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The world’s most protected currencies: Revealing the hardest banknotes to counterfeit

With counterfeit currency amounting to millions of bills every year, driven by advancements in printing technology, central banks have been enhancing their banknotes with various advanced security features. From holograms and hidden images to microprints and colour-shifting inks, these elements are designed to thwart even the most skilled fraudsters. However, not all currencies are equally […]

Big tech’s staggering power consumption: Calculating the massive electricity bills companies pay off with ease

In today’s digital world, tech giants such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia power nearly every aspect of our lives. However, behind the digital services and devices we use daily, these tech companies are running sprawling data centres, global offices, and production facilities that consume staggering amounts of energy. In fact, their power consumption is […]

The global cost of homes in 2024: Comparