbanked, succour the poor, topple corrupt government. You ran a crypto node (one of the links that makes up a blockchain) on your computer because it made you a cornerstone in the brave new world that was being built. A “full” node also allowed you to “mine” bitcoin (a reward for being part of the blockchain, a cryptographic lottery in which greater computing power gives you a greater chance of winning) and charge fees for processing transactions. Peer-to-peer in the crypto now means billionaire-to-billionaire. The amateur, volunteer, do-it-yourself, homebrew, cottage, band of brothers, guerrilla phase is well over, although there are diehards indulging in that dream with cryptos well shy of the top ten. Now, just as in football, if your team doesn’t have a Mr Moneybags or two, you’re nowhere. There’s a lot of misleading talk in crypto. Decentralised might mean there’s no formal CEO (although Dash does own up to having one) and no headquarters with a fancy atrium and a fishtank, but each crypto has a central committee of miners and developers, although they might be hard to identify and spread around the globe. BitcoinSV has obviously got big money behind it and the ethos has changed. Steve Shadders, the chief technical officer of Wright’s company nChain, commented that if you’re not making money with your node, you shouldn’t be running one. You would have been stoned to death as a heretic for an utterance like that in the early days. The two-day conference was mostly zeal being thrown back and forth, from the zealots on stage to the zealots in the audience, and back again, a regular crossfire of zeal. However, some optimism is not entirely unwarranted. Using blockchain as a basis for a new internet is a promising idea. The data storage aspect of the SV blockchain was pushed hard — and why not? But the trouble with good tech is that consumers may simply not give a shit. Remember Betamax, MiniDisc, Super Audio CD? The question of micro-payments came up a lot since the cost of transactions with BitcoinSV is very low at the moment. And it’s fast. It could function as cash and be used to buy the much-discussed cup of coffee or a pizza. It could. But it isn’t, because almost no one is using it. At the moment. There were two sober presentations without the obligatory hallelujahs for BitcoinSV. One came from Thomas Lee, an analyst at Fundstrat Global Advisors. He made a very telling point. The good news, according to him, is that as part of global liquid assets, crypto currently only makes up 0.1 per cent. So if the big financial institutions wake up one morning and decide that it’s time to get into crypto, there will be what they like to call in those circles “parabolic” growth. Lamborghinis all round for current bag-holders. The bad news is, it’s hard to guess which cryptos will get the love. Lee listed the top ten cryptos three years ago: only four of them are still there. The City types I’ve quizzed about crypto fall into two main categories: those who view crypto as a tulip mania, or simply dangerously radioactive and untouchable (generally people in their sixties or seventies); and those (younger) who find it intriguing, but are biding their time, yet like to work the word “blockchain” into their reports to show they’re hip. Bitcoin’s extreme volatility, and that it has been pronounced dead so many times after crashes, makes it less attractive to investors, though exciting to traders. The association with the dark net, the Silk Road, drug-dealing and criminality is also off-putting, but as crypto fans delight in responding, the dollar bill was a favourite of Pablo Escobar and there isn’t a major bank in the world that hasn’t been caught up in money-laundering, mis-selling or other malfeasance. The other speaker who resisted the euphoria was Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. In a rather stiff debate with Craig Wright, Wales outlined his reservations about the utility of blockchain (sceptics often sneer at it as a “slow database”). Like others not intoxicated by the promised panacea of crypto, he realises that crypto is still missing the killer app or the bridge that will deliver crypto to the masses. If someone like Amazon adopts crypto, he said, then things would be very different. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Craig Wright is Satoshi or not. The debate is finally an academic one, like which was the first rock ’n’ roll record. Crypto is on the loose. Its death-defying resilience over 11 years has been remarkable. Bitcoin looks set to be a digital gold, which still leaves room for a proper cryptocash. BitcoinSV? Litecoin? Dash? Monero? Beam? Zcash? There are many options on the table and, in the next few years, consumers will choose whether they want crypto and which brand. Or whether they’ll just stick to their old credit card. Share Try three issues of Britain’s newest magazine for £5 As their birth rate plunges, EU countries are failing to confront reality When white American author Jeanine Cummins wrote a novel about Mexican refugees a critical firestorm erupted The leaked “Afghanistan Papers” tell a story of cover-ups at every level of America’s longest war. But can we really expect anything different? 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The average number of Bitcoin transactions per block reached an all-time high of over 2,700 transactions on Mar. 29. These figures have not been seen since the peak of the cryptocurrency market in December of 2017.Average Bitcoin transactions per block represent how many transactions are included in each 2 MB block, on average, in a given day. Assuming an average transaction occupies 570 bytes of data, then a block can contain approximately 3,500 transactions, given the 2 MB limit.Bitcoin transactions per block now at all time high. 🚀 We’re taking over. pic.twitter.com/1QELlRWWnw— Jacob Canfield 🔰 (Official Account) (@JacobCanfield) April 7, 2019On Mar. 31, 2018, the figure hit a three-year low of 830 transactions per block. Average transactions have been trending up since.Then, on Mar. 23, average Bitcoin transactions per block shot up from 1,500 to 2,700, an increase of 80 percent.The sudden increase could signal increasing bitcoin adoption, but it is more likely to stem from growing trading-related transactions. As trading volumes increased from $4.3 billion on Jan. 1 to $16.7 billion on Apr. 7th (based on CoinMarketCap data) transaction volumes followed.Moreover, the more recent uptick appears related to the sudden increase in bitcoin prices, which again impacts trading volume.The average transactions per block do not include transactions conducted over the Lightning Network. As such, the number of transactions facilitated by Bitcoin could be much higher, especially considering that the Lightning Network has also seen steady month-over-month growth.As Bitcoin blocks approach saturation, then the transaction fees per block will undoubtedly increase. A rise in fees has already been seen with average daily fees going from $0.20 to over $1.00 per transaction.Bitcoin, currently ranked #1 by market cap, is up 0.39% over the past 24 hours. BTC has a market cap of $91.2B with a 24 hour volume of $17.16B.Commitment to Transparency: The author of this article is invested and/or has an interest in one or more assets discussed in this post. CryptoSlate does not endorse any project or asset that may be mentioned or linked to in this article. Please take that into consideration when evaluating the content within this article.Disclaimer: Our writers’ opinions are solely their own and do not reflect the opinion of CryptoSlate. None of the information you read on CryptoSlate should be taken as investment advice, nor does CryptoSlate endorse any project that may be mentioned or linked to in this article. Buying and trading cryptocurrencies should be considered a high-risk activity. Please do your own due diligence before taking any action related to content within this article. Finally, CryptoSlate takes no responsibility should you lose money trading cryptocurrencies.Like what you read? Give us one like or share it to your friendsoriginal post…Sparkswap Raises $3.5 Million From Initialized, Pantera for Lightning-Powered DEXMatic Network (MTX): IEO Review and Rating Ahead of Token Sale (Binance Launchpad)5 Reasons Why China’s Proposed Ban on Bitcoin Mining Could Kill BitmainScotland: Man Jailed after Using Bitcoin to Buy Handgun on Dark WebSaudi Arabia Won’t Bow to Trump’s ‘Crude’ Jabs Until After Aramco IPOWhat Are The Top Bitcoin & Crypto Hardware Wallets?Dow Plunges After Trump Unleashes $11 Billion Tariff ThreatYin Wu is the founder of Dirt Protocol, a protocol for decentralized information curation that aims to organize the world’s data and make it freely accessible.The following is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2018 Year in Review.In 2018, the promise of a decentralized future fell apart.The most widely used dapps have a few thousand daily users and a study of 43 blockchain applications found a zero percent success rate. With so much funding and talent in the space, why do we have so little success to show?There is a broken process for building and launching blockchains applications today. Rather than working within an low-risk environment that supports iterations and learning, blockchain companies follow a playbook that stacks the odds against their success. By pre-selling a product before it is built, projects set themselves up to failure with unrealistically high user expectations on their V1.Moving forward, this approach to building creates three problems:With so little to show from 2018, we have to change how products are incubated and tested. For a better 2019, we can take lessons from how successful technology companies are built and apply them to the blockchain space.Many blockchain projects that pitched a future of decentralization just a year ago are realizing you cannot find mass market success by preaching a philosophy alone. Open-source projects as an alternative to closed, centralized networks are nothing new. It has been tried before with Diaspora vs Facebook, Mastodon vs Twitter and DuckDuckGo vs Google.The takeaway from these projects is the same: openness and decentralization only matter to developers.Blockchain applications need to go back to basics and ask the question of who is the user and what is their problem. Bitcoin created a way for darknet users to exchange funds online. Ethereum allows developers to run a script on a decentralized computer. IPFS is a way to store censorship data.No crypto-economic incentive is strong enough to overcome a missing use-case.Facebook released the newsfeed to overwhelming negative public response. Apple product launches have all been met with the same media reaction: too expensive to succeed. Netflix moved to streaming and lost over a million customers in the transition.Some of the most important product decisions that seem obvious in hindsight were controversial at the time. For crypto projects, a vocal community can be the biggest asset or biggest liability. Listen to your users but filter the feedback. Don’t give your users what they ask for; give them what they want.There is an mistaken perception in crypto that the idea is the most important part of success. So, we see teams focusing on white papers and delaying the launch for years. But what we have learned from how successful technology startups are built is that a good idea is only the beginning.Two markets with runaway success in 2018 were exchanges (e.g. Binance) and mining hardware (e.g. Bitmain). Binance went from zero to over $1 billion in revenue in under a year. ASIC mining efficiency for bitcoin has increased by over 10 times. In the same year, no decentralized application has seen mainstream success.The product development cycle for building smart contracts and decentralized networks is excessively slow because the high risks of mistakes are too high (e.g. Parity wallet hacks). Rather than launching and learning from user feedback, teams iterate in isolation and delay the valuable learnings that come from real users. Moving forward, projects should launch earlier and smaller. Test the product with a small group of users, get feedback, and iterate.Despite a 2018 with few signs of success, I am optimistic about the year ahead.As seen in the dot-com bubble and burst, bear markets are some of the best times to collect talent and build. That said, as Einstein said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”Like what you read? Give us one like or share it to your friendsoriginal post…China’s plans to ban bitcoin mining could not have come at a worse time for Bitmain. Once seemingly indomitable, Bitmain is now in a precarious phase.In the past couple of months, the bitcoin mining hardware giant has not only reported a $500 million loss after a couple of years of consistently making profits but also failed in a bid to get publically listed.Though recent leadership changes have given rise to hopes that the Bitmain ship could be steered back into the right track, reports that China is planning to ban cryptocurrency mining comes as a big blow.Here is why Bitmain’s senior management will likely spend sleepless nights for the foreseeable future:Despite a 2017 ban on cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings, China has been the world’s biggest market for bitcoin mining hardware.With the potential ban on cryptocurrency mining in the world’s second-largest economy, sales of Bitmain’s mining hardware are certain to fall. Bitmain has been diversifying lately but the bulk of its revenues still comes from selling bitcoin miners.As part of the plans of righting the ship, Bitmain was on the verge of making a serious cryptocurrency mining investment in China. With China possessing one of the cheapest electricity across the globe, this was a no-brainer.Electricity cost around the world | Source: StatistaSpecifically, Bitmain intended to put up 200,000 units of crypto mining hardware in China at a cost between $80 million and $100 million.News of the ban will, however, derail these plans and Bitmain will have to scour other locations for cheap electricity. Or cancel its expansion plans altogether.In what can only be referred to as unfortunate timing, the restructuring that Bitmain has been undergoing in the past few months have seen it reduce its global footprint as it focused on its domestic operations.This included suspending operations in Texas and by extension a $0.5 billion investment. The investment would have turned the Lone Star State facility into the largest cryptocurrency mining operation in the United States.Similarly, Bitmain also scaled back its operations in the Netherlands earlier in the year. And last year in December, Bitmain shut down a development center located in Israel.As Bitmain was awaiting the decision of its unsuccessful public listing bid, Charles Li Xiaojia, the CEO of the Hong Kong stock exchange where Bitmain was planning to list warned that consistency and sustainability were key to a successful process.‘Be Sustainable’: Hong Kong Stock Exchange CEO Scoffs at Crypto Giant Bitmain’s IPO Attempt https://t.co/1weg5JysDzNow with the threat of losing its largest market in one fell swoop, Bitmain’s chances of an IPO have been put into even more doubt. This is because the ban has only drawn attention to the uncertainty and precariousness of the business Bitmain is in.In war and in business, the enemy never sleeps. Even as Bitmain has been scaling back, its Chinese rivals have been doing the opposite.Ebang, one of Bitmain’s Chinese rivals has already announced plans to expand dramatically this year. Ebang is scheduled to manufacture over 400,000 blockchain processing units in 2019.Canaan Creative, on the other hand, has been busy looking for funding, no doubt both to finance growth and operations. Per the Securities Times, Canaan Creative recently raised several hundred million dollars.So is it all doom and gloom for Bitmain? Not really. On the plus side, this could be a good thing for the bitcoin mining giant. The ban could drive the price of bitcoin up and therefore raise interest in cryptocurrency mining. That would boost mining hardware sales. Bitmain will, however, have to fight harder in the market in the face of emboldened rivals.Like what you read? Give us one like or share it to your friendsoriginal post…SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, is laying off 10 percent of its 6,000-employee workforce. The layoffs are part of a move to streamline the business and cut costs.“SpaceX must become a leaner company,” President Gwynne Shotwell wrote in a Friday email. The news was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.This means we must part ways with some talented and hardworking members of our team. This action is taken only due to the extraordinarily difficult challenges ahead and would not otherwise be necessary.The company is providing a minimum of eight weeks’ pay and other benefits to the fired workers.Elon Musk — the billionaire founder of electric-car company Tesla — launched SpaceX in 2002 to make space travel accessible to everyday people. In addition, SpaceX’s goal is to colonize Mars.Equidate’s Robert Hilmer says SpaceX is one of the most valuable private companies in the world, with the potential to raise an “unlimited amount” of capital.“SpaceX is one of [the most] popular pre-IPO tech companies globally,” Hilmer told CNBC.Everywhere I travel around the world, investors of all types — individuals, family offices, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds or private equity — want to get into SpaceX.Meanwhile, Musk is taking the downsizing in stride.He has not commented on the layoffs, preferring instead to focus on upcoming space launches.Starship test flight rocket just finished assembly at the @SpaceX Texas launch site. This is an actual picture, not a rendering. pic.twitter.com/k1HkueoXazThe South African business mogul is more concerned that SpaceX’s newest test flight rocket has a cool, aerodynamic design.“Obv must be more pointy tho,” Musk tweeted, in reference to the tip of the rocket.Musk is an unwitting media darling who generates countless headlines. In August 2018, Musk stirred a volcanic backlash from Tesla investors after tweeting that he might take his car company private.Weeks later, the SEC sued Musk for securities fraud, claiming his errant tweet caused Tesla stock to spike 6 percent that day. Shareholders were enraged when Tesla shares abruptly tanked in the following days.The debacle forced Musk to step down as chairman in September 2018 and pay a $20 million fine to the SEC.Despite being a technophile, Elon Musk does not own crypto, as CCN reported.“I literally own zero cryptocurrency, apart from .25 BTC that a friend sent me many years ago,” Musk confessed on Twitter.In November 2017, Musk denied speculation that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. A former SpaceX intern inadvertently started the rumor with a blog post.Sahil Gupta wrote at Medium: “Satoshi is probably Elon.”Elon is a self-taught polymath. He’s repeatedly innovated across fields by reading books on a subject and applying the knowledge.It’s how he built rockets, invented the Hyperloop (which he released to the world as a paper), and could have invented Bitcoin.Musk responded by denying that he invented Bitcoin. Meanwhile, the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has never been confirmed.A group of banks in India has begun to issue warnings to customers threatening to close their accounts in the event that they are found to have performed acts involving the use of cryptocurrencies.According to a tweet published by Indian CryptoGirl, the banks that have issued the warnings indicate that they have done so in order to comply with regulations issued by the Royal Bank of India (the country’s central bank). One of the tweets shows how the RBI has compelled banks to close the accounts of any user of cryptocurrency in what seems to be a move to indirectly ban them:“As per RBI vide its circular RBI/2017-18/154 DBR.No.BP.CP 104 /08.13.102/2017-18 dated April 6, 2018, regulator has mandated Banks to close the accounts of customers who had undertaken transactions in virtual currency / Bit coins (sic) any time during the tenure of the account & that Banks shall not deal in Virtual Currencies or provide services for facilitating any person or entity in dealing with or settling virtual currencies. These services include maintaining accounts, registering, trading, settling, clearing, giving loans against virtual tokens, accepting them as collateral, opening accounts of exchanges dealing with them and transfer/receipt of money in accounts relating to purchase / sale of virtual currencies”.If a person is found to have been involved in any of the businesses mentioned in the quotation, the bank will close the account 30 days after the user has been notified. Once this period has elapsed, the user will not be able to withdraw or use their funds.“We noticed you did a transaction involving crypto, hence, we will close your account within 30 days”P.S: Glad they’re doing it for me pic.twitter.com/JIWzeU54i5— Indian CryptoGirl (@DesiCryptoHodlr) January 12, 2019Another of the tweets shows a disclaimer by a bank forcing users to accept a clause declaring that they will not carry out any type of transaction in cryptocurrencies, recognizing the right of the bank to close their accounts “without further intimation” should it be determined that they failed to comply with that stipulation:Banks in India are now saying they will now close customers’ accounts if they deal in cryptocurrencies.These legacy institutions fear what they can’t control, but people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their wealth.Long Bitcoin, Short the Bankers! pic.twitter.com/vvjniodaiLThe measure appears to be an effort by the state to avoid the use of cryptocurrencies. Although the Supreme Court of India ordered the clarification of a government stance regarding cryptocurrencies -which are not entirely illegal- there is still a regulatory void that allows situations like this to happen as the government failed to comply with the Court’s order.Finally! The crypto matter came up for hearing in court today & Supreme court has asked Govt. to file an affidavit related to the findings of the crypto committee set up by them. They’re supposed to submit this within 2 weeks. Things are getting interesting! #isupportcrypto— Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) October 25, 2018Let’s wait and watch about the situation. Crypto isn’t illegal in India currently so there’s nothing to worry about. Hoping we get a favorable outcome from the court case.— Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) October 25, 2018Donald Trump has been doing his best to wage war on the rising oil price, but the president is struggling with the fact that strong US growth is a natural boost to crude.However, there is another thorn in his side – Saudi Arabia-led OPEC, who have been keen to limit supply. Given that state-owned Aramco is gradually opening to global investors, it seems unlikely that Mohammed Bin Salman and Khalid Al-Falih will want to let oil production off the leash anytime soon.The US might be the world’s biggest individual producer, but Saudi Arabia still casts a large shadow over the bulk of the crude supply. Aramco’s recent bond sale is part of the crown prince’s efforts to gradually open up the Saudi economy. It was a tremendous success, raising around $60 billion.Due to the need for an audit to raise debt, Aramco is now officially the world’s most profitable company. The rabid demand for the bond could spur Saudi Arabia to accelerate its plans for the long-awaited Aramco IPO.While Aramco is slowly prepping for that IPO, the oil price surge couldn’t be better for the Saudis – or worse for Trump.President Trump would love for oil prices to fall to help support his agricultural voter base and juice the economy with additional economic stimulus. However, Aramco has no incentive to open the taps. Analysts rave about the raging success of the bond sale with oil above $60 a barrel. Imagine how much money Aramco would be worth in an IPO if crude prices continued to rise from here.Crude oil has steadily climbed throughout 2019. | Source: Yahoo FinanceTrump might eventually succeed in his bid to reduce the cost of oil, but Aramco will likely massage prices until an IPO date is chosen. Given that this might not be until 2021, he might be waiting a while – and might not even be in office when it happens.If President Trump intends to lower the oil price, he would be better served encouraging Saudi Arabia to move up the IPO. Until the kingdom secures the funds for Aramco’s sale, they would be crazy to do anything to dent crude. Only time will tell if Trump’s upgrades to US pipeline infrastructure will be able to keep WTI under wraps.Prices continue to soar, and it doesn’t look like OPEC will be “increasing the flow of oil” anytime soon. The fact that Trump keeps ramping up policy attacks on major oil producer Iran is just compounding his problem. Middle East disruption and the liberal flow of crude do not go hand-in-hand.Like what you read? Give us one like or share it to your friendsoriginal post… TO HELP SUPPORT AND MAINTAIN THIS WEBSITE DONATE TO THIS ADDRESS jQuery

United States bank holding corporation Capital One has won its latest blockchain-related patent, this time incorporating the technology in a content validation system. Documents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released the patent on April 2.Capital One, which last year focused its intellectual property efforts on blockchain for user authentication, now wants to use it as part of a wider network involving content providers.“A device may receive first content data from a content provider, the first content data including data identifying content,” an extract from the patent’s summary reads. The summary continues:“The device may generate second content data based on the first content data, the second content data including information that causes content validation to be performed on the content.The device may also provide the second content data to a content validation node, the content validation node being included in a content validation network implementing a blockchain network that includes executable instructions for performing content validation.”Capital One has shown interest in blockchain for several years. In 2016, the company was already looking into how to apply the technology to solve payments issues, at the time linked to health insurance.Last year, Gill Haus, Capital One’s senior vice president, retail and direct bank chief information officer, told Forbes about the ongoing bullish mood.“The benefit that we see with blockchain is that security is inherently built in,” he said. Haus continued:“You know who is contributing to that blockchain, you have an immutable record, and you can make sure that the system and the protocol assemble easily.”Within the banking sector more broadly, blockchain has also made something of a comeback this year, despite previous concerns its impact had been overhyped by the industry.Like what you read? Give us one like or share it to your friendsoriginal post…eToro survey finds millennials are leading the shift from stocks to cryptoCrypto Market Watch April.8: Market Cap Records 5-Month High At $185 Billion5 Reasons Why China’s Proposed Ban on Bitcoin Mining Could Kill BitmainCrypto Expo Asia Partners ICOWatchlist to Present Blockchain Summit in Vietnam – November 24, 2018Saudi Arabia Won’t Bow to Trump’s ‘Crude’ Jabs Until After Aramco IPOWhat Are The Top Bitcoin & Crypto Hardware Wallets?Dow Plunges After Trump Unleashes $11 Billion Tariff ThreatChina’s plans to ban bitcoin mining could not have come at a worse time for Bitmain. Once seemingly indomitable, Bitmain is now in a precarious phase.In the past couple of months, the bitcoin mining hardware giant has not only reported a $500 million loss after a couple of years of consistently making profits but also failed in a bid to get publically listed.Though recent leadership changes have given rise to hopes that the Bitmain ship could be steered back into the right track, reports that China is planning to ban cryptocurrency mining comes as a big blow.Here is why Bitmain’s senior management will likely spend sleepless nights for the foreseeable future:Despite a 2017 ban on cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings, China has been the world’s biggest market for bitcoin mining hardware.With the potential ban on cryptocurrency mining in the world’s second-largest economy, sales of Bitmain’s mining hardware are certain to fall. Bitmain has been diversifying lately but the bulk of its revenues still comes from selling bitcoin miners.As part of the plans of righting the ship, Bitmain was on the verge of making a serious cryptocurrency mining investment in China. With China possessing one of the cheapest electricity across the globe, this was a no-brainer.Electricity cost around the world | Source: StatistaSpecifically, Bitmain intended to put up 200,000 units of crypto mining hardware in China at a cost between $80 million and $100 million.News of the ban will, however, derail these plans and Bitmain will have to scour other locations for cheap electricity. Or cancel its expansion plans altogether.In what can only be referred to as unfortunate timing, the restructuring that Bitmain has been undergoing in the past few months have seen it reduce its global footprint as it focused on its domestic operations.This included suspending operations in Texas and by extension a $0.5 billion investment. The investment would have turned the Lone Star State facility into the largest cryptocurrency mining operation in the United States.Similarly, Bitmain also scaled back its operations in the Netherlands earlier in the year. And last year in December, Bitmain shut down a development center located in Israel.As Bitmain was awaiting the decision of its unsuccessful public listing bid, Charles Li Xiaojia, the CEO of the Hong Kong stock exchange where Bitmain was planning to list warned that consistency and sustainability were key to a successful process.‘Be Sustainable’: Hong Kong Stock Exchange CEO Scoffs at Crypto Giant Bitmain’s IPO Attempt https://t.co/1weg5JysDzNow with the threat of losing its largest market in one fell swoop, Bitmain’s chances of an IPO have been put into even more doubt. This is because the ban has only drawn attention to the uncertainty and precariousness of the business Bitmain is in.In war and in business, the enemy never sleeps. Even as Bitmain has been scaling back, its Chinese rivals have been doing the opposite.Ebang, one of Bitmain’s Chinese rivals has already announced plans to expand dramatically this year. Ebang is scheduled to manufacture over 400,000 blockchain processing units in 2019.Canaan Creative, on the other hand, has been busy looking for funding, no doubt both to finance growth and operations. Per the Securities Times, Canaan Creative recently raised several hundred million dollars.So is it all doom and gloom for Bitmain? Not really. On the plus side, this could be a good thing for the bitcoin mining giant. The ban could drive the price of bitcoin up and therefore raise interest in cryptocurrency mining. That would boost mining hardware sales. Bitmain will, however, have to fight harder in the market in the face of emboldened rivals.Like what you read? Give us one like or share it to your friendsoriginal post…SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, is laying off 10 percent of its 6,000-employee workforce. The layoffs are part of a move to streamline the business and cut costs.“SpaceX must become a leaner company,” President Gwynne Shotwell wrote in a Friday email. The news was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.This means we must part ways with some talented and hardworking members of our team. This action is taken only due to the extraordinarily difficult challenges ahead and would not otherwise be necessary.The company is providing a minimum of eight weeks’ pay and other benefits to the fired workers.Elon Musk — the billionaire founder of electric-car company Tesla — launched SpaceX in 2002 to make space travel accessible to everyday people. In addition, SpaceX’s goal is to colonize Mars.Equidate’s Robert Hilmer says SpaceX is one of the most valuable private companies in the world, with the potential to raise an “unlimited amount” of capital.“SpaceX is one of [the most] popular pre-IPO tech companies globally,” Hilmer told CNBC.Everywhere I travel around the world, investors of all types — individuals, family offices, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds or private equity — want to get into SpaceX.Meanwhile, Musk is taking the downsizing in stride.He has not commented on the layoffs, preferring instead to focus on upcoming space launches.Starship test flight rocket just finished assembly at the @SpaceX Texas launch site. This is an actual picture, not a rendering. pic.twitter.com/k1HkueoXazThe South African business mogul is more concerned that SpaceX’s newest test flight rocket has a cool, aerodynamic design.“Obv must be more pointy tho,” Musk tweeted, in reference to the tip of the rocket.Musk is an unwitting media darling who generates countless headlines. In August 2018, Musk stirred a volcanic backlash from Tesla investors after tweeting that he might take his car company private.Weeks later, the SEC sued Musk for securities fraud, claiming his errant tweet caused Tesla stock to spike 6 percent that day. Shareholders were enraged when Tesla shares abruptly tanked in the following days.The debacle forced Musk to step down as chairman in September 2018 and pay a $20 million fine to the SEC.Despite being a technophile, Elon Musk does not own crypto, as CCN reported.“I literally own zero cryptocurrency, apart from .25 BTC that a friend sent me many years ago,” Musk confessed on Twitter.In November 2017, Musk denied speculation that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. A former SpaceX intern inadvertently started the rumor with a blog post.Sahil Gupta wrote at Medium: “Satoshi is probably Elon.”Elon is a self-taught polymath. He’s repeatedly innovated across fields by reading books on a subject and applying the knowledge.It’s how he built rockets, invented the Hyperloop (which he released to the world as a paper), and could have invented Bitcoin.Musk responded by denying that he invented Bitcoin. Meanwhile, the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has never been confirmed.A group of banks in India has begun to issue warnings to customers threatening to close their accounts in the event that they are found to have performed acts involving the use of cryptocurrencies.According to a tweet published by Indian CryptoGirl, the banks that have issued the warnings indicate that they have done so in order to comply with regulations issued by the Royal Bank of India (the country’s central bank). One of the tweets shows how the RBI has compelled banks to close the accounts of any user of cryptocurrency in what seems to be a move to indirectly ban them:“As per RBI vide its circular RBI/2017-18/154 DBR.No.BP.CP 104 /08.13.102/2017-18 dated April 6, 2018, regulator has mandated Banks to close the accounts of customers who had undertaken transactions in virtual currency / Bit coins (sic) any time during the tenure of the account & that Banks shall not deal in Virtual Currencies or provide services for facilitating any person or entity in dealing with or settling virtual currencies. These services include maintaining accounts, registering, trading, settling, clearing, giving loans against virtual tokens, accepting them as collateral, opening accounts of exchanges dealing with them and transfer/receipt of money in accounts relating to purchase / sale of virtual currencies”.If a person is found to have been involved in any of the businesses mentioned in the quotation, the bank will close the account 30 days after the user has been notified. Once this period has elapsed, the user will not be able to withdraw or use their funds.“We noticed you did a transaction involving crypto, hence, we will close your account within 30 days”P.S: Glad they’re doing it for me pic.twitter.com/JIWzeU54i5— Indian CryptoGirl (@DesiCryptoHodlr) January 12, 2019Another of the tweets shows a disclaimer by a bank forcing users to accept a clause declaring that they will not carry out any type of transaction in cryptocurrencies, recognizing the right of the bank to close their accounts “without further intimation” should it be determined that they failed to comply with that stipulation:Banks in India are now saying they will now close customers’ accounts if they deal in cryptocurrencies.These legacy institutions fear what they can’t control, but people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their wealth.Long Bitcoin, Short the Bankers! pic.twitter.com/vvjniodaiLThe measure appears to be an effort by the state to avoid the use of cryptocurrencies. Although the Supreme Court of India ordered the clarification of a government stance regarding cryptocurrencies -which are not entirely illegal- there is still a regulatory void that allows situations like this to happen as the government failed to comply with the Court’s order.Finally! The crypto matter came up for hearing in court today & Supreme court has asked Govt. to file an affidavit related to the findings of the crypto committee set up by them. They’re supposed to submit this within 2 weeks. Things are getting interesting! #isupportcrypto— Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) October 25, 2018Let’s wait and watch about the situation. Crypto isn’t illegal in India currently so there’s nothing to worry about. Hoping we get a favorable outcome from the court case.— Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) October 25, 2018Donald Trump has been doing his best to wage war on the rising oil price, but the president is struggling with the fact that strong US growth is a natural boost to crude.However, there is another thorn in his side – Saudi Arabia-led OPEC, who have been keen to limit supply. Given that state-owned Aramco is gradually opening to global investors, it seems unlikely that Mohammed Bin Salman and Khalid Al-Falih will want to let oil production off the leash anytime soon.The US might be the world’s biggest individual producer, but Saudi Arabia still casts a large shadow over the bulk of the crude supply. Aramco’s recent bond sale is part of the crown prince’s efforts to gradually open up the Saudi economy. It was a tremendous success, raising around $60 billion.Due to the need for an audit to raise debt, Aramco is now officially the world’s most profitable company. The rabid demand for the bond could spur Saudi Arabia to accelerate its plans for the long-awaited Aramco IPO.While Aramco is slowly prepping for that IPO, the oil price surge couldn’t be better for the Saudis – or worse for Trump.President Trump would love for oil prices to fall to help support his agricultural voter base and juice the economy with additional economic stimulus. However, Aramco has no incentive to open the taps. Analysts rave about the raging success of the bond sale with oil above $60 a barrel. Imagine how much money Aramco would be worth in an IPO if crude prices continued to rise from here.Crude oil has steadily climbed throughout 2019. | Source: Yahoo FinanceTrump might eventually succeed in his bid to reduce the cost of oil, but Aramco will likely massage prices until an IPO date is chosen. Given that this might not be until 2021, he might be waiting a while – and might not even be in office when it happens.If President Trump intends to lower the oil price, he would be better served encouraging Saudi Arabia to move up the IPO. Until the kingdom secures the funds for Aramco’s sale, they would be crazy to do anything to dent crude. Only time will tell if Trump’s upgrades to US pipeline infrastructure will be able to keep WTI under wraps.Prices continue to soar, and it doesn’t look like OPEC will be “increasing the flow of oil” anytime soon. The fact that Trump keeps ramping up policy attacks on major oil producer Iran is just compounding his problem. Middle East disruption and the liberal flow of crude do not go hand-in-hand.Like what you read? Give us one like or share it to your friendsoriginal post…Unlike traditional assets, Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies are predicated on decentralization, giving their users an opportunity to “be their own bank.” While many have embraced this premise, there have been some that are wary, as a loss of a private key could result in a loss of thousands, if not millions of dollars.In fact, one early crypto investor famously lost tens of thousands of BTC, now valued in the dozens of millions of dollars, on a computer hard drive that ended up in his local landfill. But fear not, that’s where the Ledger Nano lineup, TREZOR devices, and other Bitcoin hardware wallets from industry startups come in, as they allow users to effectively fully mitigate the risk of over-the-Internet hacks. And NewsBTC is here to help you decipher which each device does, in a bid to give you, the reader, a chance to learn more about cryptocurrency security.Here are some of the industry’s best hardware wallets in no particular order.Ledger Nano SThe Nano S is the world’s foremost cryptocurrency storage device, created by French industry startup Ledger. This piece of Bitcoin-friendly hardware is so well-known that it was even featured in an episode of Showtime’s “Billions” as a plot device. Simply put, the Nano S is the “certified benchmark of crypto security,” having the most recognizable look — a USB-esque design, two physical buttons, a small screen, a streamlined appearance, and a small but functional screen. But what does the device actually do?This hardware wallet is a device that allows consumers to take control of their private keys, by securing them in an offline, “cold” container on a single device, this being the Nano S. Ledger allowsThe device, which comes in black, yellow, pink, green, blue, and transparent white, stores upwards of 1,100 cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, Litecoin, Monero. Effectively all assets in top 20, and all established Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens are supported by the Nano S. Ledger, however, does have plans to add all crypto assets it can technically support over time.The Nano S is secured through an onboard secure chip, which has stood up to harsh technical tests, disallowing hackers to either physically or electronically breach the private keys stored solely on the Nano. On the software side, the device is powered by BOLOS, a Ledger-developed operating system that further cements the security of a user’s crypto holdings. Ledger’s proprietary system has been certified by ANSSI, the French cybersecurity agency.The easy-to-use wallet is best used in tandem with Ledger Live, the startup’s desktop (and now mobile) application that allows users to view their account balances, sign transactions, and manage on-device applications. The Nano S can be used with services like the Monero core wallet, Electrum, and MyEtherWallet though, as some cryptocurrencies and blockchain functions aren’t natively supported in the Live application.Ledger’s flagship product can be ordered for the crypto or fiat equivalent of approximately $60 U.S. dollars worldwide through Ledger’s website (free shipping, duties not included), Amazon, and certain resellers. But, the device has sold for even less in flash deals and bundle packages.Ledger Nano XThe reason why the Nano S is currently selling for a hot price is due to the launch of the Ledger Nano X — the spiritual successor to the Nano S.Unlike its predecessor, the Nano X sports support for Bluetooth, thereby giving its users the opportunity to transact with Bitcoin and other digital assets on-the-go, all with your mobile device. While many have discussed the security flaws of Bluetooth, Ledger has affirmed that its wireless system will be just as secure, if not more secure than the Nano S, making this a logical upgrade.Save for aforementioned feature, a larger screen, refreshed design, updated CC EAL5+ chip, and larger storage space, the Nano X is near-identical to the S in many respects.While the Nano S is selling for bargain bin prices, the Nano X sells for $119, due to its newfangled features. Like its predecessors, it can be ordered through the official company website, Amazon, or other resellers.NewsBTC will have a full review of the device in the coming weeks — stay tuned.TREZOR OneNext up on the chopping block is TREZOR, or the TREZOR One and TREZOR Model T rather. TREZOR, or SatoshiLabs as the parent company is known, launched in 2014 as the world’s first Bitcoin hardware wallet provider, first offering the TREZOR One device, which has remained the company’s “gold standard” to this day.The One device is a traditional hardware wallet, with a monochrome small screen, two buttons for verification and navigation, and a USB port for computer or mobile phone connectivity. It ensures that attackers cannot gain access to your cryptocurrencies, as it gives users the opportunity to store their holdings offline in cold storage, rather than an online hot wallet, like Blockchain.com or Coinbase.TREZOR accomplished this security feat through a number of tried and true security measures: firmware verification, which ensures the OS used by the TREZOR is SatoshiLabs-approved; an “ultrasound hardware seal”; a write-protected bootloader, which prevents man-in-the-middle attacks, and protected key operations. All this limits the attack surface and ensures that TREZOR is operating on what it calls the “zero trust principle.”Much like competing devices, the TREZOR One, which ships in black and white variants, supports approximately 1,100 cryptocurrencies, including most assets in the top 20, like Bitcoin, Stellar Lumens, Tether, and Dash, and all ERC-20 tokens that have an established track record. The One does not, however, support the cold storage of XRP, Cardano, Monero, or Tezos at this time, presumably due to the aged architecture of the device.One is best used with what is known as the “TREZOR Bridge,” which is a communication tool for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux that connects the gap between your offline private keys on TREZOR and your Internet browser. Bridge is much like Ledger Live, in that it allows users to track their holdings and send and receive transactions, making it an all-in-one shop for TREZOR users.The device can also be used with certain mobile wallets, namely Mycelium. Mycelium, a barebones wallet solution for Bitcoin, allows users to hook up the TREZOR Ones to Android devices, thereby creating an on-the-go hardware-secured account.One sells for €69 ($77.5 U.S.) on TREZOR’s website for Bitcoin or credit card, and for similar prices on Amazon and through resellers. It is comparatively slightly more expensive than the $60 Ledger Nano S, especially considering the lack of free international shipping.TREZOR Model TJust as there’s a Ledger Nano X to the Ledger Nano S, there is a TREZOR Model T to the TREZOR One. The Model T is a refreshed take on the One, providing users with a larger, color screen, a bigger footprint, a faster USB-C connection option, and support for more cryptocurrencies than its predecessor. It supports XRP and Monero, for example, while the One does not.What makes the Model T unique is that TREZOR has expanded its capabilities beyond cryptocurrencies and blockchain, giving users the ability to manage passwords, the SSH, GPG, and U2F protocols through the hardware, providing an additional value proposition.Model T currently sells for €149 ($170 U.S.) on TREZOR’s website for Bitcoin or credit card, and for similar prices on Amazon and through resellers.KeepKeyThe KeepKey is a long-standing, Bitcoin-centric hardware wallet provider that is currently owned by ShapeShift, crypto pioneer Erik Voorhees’ startup. The firm only offers a single device — the KeepKey, and it’s rather simple but effective. The Importance Of Crypto & Bitcoin Security Featured Image from Shutterstock, Product Images Courtesy of Their Respective CompaniesLike what you read? Give us one like or share it to your friendsoriginal post… TO HELP SUPPORT AND MAINTAIN THIS WEBSITE DONATE TO THIS ADDRESS jQuery

get the latest gambling news from calvin ayre TAGs: audio interview, Blockchain, ethereum, Ryan Gittleson, Virtue Poker Lee Davy sits down with Ryan Gittleson of Virtue Poker to learn why the new P2P decentralised poker platform is about to shake the poker industry like a rag doll. *To download this audio, right click and save link as* Virtue Poker is a peer-to-peer decentralised poker platform built using Ethereum. I sound like Scotty talking to Spock on the Enterprise. It’s complicated; it’s confusing, and it scares the hell out of me. But if I have learned one thing late on in life it’s to do the very thing that frightens me. So, I sat down with Virtue Poker’s Ryan Gittleson to try and learn how to speak Vulcan. “First and foremost, what we are trying to do is bring innovative technology to an industry that has not seen that much innovation in the past ten years. “The core properties of what we are doing, building on top of the Ethereum Blockchain, include transparency and trustless asset transfer. Properties that I think will be beneficial for the poker industry as a whole.” Why are you the right team to do it? “Virtue Poker is a project out of the Venture Production Studio called Consensys. The founder of Consensys is Joe Lubin. He was a co-founder of Ethereum which is a next generation blockchain solution. He started Consensys a year and a half ago with the goal of building decentralised applications that use this new technology. We are the spoken of as the thought leaders in this space and employ a network of engineers north of 100 people spanning the globe. We are not only working on poker but a host of other products as well.”  “The easiest way to describe the benefits of a blockchain is to use poker as an example. A lot of what we are doing doesn’t even touch the blockchain. It uses what is called The Mental Poker Protocol which is an encryption scheme that allows a series of individuals at a poker table to collectively shuffle a deck of cards without a centralised server involved in the process. Every single peer and machine in this subnet are responsible for shuffling the deck of cards, so you don’t have to rely on a server located in a far off country with a random number generator. “The blockchain is used to escrow tournament buy-ins. If you, me and Bob were to play poker, we each send ten ether (a cryptocurrency) to what’s called a smart contract which can be described as a cryptographic box which only unlocks when certain criteria are met. This contract sits on the ethereum blockchain, holds all of our money and waits for the game to be played. When the game is finished, and there is a winner declared that contract executes and pays the winner directly into their digital wallet. There isn’t a deposit or withdrawal process with Virtue Poker. The way it interacts is you have the digital wallet, and essentially we are bringing the live experience online. When you go to the casino you give them cash, get your chips, and when you win you exchange your chips for cash, and that’s it. There is no delayed withdrawal process. With us, it only takes 17 seconds to cash out.”  Why is now the right time to start? “The unique property of Ethereum is this concept of smart contracts. Ethereum was released a year ago, and Ethereum is what enables this new capability to exist on Virtue Poker where you have full custody of your money. We are poised to disrupt the industry in a way the poker industry has never seen before. “People are sick of the available options that are out there. PokerStars have dominated the space for the past decade, and it’s now ripe for new entrants in our opinion.” It is ripe because of the way PokerStars have been treated their professional player base? “Absolutely, PokerStars eliminated their Supernova program. I think they are making a big mistake that a lot of companies do. They aren’t listening to their customer. At Virtue Poker our aim is to be a customer centric platform that hears their needs and wants and responds to them.” It sounds perfect so why aren’t the big online poker rooms using this technology? “It’s a new technology. Ethereum was in relative obscurity until the beginning of this year, and it caught wind largely with financial applications. I doubt it’s even on their radar yet. They may be aware of Bitcoin, but it’s the underlying technology where the innovation lies.” I recently reached out to the top online poker rooms for their thoughts on cryptocurrency and formed the opinion they don’t believe it’s something their customers wants.  “It’s funny that you bring that up. I have been doing a lot of research with poker pros, and people like Bitcoin as a mechanism for depositing and withdrawing money because of the lack of payment processing fees. There is a steep learning curve in understanding the values that a cryptocurrency and blockchain system can provide and we just need to educate people. Once they see it, they will desire it and want to use it on their platforms.” “The biggest issue is the trust issue. The industry has come a long way since the Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet scandals, but there is still a lingering perception: ‘should I trust a platform with my bankroll’, ‘is the game fair?’ These perceptions exist even independent of whether they are true or not. And that is tainted the industry and done irreparable damage, and I think a solution like this allows for fair gaming. Everyone is involved in the shuffle, and you don’t have to trust us with your money. It will innovate the whole industry.” “Initially for the first release of the platform, you will only be able to conduct wagering using cryptocurrency so most likely the currency will be ether – the token used on the Ethereum blockchain, and we will most likely have Bitcoin availability as well. It will be a niche product starting out for the cryptocurrency enthusiasts. A lot of the high stakes players will like it because you don’t have to deposit $50,000 on PokerStars and got through the player transfer process to aggregate all of that money. Part of our marketing strategy is to enlist well known online and live pro poker players and get them to play on Virtue and showcase the games on Twitch. A lot depends on where we end up getting our initial gaming license. Most likely we won’t be able to offer this service to American residents or Black Markets but that part of the strategy we are still figuring out.” What are the added complications with cryptocurrency that doesn’t exist with real money when applying for a gaming license? “Luckily the UK has been very forward thinking with their classification and understanding of online gambling platforms that use cryptocurrency. Thay have a well-established regulatory regime, but largely it’s an education process. First, we have to educate the regulators on what a blockchain is and how does the poker player use it as part of their stack. One of the cool things about the blockchain is transparency. There is a chain of activity on the blockchain recording all the results, so it will be an attractive solution for the regulators when they get their head around it.” What will customers say to their friends to recommend Virtue Poker? “This is an amazing platform. It has seamless withdrawal and deposit options. The game is smooth and has a better user interface than the stagnant interfaces that have ben out there for so many years. It’s a new cool, innovative solution for the poker industry. The industry has been stale for the last decade because the same players have dominated it. There has been no incentive to innovate instead they have taken a step backwards by the way they have alienated their customers. Getting rid of a program {Supernova} that a lot of people use to support their livelihood is not a good move, you are not listening to their wants and desires. We want to be there for the poker player. We don’t want our platform infested with bots; we want to prevent collusion, and we want a level playing field so a recreational player would feel comfortable playing on Virtue Poker.” What are you really selling here beyond your product? “Integrity. We want to bring back trust to an industry that has been rocked by scandal. We want to show that a blockchain based solution can add value to a well-established industry and show this is a beginning of a technological revolution as more and more decentralised applications come out that use Ethereum or other blockchain solutions as part of their stack.” What weakness will get in the way if you don’t address it? “The biggest thing we are up against is adaptability. This isn’t going to be a platform where you can use a debit card or a Neteller account. There will be a learning curve to use cryptocurrency to play on our platform. But luckily it’s not foreign to the industry. A lot of platforms have added Bitcoin as a deposit and withdrawal option and a lot of people in the poker community have started interacting with digital wallets and solutions in our ecosystem. The other problem is the giant elephant in the room – marketing resources. We don’t have a hundred million dollar annual budget, but we hope to overcome that obstacle by getting reputable pros to like our product, and we have already begun a lot of those conversations.” Why is cryptocurrency perfect for poker? “Payment processing is a thorn in the side of the poker industry. The restrictions and hoops you have to go through to get money on and off a site is a headache for both parties. That’s a blockchain speciality. Bitcoin was invented as digital money that can move freely around the world; instantly and at no cost. There won’t be a 5% withdrawal fees on Virtue Poker. We are eliminating that headache and cost. It will be attractive to both us as a business and our players.” What will success look like next year and in five years? “By the end of next year we want to have released our product; have people using it and getting customer feedback. We are not naive enough to think we’ll get this right first time but we want to get people interacting with our product, using cryptocurrency and understanding how blockchain works. We don’t see this as only an application for the poker industry but a tool for a wider base understanding and adaptability of Ethereum and blockchain systems as a whole. “Five years out we aim to be able to have solved the trust problem in poker and have happy customers who feel that the game has been reinvigorating, not bot infested or shark ridden.” What promises do you want to make and keep? “The first and foremost is we will always listen to their feedback. We are not out here to be another cash hungry money grabbing platform. We’re here to solve some of the problems that plague this industry, and we promise to listen to then,” views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CalvinAyre.com Becky’s Affiliated: How True Flip is pushing the blockchain iGaming platform envelope The future of online poker? Virtue Poker outline plans for token sale Phil Hellmuth jumps on the crypto train with BlitzPredict Becky’s Affiliated: How Quanta is paving the way for blockchain tech in lottery Humaniq celebrates success: First working hybrid Blockchain and 100,000-strong community The Ayre Media Group is based in Antigua in the West Indies with teams in London, Manila and Vancouver covering the global gambling industry.Along with ensuring fair coverage of the gambling industry we highlight the great work of the Calvin Ayre Foundation.

in decision making and inspire action, she earns a seat at the table wherever she serves.  She has over 18 years of experience in banking & financial services industry, manufacturing, IT, insurance and public accounting firms. Prior to joining DMM Group, she spent about 8 years in the investment banking industry where she rose through the ranks of Merrill Lynch Japan Securities Co., Ltd. responsible for Corporate Financial Planning and Analysis, leading business plan development, financial forecasting, financial analysis, and capital commitment planning, as well as competitive analysis. Esther drives on-going focus and efficiencies on cost optimization and expense management across the Asia Pacific segment of their Corporate Workplace Division. Born in Malaysia and migrated alone to Singapore at the age of 15. Esther receives her B.Sc. (Hons) with First Class Honors in Finance and Accounting from University of Salford in UK. She is also a Chartered Certified Accountant and now a fellow member of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants ACCA. Teemu Suna is one of the founders, CEO and chairman of Nightingale Health, a blood testing company aiming to solve the global burden of chronic disease. A passionate advocate for disruptive health solutions, Suna has steered Nightingale into an established growth company with over 60 team members and customers in over 20 countries. Since late 2015, Suna has raised over €40 million to bring Nightingale’s technology to global healthcare. Prior to Nightingale, Suna spearheaded pioneering business ventures in healthcare IT, serving as Chief Technology Officer at Fujitsu Finland. Immersed in the field of computational medicine, Suna has authored scientific articles on applying artificial neural networks in medical applications. Determined to make preventive medicine a concrete reality for all, at Nightingale, Suna has united expertise from a diverse range of different backgrounds to further push the boundaries of the health industry. Slush Tokyo and Recruit are bringing together big names from the Blockchain scene for an exclusive night by the Tokyo Bay. The speakers will cover diverse topics within blockchain with the panoramic Tokyo Bay skyline behind them. Get ready for compelling discussions as well as food, drinks and quality networking. Think beyond borders: why digital entrepreneurs from all over the world become e-residents of Estonia. Estonia is creating a borderless digital society for global citizens as the first country to offer e-Residency. In 4 years, the programme has attracted + 50,000 citizens from +160 countries and they have created +6,500 companies in Estonia that they can run fully online from anywhere in the world. If you’re already an e-resident and/or wish to know more about Estonia’s digital society, join this casual networking event with representatives of the programme and Japanese e-residents. Location : Jinnan Cafe (1 Chome-17-5 Jinnan Shibuya-ku Tokyo) Registration -56486857712 Executive Breakfast is a casual networking event with key thought leaders and decision makers across various industry sectors from all around the world. Free Entrance for all Slush Tokyo 2019 Executive Pass holders. Join us for good food, coffee, music and talks! Click me for more information. Art Session: Relax with the Art within You Art has the power to represent your life - come and have a fresh look at yourself. This session will allow attendees to experience art in a new way. It’s not about what other people think, it’s about what you feel about yourself and what you're doing. It’s about that moment of trying something -- if it looks good or sounds good, that is what art is all about. Let’s find out what the art world gives you in this one hour. Target: Those who are interested in art, those who want to enhance your creativity and self-consciousness, you! Serial Entrepreneur and Angel Investor. MSc, in Artificial Intelligence, from Tokyo University. Engaged in research on Recommendation Engine, Complex Network, Clustering. Won the Innovative Software Creation Program (Super Creator Award) under Information-technology Promotion Agency Japan (IPA) in 2005 and 2006. Started her first business to create the middleware which enables to develop iOS / Android / Feature Phone simultaneously, and sold the company to mixi.inc. Chairman & Co-Founder, Animoca Brands and Founder & CEO, Outblaze A technology entrepreneur and investor based in Hong Kong, Yat Siu is the chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, a company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: AB1) that leverages gamification, blockchain, and artificial intelligence technologies to develop and publish a broad portfolio of mobile products. Yat began his career at Atari Germany in 1990. In 1995 he moved to Hong Kong to establish Hong Kong Cybercity/Freenation, the first Asian free web page and email provider. In 1998 he set up Outblaze, an award-winning pioneer of multilingual white label web services. In 2009, he sold Outblaze’s services business to IBM, and pivoted Outblaze to digital entertainment services and products. Outblaze is now a conglomerate of companies focused on cloud, AI, blockchain, and smartphone software. Yat is the CEO of Outblaze, and he is a director for TurnOut Ventures, a partnership between Outblaze and Turner Entertainment that brought to prominence the hugely popular emoticon character Tuzki. In 2017 Yat set up the Dalton Learning Lab, an afterschool lab environment that supplements Hong Kong students with skills not emphasized by the local education system, including divergent thinking and design thinking. He is also the founder of ThinkBlaze, the research arm of Outblaze investigating socially meaningful issues in technology. Yat has earned numerous accolades including Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum, and Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the DHL/SCMP Awards. A classically trained musician, Yat is a member of the advisory board of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and a director of the Asian Youth Orchestra. Panasonic: Game Changer Catapult Business Creation Open Dialogue Session An interactive session focused on people interested in the startup scene as a whole. Masa Fukata, the director of Game Changer Catapult will welcome Masahiro Kotosaka, Associate Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University, and Yuka Tanimoto, Senior Editor and Chief Producer of Event Production Group, Forbes Japan, to discuss innovation. We will also introduce the entrepreneur projects in collaboration with Avex and Keio SFC. Finally, we will demonstrate “cleaning as training” in order to share the new concept of housework. Target: startup company, involved health tech, electronic industry, you! Masa co-founded an internal innovation accelerator “Game Changer Catapult” in 2016, an initiative to transform ideas into reality to make the people’s wish through open innovation for a better life, a better world at the home tech division, Appliances Company in Panasonic Corporation. Also, he was appointed as Director in BeeEdge Co., Ltd. a joint-venture business incubation company with Panasonic, Scrum Ventures LLC, a US-based venture capital firm, and INCJ, Ltd.  He started his career in Panasonic, executed marketing communications for audio/video and digital imaging products, including launching of Lumix digital camera and DVD recorder with Hollywood film and music scene, after the participation of the international management program in Canada and the United States. Managed sports sponsorship contract including IOC and Organizing Committees of Olympic Games from 2004, technology operations and executing marketing strategy and communications, followed by a career as Director, Panasonic Canada Inc.  MBA, Kobe University, Japan. Associate Professor at Keio University, consultant and adviser to several start-up/multinational companies Masahiro Kotosaka is Associate Professor at Keio University. He is also a consultant and adviser to several start-up/multinational companies and was working for McKinsey & Company based in Frankfurt and Tokyo. He is an expert of strategic management of startups and international business of born global firms and spent four years running three profitable IT/Retail business before joining McKinsey. His recent publication includes The Element of Strategic Management (Toyo Keizai, 2018) and The Japanese Business in Evolution (Co-author, Routledge, 2017). Yuka Tanimoto earned an MBA in the U.S. in 2004 after gaining experience at a brokerage firm and serving as a financial and economic anchor for Bloomberg TV. She next worked as a newscaster for Nikkei CNBC and became the company's first-ever female commentator. After 2011, she became active as a freelance journalist. Through her career, Ms. Tanimoto has interviewed over 3000 VIPs from every corner of the globe including former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and Co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, Lynda Gratton, and founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz. She has also appeared on numerous television programs including“Vivit”（TBS TV）, "Sunday! Scramble" (TV Asahi), "Your Time" (Fuji TV), “Morning Cross” (Tokyo MX TV), and commentator work on "AbemaPrime" (Abema TV). She currently serves as a column contributor to the media, as moderator of the economic symposium, as a corporate advisor. In February 2016, she became Deputy Editor and Web Editor for Forbes Japan. In April of that same year, she also became a part-time lecturer at Atomi University. Yuka Tanimoto's literary works include “Active Listening The Art of Listening for Success”（Diamond, Ine.）,”Time Mastery of 1000 Top World Leaders”（Kadokawa/Chukei Publishing）, and “The Habits of Leaders Who Create Followers without Trying”（SB Creative）, “Why World Top Leader Get Partiality”(Discover 21) Aya originally became fascinated in the blockchain space for its potential to impact financial inclusion in emerging markets. In early 2013, she joined Kraken as Managing Director and has since worked to educate the public, VCs, and regulators on cryptocurrencies and blockchain innovation globally. As the Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, Aya leads the Foundation’s teams and supports the Ethereum ecosystem through core development and research activities, and educational efforts aimed at further expanding the world’s largest blockchain ecosystem. In 2019, she was appointed to the World Economic Forum’s Blockchain Global Council. Jun is the CEO & Founder of Omise, an online payment platform that provides online operations with a full-featured payment gateway, security & fraud protection models and cash management services —the complete infrastructure required to enable and streamline online commerce. He is a deep thinker and is no stranger to the startup world. Prior to founding Omise, he was involved in founding a series of tech companies in Japan. He brings over 16 years of professional experience in the technological field and has previously held several managerial positions. Jun has led his payment company through dramatic growth to become one of SEA’s leading online payment platform. He is passionate about delivering online payments for everyone and works to influence his team to do the same. After receiving his M.S. in Planetary Science from both Kyushu University and the University of Tokyo on a full scholarship, Takahiro joined Accenture, where he spent 5 years as a management consultant, specializing in retail and high-tech industries. Joining Recruit Next (Japan’s largest information company) Takahiro launched 4 businesses – leading two of them – including SUMO, a moving service and business for elderly people. Takahiro joined ispace in 2011 after an initial volunteer role and is now the acting COO. With one startup exit already under his belt, Ishigame cofounded Infostellar, a satellite-antenna sharing platform for small, low-orbit satellites -- what he calls "an Airbnb for satellites." Infostellars' cloud-based service StellarStation helps ground stations to make money during their downtime. For satellite operators, it allows them to contact their satellites more frequently, without building more costly stations. In September 2017, investors led by Airbus Ventures put $7.3 million in Series A Funding into the company, which was established with two other cofounders, including aerospace engineer and CEO Naomi Kurahara. Ishigame was selected as one of the honourees of Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2018. Future experience with LEXUS: The Concept of Value Changes In a world full of AI and big data which has dramatically evolved our lives with efficient services, we want to hear your ideas. In this session, we will talk about value creation in this new era by providing experimental value with the guidance of industry experts. So come and share your ideas! Rika lives in Silicon Valley and recently transitioned from the role Vice President of Strategy and Partnerships at Atheer into a role as Atheer's Advisory Board Member, and joined the founding team of a new Silicon Valley startup delving into AI (Artificial Intelligence) on the Edge (edge-computing).  She also is the founder of a not-for-profit helping women advance on corporate boards.  Born in Japan to a German mother and Japanese father, and trilingual in Japanese, German and English, Rika graduated from International School of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo and went to the US to attend Princeton University, and has worked internationally over the past two decades. She is a technology industry veteran and serves on the Advisory Boards to ventures in the Extended Reality (VR/AR/MR) ecosystem as well as AI startups, and is an active advocate for advancing women's leadership in technology and business across industry verticals and global lines. At Atheer she forged go-to-market programs with technology, OEM, and Solution Integration partners that built and delivered best-of-class Augmented Reality (AR) solutions for the Enterprise.  Having held leadership positions in strategy and business development disciplines at hardware/software and services enterprises and startup ventures globally - from NVIDIA, Sony, Accenture, American Express, china.com among others - Rika embraces the opportunity we have to shape the next 50 years of computing, and her work focuses on driving innovative experiences where human, digital, and physical intersect. Global Head of Brand Management and Marketing of LEXUS As the Global Head of Brand Management and Marketing, Spiros leads the development and deployment of Lexus’ brand strategy, metrics and research, global marketing communications, partnerships and activities throughout the brands worldwide network covering over 90 countries. He is also responsible for defining the future vision of the luxury brand in a time of rapid industry change. Prior to his current role, Spiros was the Head of Brand, Marketing, Consumer Experience and the Lexus Academy for Lexus in Europe overseeing 40 markets. He helped guide the brand to record levels of awareness and consideration. In addition, he has served as Director of Marketing for Toyota & Lexus operations in Spain as well as Head of Brand & Communication Strategy for Toyota Europe. Spiros has a track record of marketing and digital innovation having received several awards such as the Marketing Rising Star by the industry’s leading publication. He also serves as a mentor and coach for the MIT Enterprise Forum which supports promising start-ups. In addition, he is a board advisor to two start-ups in the Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare areas. He also acts a mentor for the US Marketing Academy and was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the world’s most influential CMOs in 2018. In his free time, Spiros plays ice hockey, DJs, rides his motorcycle and cooks. Spiros has worked and lived in North America, Europe and Asia. He is currently based in Tokyo. Chief Business Development Officer of Axelspace Corporation Experienced Marketing, Branding and Corporate Access professional with extensive global financial sector exposure. At Daiwa Capital Markets, originated fundraising road shows, organised and hosted various corporate access initiatives. Prior to that, at Lehman Brothers, developed marketing solutions and worked as a strategic advisor to the business heads to increase revenue. Nurtured marketing and branding experiences at McCann-Erickon, Saatchi&Saatchi and Bartle Bogle Hegarty. Contributed in planning and executing integrated marketing communications to build Brand Equity for iconic brands, including P&G, Adidas, Levi’s, Unilever and Virgin Atlantic. Participated in Axelspace in August 2017 and serves as a Brand Manager. Tsune focuses on investment in mid/late stage venture investments in rapidly growing software companies. Tsune led WiL's investments in Auth0, Asana, and TransferWise and actively worked on investments in Automation Anywhere and BirdEye. Prior to joining WiL, Tsune was VP of Business Operations and Strategy at Evernote. Tsune spearheaded analytics and was instrumental in improving the company’s revenue growth and financial stability through a series of monetization efforts. He has also worked for Blue Ridge Capital, analyzing publicly traded internet companies. Tsune holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Economics from the University of Tokyo. Hajime is an AI technologist leading 65+ deep learning researchers to help corporates in Bank/Insurance/Manufacturer/Internet Services/Medical/Pharmacy sectors with AI solutions at Cinnamon. Active investor and community contributor in Asia: Organized Vietnam FrontierTech Summit with 1500+ delegates. Also Partner at Zeroth.ai (AI Investment Firm), Founder Institute KL Local Director. Fred is the founder and chief architect of Ascent Robotics, one of Japan's leading AI startups. Ascent develops autonomous robots and vehicles by leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms inspired by theoretical neuroscience. The company raised $18M in Series A in 2018 and employs engineers and scientists from over 20 countries around the world. In addition to founding Ascent, Fred has also founded two other AI firms and chairs Decoded, a Tokyo collective of AI and machine learning experts. Zac’s experience includes leadership roles at multiple successful tech companies. He started initially in AdTech, where he was a part of two successful acquisitions, Admeld (Acquired by Google) and Sociomantic (acquired by DunnHumby). Prior to starting BlockFi, he led business development teams at Orchard Platform, a broker-dealer and RIA in the online lending sector, and Zibby, an online consumer lender. BlockFi provides crypto savings accounts and USD loans and the company has the most coverage of the US market, currently operating in 48 states and also the only lender to raise institutional capital – with a 50M credit facility from Galaxy Digital and investors including Fidelity, Galaxy Digital, Susquehanna, Akuna Capital, and ConsenSys Ventures. This stage is for everyone! If you have a cool idea or if you want to share some thoughts or a current project you're working on, this is your time to shine. Let’s take small actions here - an action that will give you a chance to explore infinite possibilities. A futurist with an artist's eye and an inventor’s mind, Monika Bielskyte prototypes culturally diverse, socially and environmentally engaged future world designs for the entertainment industry, technology companies, and cities/countries.  A large part of her time is devoted to research and strategy in the immersive media technology space (Augmented, Mixed, Virtual Reality and AI). Monika's work consists in connecting bleeding edge technological innovation with some of the world's most original creative visions. Mobile platforms such as Google Play and Android have reached global scale and are bringing billions of people online. They facilitate innumerable connections between users, developers and nonprofits that together create social impact around the world in areas such as health, education, financial inclusion and personal safety. Learn about the social impact needs and interests of global smartphone users to better understand this massive opportunity from a developer’s perspective. We will share best practices and real life examples that will help you build better social impact focussed apps and games. Let’s get creative! Social Impact and Accessibility Partnerships at Google Play Maxim Mai leads Social Impact and Accessibility Partnerships at Google Play. His mission is to amplify the positive impact created by apps and games in communities around the world and to empower their developers to find success on Android and Google Play. He also helps NGOs tap into Google Play to raise awareness and funds for their causes. Part of the Google Play team, Maxim is an expert on app strategy, distribution and revenue models. He has consulted top developers and startups in Europe and North America on how to build and grow sustainable mobile businesses. Maxim has been with Google for six years. Prior to joining Google Play, he worked with strategic online publishers to grow their advertising businesses. Pre-Google, Maxim worked in strategy consulting. He is based in New York City and holds a Bachelor of Commerce with First Class Honours from The University of Sydney. Co-Founder of Japan Israel Women’s Association (JIWA) Co-Founder of Japan Israel Women’s Association (JIWA) / Marketing Expert at Life is Tech, Inc Global division Alissa Miky is the Co-founder of the Japan Israel Women’s Association (JIWA). JIWA is a volunteer group that supports young people who wish to devote their energy to both work and home. The birth-rate in Israel is 3.11, and records #1 on the OECD. Furthermore, women’s social advancement ranking reached 9th place in OECD, and Israel’s percentage of women in high-tech industries is 35.5%, which is 1.4 times that of America's. Moreover, Israel excels at developing start-ups around the world and acquired 2.3 times as many funds as Japan in 2018. She believes that Israel’s philosophy, as well as their business strategy, will be the motivation for young Japanese people. She became interested in Israel when she worked at an Israeli trading company and met many Israeli people. There, she worked for the marketing, sales, and PR department as a new business development manager of EdTech, Health Tech, Connected Cars, etc. While she was at the Israeli trading company, she surpassed the sales record by twelve times the previous. Alissa Miky has received awards; Forbes JAPAN "100 women shining on earth" youngest recipient. Businesses Insider JAPAN "Game Changer" One of 46 people. Jason Smith is the Vice President of Business Development at Fundbox. In this leadership role, Jason is responsible for identifying and creating global partnerships to help Fundbox achieve its vision of building the world’s first AI-enabled B2B business capital platform.  As a growth leader, Jason brings a strong background and experience e-commerce, fintech, and technology into Fundbox.  Prior to joining Fundbox, Jason spent 13 years at payments and credit giant PayPal in various leadership roles. Most recently Jason was the head of PayPal’s Global Channel Sales business group which, under his leadership, scaled the business globally and grew revenue over 4X.  In addition, Jason was also a founding member of PayPal’s omnichannel business and a key member of the corporate development team where he was responsible for numerous investments, acquisitions, business development and sales initiatives across the eBay Inc. and PayPal portfolio.  Jason is a graduate of Washington State University. Firat Isbecer is an entrepreneur and an angel investor. Isbecer co-founded Pozitron, one of Europe’s fastest growing mobile banking, mobile commerce and closing another $6M round from tier one global VCs with billion dollar clients on most continents. Before building Markable’s world class team, Joy won a Gold Medal in Math Olympics in China at age 16 and was the TV anchor of a Chinese television program for ten years. Joy then attended MIT on a full scholarship, with majors in math and economics. Joy sold her first start up, a social media platform for international students built together with Berkeley students to a Chinese company in her last year of college. After college, she worked as a lead machine learning quantitative scientist for seven years that built financial high frequency AI trading programs generating a daily six-figure profit while causing traditional wall street to crash in 2008. Joy left high frequency trading to create Markable.ai, upon noticing a huge gap in the market between e-commerce and digital content. This gap inspired her to develop the AI technology to make all forms of visual digital content such as photos, videos and livestream content immediately shoppable. Markable.ai has a goal to deliver the ultimate shopping therapy for consumers; the future of AI driven fast e-commerce; and the future of AI driven green, user-engaged advertising. Mikko Ikola (Ambronite): Future of Food — Transforming Humans and Our Planet From Surviving to Thriving Mikko Ikola is CEO & Co-founder at Ambronite. Ambronite’s mission is to transform humans and our planet from surviving to thriving, through sustainable plant-based foods. In this keynote presentation, Mikko will take you on a journey through our broken food system, and presents a vision how we can turn it into a system that will make humans and our planet to thrive in the future Mikko Ikola is CEO & Co-founder at Ambronite. Ambronite’s mission is to transform humans and our planet from surviving to thriving, through sustainable plant-based foods. Ambronite’s first product, Complete Meal Shake, contains 100% of everything the human body needs and quenches hunger for 4 hours using only real foods. Ambronite is used worldwide by top performers and has customers in over 30 countries. Ambronite has been featured in publications such as TIME Magazine, Wired, and Wallpaper. Ambronite has raised USD$1.5m in funding from investors such as Jawed Karim (Co-founder at YouTube) and Lifeline Ventures. Besides nutrition and healthy lifestyle, Mikko has a tech-background in computer science and is inspired by topics such as leadership (Scaling Up Methodology) and minimalism. Teemu Suna (Nightingale Health): Founder Story of Nightingale Health Teemu Suna is CEO, chairman and one of the founders of Nightingale Health, a blood testing company aiming to solve the global burden of chronic disease. Suna has steered Nightingale into an established growing company with over 60 team members and customers in over 20 countries. In this session, Suna will share his story about how it all began. Teemu Suna is one of the founders, CEO and chairman of Nightingale Health, a blood testing company aiming to solve the global burden of chronic disease. A passionate advocate for disruptive health solutions, Suna has steered Nightingale into an established growth company with over 60 team members and customers in over 20 countries. Since late 2015, Suna has raised over €40 million to bring Nightingale’s technology to global healthcare. Prior to Nightingale, Suna spearheaded pioneering business ventures in healthcare IT, serving as Chief Technology Officer at Fujitsu Finland. Immersed in the field of computational medicine, Suna has authored scientific articles on applying artificial neural networks in medical applications. Determined to make preventive medicine a concrete reality for all, at Nightingale, Suna has united expertise from a diverse range of different backgrounds to further push the boundaries of the health industry. Fireside Chat with Danny Brown Wolf (Orbs) and Noah Sakamaki (COINPOST) Danny Brown Wolf is the Head of Strategy at Orbs, and on the founding team of Orbs Group USA. She was formerly the decentralization Director for Cool Cousin, a travel-tech start- crowned by the New York Times, L.A Times, The Guardian and National Geographic as a “must app for travelers”. Danny will be interviewed about his journey from Fintech to Blockchain by Noah Sakamaki. Click for more information about Danny brown Wolf and Noah Sakamaki. Noah is a News Manager and content writer for CoinPost, the leading Cryptocurrency media platform in Japan. Focusing on keeping Japanese viewers informed about what is going abroad with everything crypto-related, Noah frequently reports about the SEC and their decisions regarding Bitcoin ETFs and securities. Noah has also interviewed many key players in the industry such as Jed McCaleb, Max Kordek and Stefan Thomas. Born and raised in Tokyo as a Japanese American, Noah graduated from Abiline Christian University in 2017 while retaining his ability to read, speak and write in English & Japanese. Danny Brown Wolf is the Head of Strategy at Orbs, and on the founding team of Orbs Group USA. She was formerly the decentralisation Director for Cool Cousin, a travel-tech start- crowned by the New York Times, L.A Times, The Guardian and National Geographic as a “must app for travelers”. Her background is in Policy and International Affairs, having worked at the United Nations, the Israeli Parliament, as the Director of Policy at the IDC's Abba Eban Institute, and on projects dedicated to capacity-building of the Palestinian hi-tech industry and peace-building between Israelis and Palestinians through hi-tech initiatives. Building a Startup Community: Amarit Charoenphan (HUBBA), Tim Romero (Disrupting Japan), Paula Pärnaste (Lift99) Learn the secret of building a community from eco-system builders around the globe. Leading the discussion by Amarit Charoenphan co-founder of Techsauce media and Hubba, Thailand largest co-working space. Paula Pärnaste is on a mission of building a founders ecosystem across the Central and Eastern Europe at Lift99. Tim Romero is deeply involved in Japan's startup community as an investor, founder, mentor and host of the Disrupting Japan podcast. Click for more info about Amarit Charoenphan, Tim Romero, Paula Pärnaste CEO and Cofounder, HUBBA / Cofounder and Chief Connection Officer, Techsauce Amarit's passion and life's work is to create a better world where people work with passion, meaning, and purpose while actively supported by an inspiring community and ecosystem. He is the Group CEO & Cofounder of HUBBA, the Hub of Global Creators. HUBBA is Thailand’s 1st and largest coworking space and community. He is also the Co-founder of Techsauce Media, Thailand's leading tech media, which is best known for Techsauce Global Summit, Southeast Asia's 1st Global Scale conference. Tim Romero is a Tokyo-based entrepreneur, podcaster and author who has started four companies and led Japan market entry for others since coming to Japan more than 25 years ago. Tim hosts the Disrupting Japan podcast, teaches corporate innovation and entrepreneurship at the NYU Shinagawa campus and is CTO of TEPCO Ventures. Tim is deeply involved in Japan's startup community as an investor, founder and mentor. Entrepreneur herself, Paula is part of LIFT99 team building a founders ecosystem across the Central and Eastern Europe, and the world. LIFT99 is creating opportunities for the most ambitious founders in CEE, providing them with the supportive community, global network, know-how, funding etc. The community comes alive in the LIFT99 Founders2Founders app, and in the startup hubs – one in Tallinn, known as the home of Estonian startup culture, and the second one opening soon in Ukraine. Paula’s current responsibility is leading the launch of the LIFT99 Kyiv Hub. It will become another key location in the company’s mission to bring more startup success stories into the area. Miku Hirano (Cinnamon): Update your dream Recently closed Series B funding at 13.5M USD, Cinnamon is the rising star of AI startups in Japan. In this session, Miku will share her entrepreneurial journey and the founding story of Cinnamon. Serial Entrepreneur and Angel Investor. MSc, in Artificial Intelligence, from Tokyo University. Engaged in research on Recommendation Engine, Complex Network, Clustering. Won the Innovative Software Creation Program (Super Creator Award) under Information-technology Promotion Agency Japan (IPA) in 2005 and 2006. Started her first business to create the middleware which enables to develop iOS / Android / Feature Phone simultaneously, and sold the company to mixi.inc. Fireside Chat with Yat Siu (Outblaze) and Slush Team Yat Siu is deeply involved in Internet startup scene, he founded several internet and tech companies including Outblaze (acquired by IBM) and Animoca. In addition, he also launched Hong Kong's first internet provider. Yat will share his founding episodes on stage Chairman & Co-Founder, Animoca Brands and Founder & CEO, Outblaze A technology entrepreneur and investor based in Hong Kong, Yat Siu is the chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, a company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: AB1) that leverages gamification, blockchain, and artificial intelligence technologies to develop and publish a broad portfolio of mobile products. Yat began his career at Atari Germany in 1990. In 1995 he moved to Hong Kong to establish Hong Kong Cybercity/Freenation, the first Asian free web page and email provider. In 1998 he set up Outblaze, an award-winning pioneer of multilingual white label web services. In 2009, he sold Outblaze’s services business to IBM, and pivoted Outblaze to digital entertainment services and products. Outblaze is now a conglomerate of companies focused on cloud, AI, blockchain, and smartphone software. Yat is the CEO of Outblaze, and he is a director for TurnOut Ventures, a partnership between Outblaze and Turner Entertainment that brought to prominence the hugely popular emoticon character Tuzki. In 2017 Yat set up the Dalton Learning Lab, an afterschool lab environment that supplements Hong Kong students with skills not emphasized by the local education system, including divergent thinking and design thinking. He is also the founder of ThinkBlaze, the research arm of Outblaze investigating socially meaningful issues in technology. Yat has earned numerous accolades including Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum, and Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the DHL/SCMP Awards. A classically trained musician, Yat is a member of the advisory board of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and a director of the Asian Youth Orchestra. Fireside Chat with Aya Miyaguchi (ETH) and Jun Hasegawa (Omise) The blockchain is now in action. Joining a conversation with Aya Miyaguchi, who leads educational and development efforts of Ethereum foundation and Jun Hasegawa, the CEO & Founder of Omise, an online payment platform. Click to find out more about Aya Miyaguchi and Jun Hasegawa. Aya originally became fascinated in the blockchain space for its potential to impact financial inclusion in emerging markets. In early 2013, she joined Kraken as Managing Director and has since worked to educate the public, VCs, and regulators on cryptocurrencies and blockchain innovation globally. As the Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, Aya leads the Foundation’s teams and supports the Ethereum ecosystem through core development and research activities, and educational efforts aimed at further expanding the world’s largest blockchain ecosystem. In 2019, she was appointed to the World Economic Forum’s Blockchain Global Council. Jun is the CEO & Founder of Omise, an online payment platform that provides online operations with a full-featured payment gateway, security & fraud protection models and cash management services —the complete infrastructure required to enable and streamline online commerce. He is a deep thinker and is no stranger to the startup world. Prior to founding Omise, he was involved in founding a series of tech companies in Japan. He brings over 16 years of professional experience in the technological field and has previously held several managerial positions. Jun has led his payment company through dramatic growth to become one of SEA’s leading online payment platform. He is passionate about delivering online payments for everyone and works to influence his team to do the same. Operations in Space Business: Helen Tung (NewSpace2060), Takahiro Nakamura (ispace) , Kazuo Ishigame (Infostellar) How does space business work? What are the stories behind rockets and satellites? Listen to the episodes from people behind groundbreaking startups. Takahiro runs i-space, a micro lunar robotic satellite company. Kazuo is a Co-founder of Infostellar, an Airbnb for satellites. Moderating this session is Helen Tung, a space legal futurist. Click for more info about Helen Tung, Takahiro Nakamura, and Kazuo Ishigame. Emergent Tech advisor and MINERVA fellow at the EU - Japan Centre Helen is an Emergent Tech advisor and MINERVA fellow at the EU – Japan Centre. Helen works with NewSpace and emerging tech startups and trains and mentors entrepreneurs. Helen’s mission is to empower individuals to make better decisions and find their voices. She has spoken widely on topics including AI, Robotics, decision making, autonomous systems, law and ethics. Her areas of interest include space applications, blockchain, data protection, cyber security, smallsat constellations, space law and policy and mindfulness. Helen is currently the Founder & Convenor of EU-Japan NewSpace2060 International Poetry Manga Poster competition 2019 and Writer and Editor of EU- Japan NewSpace2060 blog (Summer 2019 coffee table mag TBC) as part of MINERVA Fellowship. After receiving his M.S. in Planetary Science from both Kyushu University and the University of Tokyo on a full scholarship, Takahiro joined Accenture, where he spent 5 years as a management consultant, specializing in retail and high-tech industries. Joining Recruit Next (Japan’s largest information company) Takahiro launched 4 businesses – leading two of them – including SUMO, a moving service and business for elderly people. Takahiro joined ispace in 2011 after an initial volunteer role and is now the acting COO. With one startup exit already under his belt, Ishigame cofounded Infostellar, a satellite-antenna sharing platform for small, low-orbit satellites -- what he calls "an Airbnb for satellites." Infostellars' cloud-based service StellarStation helps ground stations to make money during their downtime. For satellite operators, it allows them to contact their satellites more frequently, without building more costly stations. In September 2017, investors led by Airbus Ventures put $7.3 million in Series A Funding into the company, which was established with two other cofounders, including aerospace engineer and CEO Naomi Kurahara. Ishigame was selected as one of the honourees of Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2018. Future of AI and Automation: Tsune Shirota (WiL), Hajime Hotta (Cinnamon, Zeroth.ai), Fred Almeida (Ascent Robotics) A conversation with investors and founders from AI and Automation. Tsune led WiL's investment in Auth0, Asana, and TransferWise. Hajime is a partner at Zeroth.ai and CTO at Cinnamon. Fred Almeida is the founder and chief architect of Ascent Robotics, a company that develops autonomous robots and vehicles. Click for more info about Tsune Shirota, Hajime Hotta, and Fred Almeida. Tsune focuses on investment in mid/late stage venture investments in rapidly growing software companies. Tsune led WiL's investments in Auth0, Asana, and TransferWise and actively worked on investments in Automation Anywhere and BirdEye. Prior to joining WiL, Tsune was VP of Business Operations and Strategy at Evernote. Tsune spearheaded analytics and was instrumental in improving the company’s revenue growth and financial stability through a series of monetization efforts. He has also worked for Blue Ridge Capital, analyzing publicly traded internet companies. Tsune holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Economics from the University of Tokyo. Hajime is an AI technologist leading 65+ deep learning researchers to help corporates in Bank/Insurance/Manufacturer/Internet Services/Medical/Pharmacy sectors with AI solutions at Cinnamon. Active investor and community contributor in Asia: Organized Vietnam FrontierTech Summit with 1500+ delegates. Also Partner at Zeroth.ai (AI Investment Firm), Founder Institute KL Local Director. Fred is the founder and chief architect of Ascent Robotics, one of Japan's leading AI startups. Ascent develops autonomous robots and vehicles by leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms inspired by theoretical neuroscience. The company raised $18M in Series A in 2018 and employs engineers and scientists from over 20 countries around the world. In addition to founding Ascent, Fred has also founded two other AI firms and chairs Decoded, a Tokyo collective of AI and machine learning experts. Zac Prince (BlockFi): Bringing Banking to Crypto Founder of BlockFi, a company that with the most coverage in US market for providing crypto savings accounts and USD loans, Zac has led companies which have been previously acquired by Google and DunnHumby. He has also led business development teams at Orchard Platform, a broker-dealer and RIA in the online lending sector, and Zibby, an online consumer lender. Zac’s experience includes leadership roles at multiple successful tech companies. He started initially in AdTech, where he was a part of two successful acquisitions, Admeld (Acquired by Google) and Sociomantic (acquired by DunnHumby). Prior to starting BlockFi, he led business development teams at Orchard Platform, a broker-dealer and RIA in the online lending sector, and Zibby, an online consumer lender. BlockFi provides crypto savings accounts and USD loans and the company has the most coverage of the US market, currently operating in 48 states and also the only lender to raise institutional capital – with a 50M credit facility from Galaxy Digital and investors including Fidelity, Galaxy Digital, Susquehanna, Akuna Capital, and ConsenSys Ventures. Let's talk about the future: Monika Bielskyte (ALLFUTUREEVERYTHING), Suzana Ilic (MLT), and Alissa Miky (JIWA) A futurist with an artist’s eye and an inventor’s mind, Monika Bielskyte will discuss how we see the future with Suzana Ilić, Founder of Machine Learning Tokyo who is leading efforts in creating a community for studying, teaching and building Artificial Intelligence projects with Deep Learning. Alissa Miky is the Co-founder of the Japan Israel Women’s Association (JIWA). JIWA is a volunteer group that supports young people who wish to devote their energy to both work and home. Click for more info about Monika Bielskyte, Suzana Ilic and Alissa Miky. A futurist with an artist's eye and an inventor’s mind, Monika Bielskyte prototypes culturally diverse, socially and environmentally engaged future world designs for the entertainment industry, technology companies, and cities/countries.  A large part of her time is devoted to research and strategy in the immersive media technology space (Augmented, Mixed, Virtual Reality and AI). Monika's work consists in connecting bleeding edge technological innovation with some of the world's most original creative visions. As the Head of MLT, a non-profit group of Machine Learning Engineers and Researchers and a community of 2000 people in Tokyo, Suzana has been leading efforts in creating an open and collaborative engineering space for studying, teaching and building Artificial Intelligence projects with Deep Learning at its core. Co-Founder of Japan Israel Women’s Association (JIWA) Co-Founder of Japan Israel Women’s Association (JIWA) / Marketing Expert at Life is Tech, Inc Global division Alissa Miky is the Co-founder of the Japan Israel Women’s Association (JIWA). JIWA is a volunteer group that supports young people who wish to devote their energy to both work and home. The birth-rate in Israel is 3.11, and records #1 on the OECD. Furthermore, women’s social advancement ranking reached 9th place in OECD, and Israel’s percentage of women in high-tech industries is 35.5%, which is 1.4 times that of America's. Moreover, Israel excels at developing start-ups around the world and acquired 2.3 times as many funds as Japan in 2018. She believes that Israel’s philosophy, as well as their business strategy, will be the motivation for young Japanese people. She became interested in Israel when she worked at an Israeli trading company and met many Israeli people. There, she worked for the marketing, sales, and PR department as a new business development manager of EdTech, Health Tech, Connected Cars, etc. While she was at the Israeli trading company, she surpassed the sales record by twelve times the previous. Alissa Miky has received awards; Forbes JAPAN "100 women shining on earth" youngest recipient. Businesses Insider JAPAN "Game Changer" One of 46 people. Fintech Fireside Chat with Firat Isbecer (Commencis) and Jason Smith (FundBox) A conversation about Fintech from two industry veterans. Firat is an entrepreneur and an angel investor from Turkey. After exiting his previous company, Positron is now a CEO of Commencis. Prior to joining Fundbox as VP of Business Development, Jason spent 13 years at PayPal and helped the company to grow globally. Click for more info about Firat Isbecer and Jason Smith. Firat Isbecer is an entrepreneur and an angel investor. Isbecer co-founded Pozitron, one of Europe’s fastest growing mobile banking, mobile commerce and payments software companies which was acquired by London-based fintech star Monitise plc in 2014. After joining Monitise, Isbecer oversaw the company’s Eastern Europe, Middle East, Central Asia and Africa operations as the Managing Director of Monitise MEA. In 2017, Monitise plc was acquired by US-based a Fortune 500 financial services tech giant Fiserv Inc. After the Monitise-Fiserv acquisition, he left the company and founded Commencis. Commencis helps leading brands to grow and scale in digital by building purposeful products, powered by its Big Data, Analytics and Cloud solutions. Isbecer is also an active seed investor, he is a member of Galata Business Angels, Turkey’s first angel investor group. He has made over 40 seed investments in 11 different countries to date making him one of the most active investors in Turkey. After studying at Robert College in İstanbul, Firat received his Bachelor’s Degree from Galatasaray University, and his Master’s Degree in Geopolitical Studies from a joint programme by the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Isbecer briefly worked at a Paris based independent Euro-Mediterranean Think Tank as a research associate. He has been recognised in Fortune Turkey’s 40 under 40 list numerous times. Jason Smith is the Vice President of Business Development at Fundbox. In this leadership role, Jason is responsible for identifying and creating global partnerships to help Fundbox achieve its vision of building the world’s first AI-enabled B2B business capital platform.  As a growth leader, Jason brings a strong background and experience e-commerce, fintech, and technology into Fundbox.  Prior to joining Fundbox, Jason spent 13 years at payments and credit giant PayPal in various leadership roles. Most recently Jason was the head of PayPal’s Global Channel Sales business group which, under his leadership, scaled the business globally and grew revenue over 4X.  In addition, Jason was also a founding member of PayPal’s omnichannel business and a key member of the corporate development team where he was responsible for numerous investments, acquisitions, business development and sales initiatives across the eBay Inc. and PayPal portfolio.  Jason is a graduate of Washington State University. Marvin Liao (500 Startups): The Future of Work: A Venture Capitalist's View Marvin is a Partner at 500 Startups, a global Seed Venture Capital Firm & Startup Accelerator based in Silicon Valley. He runs the Flagship Accelerator program & invests in Digital Media, Enterprise SAAS, Marketplace, Fintech, Adtech, Digital Health, Internet of Things & Mobile startups across the globe. Marvin is a Partner at 500 Startups, a global Seed Venture Capital Firm & Startup Accelerator based in Silicon Valley. He runs the Flagship Accelerator program & invests in Digital Media, Enterprise SAAS, Marketplace, Fintech, Adtech, Digital Health, Internet of Things & Mobile startups across the globe. Formerly of Yahoo! Inc. (10.5 years), Marvin Liao has held roles in the various departments of Sales, Business Development, Ad Operations and Marketing & ran online marketing at a venture capital funded ecommerce start-up prior to that. He also serves on the boards/advisory boards of several internet advertising and ad technology companies. Investment in Southeast Asia: Kay-Mok Ku (Gobi), Soo Boon Koh (i-Globe), Kaspar Hadiyat (Koru Partners), and Slush Team As one of the rising region in startup scene, learn more about investment landscape in Southeast Asia with top investors like Soo Boon Koh from iglobe, Kay Mok Ku from Gobi Southeast Asia and Kaspar Hidayat from Koru Partners. Click for more info about Kay-Mok Ku, Soo Boon Koh and Kaspar Hidayat. Kay-Mok Ku is Managing Partner for Gobi Southeast Asia. He joined Gobi in 2010 and has invested in over 30 companies, including Carsome, Deliveree, Eko, Hermo and Salestock. He is a board member of the Singapore Venture Capital Association (SVCA). Prior to his career with Gobi Partners, Mok held the Vice President position in both Xinya Media and MediaCorp (Singapore). He was also part of the team that managed a $500 million fund at the Media Development Authority in Singapore, and is co-founder of Private Express, a crypto startup based in Silicon Valley. He started his career with the Infocomm Development Authority, and has a Computer Science degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from San Jose State University. Soo Boon founded iGlobe in December 1999 when venture capital (VC) first began experiencing the onset of globalization. As a veteran in the global VC industry with a specialization in technology investing, she has achieved consistent top-quartile fund return for her investments. Working alongside prominent VCs such as Sequoia Capital, IVP, RRE, Tencent and Qualcomm Ventures, she has since established herself as a prominent leader in the investing community. Soo Boon led some of the notable exits, including u-blox AG (SWX: UBXN), Telenav Inc. (NASDAQ:TNAV), Celestry Inc. (sold to Cadence), Aicent Inc. (acquired by TA Associates) and Anacle Systems Ltd (HKGEM: 8353). Currently, Soo Boon serves as board observer of several VC-backed companies based in San Francisco. This includes Nerdwallet Inc and Matterport Inc. Soo Boon is also a board member of The Great Room (Singapore) and Reach Robotics (UK). In late 2018, she oversaw two portfolios which targeted public listing, despite volatile stock market conditions: Twist Bioscience was listed on the Nasdaq (TWST) on Oct 31, 2018, and ACSL was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mother’s Board (TSE:6232) on Dec 21, 2018. Kaspar Hidayat is a Principal at Koru Partners, an early stage venture capital firm in Southeast Asia. Prior to joining Koru, he was part of the teams at 500 Startups and Venturra Capital that made Seed and Series A investments in many of Southeast Asia's leading companies in their respective verticals, including Grab, Bukalapak, Zilingo, Carro, Shopback and Carousell. Kaspar has also spent time as an operator as Country Manager and VP of Marketing at Pomelo, Southeast Asia's leading digitally native vertical fashion and apparel brand. Kaspar earned his B.A. in philosophy and economics at Amherst College. Going beyind the Pitch Contest: Tim Miskche (Artisense), Rumi Djalil (UltraCelsius), Wilson Chan (Buyandship) and Slush Team Three founders who were pitching last year will share advice for startups who wish to go overseas, challenges, and opportunity running early stage startups. Tim Miksche runs Artisense Japan, a 3D mapping startup. Wilson Chan is CEO of buyandship, providing an affordable international shipping service. Rumi Djalil is the CEO of Ultracelsius, a company developing sustainable freezing technology. More about Tim Miksche, Wilson Chan, and Rumi Djalil. More about Tim  Miksche, Wilson Chan, and Rumi Djalil. Tim is Representative Director and CEO of Artisense Japan K.K. and Winner of the SLUSH Tokyo 2018 pitch contest. Artisense is a deep-tech computer vision and AI startup specializing in dynamic 3D mapping and localization for autonomous vehicles and robots. The research-based company was founded in Palo Alto, USA and is using its proprietary know-how to build a new mapping standard that will enhance human life. Holding off competition in three consecutive pitching rounds, Tim took home the main prize of ¥ 5.000.000 to kick-start the foundation of Artisense in Tokyo. Having lived, studied and worked on three continents, Tim is an open- minded and self-motivated entrepreneur. With 20+ years of professional experience in automotive, digitalization and innovation management, he likes to build bridges and to foster creative exchange on the multinational level. Before joining Artisense, Tim was leading digital innovation and AR/VR within Audi Design at the carmaker’s headquarters in Germany. In 2017, he founded transferNET, a business consultancy supporting startups in market entry and business growth. Tim is co-ambassador and active startup mentor at World Innovation Forum Japan. Most recently, he was also nominated as representative for Japan of the German Startup Association. Rumi Djalil is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ultracelsius, a company focusing on creating cold chain technology in Indonesia. The company has developed a freezing technology that can keep food content cold even after 4 days without any power which saves energy and is perfect for remote areas. He was one of the finalists of Slush 2018. He has aspirations that Ultracelsius technology could one day solve important energy problems. He holds a law degree from the University of Indonesia and a Master of International Business from The Fletcher School, Tufts University. He started his career as an Investment banker at Citi during the verge of the 2008 sub-prime crisis. After that, he spent time as a Consultant at McKinsey where he got exposure to various industries. He was also heavily involved in corporate restructuring during the transformation of Indonesian Railways. Co-founder and CEO of buyandship, an integrated marketing and logistics platform for cross-border e-commerce connecting the world to Asia. Previously worked in private equity and management consulting in Hong Kong and Japan. W&W ✕ Kizuna AI ✕ TheWaveVR -XR Music Video Special Premier- Supported by Avex Future of Music TheWaveVR is unveiling their first digital concert for Japan, created in collaboration with Avex. Watch the world premier of Wave's XR video for W&W's new song - “The Light” featuring Kizuna AI - as a preview for live W&W concert in TheWaveVR in April. Wave is an an online music festival that never sleeps, allowing fans to view, host, and socialize in interactive concerts at anytime, from anywhere. TheWaveVR is based in Los Angeles, CA and Austin, TX; available on Steam, Oculus and PC desktop. Slush Tokyo Pitch Contest Winner Announcement and Closing Out of the hundred applicants and 40 companies who made the cut - here we will officially announce who will bring home the title of Slush Tokyo 2019 Pitch Contest Winner! Slush Tokyo 2019 Official Afterparty Annual Slush Tokyo Afterparty where you can loosen up, dance to some live music and meet other attendees!Slush Tokyo 2019 Volunteer Afterparty An exclusive afterparty for the team of 400 behind Slush Tokyo 2019! Please bring your ticket number ready and please bring a form of identification (ID or business card). Address: 2 Chome-6 Ōtemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tōkyō-to 100-0004 For more information on grabbing your official #slushtokyo19 badge, check out our Pre-registration Page! We only need a few hours to make you pitch like a winner. It's time to prep your decks for 2 days worth of pitching at Slush Tokyo 2019! We're bringing in industry experts, investors and the like to help you bring your A-game. Wait for our startup team's e-mail invite with the training's location and agenda. The pitch training is aimed at startups who will be a part of the Pitch Contest, Showtech Time and/or has a Demo Booth. Got a startup pass but not pitching on-stage or showcasing at a booth? Drop us an email at [email protected] Pre-registration @ X-Hub Tokyo Demo Day Grab your badge at X-Hub Tokyo Demo Day happening at Shibuya Stream (3 Chome-21-３ Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tōkyō-to 150-0002) Click me for more info. MEET THE SLUSH GLOBAL TEAM, LEARN ABOUT DIFFERENT TECH SCENES, GET EXCLUSIVE STORIES AND MORE. Don’t have a media pass? That’s ok! This event is open for everyone in the media space. Just show up and we’ll make sure you leave inspired, informed and excited for our next event. Contents : Open pitch, Networking, live music & drinks! Registration : https://slushtokyostartupday.splashthat.com/ AN EXCLUSIVE INVITE ONLY FOR INVESTOR PASS HOLDERS SOMEWHERE IN ROPPONGI Do Corporate VCs perform better than independent VCs? How does the future of work look like in Japan? Must we aim to scale globally from the beginning or not at all? Forget aimless networking - this year, Investor Day presents a series of panel sessions led by a diverse mix of experts. Come and join us as we exchange critical perspectives on these tech and business trends in venture capital. And of course, the food has never been greater. Location: For privacy purposes, please check your individual e-mail invites registered with Slush Tokyo. *Our Investor Team will contact you with specific information about the event. Slush Tokyo Speaker's Dinner -XR Nightclub Prototype Presentation by TheWaveVR- Supported by Avex Future of Music Our program team will contact you directly with further information. Pitch Contest: Social Media & Communication Track Cross Border Business Strategy: How to build your own brand in this society? Speaker: Techstars (Dennis List) × EY-Parthenon (Nobuko Kobayashi) × SoGal Ventures (Pocket Sun) Target:
Businessperson, Executives, those who wants to change company culture, you! Hailing from a family of entrepreneurs, I have been in various roles across IT and Consumer Electronics for over 15 years. Prior to joining Techstars as Program Manager, I co-founded music hardware startup Rocki and participated in the 2014 Boston Techstars Accelerator Program. I specialize in helping founders work out challenges around the foundation of their company such as telling their story, building their product, finding the right funding strategy, putting together their team and leveraging their networks to bootstrap early stage growth.  Pocket Sun is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and global keynote speaker. She founded SoGal, one of the largest global entrepreneurship and venture capital networks for women, with 13 chapters worldwide. Together with her business partner Elizabeth Galbut, she founded SoGal Ventures, the world’s first millennial venture capital firm to invest in early stage companies in the US and Asia led by diverse teams. As millennials themselves, Pocket and Elizabeth invest in the future of how the next generation lives, works, and stays healthy. Since 2015, they have invested in 50 startups, of which two have been acquired. Nobuko is Partner with EY Japan with a focus on management consulting in consumer sector.    Outside consulting her career includes leading corporate development for a Japanese trading conglomerate out of New York as well as heading analyst team for a US activist fund out of Tokyo.  A multi-cultural thought leader with outside-in perspective on Japan, Nobuko shares her views on a wider range of topics from corporate governance to gender diversity on a number of prominent media outlets including Nikkei Asian Review and Bloomberg.  Pitch Contest: Financial & Insurance Track Jenny Lefcourt brings 20+ years of technology start-up experience to her role as General Partner at Freestyle, a $90M seed stage fund in San Francisco whose partners are all serial entrepreneurs. Freestyle has has led investments in companies such as Airtable, Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, Wag, and Digit. Jenny is also a founding member of All Raise, a non-profit dedidcated to diversity in funders & founders. Prior to joining Freestyle, Jenny cofounded WeddingChannel.com (sold: XOXO) and Bella Pictures (sold: CPI). She was an angel investor and advisor in many technology companies including Discord, MainStreetHub, StyleSeat & Minted. Jenny earned her B.S. in economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and attended Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. She lives in Marin with her husband and three children. Alice Lloyd George loves working with entrepreneurs on the frontier of innovation and helps RRE invest in emerging technologies including blockchain, machine intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and NewSpace, as well as consumer and healthcare startups. She appears on Fox Business, was Forbes’ 30 under 30 (2016), and Marc Andreessen calls her “one of the unknown rockstars in tech.” Before joining RRE Alice worked in investments at Bridgewater Associates, and in a prior life lived in Beijing conducting research as a Brookings Institute fellow. Alice hails from the UK, graduated with a BA from Princeton, and began her career at The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, where she reported on business and politics across Asia. She is the founder and host of the hit podcast Flux, a series of conversations with founders at the frontier. You can follow her latest musings on Twitter @amlg23 Panasonic : Game Changer Catapult Intrepreneur Open Pitch & Talk Session It’s time to unveil Game Changer Catapult’s brilliant Intrepreneur teams who are excited to pitch their ideas and interact with you and as well as find future business partners. To startups who are interested in collaborating with Game Changer Catapult, come and join us for this session! Alexandre Bartholo, CEO at Assemblage and Emi Kusano, influencer and artist, will join to discuss about the future of social community of music and beauty care. Don’t miss it! Target: Startup company, involved social media or music industry, you! Graduated from Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus. In addition to activities such as work production, writing, MC and CM appearance of radio and TV, she presides over Kayo Electro Unit "Satellite Young". Do singing, songwriting, and concept work. Sing on contemporary internet society such as artificial intelligence and online association and latest technology on the reconstructed 80's sound. In 2017 she appeared as the Satellite Young in the world's largest music festival "South by South West". In Santen PC "Sante PC" which CM is currently on air, she took over as the image character of 2018. She writes the music and words for songs. She leads sythpop sensation “ Satellite Young”. The unit performed at SXSW 017. She is focusing on cutting technology as motif of the songs. For over 15 years Alex has developed his passion for storytelling and design across film & television, advertising and events. Alex is an accomplished director, a skilled and knowledgable DP, and as head of the production team at Assemblage he is driven by the desire to deliver only content of the highest aesthetic quality that communicates client messages in ways that leave an impression Pitch Contest: Health & Wellbeing Track Prior to founding Sansan in 2007, Chika worked in IT at Mitsui & Co., where he was involved in importing computer equipment, developing systems, and working on joint ventures. In 2001, he was transferred to Silicon Valley, where he dealt with cutting-edge U.S. ventures as they developed their business links with Japan. Upon returning to Japan, he sold database software he brought back from the U.S., and then became a manager at Mitsui, handling corporate planning and management at security-related companies. In May 2007, Chika left Mitsui and together with four friends started Sansan, an IT venture providing business card-based contact management services. Sansan has now grown to over 7,000 corporate clients and over 2.5 million individual users, making it the largest database of its kind in Japan. In 2011, Chika received the U.S. Ambassador’s Award at the Entrepreneurs' Awards Japan. This honor recognizes entrepreneurs who start companies with high growth potential, and devote themselves to becoming market leaders. As a key member of Uber’s Japan Leadership Team, Yukiko is responsible for overseeing the Uber Eats business in Japan. Yukiko joins Uber from Google, where she was the Head of New Business Sales in Japan. Prior to Google, Yukiko was the President of OpenTable overseeing its operations in Japan. Previously Yukiko was the President of Travelzoo Japan and an Executive Officer of Travelzoo Asia Pacific for more than 6 years and also held various senior roles at Rakuten, including Managing Director for Rakuten Dining, where she was responsible for restructuring the business units and managing the special task force projects. Yukiko began her career with Andersen Consulting (Accenture) before co-founding ProTrade. (ProTrade was acquired by Rakuten in 2000). Pitch Contest: Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Track The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback in a Global Context Good engineering leadership requires the ability to communicate clearly. It’s often difficult to deliver feedback in effective ways, especially in an international context. In this session, Code Chrysalis will cover strategies for giving and receiving constructive and compassionate feedback. Let’s improve your communication skills! Target: Engineers, people who want to learn and improve their communication and leadership skills, you! Yuki Kanayama is the founder of VASILY, the company behind Apple and Google’s award-winning fashion application, IQON. In October 2017, the company was acquired by ZOZO Inc. (former START TODAY CO.,LTD.), the owner of ZOZOTOWN, the largest fashion online shopping website in Japan. After the acquisition, he became the Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) of ZOZO Technologies Inc. He is now in charge of operations and new business development of “ZOZO Research”. He is also the author of the book “いちばんやさしいグロースハックの教本” (The Simplest Guide to Hack Growth). Pitch Contest: Social Entrepreneurship Track In early 2004, before Facebook and photo-sharing sites, Evgeny Tchebotarev created a community for photographers to meet, share photos and information. He initially developed this on top of a LiveJournal platform and then founded 500px as a company. As Founder and COO, Chief Product Officer, and later Chief Photography Officer (CPO), Evgeny was responsible for bringing the 500px vision to life through operational excellence, product innovation, community engagement and maintaining a strong link between photographers and 500px team. Originally from Moscow, Ev has earned a BA in Commerce and Finance from Ryerson University in Toronto, graduating with honours in 2007. He began photography in 2002 and immediately became a fascinated with it when he sold three photos to magazines from his first roll of film. Since then he has spent the entirety of his professional career dedicated to the betterment of visual creativity, focusing on photography and design. Ev remains an active photographer and community member, and has been honoured to judge many world class photo contests, including Red Bull Illume, Photo Life, and Sony World Photography Awards. Since 2016, after leaving 500px, Ev travelled to Asia to consult companies, where for 2 years he was focused on helping companies to build Silicon Valley-style product management expertise. In July 2018, Ev joined Skylum as VP of Growth Asia, applying years of hands-on expertise of working with Asian companies to expand Skylum’s award-winning products to Asian markets. Pitch Contest: AI, Analytics & Big Data Track Come See: French Tech's 9 Hottest Companies Curious about the tech scene in Europe? Come and check out the coolest startups flying all the way from France! These 9 companies are supported by La French Tech. Let’s build a worldwide startup ecosystem by learning more about startups from the global scene. In 2007, Hironao Kunimitsu founded gumi Inc. which is now a public company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. In 2015, he established Tokyo VR Startups Inc. Additionally, in 2016, he led the investment in VR-focused venture capital fund “The VR Fund, L.P.”, and gumi became a general partner. He continued to help nurture the global VR community through co-founding “Seoul VR Startups” in 2016 and “Nordic VR Startups” in 2017, incubation program in Seoul and Nordic respectively. Since mid of 2017, he started to pay attention to the blockchain and cryptocurrency area, then founded Crypto Investment Fund – gumi Cryptos. Pitch Contest: Industrial Internet, IoT & Mobility Social Impact and Accessibility Partnerships at Google Play Maxim Mai leads Social Impact and Accessibility Partnerships at Google Play. His mission is to amplify the positive impact created by apps and games in communities around the world and to empower their developers to find success on Android and Google Play. He also helps NGOs tap into Google Play to raise awareness and funds for their causes. Part of the Google Play team, Maxim is an expert on app strategy, distribution and revenue models. He has consulted top developers and startups in Europe and North America on how to build and grow sustainable mobile businesses. Maxim has been with Google for six years. Prior to joining Google Play, he worked with strategic online publishers to grow their advertising businesses. Pre-Google, Maxim worked in strategy consulting. He is based in New York City and holds a Bachelor of Commerce with First Class Honours from The University of Sydney. Her inspiration to promote social investment emerged from her 10 years of experiences in Cambodia. Prior to establishing ARUN, she worked with NGOs and international aid agencies such as JICA and World Bank through which she gained critical knowledge and personal networks in social development in Asia and Africa. Through social investment, Satoko hopes to establish a new international cooperation scheme that contributes both to the empowerment of the people and sustainable development. She has a MSc from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA from International Christian University (ICU). She currently serves as ARUN’s president. Pocket Sun is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and global keynote speaker. She founded SoGal, one of the largest global entrepreneurship and venture capital networks for women, with 13 chapters worldwide. Together with her business partner Elizabeth Galbut, she founded SoGal Ventures, the world’s first millennial venture capital firm to invest in early stage companies in the US and Asia led by diverse teams. As millennials themselves, Pocket and Elizabeth invest in the future of how the next generation lives, works, and stays healthy. Since 2015, they have invested in 50 startups, of which two have been acquired. Decentralization: Why it is important in Blockchain and the Future of Web Viewing your friends' lives on Facebook, buying your daily items on Amazon, using Google Maps to get to where you want -- is this your life? Web services has become a dominant part of our lives to the point of dependency. We cannot live without them anymore. Meanwhile, these web services that we take for granted due to its free access could be achieved in exchange for our personal information. Blockchain technology could bring new kind of freedom against the current state of centralized web. This session reveals the negative side of daily used web services and how blockchain can achieve our privacy and future of web throughout the discussion with specialist from Neutrino, ALIS, and withID. Target: anyone who is concerned about their own freedom and interested in building the next generation of web services A new twist to the usual pitching event - at Showtech Time, startups will be pitching to those that truly matter: their customers! Maki Kaplinsky is a serial entrepreneur, Co Founder and CEO of NFT Inc. NFT is a Silicon Valley-based start-up with main R&D in Israel, developing a door-to-door, electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) flying car that drives like a car on the road, and flies like a plane. Maki's previous start-up IQP Corporation, was an early innovator in the Internet of Things and sold to GE in 2017. Liu Weichun, co-founder and COO of KKday, is in charge of KKday’s global product management and operational strategies. After graduating from New York University, Liu worked as an investment banker. Afterwards, she joined Dell and served as a supply chain manager. During her time at Dell, she had the opportunity to meet a lot of Taiwanese “invisible brand champions” who excelled technology-wise, but lacked brand management savvy. From this experience, she decided to play a leading role in helping Taiwanese brands establish highly visible positions in the global markets. Knowing that high quality products and good customer service are what make brands influential, Liu Weichun is dedicated to improving KKday’s product development, supply chain management, and user experience. Her goal is to facilitate the ease of booking complete travel itineraries which enable travelers to enjoy more local experiences. She hopes that one day, booking a complete, traveler-customized trip will be as easy as buying a movie ticket Workshop : Protect Yourself from Cyber Threats! Learn how to protect yourself from cyber threats and how to encrypt your own information. With social networking sites, our information is constantly available for hackers. To prevent your from getting hacked, this workshop will provide countermeasures for cyber threats. Time for some practical and useful cybersecurity knowledge. *Laptop or Cellphone required. Koichiro is the President and CEO of CrowdWorks. After his experience at a leading manufacturing company, has been a part of the listing of IT company as one of executives. Later on, founded Crowdworks Inc in 2011 which provides Japan’s largest crowdsourcing service and has taken the lead in crowdsourced equity offerings. The company was listed on TSE Mothers in 2014 and provides services to over 2.24 million crowd-workers which includes,12 government institutions and 290,000 companies as of October, 2018. In 2015, he was awarded the Workstyle Innovative Award in Japan’s Venture Company Award from the Ministry of Economy,Trade and Industry proposed by Shinzo-Abe Prime Minister. In 2016, he has taken a position as a director of the Japan Association of New Economy which has membership of around 500 companies and is led by Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten). Joy Tang is the CEO and founder of Markable.ai, the leading AI computer vision company for the retail sector. It has raised over $5.2M and closing another $6M round from tier one global VCs with billion dollar clients on most continents. Before building Markable’s world class team, Joy won a Gold Medal in Math Olympics in China at age 16 and was the TV anchor of a Chinese television program for ten years. Joy then attended MIT on a full scholarship, with majors in math and economics. Joy sold her first start up, a social media platform for international students built together with Berkeley students to a Chinese company in her last year of college. After college, she worked as a lead machine learning quantitative scientist for seven years that built financial high frequency AI trading programs generating a daily six-figure profit while causing traditional wall street to crash in 2008. Joy left high frequency trading to create Markable.ai, upon noticing a huge gap in the market between e-commerce and digital content. This gap inspired her to develop the AI technology to make all forms of visual digital content such as photos, videos and livestream content immediately shoppable. Markable.ai has a goal to deliver the ultimate shopping therapy for consumers; the future of AI driven fast e-commerce; and the future of AI driven green, user-engaged advertising. Mikko Ikola is CEO & Co-founder at Ambronite. Ambronite’s mission is to transform humans and our planet from surviving to thriving, through sustainable plant-based foods. Ambronite’s first product, Complete Meal Shake, contains 100% of everything the human body needs and quenches hunger for 4 hours using only real foods. Ambronite is used worldwide by top performers and has customers in over 30 countries. Ambronite has been featured in publications such as TIME Magazine, Wired, and Wallpaper. Ambronite has raised USD$1.5m in funding from investors such as Jawed Karim (Co-founder at YouTube) and Lifeline Ventures. Besides nutrition and healthy lifestyle, Mikko has a tech-background in computer science and is inspired by topics such as leadership (Scaling Up Methodology) and minimalism. The Secret of my Global Expansion: Growing your Business Outside your Hometown  James Chou is the Managing Director & CEO of Microsoft for Startups for Greater China, Japan & Korea, Chair of Technology and Innovation Committee of American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.  Within Microsoft, he leads the effort to scale up the business for some of the best and most innovative startups in China by providing unprecedented access to top Microsoft partners and customers, venture capitalists, and technical knowledge.  Through the acceleration, he helped his portfolio companies raising hundred of million dollars and increased their valuation more than 300% in average in only 4 months to 10+ billion dollars.  He is a frequent public speaker for Startups, Venture & Private Equity in China, Digital Transformation and Corporate Innovation.  He has more than 20 years experiences in TMT space in China and US.  He is also a mentor to several leading accelerators and an advisor to several leading VCs in China.  Before joining Microsoft, he was a serial entrepreneur and a venture investor.   He has founded or co-founded three high tech companies in China.   Previously, he served senior management positions at AsiaInfo and UTStarcom, the first 2 NASDAQ listed Chinese technology companies.  Prior to that, He worked product management, sales, and engineering roles at Hewlett Packard and NEC in Silicon Valley for 7 years.   James got his MBA from Santa Clara University.  Executive Officer of Global Business Division at DMM.com LLC Esther Imai is the Executive Officer of Global Business Division at DMM.com LLC, a privately-held Japanese media and technology corporation. Chairman and CEO of DMM.com LLC had entrusted her to manage 8 billion yen (US$73 million) fund for global investments. She serves as the Chairperson of the Board of Director of DMM.HeHe Ltd and as a Director of AC Group Ltd, where she brings the team together into a coherent whole, help them extend their thinking to drive material business advantage. She is also leading the Global Business team under CFO group of DG Holdings Co., Ltd. (DMM Group Holding Company) where she is responsible for the financial aspects of the overseas subsidiaries under DMM Group including M&A and starting up new businesses overseas. Esther is being respected as a credible voice and payments software companies which was acquired by London-based fintech star Monitise plc in 2014. After joining Monitise, Isbecer oversaw the company’s Eastern Europe, Middle East, Central Asia and Africa operations as the Managing Director of Monitise MEA. In 2017, Monitise plc was acquired by US-based a Fortune 500 financial services tech giant Fiserv Inc. After the Monitise-Fiserv acquisition, he left the company and founded Commencis. Commencis helps leading brands to grow and scale in digital by building purposeful products, powered by its Big Data, Analytics and Cloud solutions. Isbecer is also an active seed investor, he is a member of Galata Business Angels, Turkey’s first angel investor group. He has made over 40 seed investments in 11 different countries to date making him one of the most active investors in Turkey. After studying at Robert College in İstanbul, Firat received his Bachelor’s Degree from Galatasaray University, and his Master’s Degree in Geopolitical Studies from a joint programme by the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Isbecer briefly worked at a Paris based independent Euro-Mediterranean Think Tank as a research associate. He has been recognised in Fortune Turkey’s 40 under 40 list numerous times. Special Guest Speech by Yuriko Koike (Governor of Tokyo) Yuriko Koike is the current Governor of Tokyo. Previously she served various roles in the government including Minister of the Environment and Minister of Defense. Click me for more info about Yuriko Koike. Governor of TOKYO, Former Minister of the Environment, Former Minister of Defense Yuriko Koike was inaugurated as Governor of Tokyo in August 2016. Koike served as Minister of the Environment from 2003 to 2006. Later she held two other cabinet posts- Special Advisor to the Prime Minister for National Security Affairs, appointed in 2006, and Japan’s first female Defense Minister, in July 2007. In 2008, she ran for the head of Japan’s ruling party - the first female candidate to ever run for prime ministership. After graduating from Cairo University, Koike began her journalistic career as a TV Personality. She has written books and articles on Japanese politics and international affairs. Fireside Chat with Jenny Lefcourt (Freestyle) and Alice Lloyd George (RRE) Jenny Lefcourt is Partner at freestyle, one of the most successful SF based a seed-stage investor and mentor behind startups like Airtable, 9GAG, and Narvar. Alice Lloyd George is Partner at RRE, a New York-based venture capital behind companies like Venmo, BuzzFeed, and Business Insider. Jenny and Alice will share their experience working in the investment scene. Click for more information about Jenny Lefcourt and Alice Lloyd George Jenny Lefcourt brings 20+ years of technology start-up experience to her role as General Partner at Freestyle, a $90M seed stage fund in San Francisco whose partners are all serial entrepreneurs. Freestyle has has led investments in companies such as Airtable, Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, Wag, and Digit. Jenny is also a founding member of All Raise, a non-profit dedidcated to diversity in funders & founders. Prior to joining Freestyle, Jenny cofounded WeddingChannel.com (sold: XOXO) and Bella Pictures (sold: CPI). She was an angel investor and advisor in many technology companies including Discord, MainStreetHub, StyleSeat & Minted. Jenny earned her B.S. in economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and attended Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. She lives in Marin with her husband and three children. Alice Lloyd George loves working with entrepreneurs on the frontier of innovation and helps RRE invest in emerging technologies including blockchain, machine intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and NewSpace, as well as consumer and healthcare startups. She appears on Fox Business, was Forbes’ 30 under 30 (2016), and Marc Andreessen calls her “one of the unknown rockstars in tech.” Before joining RRE Alice worked in investments at Bridgewater Associates, and in a prior life lived in Beijing conducting research as a Brookings Institute fellow. Alice hails from the UK, graduated with a BA from Princeton, and began her career at The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, where she reported on business and politics across Asia. She is the founder and host of the hit podcast Flux, a series of conversations with founders at the frontier. You can follow her latest musings on Twitter @amlg23 Chika Terada (Sansan): Be your own rival Chika is co-founder and CEO of Sansan, and IT venture to provide business card-based contact management services. Sansan has now grown to over 6,000 corporate clients and 2.5 million individual users, making it the largest database of its kind in Japan. In this session, Chika will talk about his concept of rivaling himself and how it has helped him to keep growing his business. Prior to founding Sansan in 2007, Chika worked in IT at Mitsui & Co., where he was involved in importing computer equipment, developing systems, and working on joint ventures. In 2001, he was transferred to Silicon Valley, where he dealt with cutting-edge U.S. ventures as they developed their business links with Japan. Upon returning to Japan, he sold database software he brought back from the U.S., and then became a manager at Mitsui, handling corporate planning and management at security-related companies. In May 2007, Chika left Mitsui and together with four friends started Sansan, an IT venture providing business card-based contact management services. Sansan has now grown to over 7,000 corporate clients and over 2.5 million individual users, making it the largest database of its kind in Japan. In 2011, Chika received the U.S. Ambassador’s Award at the Entrepreneurs' Awards Japan. This honor recognizes entrepreneurs who start companies with high growth potential, and devote themselves to becoming market leaders. Fireside Chat with Genki Shiota (Akatsuki) and Yuji Maeda (SHOWROOM) Change the world through the power of entertainment. Join our conversation with Genki Shiota, Co-founder of Akatsuki Japan's Leading Mobile Gaming Company Akatsuki Inc., and Yuji Maeda, the CEO of SHOWROOM Inc., a live streaming platform for hidden talents all over the globe. Click for more info about Genki Shiota and Yuji Maeda. Genki Shiota is the co-founder of Akatsuki, a global entertainment company producing a wide range of entertainment, including globally-popular mobile games, eSports, soccer, films, and VR/MR/AR. Located in Tokyo, Fukuoka, Taiwan and LA, Akatsuki strives to provide the best entertainment experience with excellence by combining digital and real elements and utilizing its knowledge of cutting edge technologies. Akatsuki's vision is to create "A Heart Driven World", or in other words, creating a world where everyone wants to make things which will bring happiness to all. Its mission is to "Make The World Colorful" by making the world shine with entertainment. These vision and mission statements were written and conceptualized by Mr. Shiota himself. Now enjoying its 8th year in business, Akatsuki accelerates investment to support the growth of next-generation start-ups through two CVCs: the AET Fund, and the Heart Driven Fund. Yuji Maeda joined UBS Securities Japan in 2010 after completing his bachelor degree in political science and economics at Waseda University. In July 2011 he was transferred to UBS Securities LLC in New York and began covering institutional investors who were based in the USA and Canada. After three years of his career as a Japanese equity salesperson, he met Tomoko Namba, the founder of DeNA (Japanese internet / social gaming company), which made him join DeNA afterward. He launched "SHOWROOM" in late 2013 as an internal corporate venture of DeNA, which ended up in being spun off into a separate company in 2015. Now he leads the whole business as the CEO of SHOWROOM Inc. Fireside Chat with Yukiko Muto (Uber Eats) and Slush Team Prior to joining Uber, Yukiko co-founded ProTrade (acquired by Rakuten in 2000). She led Japan's business in some of world's top startups including OpenTable and Travelzoo. She was the Head of New Business Sales in Japan before becoming President of Uber Eats, Japan. As a key member of Uber’s Japan Leadership Team, Yukiko is responsible for overseeing the Uber Eats business in Japan. Yukiko joins Uber from Google, where she was the Head of New Business Sales in Japan. Prior to Google, Yukiko was the President of OpenTable overseeing its operations in Japan. Previously Yukiko was the President of Travelzoo Japan and an Executive Officer of Travelzoo Asia Pacific for more than 6 years and also held various senior roles at Rakuten, including Managing Director for Rakuten Dining, where she was responsible for restructuring the business units and managing the special task force projects. Yukiko began her career with Andersen Consulting (Accenture) before co-founding ProTrade. (ProTrade was acquired by Rakuten in 2000). Yuki Kanayama (ZOZO Technologies): What Comes After Exit ? Yuki Kaneyama founded VASILY and developed fashion application a named IQON in 2008 which was later acquired by ZOZO Inc. Now he is running ZOZO Technologies Inc. as Chief Innovation Officer. He will share his founding story, current challenges, and visions for the future. Yuki Kanayama is the founder of VASILY, the company behind Apple and Google’s award-winning fashion application, IQON. In October 2017, the company was acquired by ZOZO Inc. (former START TODAY CO.,LTD.), the owner of ZOZOTOWN, the largest fashion online shopping website in Japan. After the acquisition, he became the Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) of ZOZO Technologies Inc. He is now in charge of operations and new business development of “ZOZO Research”. He is also the author of the book “いちばんやさしいグロースハックの教本” (The Simplest Guide to Hack Growth). Fireside Chat with Evgeny Tchebotarev (500px) and Masaru Ikeda Started from a passion in photography, Evgeny Tchebotarev created 500px, a photosharing community before Facebook and Flickr. After 500px's exit, Ev is now working as VP of Growth Asia at Skylum. Joining Evgeny on stage is Masaru Ikeda, a well-known editor in Japanese start up scene. Click me for more info about Evgeny Tchebotarev and Masaru Ikeda. In early 2004, before Facebook and photo-sharing sites, Evgeny Tchebotarev created a community for photographers to meet, share photos and information. He initially developed this on top of a LiveJournal platform and then founded 500px as a company. As Founder and COO, Chief Product Officer, and later Chief Photography Officer (CPO), Evgeny was responsible for bringing the 500px vision to life through operational excellence, product innovation, community engagement and maintaining a strong link between photographers and 500px team. Originally from Moscow, Ev has earned a BA in Commerce and Finance from Ryerson University in Toronto, graduating with honours in 2007. He began photography in 2002 and immediately became a fascinated with it when he sold three photos to magazines from his first roll of film. Since then he has spent the entirety of his professional career dedicated to the betterment of visual creativity, focusing on photography and design. Ev remains an active photographer and community member, and has been honoured to judge many world class photo contests, including Red Bull Illume, Photo Life, and Sony World Photography Awards. Since 2016, after leaving 500px, Ev travelled to Asia to consult companies, where for 2 years he was focused on helping companies to build Silicon Valley-style product management expertise. In July 2018, Ev joined Skylum as VP of Growth Asia, applying years of hands-on expertise of working with Asian companies to expand Skylum’s award-winning products to Asian markets. Masaru Ikeda writes for many publications and media outlets covering the startup scene in Japan and the rest of the world. He started his career as a programmer/engineer, and previously co-founded several system integration companies and consulting firms. He’s been traveling around Silicon Valley, Europe, and Asia exploring the IT industry and prominent startups. Fireside Chat with Hironao Kunimitsu (gumi) and Reed Stevenson (Bloomberg) Hironao Kunimitsu, founder, and CEO of gumi, Japan's leading gaming startup. He will share his experience running a business in various industries like gaming and blockchain. Joining his talk is Reed Stevenson, Deputy Technology Team Leader of Bloomberg. Click for more info about Hironao Kunimitsu and Reed Stevenson. In 2007, Hironao Kunimitsu founded gumi Inc. which is now a public company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. In 2015, he established Tokyo VR Startups Inc. Additionally, in 2016, he led the investment in VR-focused venture capital fund “The VR Fund, L.P.”, and gumi became a general partner. He continued to help nurture the global VR community through co-founding “Seoul VR Startups” in 2016 and “Nordic VR Startups” in 2017, incubation program in Seoul and Nordic respectively. Since mid of 2017, he started to pay attention to the blockchain and cryptocurrency area, then founded Crypto Investment Fund – gumi Cryptos. Reed is a journalist with more than two decades of experience. He returned to Tokyo in 2016 as technology editor at Bloomberg. His previous stint in Japan was reporting for Reuters from 1996 to 2002. In between, Reed's bureau chief assignments with the news agency took him to Seattle, Amsterdam and Dubai. He joined Bloomberg in San Francisco four years ago. A graduate of an international school in Yokohama and the University of Pennsylvania, Reed has reported on business, politics, technology and a variety of stories for print, television and radio. Yoshiki Yasui (Origami): Pioneering a Cashless Society through an Open Platform Mindset With a vision to shape the future of money, payment, and commerce, Yoshiaki Yasui founded Origami. Since 2012, Origami developed Origami Pay, QR-code payment service to create a cashless society in Japan. Born in Toronto in 1985, Yoshiki spent his childhood in Toronto and New York until moving to Japan at the age of 10. For post-secondary education, Yoshiki studied at the University of Sydney and later graduated from Waseda University. Upon graduation, Yoshiki first began his work in the Investment Banking Division for Lehman Brothers. Later he worked at DCM Ventures, a major venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, where he was responsible for investments in the US, Japan and China. Yoshiki founded “Origami” in 2012. Currently, Yoshiki is also a committee member of the Payments Japan Association, as well as the New Industrial Structure Committee of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan. Making Social Impact: Maxim Mai (Google Play) and Satoko Kono (ARUN) An enterprise and an investor discuss how to make the world a better place. At Google, Maxim helps app and game developers to create a positive impact. Leading ARUN, Satoko invests in social entrepreneurs in developing countries with capital funds from individuals and businesses in Japan. Click for more info about Maxim Mai and Satoko Kono. Social Impact and Accessibility Partnerships at Google Play Maxim Mai leads Social Impact and Accessibility Partnerships at Google Play. His mission is to amplify the positive impact created by apps and games in communities around the world and to empower their developers to find success on Android and Google Play. He also helps NGOs tap into Google Play to raise awareness and funds for their causes. Part of the Google Play team, Maxim is an expert on app strategy, distribution and revenue models. He has consulted top developers and startups in Europe and North America on how to build and grow sustainable mobile businesses. Maxim has been with Google for six years. Prior to joining Google Play, he worked with strategic online publishers to grow their advertising businesses. Pre-Google, Maxim worked in strategy consulting. He is based in New York City and holds a Bachelor of Commerce with First Class Honours from The University of Sydney. Her inspiration to promote social investment emerged from her 10 years of experiences in Cambodia. Prior to establishing ARUN, she worked with NGOs and international aid agencies such as JICA and World Bank through which she gained critical knowledge and personal networks in social development in Asia and Africa. Through social investment, Satoko hopes to establish a new international cooperation scheme that contributes both to the empowerment of the people and sustainable development. She has a MSc from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA from International Christian University (ICU). She currently serves as ARUN’s president. Pocket Sun: Redefining Next-Gen Women Entrepreneurs and Investors Pocket Sun is the founding partner at SoGal Ventures, one of the world’s largest communities of diverse entrepreneurs and investors. Sogal invested in 50+ startups with world-class founders in the US, Asia Pacific, and Europe. She will talk about a new approach to venture capitalist Pocket Sun is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and global keynote speaker. She founded SoGal, one of the largest global entrepreneurship and venture capital networks for women, with 13 chapters worldwide. Together with her business partner Elizabeth Galbut, she founded SoGal Ventures, the world’s first millennial venture capital firm to invest in early stage companies in the US and Asia led by diverse teams. As millennials themselves, Pocket and Elizabeth invest in the future of how the next generation lives, works, and stays healthy. Since 2015, they have invested in 50 startups, of which two have been acquired. From Israel and Silicon Valley Startup Ecosystem Synergies: Alexander Zaidelson (Beam), Maki Kaplinsky (NFT) Maki Kaplinsky, a serial entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of NFT Inc, a Silicon Valley-based start-up, developing a door-to-door, electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing flying car. Her previous startup, IQP Corporation was acquired by GE. Prior to Beam, Mr. Zaidelson spent over 2 years in CIRTech Venture Capital Fund invests in growth and late-stage technology companies in Israel. They will be joining the stage talking about cutting edge technology and innovations and Israel startup scene. Click for more information about Alexander Zaidelson (BEAM) and Maki Kaplinsky (NFT). Alexander Zaidelson is the CEO of Beam. Prior to Beam, Mr. Zaidelson spent over 2 years in CIRTech Venture Capital Fund investing in growth- and late-stage technology companies in Israel. Before CIRTech, Mr. Zaidelson served as Vice President of Product Management at WeFi Inc., a network connectivity and customer behavior analytics company. While at WeFi, Mr. Zaidelson spearheaded the company’s pivot to customer behavior analytics, overseeing creation of leading data products that are unique in the industry. The products created by the team helped WeFi win major clients in mobile application space. WeFi was ultimately acquired by TruConnect Inc. Prior to WeFi, he co-founded Nareos, a mobile peer-to-peer file sharing company that pioneered content and video sharing on smartphone in the pre-iPhone era. Mr. Zaidelson also founded Wikitup, a visual desktop dictionary company that was acquired by iMesh. An entrepreneur at heart, in the course of his career he also served as co-founder or adviser to a number of start-up projects. Mr. Zaidelson holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from St. Petersburg State University and an MBA from Tel Aviv University. Maki Kaplinsky is a serial entrepreneur, Co Founder and CEO of NFT Inc. NFT is a Silicon Valley-based start-up with main R&D in Israel, developing a door-to-door, electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) flying car that drives like a car on the road, and flies like a plane. Maki's previous start-up IQP Corporation, was an early innovator in the Internet of Things and sold to GE in 2017. Fireside Chat with Liu Weichun (KKDay) and Phoebe Amoroso Liu Weichun, co-founder and COO of KKday: Asia’s leading tours, and activities e-commerce platform. Recently KKday closed Series B+ funding co-led by LINE Ventures and the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. Weichun will share her founding story in an interview with Phoebe Amoroso. Click for more info about Liu Weichun and Phoebe Amoroso. Liu Weichun, co-founder and COO of KKday, is in charge of KKday’s global product management and operational strategies. After graduating from New York University, Liu worked as an investment banker. Afterwards, she joined Dell and served as a supply chain manager. During her time at Dell, she had the opportunity to meet a lot of Taiwanese “invisible brand champions” who excelled technology-wise, but lacked brand management savvy. From this experience, she decided to play a leading role in helping Taiwanese brands establish highly visible positions in the global markets. Knowing that high quality products and good customer service are what make brands influential, Liu Weichun is dedicated to improving KKday’s product development, supply chain management, and user experience. Her goal is to facilitate the ease of booking complete travel itineraries which enable travelers to enjoy more local experiences. She hopes that one day, booking a complete, traveler-customized trip will be as easy as buying a movie ticket Phoebe Amoroso is a multimedia journalist and reporter hailing from the UK. After 2.5 years as a market reporter for NHK World’s Newsline, she joined the channel’s business show Biz Stream as a newscaster and director. In addition to assisting with documentary production, she travels around Japan as a journalist with a focus on cuisine, travel and human stories. A graduate from Cambridge University and the London School of Economics, she moved to Tokyo in 2014 on a Daiwa Scholarship, through which she studied Japanese and worked as a video journalist for Thomson Reuters, making a variety of news and features. Koichiro Yoshida (CrowdWorks): Why You Should Fail Learn from the story of Japan's biggest crowdsourcing service. Koichiro Yoshida, the founder, and CEO of CrowdWorks will share personal episodes and what he learned from his entrepreneurial journey. Koichiro is the President and CEO of CrowdWorks. After his experience at a leading manufacturing company, has been a part of the listing of IT company as one of executives. Later on, founded Crowdworks Inc in 2011 which provides Japan’s largest crowdsourcing service and has taken the lead in crowdsourced equity offerings. The company was listed on TSE Mothers in 2014 and provides services to over 2.24 million crowd-workers which includes,12 government institutions and 290,000 companies as of October, 2018. In 2015, he was awarded the Workstyle Innovative Award in Japan’s Venture Company Award from the Ministry of Economy,Trade and Industry proposed by Shinzo-Abe Prime Minister. In 2016, he has taken a position as a director of the Japan Association of New Economy which has membership of around 500 companies and is led by Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten). Joy Tang (Markable.ai): AI Innovation for the New Generation Joy Tang is the founder and CEO of Markable.ai, the leading AI computer vision company for the retail sector. It has raised over $5.2M and closing another $6M round from tier one global VCs with billion-dollar clients on most continents. Joy created Markable.ai, after noticing a huge gap in the market between e-commerce and digital content. This gap inspired her to develop the AI technology to make all forms of visual digital content such as photos, videos and live stream content immediately shoppable. In this session, Tang will share her view on the future of fashion with AI. Joy Tang is the CEO and founder of Markable.ai, the leading AI computer vision company for the retail sector. It has raised over $5.2M

Harmony creates an open market for the decentralised economy. The project aims at providing a consensus protocol over the open Internet at 10 million transactions per second with 100-milliseconds latency and not more than 0.1% fee.- Currency: USD paid in ETH at the moment of sale;- Total tokens: 21,000,000,000;- Available for token sale: ТВА;- Token price: ТВА;- ICO plans to raise funds: as of today it is known that it is planned to raise USD 2,000,000 at seed round;- Sales t&c: 40% bonus for seed round, 20% bonus for private sale, 0% bonus for public sale;Token allocation20% for sale, 40% for developers and community, 28% for foundation and research, 12% for founder and team.Token freeze Sales — «40% no lockup, 10% monthly over 6 months; for bonus, 100% release after 1-year lockup»; Developers and community — «1-year 28% lockup, 1.5% monthly over 4 years»; Foundation and research — «28% no lockup, 1.0% monthly over 6 years»; Founder and team — «1-year 28% lockup, 2% monthly over 3 years».As you can see the token freeze system is rather sustainable and fundamental.Token release: immediately, as soon as listed on crypto exchanges.Investors | Partners |Roadmap | Token economy | Token saleNo information is available about those things as of this stage.As the developers noted, the main competitors for this project are:EOS, Zilliqa, Hashgraph, Thunder, Dfinity, Solana, Kadena, Algorand.In GitHub of the project there is 1 repository with the project description, as well as brief description of a new language for smart contracts. GitHub of the project is not empty, but it is clear that the project is an a very early stage of implementation, and it is not improbable (it is most probable) that the main activity is done in closed repositories.The project presents a system for information transfer and storage, based on the newest and the most perspective developments in the area of distributed systems and telecommunications.1. Network transport level — the use of Google UDP instead of TCP/IP will enable to reduce the time to establish connection between the network nodes.2. Adaptability for the latest 5G mobile communication network (http://www.huawei.com/minisite/5g/en/defining-5g.html)3. Scalability via sharding (OmniLedger)4. 10М tps throughput5. Shards interaction on the basis of DAG principle6. Blocks parallelising7. Oracles support8. Development of DApps with the use of formal verification method (a mathematic proof of application functions) to enable the development of highly protected applications.9. Issues associated with consensus mechanism and virtual machine will be clarified in future versions of WP.Stephen has been obsessed with protocols and compilers since high school. He re-engineered ICQ and X11 protocols coded in OCaml for 15 years. In 2002 he graduated from Simon Fraser University (Australia) with a degree in Commutative Algebraic Geometry. In 2007 he got a Ph.D. of Cryptographic Protocols in the University of Pennsylvania. He was a Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Google and a Principal Engineer on Search Ranking at Apple. He founded the mobile search Spotsetter where he worked for 3 years, then Apple acquired the startup and Stephen worked there for one more year.Then he worked with EE-sales assistant until he founded HARMONY in 2017.He obtained his M.S. in AI Language Technologies at the Carnegie Mellon University​.He taught Apple Siri to understand natural language (deep learning). He did research on ambiguity of words meaning and machine translation. His research paper won the best database award at ICWSM 2013. Alok spoke at the top conferences including SIGIR, ICWSM and EMNLP. He also published a best seller book Game Changers, telling about successful graduates from his alma mater IIT Kharagpur (India).He founded a VR startup Orah in 2012 that raised US$ 10m​. Orah served the needs of thousands of professional content creators in 70 countries by selling GPU-driven live stitching software and 360° cameras. Nicolas has a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science.Michael Slinn — most likely CPO. 500+ followers in LinkedInHe focused on developing and positioning products. He delivered a presentation on the integration of smart contracts at the World Crypto Economic Forum. Michael created one of the biggest technical communities Scala at San-Fransisco Bay.He obtained a Ph.D. of Computer Science at College Park of Maryland University and his B.S. in the University of Science and Technology (Beijing).He worked at Google as Search Infrastructure Engineer for Play Market, published 10+ academic papers on spatio-temporal querying​ and map-based visualization. Rongjian has been doing an in-deptyh research on decentralized protocols since early 2017. He is a Co-Chairman of ABC Blockchain Foundation with 100+ Engineers from Google, Facebook, Linkedin as members.Trausti Kristjansson — Part-time, 500+ followers in LinkedInTrausti received his Ph.D. of Machine Learning​ from the University of Waterloo.He worked in the industry’s most respected research labs (Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Google Research, Amazon), founded full-stack startups and led Ph.D. Engineers as an Engineering Director. in 2004 his research paper Interactive Information Extraction with Constrained Conditional Random Fields won the award at AAAI, the top academic conference in artificial intelligence.Georgios Fainekos is a Professor at Arizona State University. He specializes in formal methods of cyber-physical systems, swarm robotics​, and machine learning for real-time planning. Georgios did his doctoral studies at the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception Labs (GRASP Labs) of the University of Pennsylvania.Bruce Huang 黄海旻 (part-time) — 500+ followers in LinkedInHe obtained his M.S. in Computer Science at the Simon Fraser University. He was a Senior Programming Engineer in Microsoft China for 7 years, then a Director at Alibaba Cloud and Credit Lase. Later, he was a CEO of Madailicai, a top-peer lending company in China. Bruce is a certified Snowboarding Instructor (feel free to contact).There is no profile in LinkedIn, in FB he is registered under the surname Hueschen. https://www.facebook.com/huesch — 953 friendsSince May 2018 — works in IOHK (there is a link to the company web-site, but it is absolutely empty).Hourann Bosci — Software Developer854 followers in LinkedInShe studied Biochemistry, Mathematics, Polithology at University of Western Australia in 2002–2006.Work record: From 2004 till 2006 worked as Technical Assistant at her University, then as a Developer in a number of companies, including Google (6 months).In period from 2013 till August 2016 she was a Co-Founder and a General Director of Datagami (API, interfaces and visualization devices for data processing and machine learning) (the company’s closed).Since March 2017 she is a Co-Founder and a General Director of Upright Media (Upright Media platform uses a computer vision and AI to automatically produce impressive video commercials with the use of the customized approach).Shamir Allibhai — Film-Maker, Blockchain Video Authenticator, Founder of Speech Recognition Startup. 2834 followers in LinkedInHe studied in Harvard in 2007–2009, before it he graduated from the American University in Beirut.Work record: Since 2003 he was a Producer and a Commercial Director at many London-based TV channels, in 2006–2011 he has his own TV channel, where he told good stories about islam. Then he worked as a Producer in an American studio (also tending to the Middle East culture) for a year, in Qatar for 3 years and a year in San-Fransisco in a blockchain company.In a period from May 2016 through June 2017 he created content in VR-company for Oculus VR, in September 2017 — December 2017 he was a Project Advisor for Rokoko (San-Fransisco, VR), then he established Simon Says (speech recognition, AI and machine learning) and founded Unveiled Labs (provides stakeholders with absolute assurance on the authenticity of video and audio content).Education: University of Computer Studies (Birma).Work record: Web and Graphic Designer in many companies.Yair is a creative and motivated designer with 10+ with more than a decade of experience in making many products useful and beautiful across all major platforms. Try a bot he created overnight to learn more about him: https://www.facebook.com/hypertimestudio/ He has an experience of designing his own products as he is the only designer of a small startup acquired by Apple.Achievements:Once he was in top-ten of 40,000+ designers on a design-crown sourcing market, he won an award from Singapore Government for application designed for Amazon Music, Kindle and Audible across Amazon.com and other platforms. Yair has a degree in Computer Technology and Computer Arts, and he is also a certified Agile Scrum Master.Brea Salim — Community Liaison Officer779 followers in LinkedInEducation: Barnard College (Columbia) Economics and English and Phillips Exeter Academy.Work record: Since June 2011 she worked in Jakarta, the in American companies as a Writer and Marketing Consultant, since March 2018 she is a Senior Marketing Specialist in Yahoo! Small BusinessShe has her own web-site: https://www.breasalim.comShe has a Google Adwords certificate in advertising.Zi Wang — worked at Google from 2006–2015 on Chrome, Google [X], Android and Nexus. He was the first Global Creative Director​ for the Google Hardware Division and co-founded a Google Research Lab with a US$20M budget. 500+ followers.Zi founded Quantum Bakery, a startup partnering with Google, Corning and Toyota, to develop consumer products with the use of artificial intelligence. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Economics.There are 2632 results when searching for Zi Wang, but only one matches Zi Want working with Google and Toyota:All afore-mentioned is taken from the project paper and matches LinkedIn information. We may add that Zi studied in Stanford as well.Since 2015 he founded Quantum Bakery an on his page he indicates: our staff worked in Google, Apple, Facebook and Samsung. We led technological projects for Google, Tencent, Facebook, Amazon & Toyota.Aaron Li — started programming since the age of 7 and started mining Bitcoin since 2011. He won the prestigious ACM SIGKDD best paper​ award on language topic modeling, having completed his master’s degree at the Carnegie Mellon University. 880 followers in LinkedIn.Aaron was a Researcher at the Google Machine Learning team and a Founding Engineer at Scaled Inference, an AI startup head advised by Prof. Michael Jordan. A New Zealand citizen, Aaron was granted the Extraordinary Ability Visa in the US to create fundamental and disruptive technologies for humans.All afore-mentioned is taken from the project paper and matches LinkedIn information. He has 7 publications, 3 awards in the area of Computer Science and Innovations. He worked as a Software Engineer in Google for 4 months.Navneet Singh — led the Mobile Engineering at Google for 6 years. He also was a Senior Vice President at the largest payment processor​ WorldPay and a Head of Data Science at the mobile payment provider Ezetap. 2007 followers in LinkedIn.Navneet graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science. He speaks 6 languages, has an extensive experience with distributed machine learning, and a deep passion for transforming businesses with data-driven innovation.All afore-mentioned is taken from the project paper and matches LinkedIn information. He has three patents and one publication.Michael Young — co-founded and led 3 venture-backed companies to acquisitions, including one to a key supplier of Apple. Bringing expertise in computer vision (projected sensor screen), he has closed deals with Fortune 500 companies, the US Department of Defense, and strategic partners across China and Japan. 500+ followers in LinkedIn.An inventor of 20 patents, Michael raised US$35M+ and was selected as one of America’s Best Entrepreneurs​ by Bloomberg. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in Physics and left Stanford with a Ph.D.There are 4,712 results for Michael Young-physicist from Pennsylvania and Stanford Universities, and only one matches the description (no photo):All afore-mentioned is taken from the project paper and matches LinkedIn information. We may add that he worked in different companies only in managerial positions.Kushagra Shrivastava — runs the Xoogler investment syndicate. He worked at Google in 2006–2014, leading marketing and strategy for Google Play and Android Apps. Graduated from the INSEAD Executive Program for Marketing, Kushagra was the Chief Executive for Products at an advertising startup acquired by Pinterest. 4,057 followers in LinkedIn.Kushagra is the Senior Director for Yahoo Small Business. He is also a Fellow at Stanford Center for Legal Informatics​, he founded his Blockchain Group and actively contributes to the Computable Contracts project. All afore-mentioned is taken from the project paper and matches LinkedIn information.The project has a TOP-team and TOP-level advisors. Looking from the technical side, all looks very cool as well: both the idea and the implementation. We like the token freezing system for all project participants: as we’ve already mentioned above, everything is thought through!Minuses: at the moment there is only one potential minus, which is the lack of project partners and investors (we are sure that they will appear very soon), as well as the absence of metrics (the project is at the very early stage of implementation).Interest level: despite the lack of partners, investors and metrics at the current stage of the project implementation, but, taking into consideration all other positive aspects, the project may be obviously rated as HIGH!There are a lot of tools you can find on the website: a calendar with all upcoming ICO events adjusted to your time zone, social statistics on projects, open whitelists and etc. Simply scroll down on the main page. Till next time!Thank you for choosing ICO DropsWebsite | Twitter | Telegram News | Telegram EN ChatFrom a quick cheer to a standing ovation, clap to show how much you enjoyed this story.Simple and beautiful ICO Calendar. With us it’s impossible to miss the next great #ICO. 🚀

There comes a time in every person’s life when they reach an impasse. When I say, “impasse,” I’m speaking about one of life’s many obstacles that present itself to us at incredibly inopportune moments. For you cinephiles in the audience, you’ve witnessed the man/woman standing on a street corner, who just lost their job and screams at the top of their lungs, “how could this get any worse,” only to be drenched in sewer runoff following a taxicab who drives right through a puddle. For those of us less entrenched with stereotypical vehicles of slapstick in film, everyone, more or less, has a bad day. Well, suffice to say that the US stock market has had a series of rough days over the course of the last several weeks, and several analysts believe that our nation may be headed for a recession a la 2008. Over ten years have gone by since our country underwent an industry-collapsing recession, and, although activity measures like retail sales, industrial production, and employment are at an all-time high, a growing number of economists and financial experts believe we are due for another recession in the next twenty-four months. Market growth has shown significant signs of slowing down over the last few months, with the Dow and several other indices dropping hundreds of points every week or so. “Traditional signals of a U.S. recession from the shape of a yield curve to a fall in housing investment to corporate bond spreads are suggesting in late 2019, early 2020.”According to several media outlets, all eleven sectors of the S&P 500 have received a decrease in expected earnings growth in the last few months, “led by utilities, materials, and industrials.” Before he even took office, President Trump made it clear that he wanted every product, service, and commodity to be manufactured in America and only America. As it relates to the oil industry, this has translated to a rush to pump oil out of shale fields around the country, most notably in West Texas, miraculously leading to record-high levels of production for black gold. Though domestic oil production couldn’t be higher, concerns about oversupply have sent oil prices every which way but loose. As of Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped below 22,000 following a statement issued by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that was intended to calm nervous investors in the space. In his ill-timed statement, Mnuchin said that:“We continue to see strong economic growth in the U.S. economy with robust activity from consumers and businesses. With the government shutdown, Treasury will have critical employees to maintain its core operations at Fiscal Services, IRS, and other crucial functions within the department.”Following Mnuchin’s statement, several major US indexes dropped due to the fact that his words were viewed as off-base and arguably unnecessary in the grand scheme of it all. One analyst told CNN that “this type of announcement raises the question of whether Treasury sees a problem that the rest of the market is missing.” Why else would Mnuchin call executives from every major US banking institution on Christmas Eve? In addition to Mnuchin’s bizarre statement, I can’t imagine it being helpful that President Trump shutdown parts of the federal government until further notice. Though many understand that the shutdown will have no major effects on the US economy, investors and executives across all sectors are concerned with the inability of lawmakers and the current administration to set aside their differences and approve the federal budget. When describing Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA) , SpaceX, and The Boring Company, many would use terms like “eccentric” or “a little out there.” While I recognize Musk’s eccentricity, Musk so much more than simply “out there.” He is an innovative revolutionary with the creativity to manifest tenable change and the bank account to make his ideas a reality. When Musk founded The Boring Company in 2016, his primary goal was to mitigate traffic in major cities by creating a network of underground tunnels, allowing for cars to travel both above and below the surface. The Initial Test Tunnel, as its called, is located in Hawthorne, California, and is currently being used for the research and development of The Boring Company’s public transportation projects, “Loop” and “Hyperloop.” As the company broke first ground on their tunnel in California, Musk thought of no better time to market the Boring brand. He decided to sell a line of very interesting products emblazoned with the Boring Company logo, the most notable product being the “Not-A-Flamethrower.” Originally retailing for $600, the price has now dropped to $500 per flamethrower with an added twist:The Boring Company is now accepting Bitcoin (BTCUSD), Ethereum(ETHUSD), Litecoin (LTCUSD), and Bitcoin (BTCUSD) Cash as forms of payment.Historically, Musk has never openly supported cryptocurrency, though he has had several “flirtations” with the blockchain payment system this year. In February, Musk discovered that several false “Musk” twitter accounts were scamming users into giving away their cryptocurrency. He said that he “literally owned zero cryptocurrencies,” and for crypto owners to be on alert for scammers. After delivering this warning, Musk admitted that he owns .25 Bitcoin (BTCUSD) that a friend sent him a while back. So what does The Boring Company’s accepting of cryptocurrency mean for the crypto market? Analysts are suggesting Musk’s move is one of many that will take place as cryptocurrencies are potentially on the verge of a comeback.The price of Bitcoin (BTCUSD) was unremarkable on Thursday, furthering a relatively consistent downward trend for the world’s largest digital currency. The value decrease of cryptocurrency has been the new normal over the last few months, but many believe bitcoin’s lull may be finding its end. Madi Greenspan, a senior market analyst at eToro believes that the market is on the precipice of watching bitcoin breakout once more. “It’s only a matter of time now. Of course, the flat-line pattern could easily remain for another few months, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing; however, there are signs of excitement boiling underneath the cool price action exterior.”As for the evidence backing up Greenspan’s curious claims, let’s turn our attention to the rising number of transactions per second. For those of us not familiar with how cryptocurrency works, join me for this brief, but informative, aside. All cryptocurrencies use “blockchain” technology, a framework purposed with decentralizing currency and reframing how transactions occur. Blockchain is a digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record infinite exchanges, while also keeping a record of every person a currency changes hands with. Imagine a spreadsheet that is shared between a thousand computers. Once you’ve done that, imagine that spreadsheet updating regularly to account for all interactions with the file. Attaching this technology to cryptocurrency removes the need for traditional banking systems to monitor transactions and a dramatic increase in fiscal transparency, given that all parties can view transaction history for each BitCoin purchased. Reverting our attention back to the wise words of Mati Greenspan, transactions per second, between various cryptocurrencies, are increasing, and this serves as a vital barometer for the “scalability of blockchain technology.” Industry experts have been concerned with the ability of blockchain to scale and meet the demands of consumers and creators of new coins alike. At the time of the dot-com bubble, Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, observed that investors were slaves to “irrational exuberance” surrounding the industry, and many believe this is the case with cryptocurrencies today. The price of bitcoin has been more erratic than a first-grader full of birthday cake, trading at $20,000 at its height and now selling for less than $7000. Many startups have looked into the viability of initial coin offerings (ICO) as a means for tapping into a liquid market without the need for intermediaries and funding their companies. Unlike IPOs, investors do not receive company stock. Rather contributors receive tokens that can be traded on crypto exchanges, according to the Brookings Institution. The future of cryptocurrency is dependent on the scalability of blockchain technology to meet the demands of consumers, as well as the commitment of long-term investors to see their investments in coins to the end. If the industry reveres Elon Musk as much as they do, perhaps his adoption of the coin as payment for The Boring Company is an indication that the crypto market is about to trend upwards. INT. Oval Office, President Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo enter the room, wearing matching “MAGA” hatsMnuchin: (delivering the punchline of a joke) And the bartender goes, “cookie, my favorite!”Trump: That joke was excellent. The best joke in the world. China doesn’t tell jokes. Pompeo: Good one, Mr. President. Now, Steven, joking aside, we wanted to tell you something.Mnuchin: Sure, I’m listening. Hold on, let me take these out of my ears (Mnuchin comically removes two coins from his ears)Pompeo: Not now, Steven, this is important. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard the news about Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist from Saudi Arabia?Mnuchin: Yes, I’m headed to an investor conference in Riyadh tomorrow.Sources can’t confirm that the above took place as described, but Treasury Secretary Mnuchin did announce Thursday that he was rescinding his participation in a “high-profile investor conference” in Saudi Arabia, likely because of the growing controversy over journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. An administration official told CNN that no other government officials will attend next week’s summit in Mnuchin’s place. In response to the Treasury Secretary’s refraining from the conference, the recently jittery stock market took a turn down south. CNN reports that the Dow lost as many as 392 points, or 1.5%, on Thursday, as investors reacted to Mnuchin’s decision. Tech stocks followed suit, with Facebook (FB) and Alphabet () losing about 2% each, the Nasdaq falling 1.5%, and Netflix (NFLX) tumbling about 3%. Market volatility is in the air and residents of Wall Street are ready to cut their losses. Increasing fears of rising bond yields coupled with President Trump’s trade war with China sparked an onslaught of buyer’s remorse last week, the worst for all three major indexes since March, according to market analysts. Many believe Mnuchin’s announcement was based on rising tensions between the United States and Saudi Arabia over the situation surrounding missing Washington Post Journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul several weeks ago to file paperwork in order to marry his Turkish fiancee. The journalist, who in recent months began critiquing the Saudi government, never returned to his Turkish wife-to-be. An audio clip, released by the Turkish government confirms that Khashoggi was drugged, killed, and dismembered while in the Consulate. Sources reportedly told CNN that a group of Saudi men, whom Turkish officials believe are in cahoots with those who planned Khashoggi’s killing, were led by a high-ranking intelligence officer, with one source saying “he was close to the inner circle of the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was not the only government official in the geopolitical space to withdraw from participating in the event held in Saudi Arabia. UK Trade Minister Liam Fox elected not to attend as well.“The Secretary of State for International Trade has decided the time is not right for him to attend the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on October 23…The UK remains very concerned about Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance. We encourage Turkish-Saudi collaboration and look forward to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia conducting a thorough, credible, transparent, and prompt investigation. ” –Unnamed UK government spokesman on behalf of Dr. FoxSeveral other government officials canceled their plans, including French finance minister Bruno Le Maire and Dutch Finance Minister Woke Hoekstra. In addition to the various nations’ “no-thank-you” RSVPs, the boycott of the country has spread to entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshai and other industry executives including C-level friends from Ford (F), Google (GOOG), and several others have decided against making appearances at Saudi Arabia’s annual “Davos in the Desert” event this month. Only time will tell as to whether the effects of the Saudi governments alleged involvement with Khashoggi will result in the pulling back of investments from Silicon Valley, as well as from the many nations who declined to send officials. Recent reports indicate that Richard Branson, founder, and chairman of Virgin Galactic, has temporarily suspended his $1 billion partnership with Saudi Arabia. “A shoe must be three things,” Nike (NKE) co-founder Bill Bowerman proclaimed. “It must be light, comfortable and it’s got to go the distance.” In the late 1950s, Bowerman was displeased with the current track shoe market. Shoes were made of heavy leather, metal, and were anything but soft and comfortable. As a track coach for the University of Oregon, revered both then and now as an elite running school, Bowerman was obsessed with helping his runners slash seconds of their times. He first began dismembering running shoes in the 50’s, when he wrote to several shoe companies with suggestions for improving their footwear to improve quality for runners and walkers alike. He received no responses, but Bowerman never slowed. One of the first student-athletes to try a Bowerman original was Phil Knight, the eventual founder of Nike (NKE). As to why Bowerman chose him, Knight admitted that “he wasn’t one of the best runners on the team. Bowerman knew he could use me as a guinea pig without much risk.” Bowerman made every shoe to the exact dimensions of a runner’s foot, measuring widths and noting individualities, such as extended heel or slim ankle. As for raw materials, nothing was out of the question. Bowerman used kangaroo leather, velvet, deer hide, snakeskin, and even fish skin, in pursuit of the perfect track sneaker. “Most American shoemakers are not interested in what we track coaches think about track shoes. The best shoes…at this time are made by the Germans. Their sole material is not too good and I can either replace their sole or I can make my own shoe. I don’t think there is any question, certainly, in my own mind there is not, that I now have the best shoe in the world — if I could just find some good American shoemaker to make it.”Bowerman would eventually find a good American shoemaker, or better yet, he would become the shoemaker he sought out. Partnering up with his former student-athlete, Phil Knight, the two running enthusiasts would eventually start Blue Ribbon Sports and years down the line, Nike. Fast forward fifty-four years and Nike (NKE) one of the most well-known brands in the history of retail. It’s legacy as a brand is built on decades of gold-medal athletes, unparalleled innovation for high-performance shoes, and a keen eye for the next big thing. “In our view, Nike (NKE) represents an already dominant, legacy global brand that is now aggressively embracing the power of digital to enhance most facets of its business,” analyst Brian Nagel said on Thursday. Nagel, an analyst for global investment firm Oppenheimer, upgraded Nike (NKE) to “Outperform” from “Perform” based on the firm’s rubric for investment success. Nike’s shares have been red-hot this year, soaring 23% in 2018. The brand’s stock is outperforming the S&P 500, which climbed a measly 6% in the same timespan. Bullish growth forecasts for the global sportswear brand are not without competition, as rival Adidas AG (ADDYY) reports that its last quarter sales in North America, a region where the brand is beating  Nike to the punch somewhat consistently, shot up 7% to nearly $1.3 billion.In an effort to stay fresh and keep moving forward, Nike commemorated the 30th anniversary of its legendary ‘Just Do It’ campaign by selecting Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL quarterback whose decision to kneel during the national anthem spurned nation-wide outcry. Kaepernick refused to stand in support of a nation wrought with police brutality and social injustice, and the very notion of challenging the norm is in Nike’s lifeblood.Despite various criticisms from the media and President Donald Trump, the 30th-anniversary campaign has generated an increase of 31% more online sales in the days following the ad, as well as 170,000 new followers on Nike’s official Instagram. Since the launch of the campaign, Nike’s shares have risen 6.5%, adding roughly $6 billion to the company’s market value. Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman had a vision for their company. It was never about becoming a global icon, no, it was much simpler than that. Knight and Bowerman believed in investing in the future of athleticism. At the very end of Nike’s commercial featuring Kaepernick, the former Superbowl-winning quarterback leaves consumers with a line:“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” Get stock alerts, news & trending stock alerts straight to your inbox!We keep all user information pricate & promise to never spam.* //

A pop star releasing music or photos is usually a cause for eternal happiness. But after five consecutive days of impromptu drops meant to promote her new single, “5 in the Morning,” Charli XCX is apologizing to fans. “Me and my friends really hustled to get all this stuff together in a week,” she tweeted after offering a free download to six remixes of the new song. “I’m sorry if it’s not what you were hoping for but I’m trying my best here.”It is approaching four years since Charli last released an official studio album. During one of the many fruitless build-ups to a new LP, Charli once told Zane Lowe “the albums out in May (of 2017). I’m sure I’ll just get bored and leak the whole thing before then anyway.” So when clean-cut studio singles began mysteriously appearing online last summer, with still no album release in sight, the train to Charli’s career left the station and long since found its way off the tracks with Charli, her label and an alleged group of hackers all claiming to be in the driver’s seat.While touring her last album Sucker in 2014, Charli took on a BBC documentary project that chronicled her perspective as a feminist in the music industry. She conducted her own interviews, backstage at festivals and in between sets, employing herself as a full-time filmmaker while fulfilling the role of a full-time pop star. Halfway through the tour, Charli had enough of the pop circuit. She stepped down from her headline spot, citing a need to create in order to return to a place of happiness. The “Boom Clap” and “Fancy” era of her career that saw her break onto pop’s main stage ended abruptly, if not uncharacteristically by the genre’s lofty standards.But Charli didn’t waste time getting back on the horse. She had met SOPHIE, the then-illusive internet producer, at a writing camp in early 2015 and only two weeks after what would have been her final date on tour the duo released their first collaboration. Charli traded in school uniforms and guitar licks for black latex and synth hits. Fellow UK producer A.G. Cook and his PC Music associates (described as a sonic “critique of late capitalism” by Pitchfork around the time) were also enlisted in what appeared to be a makeover, but was more of a callback to the earlier stages of Charli’s career when her music was made for Myspace and London raves. “Vroom Vroom” sutured whiplash to sugar pop, throbbing drums blasted from a lavender Lamborghini, doppler effect and all.SOPHIE and PC Music helped Charli craft her next full-length album, XCX3–the shorthand placeholder name for the project, her third studio record. As 2016 came into focus, Charli revealed the album had already been finished. “I’m just gonna put it out and the music can do all the press for me,” she mused at the NME Awards in February. Less than a week later, an EP extension of “Vroom Vroom” was announced as the imminent release.The project debuted on a newly established record label owned by Charli called Vroom Vroom Recordings. The decision laid the groundwork for her aspirations beyond the role of singer/songwriter but with a barebones website, minimal releases from its signees (RIVRS and Cuckoolander) and almost no social media posts since the summer of 2016, Vroom Vroom Recordings falls somewhere between a neglected pet project and a music shell company needed to free Charli’s new sound.On the first episode of her Beats 1 radio show “The Candy Shop,” Charli described a segment dubbed the “Marmite moment” where she would play a song that she loved, but her friends thought she was crazy for liking. “This is a song that’s gonna split people’s opinion, you’re either going to think I’m an idiot or you’re going to think I’m a genius–obviously the right answer is genius.”Vroom Vroom, a hard-hitting four track EP, would be the Marmite moment of Charli’s career and there’s little to suggest her (proper) label, Atlantic Records, did much else but spit it out. “Vroom was not us trying to appease anyone,” she explained to The FADER months later. “I think my label got afraid and I think a lot of people were confused. But I just felt that I wanted to–I just wanted to do that.”The project’s biggest impact was on Charli’s fanbase. Listeners who began following after the film The Fault in Our Stars were likely tuned out. Devotees saw the change as exciting growth that was simultaneously grounded in her early career while PC Music fans praised the collaboration as deserved mainstream attention for their underdog sound. This new era of her career melded fans who not only enjoyed the Marmite, but wanted to injected it into their veins.Live performances in 2016 teased what sounded like the full length cut to Charli and Sophie’s collaboration (heavyweight producers Stargate and BloodPop were later confirmed to be involved as well). Unreleased songs like “No Angel,” “Taxi” and “Round and Round” had those in-tune with the new sound paralyzed in euphoria, awaiting an elctro-pop coup de grace that never came. Instead, they got treated to a track with Lil Yachty on Halloween.Ending the year with “After the Afterparty” was a reminder of Charli’s mainstream commitments. After eight months of unsupervised fun, the party was put on hold. Charli promised a May release date for her album while on the record with Zane Lowe and hummed about leaking it before then anyway.The next leg of the “After the Afterparty” press tour, about a month later, delivered a more concise stump speech. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly she revealed the Sophie-led album was still in the cards, but the live teasers like “Taxi” were now simply demos with no place on the project. Again, Charli slipped in the idea of a leak. “I don’t know how many (songs we recorded), but we did a lot. It’s cool because we can pitch them or leak all of them or whatever.”A month later, at the start of 2017, the goal posts to the album were still moving. Charli told Rolling Stone that half of the project would resemble the “After the Afterparty” sound, in what felt like a compromise with the label for a more feasible follow-up to Sucker.Charli didn’t pull any punches looking back on her previous LP soon after. “I made some rash decisions with Sucker,” she told Q Magazine the same month. “Like the song ‘Break The Rules.’ That song was so bad. I hate it… I was like, ‘Whoever sings this song is an idiot’… Cut to: four months later, it’s on my album and it’s my new single. I fucked myself.”The “half and half” directive would soon make a high-stakes debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live! where Charli performed “After the Afterparty” and a new track simply dubbed “Bounce.” With A.G. Cook—now her creative director—laid passed out on stage, Charli delivered a cheery but mellow performance of the former before letting loose on what felt like the main event. “Bounce” fired DJ hype lyrics and a radiant chorus through Cook and SOPHIE’s strobe light, rubber wrecking production, predictably unmarketable to the average late night talk show viewer while her fans watched on in awe.The TV spot was likely the first nail in the shelf to the SOPHIE version of XCX3 as both performances have been largely scrubbed from the web. A week later, back at the NME Awards, a familiar tale unfolded as Charli brushed off talk of a new single or any album-related info. Instead, she revealed a forthcoming mixtape produced by Cook. Between her rampant recording schedule and not wanting to let fans down, the project would parlay while the label weighed another delay to whatever was becoming of the album, post-late night market test. Frustrated by apparent pushback on the idea, Charli would tweet a week later, “You have no idea how fucking hard it is to just release a free fucking mixtape in 2017.”Number 1 Angel would see the light of day in March (for fucking free, no Number 1 Angel Recordings needed) with little external promotion. The sound combined Cook’s PC Music expertise with Charli’s pop affection. Tracks like “3AM,” “Roll With Me” and “Lipgloss” were a continuation of the sticky “Taxi” sound from the previous year, coupled with moodier romantic takes as a centerpiece. At times, Number 1 Angel sounded like a project put together in only a few weeks, but more importantly, it was Charli doubling down on the PC Music sound and honing in on a more fluid music identity.The prospect of a May album being released only two months after the mixtape hadn’t been officially ruled out, though it did seem unlikely. I reached out to Atlantic Records in April about any forthcoming press opportunities, hoping to gauge if an album was still in the cards, but was quickly spun onto more timely clients, mostly David Guetta.Charli’s next label-backed move was, however, already inked at the time. She mused on Twitter about a perfect world where she could tour with her friends and collaborators, including Cupcakke, Brooke Candy, Dua Lipa, MØ, Abra and Tinashe. A few days later, she was announced as the opener for Halsey’s upcoming fall tour, third on the ticket below PartyNextDoor.Shortly after the release of Number 1 Angel, a member of the team responsible for her go-to fan “update” account reached out to congratulate the pop star on the mixtape forray. The account, @Fckyeahcharli, had been in contact with the pop star herself on previous occasions, mostly since her career turn in Vroom Vroom, though they began posting updates during the Sucker era. The encouragement was met with what one of the posters thought was another scoop for fans.Charli revealed she had a WeTransfer file–the same service she used to release official music as recently as last month–that she planned to drop soon as well. @FckyeahCharli relayed the message to fans, who expected studio quality versions of “Bounce,” “Taxi,” “No Angel” and other XCX3 songs to be on the way. But with info of the WeTransfer now public, Charli went silent on the idea. Before the end of March, the first of hundreds of unreleased Charli XCX songs would begin appearing online.The infrastructure for sharing leaked pop music in the digital age has evolved in recent years. Lanaboards, a Lana Del Rey fansite, operated as ground zero for the singer-songwriter’s own infamous leak saga which resulted from a hacked hard drive in 2011. After Charli’s mixtape, talk of leaks escalated from the occasional murmur—typical of any major artist’s sporadic leakage—to fans suddenly showing off playlists with dozens of unreleased tracks, spanning multiple eras of Charli’s career.The expected album release month of May came and went as the leaks quietly bubbled beneath the surface. Charli presented a picture of label unity in a short interview with The FADER in mid-July, declaring she had no intentions to go independent–not that anyone had really speculated at that point, outside of of recap of label drama by The Guardian in March. Shortly after, she would return to unsupervised fun out in Tokyo with Cook and playing a DJ set for NYLON Japan, still showing off her SOPHIE collaborations before circling back for a proper single release in “Boys” to end the month. The song was a rare, non-PC-influenced track that Charli didn’t write herself (despite being crowned as songwriter of the year for the SESAC Pop Awards a few months prior). To compensate she was allowed the director’s seat for the video where she called back on her previous experience to help give the song a viral push (by way of GIFs) and praise from Laura Mulvey.With the Halsey tour looming, Charli acknowledged the leaked music for the first time in an interview with Gogirl!. She quietly revealed in the final sentence of the interview that her album wouldn’t be out until next year, “because people keep leaking it and I have to rewrite everything all over again”. When asked about the album delay on Twitter, Charli had responded in a since-deleted tweet, “Album not delayed. It’s just being released at the right time for me. Label fucking love me”. Hysteria reached a fever pitch while clean-cut, studio singles with SOPHIE’s imprint popped up left and right online (“I Wanna Be With You,” “Queen Lizzy,” “Down Like Woah,” “Can You Hear Me” and more).The leaked songs would be traded, sold and boasted about by fans on social media and pop forums in an electrifying and often toxic underground community, but the most valuable songs (“Taxi” and “No Angel”) had yet to surface. While seemingly anyone with a download of “Bounce” (the Kimmel-performed song and one of the earliest and easiest leaks to find) would anonymously claim to be a hacker with access to Charli’s Google Drive, the freshest leaks were often originally posted on Twitter via burner accounts, deleted once the audio files found their way into the fanbase nervous system.One of the more visible accounts, @1nt0th3d4rkn3ss (read “into the darkness”) appeared with leaks on August 20. The following day, Charli tweeted “i like the darkness,” an inconsequential message to those following the solar eclipse in the United States, but a firebomb of conspiratorial fuel for those whose only eclipse experience would be staring into a bright computer screen all hours of the night, refreshing forum pages— for what it’s worth, Charli is documented as not being in the continental U.S. during the day of the eclipse.Fans who shared songs via Google Drive that day claimed Atlantic Records was hot on the trail seizing their accounts. More outlandish claims and narratives about Charli, the label and the hackers were churned out as fast as fans could post their thoughts, minimal evidence rarely included, but ultimately (and surreally) any fan with an internet connection could get there hands on some of the very real fragments of XCX3 as well as troves of songs from the early stages of Charli’s recording career.@1nt0th3d4rkn3ss would upload songs to SermonCloud (an audio sharing website for clerical and religious material) a few days later before riding off into the digital sunset. With their hard drives full of unreleased songs, many fans felt they had won a battle, though not quite sure who they were fighting with or against.During the tour with Halsey a few leaks continued to spring up, mostly either snippets of unheard tracks or hard-to-find early career music. In November, Charli briefly addressed the leaks again in an interview with Noisey. “My email got hacked and people leaked most of (the album),” she explained. “So I think I’m just going to start again.”Fans perceived the rewrite as losing a project they deserved to have. Many would vow to boycott any new leaks in solidarity, while collective anger quickly turned toward the mysterious hackers and Fckyeahcharli, pointing to the WeTransfer incident as either an opening for hackers to attack or a botched opportunity for Charli to cleanly offload the songs herself (Fckyeahcharli denies Charli ever intended to share a WeTransfer file but confirmed that she communicated its existence).After finishing tour in November, Charli raced to release another mixtape before the end of the year. A week after the final tour date, she announced Pop 2, another A.G. Cook collaboration with an even more expansive list of guest features. Where Number 1 Angel seemed to pull in different directions, Pop 2 offered a tracklist of emotional helium molecules pinging off one another while still gracefully pushing the black latex balloon of a project into the sky. Charli had mastered the ability to cook with Marmite and while questions stirred on the outside, it was clear her studio time with Cook had an incredibly precise direction.In an interview with Vulture, Charli explained that she didn’t know when, or even if, she’d be putting out an album after Pop 2. A demo of the mixtape’s closing song had leaked during the Halsey tour and the final version (“Track 10”) exchanged an optimistic, dancehall vibe for a darker, sharp dismantling of the project’s sound. Her patented “It’s Charli baby”, usually a call for energy on tracks throughout her career, were the final words of the project, whispered above the buzzing hum of a neon light on its last legs, ready to shut off for good.As 2018 began, the leaks surprisingly continued. Those subscribed to the belief that Charli was spilling the goods herself had a harder time explaining why the continued drip would be beneficial to her own interests. Others pleaded into the abyss for the hackers to relinquish influence over her career. Songs that Charli teased from the studio as recently as January found their way online in the form of snippets a few months later, but still no sight of the most popular songs “Taxi” or “No Angel.”Leaked music emerged the same day Charli led the charge against former Recording Academy president Neil Portnow for telling women in music to “step it up” after the GRAMMYs. New songs would appear on sale for Bitcoin on the infamous Music Mafia website before Charli revealed she still had plans for the now distantly recorded tracks. “I see u guys tweeting about girls night out / no angel / bounce / etc and to answer ur questions – those songs are still very much alive and well and v important 2 me!!”In the meantime, Charli would score a spot on one of the industry’s hottest tickets, a Taylor Swift tour, while her innovative Pop 2 sound was praised everywhere from Pitchfork to the New York Times. “I like going to really weird clubs,” she told the Times in March. “So I guess I’m not going to do nice radio songs. Maybe that’s selfish. But it’s difficult to be convinced into something.”Unfortunately, her tour setlist included little more than radio songs from what felt like a past lifetime (“Boom Clap,” “Fancy” and “Break the Rules”). To compensate and renew affection for her previous XCX3 tracks, Charli planned a handful of side-hustle mixtape showcases which featured guest appearances from her diverse crew of collaborators. The shows were capped off with the previously leaked SOPHIE-produced song “Girls Night Out” and recent shows even included performances of “Taxi” and “No Angel” (which fans still believed were being held hostage by the hackers, only increasing demand for Charli to free them herself).When it came time to promote another label-approved single last month, Charli whipped up her five days of 5:00 am content promo. After including “exclusive music” alongside “remixes/fun stuff” in the announcement, fans let their expectations off the leash in the hopes of original XCX3 material. On the final day, Charli tweeted out a WeTransfer that included a set of remixes for “5 in the Morning,” not “Taxi,” “No Angel” or “Girls Night Out.”“I’m dropping new songs each month. Not each day,” she responded to sporadic fan outrage. “Brb going to scream into a pillow now.” Two days later, she announced an upcoming Spotify meet and greet in London, asking fans to DM her their favorite unreleased tracks for a chance to attend (“I know you’ve all heard them cause someone fucking hacked me, shout out to that person,” she reiterated while explaining the giveaway). The morning after the session, “No Angel” leaked online.The infamous track, in all its glory, did not pop up on Twitter, or behind a sketchy download link deep in the belly of a pop music forum. It appeared on the music website Fizy (a Turkish streaming platform) alongside another song called “Focus” that she recently performed live for the first time. Of the dozens upon dozens of leaks over the past year, the most iconic one was a classic industry gaff–an advanced copy of soon-to-release music quietly distributed and prematurely slipping free.A few days later, after a midweek release of her “5 in the Morning” music video, Charli hinted at an official release of “No Angel,” having finally been granted permission to fulfill her stans’ wildest dream. But the followers who had long demanded it the most could only feign surprise. Scrolling back through the eclectic timelines of fans celebrating the coveted song, still hoping for a copy of “Taxi” to appear and lamenting over WeTransfer files, it’s hard to picture anything but a career wedged between the the rock of a uniquely involved fan base and hard place of a clumsy record label slowly reissuing trust.At a recent Pop 2 show in London, Charli introduced her “Girls Night Out” finale by advocating everyone to “‘at’ my record label, they should fucking release this song”. The recognizable SOPHIE synths drummed the crowd and Charli drifted into the fog while friends and collaborators flooded the stage. She seemed to enjoy ending her Pop 2 shows this way, melding the performance into a single, chaotic rave. Out with her girls, on top of the world while gripping the microphone, her fans screamed out all the words to a song that has never been released.“Louder!” she demanded through the chorus, blending into the bobbing, neon silhouettes, the line between stage and crowd almost fully dissolved. “Sing it to me!” she shouted again, not ready to let go, her microphone still firmly in-hand. Receive the best in sneakers, fashion and street culture straight to your inbox! Receive the best in sneakers, fashion and street culture straight to your inbox! 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Distributed Content Delivery and Cloud Storage Various blockchain projects are trying to solve one challenge in decentralizing the internet: distributing content itself. Blockchains are distributed databases storing an immutable history of cryptographic signature transactions, representing transfers of value on the network.  This has brought trust and honesty to entirely decentralized currency, though the detractions to versatility are nearly twofold: blockchains grow rapidly as transaction blocks are added over time, resulting in the current size of the bitcoin blockchain which, at time of writing, is roughly 95 gigabytes.  Because of this scalability issue, many regular users cannot run full and independent network nodes because they cannot accommodate the space required to store the entire blockchain, despite it being composed of blocks no bigger than a single MB.  This means that though blockchains are very useful for solving certain problems, storing any more complicated data on a blockchain would be enormously inefficient. Despite blockchains being plagued by this size issue, and having use only for storing tiny cryptographic signatures of transactions and transfers of value, distributed ledgers still have much to offer to the fields of cloud storage and data delivery.  Blockchains have proven useful for establishing trust and authenticity for a framework below decentralized applications.  Users around the world collectively carry enormous amounts of unused space on many devices.  By using blockchain as a decentralized management system on which to build decentralized apps, it is possible to harness this collective storage power to create a field of blockchain based peer-to-peer cloud storage and data delivery networks.  On these platforms, users can rent out storage or bandwidth to other users on the network and be compensated for their service offered to the network with crypto assets. Following is a table comparing several blockchain based peer-to-peer cloud storage and content delivery platforms: The Internet has become one of the most significant sources for consuming media content in the modern world.  To help satiate the voracious demand for web content, Content Distribution Networks are used.  These networks of dedicated servers distributed around the globe employ techniques such as edge caching and route optimization to participate solely in uploading and sharing media at lightning speeds, optimizing access to digital content for worldwide internet users.  Generally, large companies such as Netflix own specialized content distribution networks composed of many dedicated servers, while smaller businesses can rent content distribution network space from companies such as Akamai. Another significant service in today’s digital landscape is cloud storage, which will be used by an estimated 1.8 billion users worldwide in 2017.  Put simply, cloud storage refers to rentable storage space accessed over the internet.  Most online applications already engage cloud storage.  For example, documents, images, and emails accessed through web applications like Dropbox or Gmail aren’t stored on your physical machine, they are stored in the cloud.  Though cloud storage refers simply to storage offered over the internet, and content distribution networks are servers located geographically to deliver content quickly, combining CDN and cloud storage infrastructure is also common. Though large companies with datacenters and servers generally lead the cloud storage and CDN space, there has also been an emergence in entirely decentralized distribution networks and storage alternatives used by millions of users around the globe. For example, Bittorrent, an internet peer-to-peer content distribution protocol, accounted for more than a quarter of all upstream traffic in North America last year, according to a study by Sandvine, a Canadian broadband company.  The Bittorrent protocol enables the propagation of “torrent files[1]” using “swarms,” or networks of computers simultaneously downloading and uploading .torrent files without a central coordinating server. Because Bittorrent downloads are distributed amongst an enormous number of participating peers, controlling this peer-to-peer traffic is far more difficult than blocking traffic coming from official distribution servers.  This is the reason Wikileaks releases sensitive content over Bittorrent, and pirating media content proliferates upon the peer-to-peer protocol – the reason Bittorrent has become nearly synonymous with pirating.[2] Decentralized content distribution, such as that provided by Bittorrent, has very legitimate benefits as well. For example, the Bittorrent protocol is used by organizations to provide alternative downloading methods to their users.  Linux distributions are often released over Bittorrent, and the Blizzard gaming company offers a Bittorrent alternative for software updates.  Releasing content on peer-to-peer distribution networks is a cheap solution for individuals and businesses, and by distributing bandwidth occasionally offers faster download speeds than centralized servers. Decentralized datasets and ledgers, also referred to as Blockchains, present additional examples of the great benefits of peer-to-peer technology.  Blockchain has revolutionized the way we look at Fintech, realized the concept of decentralized and autonomous organizations, and provided solutions for decentralized supercomputing, to name a few of the many recent innovations.  Because data storage, and content and media delivery is becoming ever more distributed, blockchain solutions could revolutionize content delivery, data storage and media platforms as well – which is exactly what the following projects are seeking to deliver to the blockchain space. DECENT is a decentralized content distribution network designed upon an independent blockchain, targeted towards content creators and authors.  Instead of content creators trusting distribution to publishers who often exert influence over artists creative and financial freedoms, the DECENT blockchain assumes this role. The DECENT blockchain is essentially a blockchain publishing intermediary, handling everything from the secure distribution of media, to the payment of authors and distribution nodes, and maintenance of content creator’s reputations.  Content creators release cryptographically secured digital media – ebooks, videos, audio – onto the global DECENT distribution network.  Publishing nodes receive and store, distribute and facilitate the unlocking of these files to consumers who’ve purchased them with DECENT tokens, fulfilling the roles of miners on the PoS network. Publishers handle the creation of transactions on the blockchain to authorize the consumption of content transmitted over the network.  When generating blocks, publishers ensure payment is delivered to the author, keeping a portion of the tokens generated as fees for the storage and CPU cycles they contributed to the DECENT network.  The first DECENT version uses Bittorrent for file distribution, though future versions may support new technology.  The DECENT core team is comprised of 8 members based primarily in Slovakia and China, and more info about the team can be found here. MaidSafe is a private company located in Scotland that has been developing the SAFE Network since 2006. The SAFE Network is a peer-to-peer network which, using the spare disk space and bandwidth of users in the network, provides distributed and decentralized computing resources and file storage to other users for rent.  When uploading files onto the network, private files are fractured into pieces and distributed redundantly across the network. The redundancy provides safety incase nodes leave the network, and security, so that only the owner of the file can recover the pieces scattered throughout the network and decrypt their files. Safecoins, the digital currency of the network, are generated and distributed to users who allocate storage space and lend it to the network.  Safecoins are not stored on any blockchain, and the double-spend problem is instead solved through uniquely generated IDs attached to coins, supervised by Transaction Managers, entities participating in the close group consensus mechanism which replaces the blockchain on the SAFE Network. Safecoins are used to purchase resources on the network. Though a basic goal for the network is storage, the network may collectively use resources for essential internet functions, giving it the ability to support “every existing service [on] the internet.”  For example, using the distributed storage provided by the network, it will be possible to host websites as well.  Current web browsers may, after configuration to direct “.safenet” domain requests through the SAFE launcher application, request HTML and other web related resources over the SAFE network to view SAFE hosted websites. A SAFE browser is in development, and the network also supports a specialized decentralized naming system (decentralized Domain Name System) for locating websites hosted on SAFE.  It is essentially an augmented, decentralized and anonymous interpretation of the current internet. The cost of storage will be based upon the resources available and the relevant demand to consume this storage. , it is “anticipated that storage will be significantly cheaper than using any current solutions… as SAFE does not have many of the overheads and costs of existing services, like Dropbox.”  On the SafeNet, you only pay for the resources you use. Storj is a decentralized cloud storage platform headed by Storj Labs, the company which develops and innovates for the Storj platform.  Storj allows users, also known as farmers, to allocate spare space from their hard drive to rent out to other participants in the network, and be compensated for their disk space with the digital coin Storjcoin X.  Storjcoin X are counterparty tokens, the protocol which extends the Bitcoin blockchain to accommodate advanced features.  Storjcoin X token transactions are therefore stored on the Bitcoin blockchain. Per the whitepaper, although it uses counterparty assets now, it could accommodate any other token or form of payment in the future. Users distribute their data to the network in encrypted shards.  The shards are stored with redundancy, so that multiple nodes have copies of the same shards so that even if some nodes go offline, users should be able to retrieve their shards and piece together their files.  Because the network is distributed and uses storage redundancy, it has higher uptime than centralized and dedicated alternatives.  The vast distribution of the peer-to-peer network also leads to faster download and upload times than centralized servers, where data streams may face throttling.  Per Storj.io, the cost of storage on Storj is “half the price of the competition,” with rates of $0.015/GB for data storage per month, and $0.05/GB for bandwidth.  You only pay for the resources you consume.  More info on the Storj team may be found here. Siacoin is another decentralized cloud storage platform which utilizes the spare hard drive space of network participants for storage.  The project is developed by Nebulous Labs, the company behind SiaCoin.  SiaCoin employs erasure coding (distributing encrypted fragments of data redundantly across the network) and an independent blockchain with tokens known as SiaCoins, to support the network. Hosts and renters engage in file contracts, an agreement between the storage provider and the consumer, before providing storage. The consumer pays the SiaCoins upfront to the blockchain, which acts as an escrow service, with the previous contract being the rules for arbitration.  If the contract is met and the storage provider submits a proof of storage, the storage provider is compensated.  Otherwise, the coins are returned to the renter. Anyone with spare storage may participate and earn SiaCoins after downloading the Sia client.  Hosts set and advertise a price shown to renters seeking storage, after which they may collect file contracts from users who are comfortable with storage and said price.  This competitive nature helps keep prices low, close to the raw price of storage, vs. the higher prices offered by centralized cloud storage companies.  SiaCoin only charges for the actual storage you use. Because the price of storage is determined by the free market, price tends to fluctuate, as the value of SiaCoin is also subject to market forces and speculation. The SiaCoin site reads that “as of January 2016, storage is about $2.25/TB/month with 6x redundancy,” though actual prices are somewhat different.  Siapulse.com seems to track market rates and price conversions (not an endorsement, no guarantees of accuracy).  The SiaExplorer from the official Sia domain also allows blockchain exploration, where some basic metadata regarding contracts and transactions may be viewed.   The Sia whitepaper may be found here. BlockCDN is a blockchain based content delivery platform, planning to put to use idle network resources to provide cheap CDN services.  In the BlockCDN peer-to-peer economy, users may rent out their spare bandwidth and storage to act as cache servers in the network, participating in uploading content at high speeds from optimal geographical locations to internet users who consume content from BlockCDN customers.  Cache servers store, or ‘cache’ content such as web pages, files, etc, and participate in uploading those files to internet consumers. Per the BlockCDN whitepaper, BlockCDN makes use of Squid, the open source “caching and forwarding web proxy” software.  The company leading the BlockCDN development also plans to develop cloud computing and storage in the future.  BlockCDN allows users to purchase CDN bandwidth using BCDN tokens, the digital asset stored on the BlockCDN blockchain which fuels the peer-to-peer economy.  The network software intelligently pairs consumers with users renting bandwidth, to help provide fast global content delivery at competitive rates. According to BlockCDN.org, CDN bandwidth purchased over BlockCDN rates are only 10% of those offered by large competitors, going for as low as $0.0072/GB.  The BlockCDN blockchain is based upon the Ethereum Network.  The company appears to be based mainly in China and the U.S, some info on the team may be found here. IPFS, or the InterPlanetary File System, is a next generation peer-to-peer, content-addressable distributed file system, combining successful aspects of related projects from open source and academia over the years.  Note that according to the whitepaper, “aside from BitSwap…  the main contribution of IPFS is” the successful amalgamation of past projects which include “DHTs, BitTorrent, Git, and SFS.”  In other words, nodes participating within the IPFS network form an enormous and resilient distributed file sharing system employing distributed hash tables as employed by Kademlia, version control as in Git, block exchange as in Bittorrent, with Self-certifying File System capabilities.  With the above properties, IPFS enables a sophisticated, resilient, global file sharing and versioning environment which curates and removes duplicates for efficiency, while simultaneously supporting rapid lookups and low latency access to data.  The network “has no single point of failure” and is trustless – peers needn’t trust each other to ensure their files integrity – whilst ensuring old and important files aren’t lost in the sea of data.  The software stack is designed without a reliance on the IP protocol, and can function over other network protocols, using a versatile and tailor-made decentralized naming protocol called IPNS. The IPFS network uses the Bitswap protocol to incentivize participation and not a virtual currency, though a virtual currency implementing a “bitswap strategy… will be explored in a future paper”.  Bitswap drives the distributed file sharing economy with a unique “barter system” where nodes are required to share data blocks with or seek blocks for other nodes if they wish to download from said node. This system ensures mutual, reciprocated downloading, eliminating the idea of free loading “leeches” like on Bittorrent, keeping nodes incentivized to cache and distribute data “even if they are not interested in them [the data blocks the node shares as barter tender] directly”. Via the whitepaper, IPFS is at least “a global, mounted, versioned filesystem and namespace”, a “next generation file sharing system.”  However, its design is ambitious, and it has the potential to disrupt old and established file sharing protocols such as HTTP.  For example, by allowing those interested with online content to accommodate the content hosting and distribution required by participating on the IPFS network, IPFS could support entire websites and distribution networks, “push[ing] the web to new horizons.”  Read the whitepaper here. (This article is not an endorsement of any products, but simply a summation of content found researching the internet) [1] A Bittorrent protocol file which contains metadata regarding files and folders to share, among other controls for the protocol, including important networking addresses and relevant data. [2] Downloading materials illegally reproduced online for free, without paying the respective creators of the content. 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Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread. Token Black and Token Crip. The Token Minority is a character designed to get more minority groups into the plot. This serves several purposes: Allows the producers of the show to broaden the appeal of the show by giving more viewers protagonists they can identify with. Is useful for bringing in discussions of racial issues, gender issues or homophobia into the plot. Helps the producers feel a little better about using a Scary Minority Suspect in every other case. Allows the producers to make race jokes related to minority without any shame. Allows the producers to avoid criticism from minority groups. Fulfills the executives' desire for the show to be more ethnically respectful. Depending on the setting, it can merely be an accurate representation of demographics in that region or industry. In some casts of animal, alien, or monster characters, World of Funny Animals or not, there is a majority species and one or more minority species. Often the majority of the animal cast is made up of mammals and there is a token non-mammal. Usually, the token non-mammal is a bird, but reptiles, amphibians, and even invertebrates are certainly not unheard of. Sometimes, there are token Petting Zoo People in a group of Funny Animal /Civilized Animal tier animals. Sometimes, there are token animals, aliens, or monsters representing ethnic minorities in a group made of supposedly "white" ones. You might see this term used derisively in most contexts. This isn't out of contempt for minorities; this trope simply causes problems with representation, where, for example, the single black guy is forced to be exemplary of his entire race. This is very likely to lead to Positive Discrimination and make him The Scrappy . If there are instead four minorities (assuming a sizable cast), they can all have different strengths and flaws which round them out and make them generally equal to the rest of the cast. Taking this approach, Unfortunate Implications are unlikely to happen unless you somehow subject them all to the same stereotypes. You can even have one be explicitly antagonistic. However, this can be Truth in Television in cases where the prevalence of the minority, combined with the size of the cast and the demographics of the setting make it genuinely unlikely that there will be more than one member of the minority present (not that this would justify stereotypes, but it would justify having only one minority). For instance, a show set in rural Maine would strain credulity if its cast of five main characters included multiple racial minorities (simply because rural Maine is overwhelmingly white), and a show set in the American Bible Belt would have a hard time convincingly justifying multiple self-professed atheists in a cast of ten (unless a major theme of the show is nonconformity or religious/atheist tensions). Compare Captain Ethnic , Token Nonhuman , Token Human , Token Enemy Minority , Token Minority Couple , Token White , Twofer Token Minority , Five-Token Band , Informed Judaism , Black Vikings , Black Best Friend , and The Smurfette Principle . Examples: open/close all folders Advertising TV Ads in Australia sometimes have this (especially in "hip" young thing products like Coke). May have 1 Asian Woman, 1 African Woman, 1 White Girl, 2 White Guys and 1 Aboriginal or Middle Eastern Male. Target ads are particularly well-known for this. There will always be one blonde white girl, one brunette white girl, one Asian girl and one black girl. Always. University brochures also do this. You'll always see at least one black person and Asian person for every two white people. In brochures for traditionally black schools, there's a token white on every page. Further proof that Covers Always Lie. A controversy erupted after it was revealed that a photograph used to adorn the front of a University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduate application booklet for the 2001-02 school year was altered to add the image of a black student among a sea of white faces. A Veet ad has this. When they state that eight out of ten women were happy with the product, they showed a lineup of eight women with one of them being black. Curiously, they are all dubbed over with the same voice. Anime & Manga Poor Hans, in The Daughter of Twenty Faces, is seemingly the only non-Japanese member of a group of burglars led by Gentleman Thief "Twenty-Faces" that is ostensibly a globe-trotting organization. He often uses Gratuitous German, to boot. Super Dimension Fortress Macross/Robotech had Claudia Grant/Claudia LaSalle, apparently the only black woman on the entire ship. Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross had Bowie Emerson, seemingly the only black man on the entire planet Glorie. In Robotech, he was re-written to be Claudia's nephew (and given a new surname of "Grant"). Rakshata and Viletta of Code Geass, as they're the only Non-white/Chinese/Japanese characters of any plot importance, and of the two, Rakshata is the one who gets played in a more positive light. Of the others, we have a supposedly elite pilot who dies mere seconds after she first appears on screen, and King. And Nunnally fits in to the paraplegic category. Mobile Suit Gundam 00: In the first season of Gundam 00, Daryl Dodge has the honor of being the only black person at all. He's also killed off in episode 23. Season 2 does introduce another black man as president of the Earth Sphere Federation, although that might be more to reflect the real world than tokenism. However, he has little impact on the plot. A minor example with Setsuna F Seiei-whilst he does appear to fit this trope both within Celestial Being and in the wider Gundam metaverse in regards to protagonists, his middle eastern homeland forms a two episode story arc in the first season and plays a large role in his interactions with the princess of a neighbouring country. However, the middle eastern aspects of the story only serve to represent the region and 21st century problems to Japanese audiences, and beyond that, has no real importance to the story as the series progresses. Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket has Professor Lunland as the sole black character, and Gabriel as the sole Latino. Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ has the black Shinta and Ambiguously Brown Qum, but that's about it. Later in the show, Judau ended up befriending a young pilot from Africa, but his time on the show was very brief. Simon is the only black character in Durarara!!, though a black gangster is also seen in the episode "Heaven's Vengeance". It's also implied that minor character Tom Tanaka might be part black, though it's never clarified either way. Sailor Moon: Elza Gray was the only black character in Sailor Moon. There was also the Ambiguously Brown Sailor Pluto, depicted as noticeably dark-skinned in comparison to other Senshi, and moreso in the manga. Some say she's of Romani descent. Indian student Akira is the only non-Japanese member of the main cast of Tsuritama. Kate, the grandmother of one of the other protagonists, is French, while several black and Arabic members appear in the show's villainous Cosmopolitan Council. Bob from Tenjho Tenge would count as this. He's the sole black member of the otherwise Japanese cast. Similarly, Central High's Vice President is the only black character in Daily Lives of High School Boys. Understandable since the series is set in a small Japanese town, and usually it tends to be large cities that take part in student exchange programs with other countries. Yasutora "Chad" Sado in Bleach is half-Japanese, half-Latino in an otherwise manga-typical all-Japanese cast. Jun Hono, the half-black, half-Japanese pilot from Great Mazinger and Mazinkaiser. Jose Rodriguez, the nerdy Afro-Latino doctor from Kyo Kara Maoh! Mikasa from Attack on Titan is one of the very few Asians alive, if not the last one, at the time of the story. She serves as a deconstruction; she's a token minority because her mother's people have been nearly wiped out. The fandom sometimes jokingly speculates that she's the beneficiary of Conservation of Ninjutsu because of this, resulting in Positive Discrimination. It's ultimately subverted when we find out that Levi's surname is Ackerman, indicating that Mikasa's badass qualities are inherited from her European father's lineage, not her Asian mother's. Choe Gu-Sung from Psycho-Pass is the only Korean character in a series that takes place in Japan. In Saki, an inversion happens for Rinkai, whose mahjong team is otherwise composed of transfer students. Satoha, the vanguard player, is the only Japanese member of the team, partly because of the rules requiring a Japanese player as vanguard, and partly because she is the ace. Played straight with Aislinn of Miyamori's team, who is from New Zealand and is on an otherwise entirely Japanese team. Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa takes place in early 20th century Germany. Of the main characters Noah is the only non-white character, being Romani. Audio Play Lampshaded in The Firesign Theatre's "High School Madness" sketch, from the album Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, where Mexican-American students come out of nowhere just to ask the white protagonist for advice (then promptly disappear). Comic Books Adam Brashear, the Blue Marvel who featured in the eponymous mini series of 2009, represents a rather awkward representation of this trope. He is for all intents and purposes (in the context of the story) a Black Superman from a time when the adjective was quite emphatically capitalized. And applied as a noun. It doesn't help that even without his powers, Brashear is a super-man - an athlete, military hero and scientific genius who gained ultra-super-powers when the experimental anti-matter reactor he was creating exploded. For about a year, he was the primary hero of the Marvel Universe (perhaps coincidentally around the same time the Sentry was supposedly very successful), but then it was discovered he was black, which immediately led to outrage and uproar among both black and white communities, until the President (JFK) gave the Blue Marvel the Congressional Medal of Honor and told him to quit being a superhero. Which he did until the present day. He is now a member if the Mighty Avengers. Under the "women as minorities" category (which, in superhero comics, they definitely were until much later and in many books still are) every superhero team used to have exactly one female member. The Avengers had The Wasp (later replaced by the Scarlet Witch), the Fantastic Four had the Invisible Girl (later Invisible Woman), the Justice League had Wonder Woman (or the Black Canary, depending on when you asked), the Teen Titans had Wonder Girl, the original X-Men had Marvel Girl, and the second team of X-Men had Storm (who was also, for quite a while, the only black X-Man. She joined the team along with Sunfire, a Japanese man who left almost immediately, and Thunderbird, a Native American man who died almost immediately, making her also the only active non-white X-Man for a good while). All those teams except the FF tend to have more female members these days (though the JLA goes through periods of focusing on D.C.'s "Big 7" wherein Wonder Woman is the only female member) and some have gone through stretches where the women outnumbered the men. Blindside in the comic series Relative Heroes. Notable in that the series was about a family of superheroes, and Blindside was explained as having been adopted in order to justify having a black kid as part of the main cast. The Justice League goes back in forth on this, with some eras (such as the Meltzer and McDuffie years) having very diverse casts, while others, like the James Robinson run, were criticized for having no minority members whatsoever. During the New 52 relaunch, Cyborg was retconned into being the sole non-white founding member of the original team, presumably to make up for the extended periods of whiteness. Lampshaded in Grant Morrison's JLA run. Plastic Man jokingly states that Steel can't quit the Justice League because then the team would lose its only minority member. Archie Comics: In order to keep up with changing American trends, the comic added some ethnic characters in the 70's: African-Americans Coach Clayton, his son Chuck (who, like many Africans of the day, sported a righteous 'fro) and Chuck's girlfriend Nancy, as well as the Hispanic Frankie Valdez & his girlfriend Maria. As of 2010, the former three continue to appear quite regularly (and Chuck has naturally lost the 'fro). The latter two, not so much. The company later introduced Kevin Keller, the first gay character in the series. Kevin was met with backlash by some conservative Christian groups but his debut issues sold very well and he was even given his own mini-series. Later Archie comics have also introduced some other minority characters, including Ginger Lopez (who works for a teen fashion magazine) and Raj Patel (an Indian student interested in film). Ginger shows up fairly regularly (moreso than Maria). In Archie Comics (2015) Jughead is asexual. He's the only known ace character. Debuting in 52, Batwoman managed to provoke a Broken Base even before this due to press releases touting her as DC's first lesbian hero, who would be receiving DC's full support. Then DC promptly didn't do anything with her outside the series for over a year (and even in the series, she received little attention, as she was more supporting cast for her girlfriend, Renee Montoya). In all that time, she had very little storyline, so her characterization was mostly as a closeted lesbian and a Jew. When she came back in her own series, she was retconned into having a much more butch look and having come out several years before her first appearance. The Falcon was this in-universe. He was added to The Avengers because Gyrich insisted that the team should have more black members; he didn't actually want to join. According to Christopher Priest, Falcon's nickname in the Marvel offices throughout the 70s and early 80s was "Fal-coon". No, Priest wasn't alright with it, though being a lowly intern at the time, he didn't raise a big stink. In his blog, he refuses to name the co-workers who used it for fear of burning his bridges. Years later, Triathlon served the exact same role (again, in-universe) during Kurt Busiek's run. Later iterations of the team were thankfully more diverse. Rage also had bits of this in his debut story. He was given a spot on the Avengers line-up after picking a fight with Captain America over the lack of minority heroes on the team. Empress was the sole minority member of the original Young Justice team, and was added relatively late into the run after some complaints about the Monochromatic makeup of the cast. Lampshaded in Peter Milligan's X-Force run with Anarchist, a black superhero who opposes the decision to add another black member to the team. His reasoning? Since most superhero teams rarely have more than one minority member, another black guy on the team means that one of them will inevitably die. Averted in the X-Statix series that followed, which has an additional black member (Venus), plus a Latino member (El Guapo), and two gay members (Vivisector and Phat). In the 2005 Marvel comic Wha...Huh?, one of the stories reimagines Black Panther as a white man from South America, who is upset when he learns that The Avengers just want a token black superhero in their team and thought he was misrepresenting his race (also, Black Widow is just there to fill the "woman quota".) Though Runaways had a more diverse cast than most other mainstream comics, the team has only ever had two black members, neither of whom stayed until the end of the series, and one of whom was actually a Skrull. Superman comics Ron Troupe started as the only black recurring staff member working at The Daily Planet. Jem and the Holograms: Jetta, the token British character. She was the only non-American until The Stingers showed up. Jetta's also the only non-white member of her band, but this is downplayed as the series has a diverse cast. Blaze is the only confirmed transgender character thus far. Fan Works The "black guy in the corner" from Sherlock Season 4. The author even explicitly states that he added him so his story wouldn't be racist. In the early days of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom, Twilight was often portrayed the only POC in Ponyville when the cast was "humanized" in fan works, usually as black or Indian. Nowadays, more diverse interpretations are becoming more popular in the fandom, such as Middle Eastern Fluttershy and Rarity, Black or biracial Pinke Pie, Applejack and/or Rarity being trans mares, varying sexualities amongst the Mane Six, and Rainbow Dash being a black or latino lesbian showing up sometimes. Film Parodied by Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle with posters advertising the first movie as starring "That Asian guy from American Pie" and "That Indian guy from Van Wilder". In terms of film, equally well parodied/referenced by the "Token Black Guy" in Not Another Teen Movie. Named Malik Token, the Genre Savvy token helpfully explains the joke to the audience by introducing himself as the person that stays out of conversations and says "Damn!", "Shit!", and "That is whack!" At a party later in the film, he sees another black guy, played by Sean Patrick Thomas, Token Minority from Cruel Intentions, and tells him that he was at the party first and the other man apologizes and leaves the party. Malik's Crowning Moment of Awesome was when he got to say, "Damn, that shit is whack!" There's also the musical number: "I'm only in this song because I'm a black guy" Star Wars After Episode IV became a blockbuster, numerous people noticed that an entire galaxy of humans were all white. (Which was not entirely true; it was just that the main characters were all white.) Episode V introduced Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, the Token Minority Black. Samuel L. Jackson in the prequels may also be a example of this, as his character serves as little more than a background character until Revenge of the Sith (excluding his excellent use in the Clone Wars shorts). Casting Temuera Morrison, who is a Mori, as Jango Fett and by retroactive consequence, his clone Boba Fett and every single clonetrooper reduces all other characters in the series (black, white or green) to token minorities by sheer weight of numbers. The initial casting announcement for the first episode of the third trilogy included another black actor, but not Billy Dee Williams. Meaning, as of this writing there are now three black guys in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, but in accordance with this trope, only one is allowed to be alive at any one time. Since then, they've also added Lupita Nyong'o to the cast of Episode VII (but she voices an orange-skinned alien, so the actress's race is not visible). While the 2006 historical film Flyboys was already heavily criticized for its historical inaccuracies relating to its World War I setting, one of the more amusing ones came from the film's fictional Token Minority, Eugene Skinner, a black boxer who joined the squadron to 'pay back' his adopted homeland. Mainly because the end of the movie showed a picture of the real-life squadron which was composed of exactly zero minorities. A rare moment where a film actually seems proud to reveal when it didn't do its research. The Other Wiki's entry on the film points out that the film confuses the Lafayette Escadrille with the Lafayette Flying Corps with whom Eugene Bullard (the real person Skinner was based on) actually flew. Harvey Weinstein loved using this trope for his productions back in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Starting with Scream 2, nearly all of his teen-aimed productions had at least one token black character (often played by a rapper) solely to bump up the box office. He seemed to stop this after Shall We Dance?, which had an Advertised Extra in the form of Ja Rule (who appeared in one concert scene and had no purpose to the plot). Mercutio is a black Drag Queen in the Baz Luhrmann film of Romeo & Juliet. Also a case of Black Dude Dies First. Rochelle in The Craft, the only black girl of the four member witches' Coven, not that it make her more sympathetic than the rest at the end though. Both versions of Stephen King's It, the Made-for-TV Movie It (1990) and the theatrical It (2017) have the character of Mike, the only African-American kid of the Losers' Club, who is also in the novel. Literature The Animorphs series was actually pretty groundbreaking in its handling of minorities. In the '90's, it was extremely unusual for a middle-grade novel to have a minority protagonist at all, let alone four of them. (Rachel and Jake were Jewish, Cassie was black, and Marco was hispanic). It also got away with discussing prejudice a few times, a biracial relationship (and it was even acknowledged a couple times), and a little racism portrayed when the ultimate message wasn't about the evils or racism (specifically, the society at the beginning of the third Megamorphs, and the racist guy Cassie meets when she travels through time). They even acknowledged the existence of gay people, which was almost never done. Oh, and there were two female protagonists, and they weren't treated any differently than the males in terms of their ability to kick ass, making the series one of the first middle-grade series to have a cross-gender appeal. All in all, it was one of the most inclusive series of its day. And in later books, K. A. Applegate proved even more that she was dedicated to diversity without stereotypes. One of those later books was the Remnants series, which had several black, Hispanic, and Asian characters, a character who had a messed up face because it was burned in a fire (2Face), and Noyze, who grew up deaf. They even tried to put a lesbian in this kids series from 2001, but sadly, it didn't quite work as planned. Invoked in a short story "Papanin's Mauser" by Michael Veller. It depicts a drift-ice research unit of four people. Three of them are Russians and Communists and the last one is a nonpartisan German. According to the Soviet laws three Communists is enough to constitute a Party cell, so every day they have to conduct a Party meeting, for members only. During these meetings the German has to leave the "meeting room", that is the tent where they all live and spend time tramping around it in the bone-chilling cold. Eventually he applies for membership in the Party to end this nightmare but is rejected on the following ground: as he is he symbolizes the international nature of the Soviet people and the unbreakable ties between partisans and nonpartisans. Jessi (black), Claudia (Asian), and Abby (Jewish) in The Baby-Sitters Club. Lheorvine is the only black man in Black Legion, and one of precious few in Warhammer 40,000. Before Matt Ward retconned their dark skin into a "mutation" the Salamanders space marines, and the people of their homeworld, Nocturne, were an entire planet of token blacks. Post-Ward, it's assumed that the denizens of Nocturne are white, but "turn black" when they become Salamanders. In How to Build a Skydeck, fish-out-of-water protagonist Stan realizes that all his co-workers avoid him for being a Token Minority. Specifically, being the only white guy on the construction crew. Lord Wulfston in The Savage Empire books by Jean Lorrah is the only black person we see in the first five books or so. On the other hand, nobody makes a big deal about it; he just has a hard time being anonymous. Harry Potter's school Hogwarts has a few, including the very Irish Seamus Finnegan (although there may be others who are less obvious), the Indian Patil twins, the Jewish Anthony Goldstein, the Chinese Cho Chang, and the black Dean Thomas, Lee Jordan, Angelina Johnson, and Blaise Zabini. To Mrs. Rowling's credit, no ado is made of any of these characters' ethnicities, nor are they ever described as such. In fact, Word of God has been needed to identify some of the black characters in the series. Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Yoko Akia is the Token Asian, and Alexis Thorne is the Token Black of the Sisterhood or the Vigilantes. The other women are white. The two characters' nationalities definitely play a role in the series. Oddly, Alexis reveals in her thoughts that she knows that she was framed for crimes she did not commit because she was a poor black woman, but in the book starring her called Lethal Justice, that was not brought up at all! Gone has a very large and very diverse cast, with multiple black, Asian, Latin, and gay characters, and even one character with severe autism. The Mortal Instruments: Simon is Jewish, Maia is biracial, and Magnus is part Asian. The House of Night: Kramisha is the only black Red Fledgling. She is portrayed as a Soul Sister who speaks mostly in jive. Shaunee, the only black member of the "nerd heard" (and the only black lead for the first several books) and who we're constantly reminded is black. In the book "Come a Stranger" by Cynthia Voigt, the main character gets to be the only black girl at an exclusive summer camp. After the camp gives her a lame reason for kicking her out, she gets asked "How does it feel to be an ex-token minority?" Both Jem Carstairs and Magnus Bane from The Infernal Devices are part Asian. Radar from Paper Towns; he even lampshades this by referring to himself as the "token black friend" of the group. Mike in Stephen King It (see the film version). Live Action TV Teen Wolf seems to maintain a slot for a recurring gay extra (Danny in seasons 1-3, Mason in season 4). These characters are usually only in about half the episodes in any given season, onscreen for less than two minutes if they do appear and may not have any actual dialogue. They occupy the roles of best friends of secondary characters. If they have dialogue, it almost invariably contains some reminder that they are gay. The tokenism appeared to be broken in Season 3 with the introduction of gay werewolf Ethan. But he also occupied a minor role, did not always have lines and was only present for the one season. 30 Rock Lampshaded when, to call attention during a GE exclusive lunch, Jack calls out, "Gentlemen... token ladies." The character Toofer is named for the Twofer Token Minority trope. In a transparent attempt to say "we had a gay regular on the show," Law & Order had Serena Southerlyn come out as lesbian to the audience in the last minute of her final episode. Worth noting that actress attended the same school of Mona Lisa Smile as listed above. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit lampshades it when Detective Fin replaces Detective Jeffries (both are black). The show also averted it in later seasons with the addition of M.E. Warner and Dr. Huang to the regular cast. As of Season 15 this trope is entirely averted, as of the five members of the main cast two are Latino and one is black. Rajesh "Raj" Koothrappali of The Big Bang Theory was born and raised in New Delhi, a reference to his actor, Kunal Nayyar, having spent most of his life growing up in the city. Averted in Grey's Anatomy, in which almost half the regular cast is non-white. The production team is, however, very aware and tellingly proud of the fact. The GA staff used racial-blind casting, when you start auditions without picking the ethnic background of the characters. However as the show continued and a load of new cast members were added, the majority of them were white. Brooklyn Nine-Nine averts this trope. Of the seven members of the main cast, three are female, two are Latina, two are African-American, and one is Jewish. Captain Holt, is both African-American and gay, though neither he nor his partner fall easily into stereotypes. Argentine-born actress Stephanie Beatriz said that when she and Cuban-American Melissa Fumero realized they were both members of the main cast, they were sure there had been a mistake and that one of them was going to get fired Subverted on The Red Green Show, with the character of Edgar K.B. Montrose, played by First Nations actor Graham Greene. Greene himself approached producer Steve Smith, asking to be on the show after enjoying it on TV. The role they gave him was essentially colour-blind - that of an explosives "enthusiast" who can't really call himself an expert, since experts have the proper license and permits, and more training in handling dynamite than just watching a lot of Road Runner cartoons. Edgar was Too Dumb to Live, but that also described everybody else on the show. The only reference to Greene's ethnicity in his time on the show was a humorous Shout-Out in his first appearance, when Edgar commented about the film Dances with Wolves, and stated that the "Native guy" (Greene himself), should have gotten the Oscar. Similarly, the only non-white main character on Corner Gas is Davis Quinton, the Sergeant of Dog River's two-member police force. He (and the actor who plays him, Lorne Cardinal) is a member of the Cree Nation, hardly a rarity in Rural Saskatchewan. However, this is incidental to his character; it's only brought up once, at the end of the first season, when Karen suggests going to a ticket scalper and he acts offended. Also, both bartenders (Phil and Paul) appear Cree. One of them speaks some Cree, enough to know the original name of Dog River. Referenced in Star Trek: Voyager (itself a very racially diverse show) where Janeway and Chakotay discuss the issues involved in a ship crewed by both Federation members and Maquis separatists. Janeway notes that by making the Maquis Chakotay her second in command she hopes she has already shown that she can be tolerant of them, and Chakotay responds, "I have no intention of being your token Maquis." Back in the original series, the creators had to fight Executive Meddling to get two Token Minorities, Sulu and Uhura, on the bridge, and some nonwhites among the extras. The original pilot pushed further with a female second in command, and Spock was considered to be radical at the time as an Alien, especially with the original plans being for Spock to have either green or red skin. Also notable that both lead characters of Spock and Kirk were played by Jews. Then there's the gutsy move of creating a Russian main character at the height of the Cold War. Deep Space Nine, with a somewhat varied cast itself, has an odd class example. Miles O'Brien is heavily played up as a Closer to Earth blue-collar NCO in a staff of implicitly elite Officer and a Gentleman types, complete with a labour-movement martyr in his ancestry. (Granted, one can call Captain Sisko upwardly-mobile, as the son of a restaurateur, but this was revealed much later and never emphasised). Though the Federation is supposed to be truly egalitarian, classless meritocracy, so the whole issue is a little murky. Star Trek: The Next Generation of course had Worf as an in-universe example, the only Klingon in all of Starfleet, having been adopted by humans in his youth. Quite a bit of Character Development resulted from his dealings with born-and-raised Klingons who variously failed to live up to his idealized image of Klingon honor or disapproved of his choice to stay with the humans instead of returning to his people (where his family was disgraced anyways). Another in-universe example would be Data as the only Android of the Starfleet (and one of the very few Androids of the whole universe). In The Class Kyle's boyfriend Aaron is introduced as a secondary character to counteract the Monochrome Casting. Averted in the original Battlestar Galactica, especially in the episode "Fire In Space" which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Boomer and Tigh's extensive roles. Pete Ross from Smallville is an especially funny example, as his comic book counterpart is white. Both radio experts on Hogan's Heroes were token black characters. Given that they were all prisoners and obviously not all from the same unit, WWII segregation wasn't really an issue. Sgt. Kinchloe (played by Ivan Dixon) was more than the radio expert - he was second-in-command. He also had at least three episodes showcasing him. And his role was prominent enough that the practice of cutting out the black characters for the "Southern Version" (practiced up to the late 1960's) wasn't usually possible. Sgt. Baker (played by Kenneth Washington) was a better fit when he took Kinchloe's place, having previously been the one black guy in the mob of line-less background prisoners. It is still notable that most of Kinchloe's spotlight episodes were the only ones to feature a black Girl of the Week (an African princess and an old high school girlfriend respectively). Saturday Night Live has been guilty of this at multiple points in its run. Garrett Morris in the 70s. Eddie Murphy in the early 80s. While certainly nobody would question Murphy's right to be there, the fact remained that the show felt no obligation to have another black in the cast as long as Murphy was there. (In fact, Robert Townsend, who was originally hired to be the token black guy, was let go once Murphy showed up.) In the early 90s, the show for a change had multiple blacks in the cast. However, when SNL turned over most of its cast in 1995, they kept Tim Meadows on primarily to avoid giving the impression that the show was trying to rid itself of all its black performers. For the past few years it's been just Kenan Thompson. Season 35 introduces Jay Pharoah alongside Kenan. As a matter of fact, he's beginning to take some precedence over Kenan, especially to play the skinnier, more handsome African-American celebrities such as Denzel Washington. But it helps that his impressions are spot-on for nearly anyone. However there's also the non-black but non-white characters, like Nasim Pedrad, who is Iranian (notwithstanding the controversy over whether Iranians should be lumped in with Arabs and other Semitic peoples, or whether they are "dark whites"), or Fred Armisen who is part German, Japanese and Venezuelan. He is both the second Asian and second Hispanic cast member of SNL. The first Hispanic cast member was Horatio Sanz, a white Hispanic from the looks of him. He was often cast as Italian characters. In late 2013, SNL received a lot of criticism for their relative lack of black female cast members throughout their almost 40 year history. They held a casting call and ended up casting Sasheer Zamata, who is only the fifth black female cast member in the history of the show and the only one on the show since Maya Rudolph's departure in 2007. Benson from Soap (made in the 70s, mind) was the only black character in the show for the first three seasons and he was the butler. He was never used to put across any racial message and if anything he was the Only Sane Man in the entire show. When Benson got replaced in season three, there was Saunders the Expy, also black. In season three only there was Polly Dawson, a black woman who dates Danny who was there to try and push a racial message around. They do get some racial attacks and eventually Danny gets paranoid about everybody staring at the two of them in public. MADtv was guilty of this with Bobby Lee, the only Asian on the show. He even played a stereotypically Asian recurring character. Ricky and later Junito (Latino) of Noah's Arc, which has a predominantly African-American cast. In fact, they are the only non-African-Americans of the cast. A sketch on Dead Ringers lampshaded this with the Schwarzenegger film Shooting Lots and Lots of Bad Guys with my Very Big Gun- Arnie shouts "Noooooo! Token Black Buddy!" after his sidekick is killed by Token British Bad Guy. Dreama (black) in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Both subverted and played straight. Instead of bringing a token gay character onto the show, the writers had one of the three central characters turn out to be a lesbian. On the other hand, it wasn't until the seventh season that there was an important character who was black, and when he did show up he was the token black guy. Season 3 had the Genre Savvy (and sadly under-used) villain Mr. Trick, a modern black vampire who commented on the fact that there were very few people of color in Sunnydale. There were also a few other black characters, like Absalom and Olivia, as well as Rona in season seven. Before coming out as Lesbian, Willow was already the Token Jewish Girl. Of course after her outing she became Twofer Token Minority. The U.S. black music program Soul Train had some token white dancers in the audience. The character of Charlie Young was added to The West Wing just because the NAACP was criticizing the show for not having a Token Minority. Charlie's "token minority" status is particularly interesting in this case, as the only two of the shows main characters are white and Protestant (and that is if one guesses on Sam, whose religion is not mentioned but can be presumed not to be Catholic or Jewish). Two of the main characters are Jewish, four are Catholic, making the show's main cast far more diverse than the actual US population, even without Charlie in the mix. Star Trek: Enterprise, unlike the previous shows (which were such aversions of Humans Are White they were often accused of being Five Token Bands by some), has a black guy, a Asian woman, and everyone else is white. And also note that, in order to make it obvious to the audience he was only on the show so they could say they had a Token Minority, the black guy was a glorified extra... Subverted on ''Sue Thomas F. B. Eye" where the main character is a deaf female FBI agent. Scrubs had the great feature of JD and Turk's College Brochure. Turk is photoshopped in twice to make it appear more diverse. Lampshaded in the episode My Long Goodbye when Turk struggles to think of other black members of staff. He gets himself and Nurse Roberts (whom he is speaking to), Snoop Dog Attending, and Leonard the Security Guard... Turk:This is a white-ass hospital. He then adds that if this were a horror movie, he'd be getting nervous. Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati, although the show made a strong effort to depict him as a well-rounded individual. Parodied in an episode of The Real Husbands of Hollywood where George Lopez guest-stars as himself, with his introduction caption stating "Helping attract Latino audience." On House, Omar Epps was the only series regular of color for three seasons, until House hired three new underlings, at which point Kal Penn became the token South Asian guy. Having said that, Wilson, Cuddy and Taub are all Jewish to varying degrees of obviousness. And Thirteen is bisexual, and House is an atheist. And his atheism is portrayed... well, not negatively, at any rate. They do okay. Robin Hood has David Harewood as a black Friar Tuck in 12th century England. Van-Pires had Snap, who is really blatantly this (just look at that nickname!) Bonnie Bennett in The Vampire Diaries TV show. She has her own storyline for a bit, but it turns out to exist only to facilitate the (white, male) lead vampire's storyline. She was white in the books - but they completely erased the existence another extremely prominent female character who was Latina and definitely minimized Bonnie's personality and agency. Joss Whedon's Firefly Zoe, the second in command on board Serenity, is both black and a female in a position of authority. And she's badass! Shepherd Book is black, old, religious and badass! There are, however, no Chinese people. The villain from the Big Damn Movie, a Wicked Cultured black Well-Intentioned Extremist with a katana who avoids every Scary Black Man trope apart from being both black and fucking terrifying. Showtime's Dexter manages to avert this. In adapting from the book, the producers were given the liberty to change the ethnicity of any character based on the actors they wanted to hire. Instead, they hired a genuinely racially diverse cast and nobody got a Race Lift. However, the issue of tokenism is addressed; LaGuerta got her position based on her ability to spin things to her advantage and her Twofer Token Minority status (black Hispanic woman), and when she pisses off her boss, he very carefully replaces her with a second twofer-token (a black, Haitian woman) who got her rank as an officer the hard way. Captain Matthews: (referring to LaGuerta's replacement) Turns out she's an actual hero. Khaleel "Kenny" Al-Bahir is the Token Middle Eastern in The War at Home. Also token gay. In Flashpoint, we have Lewis Young, Winnie the dispatcher and after Lewis's death Leah Kerns as the Token Minorities. Spin City had Carter Heywood, a Twofer Token Minority who averted both Positive Discrimination and plain old discrimination by being a well-rounded character. Michael Boatman was the only regular black cast member. Lost, despite having a huge cast from a diverse range of backgrounds, only ever had one gay character, Tom Friendly. And his sexuality wasn't even confirmed until after he'd been killed off. Some Disney Channel shows include a rich, intelligent, yet conniving and selfish Latino as a token minority character. Some examples: That's So Raven, The Proud Family and Hannah Montana. Earth 2 had a token black character who was a violent criminal whose "reform" consisted of a chip in his brain when the chip malfunctioned, he tries to kill everybody. Carrusel has a few. Cirilo is Black. David is Ashkenazi Jewish. Kokimoto is Japanese. Bibi is North American of English Ancestry. Jim Carrey launched his career being the only white guy (most of the time) on the predominantly black In Living Color!. Modern Family has Gloria and her son Manny, who fit Hispanic stereotypes perfectly. They are also used as an excuse to use Hispanic jokes shamelessly. There are also two gay men who are raising an adopted Vietnamese child. Boy Meets World had two separate token blacks a different points: Eli Williams in season 3 and Angela in seasons 5-7. Angela lampshades this a few times: "Gosh I got to get some black friends." Transparently present every single time a British channel is presenting Association Football. The usual line up is "old white managernoteCoach, for American audiences.", "middle-aged white recently retired ex midfielder/defender/goalie", "just-retired black forward/midfielder". Sometimes they even try to claim "Scottish" as equivalent to "black." Infrequently but annoyingly, the channel ends up with someone from Francophone Africa whose grasp of the English language simply isn't up to the job, making the tokenism at play especially obvious (and presumably depriving Francophone viewers of the much better standard of commentary he could offer in his native tongue). The modern Charlie's Angels revamp adds a black Angel in order to appeal to modern audiences. Stockinger, the spinoff of the Austrian show Inspector Rex, has Antonella Simoni, a cheerful Italian-Austrian cop and the first female cop to appear in the Inspector Rex franchise. A few Australian cop shows have had a single token Polynesian cop - Water Rats, Rush, and East West 101 are good examples, although East West 101 had a Muslim Arab-Australian cop as the main character, so in that case 'token' would be stretching it. Regardless, whether this represents a trend in the Real Life Aussie police force, or just actor availability, is unknown. All 3 CSI series had one black character each. CSI had Warrick first and then Ray Langston, though with his departure, there aren't any. CSI NY had Sheldon Hawkes. CSI: Miami had Alexx (season 1-6), Tara (season 7), and Walter (season 8-10). There are quite a few black characters on Supernatural, but somehow none of them come even as close to being core cast as the women. In fact, the only one who managed to be seriously recurring was the psychotic Vampire Hunter who eventually became a vampire. His Scary Black Man traits were played with initially in that Dean thought he and his badass attitude toward decapitation was awesome, and then the guy turned out to be a hateful extremist who'd offed his own little sister after she was vamped, which pushed Dean's Berserk Button, and who didn't make any distinction between Friendly Neighborhood Vampires and the dangerous kind. The archangel Raphael, the one who never really does anything or gets much characterization, is the one linked to a bloodline of black people. He never even wears the same black person for more than a couple of appearances, because after he burns them out and dumps them they're in no condition to consent again. That poor family. Also, those poor actors. The guy who he wore in 'Free to be You and Me' was pretty impressively creepy. There was a married black couple of hunters, one of whom was British, who were rude and overconfident. The husband died in their first appearance, and the wife was not very useful and never came back. First-season psychic character Missouri Moseley could have been useful on a number of occasions since when they've been desperate for allies, including on a couple of occasions specifically a psychic, but has never even been referenced, even when they went back to her town, although it was too late for help by that point. In seasons two and three there were a few appearances by hard-assed Cowboy Cop Victor Hendriksen, the black FBI agent assigned to the Dean Winchester case. He had an Enemy Mine when the station in which he was holding the boys fell under demonic siege, and after they left he was killed. He reappeared as an angry ghost at the beginning of season four. There's also Bobby's old partner Rufus Turner, gruff old bastard with a taste for fine scotch. Minorities other than black generally don't even get token appearances, though there were some hot Asian fanservice girls, at least one with a small speaking part. The longest running non-white character is probably Kevin Tran, who showed up at the very end of season 7 and made sporadic appearances throughout seasons 8 and 9. His mother, Linda, also premiered around the same time, but has been in even fewer episodes than him. And as of the mid-season 9 finale, Kevin has been killed off. He showed up as a ghost a few episodes after that, and left with Linda. Neither have been back since. This is a show about two white guys, with the addition of up to two other white guys, where a supermajority of women with speaking roles are blondes. Everything but white males appear only as token, although a couple of white women have gotten to the level of supporting cast before dying. Or, in one case, being given Laser-Guided Amnesia so they wouldn't be traumatized by their kidnapping, or miss Dean after he left them for their own good. Initially played straight and later subverted in The Walking Dead with T-Dog, who is the only major character in the series not to have any sub-plots and little dialog. Extremely apparent in Season 2 episode "Judge, Jury, Executioner" in which the group deliberates whether or not to kill Randall, the episode focuses on the opinions of every member of the group except T-Dog whose one line of dialog is cut off by Dale. Also played straight in Season 3. T-Dog is killed off, shortly after they gain a new black cast member. The new black guy is then killed off later, just as Tyreese, another black guy, shows up. Later, Tyreese and his sister Sasha join the main cast, though Tyreese died in the episode after Beth. Add in Michonne at the start of Season 3, and she is easily one of the most prominent female characters on the show, being an undeniable badass with a sword. Additionally, both Michonne and Sasha are still alive and important to the show, as of the mid-season finale for Season 7. Angel had Charles Gunn as the only black guy, though Doyle and Lorne might count as token demons. In Chuck, it's lampshaded that Morgan only manages to keep his job at the Buy-More because of his Hispanic descent, fulfilling the ethnic diversity quota set forth by company policy. Big Mike makes it clear the moment he finds another Hispanic nerd to do his job, Morgan is gone. Mixed-race Angel Coulby was the result of Ability over Appearance when it came to casting her as Guinevere on Merlin, and to their credit, the producers have never once defended or explained this decision beyond saying that she was the best for the role. However, one can't help but feel that the later inclusion of Gwen's brother Elyan was the result of this trope: he's the only black knight of the Round Table and doesn't really get to do much. His death, which seemed to only serve as an excuse for people to brush off Gwen's post-brainwashing strangeness, was far from encouraging. After Gwen returned to normal, he was forgotten. JAG had a few minorities represented in lead and recurring characters: Major/Lieutenant Colonel Sarah 'Mac' MacKenzie is multiracial (WhiteIranianCherokee), Commander Sturgis Turner and Congresswoman Bobbi Latham are African Americans, Gunnery Sergeant Victor Galindez is Latino and Harmon Rabb has a Russian half-brother. Mac's background is close to that of her actress, Catherine Bell. She was born in London to a Scottish father and Iranian mother. Leon from NCIS was one of the first recurring black characters - introduced in season five - though his race is rarely ever mentioned, and Agent Dorneget (a minor character introduced in season nine) is the only recurring gay character. Australian soaps tend to be about middle-class white people, and usually don't even bother to include a significant Token Minority character - Home And Away did have the Samoan Australian actor Jai Laga'aia's character, although the moment another non-white actor got a part Lagai'a was fired. Neighbours is a little less closed-off, having allowed an Indian Australian family, the Kapoors, to join the main cast. Invoked in-universe on Suits where Jessica Pearson's backstory reveals that she was originally hired by the law firm because she was a black woman and the firm decided it needed "diversity". She was initially told that she was hired strictly on merit but later saw a working memo which specifically had "diversity" written next to her name. What really pissed her off was the fact that the memo did not mention her being a top-of-her-class Harvard graduate or her work at the Harvard Law Review, which should have made her one of the top candidates for the job no matter what her race or gender is. She got even by rising through the firms ranks and then ousting the managing partner who wrote the memo. Habib (Asian and Muslim) and Gladstone (black Caribbean) on The Thin Blue Line. Of course, this is modern day London, so an ethnically diverse workplace makes sense. Fresh Off the Boat: Invoked; at one point Eddie Huang (the new kid) gets into a scuffle with an African-American kid who says that Eddie's the new token minority. On The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, every season will typically have one or two minority contestants who never win and rarely even get close to winning. These contestants also frequently fall into But Not Too Black. Lampshaded on Community (which actually did have a very diverse cast). Elroy Patashnik was introduced in Season 6 after Troy and Shirley, the series' other two major black characters, had both departed the show. One episode had a scene where he addressed his status as the sole black member of the group and stated that he would not allow himself to be treated like a token, saying "I'm nobody's fourth Ghostbuster." Parodied and enforced in the Key & Peele sketch "A Cappella," where the token black member of the otherwise all-white a cappella group treats a second black member joining as if his country was being invaded. The Good Wife had Kalinda Sharma (her ethnicity is never especified but is assume to be Indian or Persian) from season 1-6, later African-American Lucca Quinn became the Token Minority and also a Suspiciously Similar Substitute. Almost every team of Power Rangers consists of three white people (one of whom is also possibly Latino) and one black person and one person of Asian descent to form the token minorities. Human Aliens occasionally appear on teams as well. This multiracial team lineup also seems to apply to the non-human Alien Rangers of Aquitar, which includes the black Aquitian Blue Alien Ranger Cestro. Teal'c in Stargate SG-1, who, as well as being the token black guy, is also the token alien of the titular flagship off-world reconnaissance team SG-1. In the fifth episode of the first season, one of the first signs that the team have brought a highly contagious infection back from another world is an unprovoked assault on Teal'c, which, perhaps for the sake of not appearing racially aggravated, is instigated by another black man. Lampshaded in Jason King. King is adapting one of his adventures for a TV series. The television executive insists that the hero should have a sidekick, who is first portrayed as a white guy, only to change to a black guy to go with the latest trend, then ending up with an Asian guy to get a wider potential audience. Saved by the Bell has Lisa (played by Lark Voorhies), the Black Princess of the group and Slater (played by Mario Lopez) the Hispanic. How stereotypical they are depends on the episode, but according to the producers their characters were of no specific race and they were cast just because they were the best. They ethnicity does comes into play in some Very Special Episodes. American Horror Story: Coven has Queenie the only African American witch in the Institute, which became an important plot point when she begin contacts with other Black witches. Also Nan is a witch with Down Syndrome. Legend of the Seeker'': Chase is portrayed by a Maori actor, along with his family and many minor characters. On a lesser note, we see a single black Mord'Sith, and one played by mixed race actress Katrina Law, the rest being white (in the books, they all were). Lucas Sinclair in Stranger Things is the only Black character of the entire main cast. The show is Genre Savvy enough to lampshade this hillariously some times, like when the four main kid characters dress as Ghostbusters and he argues that the doesn't want to be Winston. Although only a recurrent character, Griff in Married... with Children played the part of Black Best Friend of Al, he even lampshade this in some episodes as when he objects to go firsts into dangerous situations because Black Dude Dies First. Another recurrent Black character is Corrupt Cop Officer Dan, who was member of mostly white NO'MAAM club. In an overwhelming Caucasian cast as Beverly Hills, 90210, Silver is Ambiguously Jewish. Sons of Anarchy deals with fictionalized versions of outlaw Motorcycle Clubs, most of the clubs are ethnically-exclusive in Real Life and the most they tend to mix is that those that are not White-supremacists or Black, admit White and Hispanics (case of Hell's Angels, which is the club the Sons are based on). On that note, Juan Carlos 'Juice' Ortiz is the only Latino character among the main cast and in the chapter of the city of Charming (that also happens to be the international headquarters). As sexual minorities go, Alex "Tig" Trager is bisexual (he starts a relationship with a transgender person). Near the end of the series they open the club to Black members. Veronica Mars has two examples: Veronica's best friend Wallace, who is Black, and biker allied Eli "Weevil" Navarro, who is Latino. Music Poor Niall Horan of One Direction. Simply known as "The Irish One" by non-directorners. He's also the only blond. Mel B from Spice Girls is the only non-white Spice Girl (although technically she is mixed-race). Mythology & Religion In Books of Samuel, Uriah is a Hittite resided in Israel, which was considered as an ethnic minority in Israel back then. However, he's not among the gentiles as he followed the Israelite belief, which is a requirement for him to marry Bathsheba, an Israelite herself in the first place. He also genuinely cares about his subordinate and refused to have sex with his wife while a war was going on, despite royal orders, because he didn't want to accept privileges that his men weren't being allowed. And after his death, Prophet Nathan promptly calls David out for inventing the Uriah Gambit. Balthasar, one of the threenoteWho, by the way, are neither named nor numbered in the Bible: it is only a mediaeval tradition that there were three or that their names were as here plus Caspar. Wise Men, has been depicted as black since Medieval times. Melchior is sometimes depicted as Asian as well, so the Wise Men represent the three continents of the Medieval world: Europe, Asia, and Africa. One researcher has found references in an ancient manuscript saying that the Magi came from a country called Shir, which was in the far east, bordered an ocean, and produced silk. The Magi might have actually been Chinese, or perhaps Persian. Newspaper Comics Peanuts: Even wasn't immune. Franklin joined the cast in a nod to the court-ordered busing that was going on at the time. As Chris Rock points out, he was the only one in the cast without any distinct personality. In one interview, Schulz admitted that he really didn't know what to do with Franklin, since he had no experience with black children. Ironically, the producers of one of the Peanuts animated specials found a role for Franklin here. Amusingly, cartoonists of Schulz's generation were not taught how to draw black characters without making them look like grotesque stereotypes, so for Franklin, Schulz just drew a "white" kid and then gave him curly black hair and lines across his face to symbolize dark skin. Snoopy's Beagle Scouts are a group of birds consisting of Woodstock and birds who are identical to Woodstock... except for the one called Raymond, who is noticeably darker than his peers. Monica's Gang had a few. The main gang had a black and a mute (who has been described as deaf as well), then added one that due to his inspiration (the creator's son) is ambiguously Asian, and both a blind girl and a wheelchair bound boy as well. The gang in a country setting has among its hillbillies an Asian (a nod to the the huge Japanese-descent community). Print Media MAD magazine referenced the trope back in 1966 (issue 101). In a parody of the movie The Sandpiper, a character refers to himself as the film's "token Negro". It was a long time ago indeed. Pro Wrestling Of the foreigners who came into FMW for Texas Street Fight, Sweet Georgia Brown became this among the FMW women's division. She spent an even longer time as the black one of the WWF's women's division until Jazz debuted. Black Warrior, the lone Mexican of the Japanese anti Mexican La Ola Amarilla Power Stable that periodically invaded CMLL between 2005 and 2013. He served as the group's Translator Buddy. Kenny King in the Full Impact Pro Power Stable Young Rich And Ready For Action. Kenny could be considered one of the "main" members, mostly by virtue of representing the group in Ring of Honor but nonetheless the rest (Jason Blade, Portia Perez, Claudio Castagnoli, The Lovely Lacey, Sal Rinauro, Radiant Rain, Daffney, Steve Madison, Becky Bayless, Chasyn Rance, SoCal Val, etc) were all white. Around 2010, the WWE Divas were sadly falling into this. Each brand had one (and in many cases, ONLY one) member of each minority group amidst the sea of blond hair on the rest of the roster. On Raw, as seen by the Fatal 4-Way Divas match, there was the white Maryse, black Alicia Fox, Asian Gail Kim, and Latina Eve Torres (although the then-recently-returning Melina shook that up, and with the Bella Twins, it appears that Latinas have become something of the majority on Raw.) On SmackDown, it doesn't even go that far. There's the British/Moroccan Layla who seems to be filling in for black despite being paler than some of the more tan-addicted Divas and the Latino Rosa Mendes, that's it. However, after the "Brand Extension" was first ditched in 2011, the "one diva per group" rule was been gradually averted. As of January 2018, following a second brand split, the ethnicities of the WWE women's roster are now pretty much downplayed. Just for completeness' sake, here's the rundown: White Alexa Bliss (blonde), Bayley (brunette), Becky Lynch (redhead), Carmella (blonde), Charlotte Flair (blonde), Dana Brooke (blonde), Lana (blonde), Liv Morgan (blonde), Maryse (blonde), Mickie James (brunette), Natalya (blonde), Paige (brunette), Ruby Riott (brunette), Sarah Logan (dark blonde). Ronda Rousey (brunette) has signed with WWE, but has not yet been put on the main roster. Black Alicia Fox, Naomi, Sasha Banks Latina Brie and Nikki Bella (half-Mexican, half-Italian) Asian Asuka Pacific Islander Nia Jax (half-Samoan, half-German), Tamina Snuka (half-Fijian, half-Samoan)noteher father Jimmy Snuka was Fijian but married into the Samoan Anoa'i family Concerning SHINE Power Stable Las Sicarias, it is easy to forget Amanda Rodriguez is "The Peruvian Princess" when every other member (Ivelisse Vlez, La Rosa Negra, Thea Trinidad, Mercedes Martinez) is Puerto Rican and 3/4ths of them are loud about it. Jonathan Gresham in Search And Destroy, although this wasn't by design so much as circumstance. One other did briefly make it to TV, but Lio Rush was Put on a Bus due to an attack from Shane Taylor of The Rebellion. Puppet Shows Lieutenant Green token black of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. The show also counts a Japanese and a black amongst its minor characters. Sport Manchester United have a large Asian fanbase and seem to ensure that they always have at least one Asian player in the squad, presumably to appeal to Asian fans: Park Ji-Sung (Korean, 2005-12) Shinji Kagawa (Japanese, 2012 - 2014) Tabletop Games In Privateer Press' tabletop war game WARMACHINE, Major Markus 'Siege' Brisbane is the game's only black warcaster. Before the release of the expansion book Pirates of the Broken Coast, he was the only black model in the game. Siege came out in Apotheosis, the third expansion of the game. Theatre Hamilton: Inverted with the original Broadway cast, in which the only white character in the main cast apart from the actor playing King George III was Christopher Jackson, who played George Washington. Toys Kimono from My Little Pony G3 is Japanese, as shown by her name and her occasional kimono wearing in the books. There's also Fiesta Flair, whose toy was actually cancelled for what fans speculate was due to being too stereotypically Mexican. Video Games Pokmon: There's the boss of the main character in Pokmon Ranger 2, and a Boisterous Bruiser as well as Da Chief. There was a young dark-skinned girl standing in the player's hometown in FireRed/LeafGreen. But the sprite for this girl doesn't appear anywhere else in the entire game. Pheobe, who showed up in Pokmon Ruby and Sapphire, is implied to be the Poke-verse's equivalent of Pacific Islander. Pokmon Sun and Moon later introduced a Hawaii-based region called "Alola". In Pokmon Diamond and Pearl, they did add another token minority, a Frontier Brain named Dahlia who is ambiguously latina. In Pokmon Black and White, minor NPCs of varying skin tone are common, and two noteIris's skin tone is Ambiguously Brown in the games and anime, though Sugimori's original art is darker skinned than her sprite and anime counterpart gym leaders are black. Granted, one can't help but slightly cringe that in Pokmon Black and White 2, the basketball team are the first black people you come across. At the very least, they provide the first truly challenging duels for the player. Averted in Pokmon X and Y - Not only do you have the option to customize the character's skin tone, but the player encounters a fair number of Ambiguously Brown and even black trainers (more than previous games). Nobody treats them any differently. That said, of the main characters Shauna is the only non-white one (unless your protagonist is brown). Grand Theft Auto IV had an ad for Weazel News, an Expy of the Fox News Channel, that parodied the use of token minorities on TV news programs. The voiceover for the ad explicitly mentioned the "diverse" news team as proof that they weren't racist, and when the Asian reporter was listed, an oriental gong sound was clearly audible. Harsher in Hindsight since correspondent Jesse Watters filmed this segment for the The O'Reilly Factor in 2016. Louis in Left 4 Dead is considered the game's token black guy. Veteran Bill is the token old guy, and Zoey is the token girl. Young white male biker Francis is the least mentally stable of the four, and some Fanon says he's gay. In Team Fortress 2, several of the classes are represented as clearly being of a certain nationality. The Demoman represents Scotland, however he is also the only black man in the game. He is also a drunk and a "cyclops", making him a "Threefer." The Team Fortress 2 team stated in their blog (providing some early concept art) that the Demoman was going to be a redheaded white guy, making him look more like the stereotypical Scot. Instead, they decided that he looked too much like Groundskeeper Willie, so they made him black. So this probably isn't a case of tokenism, but an attempt to break a stereotype. A better example might be the continuous hints of Pyro being the lone female class. The 'aggressive black Scotsman' with an absurdly broad accent is a stereotype of its own in the UK. Lampshaded in his intro video on the official site: Demoman: I'm a black Scottish cyclops! They've got more f-[extended censorship bleep] than thy do the likes of me! Ironically, it appears that in the world of Team Fortress 2, there is in fact a clan of black Scottish demolitions experts... but the Demoman is unusual in that he still has one of his eyes. In [PROTOTYPE], Dr. Ragland is the only black character of plot significance. Particularly egregious considering the game takes place in New York City. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance has Devdan, the only black guy in the game. Sequel Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn adds Ambiguously Brown Fiona. The Final Fantasy series has two examples. General Leo Christophe from Final Fantasy VI and Barret Wallace from Final Fantasy VII. The latter was played perfectly straight amongst the heroes. Paradoxically, it wasn't done for the feelings of the fans, or for racial diversit. General Leo, however, is a slight inversion because the sprite has the same skin tone as the rest of the characters, while his art has a notably darker skin tone. Sazh Katzroy from Final Fantasy XIII is the token black guy. In Romancing SaGa 3, Harid "El Nool" Tornado is the lone black character you can choose. He's a mercenary Averted in the PC FPS Ethnic Cleansing, where almost all characters are of non-white races, save for the protagonist and few NPCs. The reason for this, as the name implies, is quite nefarious. Of the four player characters in the Konami arcade shoot-'em-up Sunset Riders, Cormano is the only Mexican. The other three are blond white cowboys. Sig in Jak and Daxter is apparently the only black guy on the entire freakin' planet, including the NPCs that just wander around. Chains from Payday The Heist is the team black guy. Bully each clique will have a girl, a black boy and a bisexual boy. The nerds clique have a Twofer Token Minority Black Bisexual Nerdy boy. Mass Effect: Mass Effect has an interesting take on this. While the crew of the Normandy consists mainly of humans with only one member of various other species present (one asari, one turian, etc.), those species are so common throughout the galaxy that most of your NPC interactions involve them. Tali'Zorah Nar Rayya, on the other hand, is the only quarian in the entire game, making her your token minority team member. She's also a Space Gypsy, making her and anyone of her race a barely tolerated outcast everywhere outside their fleet. Mass Effect 2 gives a double subversion, since Shepard's field mission squad consist of only three humans and seven aliens of different races, but when it comes to the human crew on Normandy SR-2, Jacob Taylor is the only black man on the whole ship, until you download the DLC and thus you have Token Minorities within token minorities. In the humans, you have an Australian (Miranda), a Canadian (Shepard, both sexes), an American (Jacob), a Brit (Zaeed), and a Japanese Genki Girl (Kasumi). Anthony Higgs of Metroid: Other M; he's the first major black character; there were a few black people on the Valhalla (key word being "few"). He's also the only supporting character who survives to the end of the game. In Night Trap, SCAT has both a token black guy and a token woman (if you don't count Kelly). In Silent Hill 4: The Room, Cynthia Velasquez, a Latina, is the only minority character, and also the first to die. Snake's Revenge has Nick Meyer, the only African-American in Snake's crew. The Persona series tends to have this, given its explicitly Japanese setting: Persona 2 has party member Lisa Silverman, the daughter of two white Americans. That said, she's been raised in Japan her entire life, cannot speak English, and her parents are extreme Japanophiles who desire her to behave like a traditional Japanese girl, much to her chagrin. There's also a minor character named Tony who goes around and takes lewd photos of women. Persona 3 has "Bebe", a French foreign exchange student and Japanophile, as your Temperance Arcana Social Link. Persona 5 has party member Ann Takamaki, a quarter-white girl who lived overseas for sometime before coming back to Japan. Her foreign background makes her the subject of numerous malicious rumors at her school, which is not helped by the volleyball coach treating her as an exotic Lust Object. The Elder Scrolls: In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion there are exactly three non-Imperials among the nobles of Cyrodiil: Count Andel Indarys of Cheydinhal, a dark elf who is accused of having gotten his position via nepotism (he's supposedly friends with King Helseth of Morrowind); Andel's son Farwil, who is an idiot; and Imperial Battlemage Ocato, a high elf who only even appears twice. Note that it is made quite clear in books and dialogue (before, during and after Oblivion) and in a later game with an appearance that there are more non-Imperial nobles in Cyrodiil. It's just that the Elder Council is conspicuously missing from their meeting hall every time we go there in Oblivion. The "Hearthfire" DLC for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim adds a Redguard housecarl, Rayya. The rest of the housecarls are Nords. The story of Temple Run seems to be taking place in Asia (judging from the architecture and rainforest), but all characters but one is western. The one non-western character is Asian. Her name? "Karma Lee". The western characters are either white or afro-american. The white characters are explorers and escape artists and similar stuff that fit the setting, while the black characters have concepts such as football star - making one wonder how he ended up in an ancient Asian temple in the first place. The Rehda in Ys: The Ark of Napishtim are culturally reminiscent of Native Americans, although their chief, Ord, talks like an Afro-American in the English dub. Played straight and averted with Neverwinter Nights 1. Played straight with the Original Campaign and the NPC, Aarin Gend, but can be averted by module builders and players since both NPCs and player characters can have skin color matching anything in the game palette (including but not limited to green, blue, purple, yellow, gold, orange, red, mirror(!) and either solid flat white or solid flat black). In Killer Bear, the titular killer refers to Tracy as "the token black girl." Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear. was criticized for introducing several token minority characters. The one that got most attention was Mizhena, a female in which, upon first meeting her in the game, when you choose certain dialogue options about how she got her name, reveals that she's a transgender. She does this before providing little else in the context of the game. In StarCraft, the only black fellow in the entire Colonial/UED Marine Corps drives the SCV. I get that Terrans are space hillbillies, but wow... Ace Combat series' Constructed World of Strangereal seems to have no equivalent of Africa or East Asia, yet some token characters obviously representing those regions' ethnic groups come included: The most egregious case is the Series Mascot Kei Nagase, who has appeared in some form (i.e. as one of mostly unrelated women who just happen to have exact same name, looks, and similar personalities) in Ace Combat 2/Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy , Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, and Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War despite being the only apparently-Japanese person in world where no Japan exists (she also pops up in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon and Ace Combat Infinity but those are set on alternate Earths, making her appearance more plausible, if still token). As noted, no equivalent of Africa exists in Strangereal, so Keith Bryan from Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere and Marcus Snow from Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War seem to be the only black guys in the world so far. Harvest Moon occasionally has a few. For example, Harvest Moon 64 has a black fisherman and Ambiguously Brown Kai in a town full of mainly white (and a few Asian) people while Story of Seasons introduced the first explicitly gay character in the series. Body Blows: The British boxer Junior is the only black guy among the human characters. Though Junior does make up for this somewhat as being a prominent character in that he is one of the only two characters to be in all of the games of the series. Web Comics Alice in the Loserz strip. As she says in one strip, one of the few black kids in school. The character of Kay Wheeler in Misfile exists solely to try and crack open Emily's Transparent Closet. Missi Fuller's ethnicity, while lampshaded in her intro comic, serves no plot purpose other than to bring a bit of variety to the cast and the sole black character who's particularly recurring, Eponine, only in later times started getting attention. Grace and Nanase in El Goonish Shive. Sort of. Sensei Greg too, but he's become a Brother Chuck. And Nanase doesn't even look very Japanese. Clark is probably this in Shape Quest. Subnormality: Lets not forget to always give them One Award. Homestuck: The Webcomic within the MS Paint Adventure Homestuck, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff has the most pointless of Token Minority characters with Geromy. Introduced as "The new friend", he has never moved, spoken, or been aknowledged by another character. He's even called the token black friend in the theme song! Amusingly enough, he is actually the third black character introduced after Barack Obana and The Big Man, with both actually having at least a minimum of a role in the comics. Interestingly, in Homestuck itself, Word of God has given a similar, though less cynical, rationale for having Jade, Nepeta, and Equius be furries. Hilariously subverted in Errant Story by Bani, who's well aware of her status and doesn't want to become the black dude who dies first. Axe Cop does it with as crazy a twist as everything else: When asked whether there will be "members of other races" in Axe Cop's team, they introduce a merman team member. Parodied in a Shortpacked! strip dealing with the controversy around Michael B. Jordan being approached to play the Human Torch. An irate comic fan complains to Jacob about this development and states that this would likely make the Invisible Woman (Torch's sister) black as well, and when Jacob doesn't see a problem with this, the fanboy responds by claiming that having two black people in the cast would be "unrealistic". The fanboy then runs off screaming when Lucy, the strip's other major black character, shows up. Web Original Satirized by The Onion, after the embarrassing event of University of Wisconsin-Madison (see Advertising folder). Invoked/parodied in the third episode of Corrupting the Classics with Contemporary Crap. "Project Playwright" has five contestants: David Mamet, Harold Pinter, Anton Chekhov, Nol Coward, and For Colored Girls author Ntozake Shange. Celebrity judge Oscar Wilde implies that Shange is only there because she is a black female, which Shange doesn't take kindly to. Hilarity Ensues. The Channel Awesome sites: Krissy Diggs, a.k.a. That Chick With The Goggles, was the only black person on any of the sites (doesn't help that her video postings are extremely sporadic). That is until The Rap Critic was added. Krissy is now (as of January 2011) off the site, leaving Rap Critic as the Token Black. Angry Joe was the only Hispanic member as well, and Benzaie is the only open bisexual. He's now joined in the Hispanic representation by The Blockbuster Buster. Ma-Ti, the only non-white hero in Suburban Knights. The Gaming Pixie and Mike Maverick are the only two black people on Reviewers Unknown. Inverted in Funday Night Gaming's cast, as all but one of the main cast is gay. Achievement Hunter had Ray Narvaez Jr. as the only Hispanic member, being of Puerto Rican descent. Lindsay Jones (ne Tuggey) is the only woman who commonly appears on camera and for awhile was the only woman in Achievement Hunter, but they have since added Steffie as an off-camera helper. There's also the very British Gavin Free. The Ultimate Sidemen have Vikram Barn (Vikkstar123) as their only member who is neither white or black; he is of Indian descent. Vik is also the only member in the group who does not play FIFA on a regular basis; it's Minecraft and Call of Duty for him. DC Superhero Girls has Bumblebee (who is black) and Katana (who is Japanese) as the two non-white main characters. Western Animation Parodied in Token Black (formerly named Token Williams), the only black kid in South Park. Part of the joke is that all the other characters think he's the token rich character the only one to regularly call attention to Token's blackness is Cartman, who has been shown in other contexts to be quite racist. And his parents own the Hooters expy restaurant Raisins. Which is done as a deliberate subversion of this trope. For some reason, the Vampire kids have one Angry Black Man among their group, which leaves the goth kids slightly confused. Superfriends was notorious for that kind of character, with a bunch of obviously non-white superheroes; Apache Chief (Native North America), Black Vulcan (Black), Samurai (Asian) and El Dorado (Latin American). The final season tried to address the black issue by replacing Black Vulcan with Cyborg of the Teen Titans, a character that Marv Wolfman and George Perez worked hard to create as a legitimate original character. Justice League: John Stewart, the black Green Lantern. Less "token" because not only does he have the same nom de guerre as a major member of the original team, but he has worked with the League in a number of stories in the comics when he was Hal Jordan's backup, thus giving the character's inclusion some credibility. Furthermore, in the Unlimited phase of the series, the producers strove to dilute the issue by bringing in many of DC's other minority superheroes like Mr. Terrific, Vixen, Steel and Doctor Light. Note that, save for Batman and Superman, both of whom had a previous series unto themselves in the DCAU, John Stewart is the most featured character in the DCAU, having the most Limelight episodes on Justice League and getting a good amount of plot in Justice League Unlimited. In addition, the second season of Unlimited featured the Ultimen, straight (and far better done) versions of many of the Superfriends token characters. Shayera Hol (Hawkgirl), from the planet Thanagar, was deliberately given a Hispanic voice actor as well. Out of the Original Seven, Batman is the only one without super powers. But who needs that when he's Batman? Superman is Kryptonian, Martian Manhunter is Martian, Hawkgirl is Thanagarian, Wonder Woman is Themysciran. The only people who aren't minorities on the team are Batman and Flash. Superman: The Animated Series had Angela Chen, who was essentially a race-swapped version of Cat Grant from the comics, right down to being a catty gossip columnist and Lois Lane's rival at the Daily Planet. Beware the Batman looked to be doing this by using Katana as Batman's sidekick instead of Robin or Batgirl. Noticeable in that she was explicitly touted as "the new Robin" in press releases. Seeing how the show was canned after a mere 26 episodes, forbidden from being aired after September 28, 2014, and written off by the company we will never know. In order to have some racial diversity in the cast of Bionic Six (despite the main characters all being related), the Bennetts were given two adopted sons who were African American and Japanese respectively. Clerks: The Animated Series also added a token minority, Lando (named for the only person of color in the original Star Wars trilogy), who rarely did anything other than show up to showcase his non-whiteness. This was expressly parodying this trope, however. Black Johnathan Reed in Davey and Goliath was added by the Lutheran Church to make the series more diverse in post Civil Rights 1970s America, followed by the Hispanic Cisco, Mr. Lee, an Asian barber, and George Soaring Eagle, a boy of Native American descent, to name a few. The Extreme Ghostbusters team was compiled of all minorities. Roland a black man, Eduardo a Hispanic, Garrett a white guy in a wheel chair and Kylie a "Goth" chick. Egon was the only non-minority but he didn't always go out with the team, but held a figure head position. Their receptionist, Janine Melnitz is Ambiguously Jewish (considering her last name). The original animated series, The Real Ghostbusters, had the movie version of the team so there is only a token black guy instead of a whole token team. Also parodied in Family Guy, in which the TV newscast's (a Show Within a Show) on-site reporter is consistently referred to by the anchors as "Asian Reporter Trisha Takanawa." One episode also introduced us to "Hispanic Reporter Renee Jimenez." Interestingly, though, she's depicted as an otherwise baseline white woman who speaks with a slight Spanish accent. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.... And then there's Cleveland Brown, the token black guy who in the later seasons becomes a portmanteau for black stereotypes that had nothing to do with his established personality. And you can't bring up minorities on the newscast team without talking about "Blackuweather forecaster Ollie Williams." Another episode, perhaps unintentionally, provided an explanation: most black residents of Quahog are disguised as whites to avoid police harassment. One example when Cleveland is in the golf course the second time with a Richard Nixon mask. Another parody in Futurama, where the characters sometimes watch the soap "All My Circuits", which features a cast of robots and a single token human. Fry: What's he do? Bender: Eh, the usual human stuff. He laughs, he learns, he loves. Fry: Boring! In Daria, Jodie Landon and Mack Mackenzie seem to be the only black students at Lawndale High, and they are apparently the only people (other than possibly Andrea) who Daria and Jane respect in that school. Jodie and Mack are painfully aware of their status and are uncomfortable being effectively examples of their race; for instance, Jodie complains how she has to be "Queen of the Negroes" at school. This includes when they were dubbed school parade King and Queen consecutively over multiple years, which they suspect is possibly in part because it disguise how little real diversity there is at the school. However, Jodie notices a little black girl looking awestruck at her being so honored, and decides she can put up with it for the greater good of inspiring other minority kids to dream. On the other hand, Jodie's parents are a pair of jerks, Tiffany of the Fashion Club is an Asian Airhead, and the school's principal, Angela Li (also Asian ethnicity) is a strutting self-important dictator. Spyke in X-Men: Evolution is not only the token black member of the team, he's related to the only other black person in the cast. Spyke was so unpopular that he was written out of the series and made to live in the sewer (no, really). His eventual guest-star role as a vigilante was more well-received by the show's fans than his entire run as a cast member. By that time they had balanced things out a bit by adding a few other minority kids to the cast, notably Sunspot (Afro-Brazilian), Magma (Race Lifted into a dark-skinned Brazilian) and Jubilee (Chinese-American). Though of course Jubilee herself was also Put on a Bus until the finale. Transformers Armada had token Hispanic Carlos. The fact that his catchphrase was "holy frijoles" should tell you how badly that turned out. Alexis was also supposedly Vietnamese, according to Word of God. Uh huh. Animaniacs has Dr. Scratchansniff who is German, The Goodfeathers who are Italian and Flavio and Marita who are Spanish. Averted amongst the humans in Transformers Animated, where there are a number of prominent nonwhite characters. However, it's notable that when the Autobots turn human in "Human Error", there's one black kid - and it's Bumblebee. This is because of the voice actors - Bumblebee is the only main-cast Autobot with a black voice actor (Bumper Robinson). The children's television series Dragon Tales has a dragon in a wheelchair, he can't fly either. Most of the plot of the episode where Lorca is introduced, "A New Friend", hinges on this. John Thunder, the Native American member of the Centurions. Maybe one of the best out there. Orange Blossom and Ginger Snap of Strawberry Shortcake, though later seasons introduce more characters. Doozy Bots, the attempt to adapt Gundam to American audiences in the early 90s (That thankfully never got past a short 5 minute preview video) featured the Black Kid of the gang who also happened to be in a wheelchair. To make matters worse (or funnier, depending on how you see it) when the main characters all transform into the eponymous super-deformed chibi Gundams/Mobile Suits, he gets stuck being the Guntank - which is the top half of a Mobile Suit attached to a set of tank treads. In Teen Titans there is Cyborg as the only African-American in the team and Robin who is Romani even though he looks white. Raven is an apparently white Half-Human Hybrid and the other two have orange and green skin (though Beast Boy was born white before turning green). Herald and Bumblebee are black while Mas y Mens are Hispanic. The Simpsons episode "A Streetcar Named Marge" mentions "Token black panelist, Drederick Tatum!" Subverted in Mucha Lucha!, where the whole main trio is non-white. Rikochet is somewhat dark-skinned, and Buena Girl and Flea's skin looks sort of Mest Indian. However, many secondary characters are white. The show is set in Mexico (or at least a Mexican-American community), where everyone is perceived to be "foreign" and "exotic" in some way. Phineas and Ferb: Baljeet is Indian, the Fireside Girl Holly is African-American, Stacy and the Fireside Girl Ginger are Asian, and Buford seems to have some kind of Dutch heritage. The show in general obviously tries to be very cosmopolitic. Isabella Garcia-Shapiro is Mexican (ethnic minority) and Jewish (religious minority) so she's both this trope and Twofer Token Minority. Though one episode has the cast visiting the "Mexican Jewish Cultural Festival" so Danville might just have a particularly large population of Mexican-Jews... The Famous Five were reimagined for a Disney cartoon series, starring the children of the original Five. George's daughter Jo (Jyoti) is half-Indian. Compare the extremely white originals with the next generation. Frosty the Snowman: Sarah from The Legend Of Frosty The Snowman is African. Mostly averted in Challenge Of The Go Bots, where A.J. and General Newcastle are both black, and Anya Turgonova is Russo-Chinese. Anya didn't show up as often after the Five-Episode Pilot, but A.J. was a main character and Newcastle was the most important human supporting character. Spoofed in the Robot Chicken sketch 12 Angry Little People, when the lone black juror points out that not every black person needs to be a positive role model. The whole main cast of The Weekenders. Though Tino's race isn't mentioned, Word of God states hes Italian American who is probably Pagan. Lor's Scottish American, Carvers African American and Tish is an Eastern European Jew. Averted in Young Justice. As of the end of season one, four of the core cast members are people of color (Aqualad and Rocket are both black, Robin is Romani, while Artemis is half-white and half-Vietnamese). In season two, Blue Beetle (Mexican American), Bumblebee and Mal Duncan (both African American) join the team as well. While they don't join the team, that season also adds recurring characters Virgil Hawkins (African American), Ed Dorado (Latino), Asami Koizumi (Japanese), and Tye Longshadow (Apache). Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats was black. Of course, she was this in the comic book beforehand. The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! has Black Panther, an African king who's proven himself a very competent fighter and quite knowledgeable about science and magic. However, he sometimes goes whole episodes without saying anything. Some unused production art shows that at some point before the series finally aired, Black Goliath was apparently supposed to take Giant-Man's spot on the team. The short-lived The Avengers: United They Stand had Falcon as the sole minority member of the team. Somewhat funny since in the comics, Falcon was added to the team to fill a diversity quota and quit when he decided he didn't want to be included simply for being black. Perhaps in response some of the complaints about the racial and gender disparity in the live-action movie, Avengers, Assemble! has The Falcon added to the film's Avengers roster, making him the sole person of color. However, he has a very large role in the show, and is the Audience Surrogate of the team. Jonny from Ed, Edd n Eddy is implied to be black. Rolf may count, as he's Ambiguously Brown. Mee Mee and Lee Lee (Dee Dee's friends) in Dexter's Laboratory are black and Asian respectively. They might even be a light parody of this trope. Freight Train from Where's Huddles?. The only non-white Color Kid from Rainbow Brite is Indigo. She is Indian. Everyone in Bertha is white, except for the Indian Panjid. Plastic Man's sidekick Hula Hula in The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show is Polynesian, whilst Plastic Man and his girlfriend Penny are white. Elena of Avalor: Elena's best friend Naomi Turner, a pale, blond-haired, blue-eyed girl with an English name in the Spanish-style Kingdom of Avalor; almost everyone else is dark-haired and tan. The Loud House has Lincoln and his family being white except for Lucy who has pale skin resembling a light shade of gray, Clyde being black with a black dad and a white dad, and of course, the Casagrandes as a Hispanic family with CJ having Down Syndrome. Token Non-Mammal Examples: Animated Film Jiminy Cricket and Cleo the goldfish from Disney's Pinocchio Abigail, Amelia, and their uncle Waldo (three geese) from The Aristocats Verne the turtle on Over the Hedge. Inverted in Rango, where most of the inhabitants of Dirt seem to be anything but mammals. Literature Lowly Worm from Richard Scarry's books. Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows Toys The Fabuland toy line by LEGO only had one crocodile and three birds among an otherwise all-mammal cast. My Little Pony: G1 had every princess with their own pet baby dragon: Spike, Prickles, Smokey, Fiery, Flash, Spiny, and Sparks. Majesty's dragon, Spike, is the most famous due to his use in adaptations such as the My Little Pony TV Specials, My Little Pony 'n Friends, and the British My Little Pony comics. Most of the dragons were scrapped in future generations though Spike returned in G3 and G4, where he is a main character in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Of the "Pony Friends" Cutesaurus the Dinosaur is the only non-mammal. Princess Silverswirl from G2 has an unnamed pet dragon, which fans have nicknamed "Spike" despite the completely different design. Western Animation Looney Tunes: An inversion in the 1936 Merrie Melodies short I Love to Singa, Jack Bunny is the only mammal, the rest of the characters are birds. Inverted in SpongeBob SquarePants. Sandy Cheeks (a squirrel) and Pearl Krabs (a sperm whale) are the token mammals among the main, major, and supporting characters. Donald Duck started out like this, though his love interest and many family members were introduced later on. Inverted with Sleepy Bat in Birdz, the only reoccurring non-avian. Care Bears: Cozy Heart Penguin is the only avian member of the Care Bear Cousins. Arthur: This unnamed crocodile/alligator. There were also anthropomorphic ducks in "Arthur's Almost Boring Day". Several episodes of The Get Along Gang included a turtle named Braker as an ancillary member of the Gang, with the Cartoon Over-Analyzations blog describing him as "the Furry equivalent of a Token Minority," as he was the one reptile in a group of mammals. Token Minority Species Examples: Animated Film Ratigan, Fidget the bat, Felicia the cat, Toby the dog, and a lizard from The Great Mouse Detective among a cast made mostly of mouse characters. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are this in A Goofy Movie, being a mouse and a bird amongst dogs and cats. Zootopia has this as a significant part of the plot, with Judy Hopps being the first rabbit police officer of Zootopia and has to struggle against the label of being the Token Minority. Comics In Paperinik New Adventures, Angus is clearly meant to be a Funny Animal kiwi bird, the only one in Duckburg. He is not only explicitly said to be from New Zealand but also a Maori. Web Original In the cat video series The Six Cats Parade, Rico is the only black cat (and the only without white color) of the group in contrast with his three black and white and one siamese siblings and his mother, which is a gray and white cat. Western Animation Pete and P.J. are this in Goof Troop, A Goofy Movie, and An Extremely Goofy Movie are token cats, despite being treated like Dogfaces in those worlds. Also, Waffles and Chainsaw from Goof Troop are a token cat and dog in a world of Dogfaces. In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the majority of the population as well as the main six characters seem to be evenly distributed among unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies. However, there are several other intelligent species in the world. Cattle, sheep, donkeys, mules, buffalo, zebra and possibly goats are all people just as much as ponies, and the same goes for some mythological beings like minotaurs and griffons. However, these beings only have short gag cameos or one-shot appearances. The only exception is Zecora the Zebra. Token Petting Zoo People Examples: Film Beans the lizard and Angelique the fox from Rango Literature Stuart Little is far more anthropomorphic than the other animals in all his book and movie appearances and in the TV series. Note that in the original book he's human by heritage; his parents are his actual parents. He just happens to have been born with the approximate form of a mouse. How anyone worked out he was a viable life-form, let alone that he had the potential to grow up intelligent, when he was born so mutated and looking like a miscarriage is left to the imagination, because it is a children's book. Video Games Rouge the Bat from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, as far as games are concerned. Western Animation Minerva Mink from Animaniacs. Also, Wilford B. Wolf is this when he transforms into a werewolf. Mousey Galore from Pinky and the Brain. Julie Bruin, Margot Mallard, Binky Bunny, and Bimbette the skunk from Tiny Toon Adventures. Lola Bunny, Melissa Duck, and Hatta Mari (a pigeon from "Plane Daffy") from Looney Tunes, and Tina Russo from The Looney Tunes Show. Ren's parents from Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon are far more human-shaped than either he or Stimpy are.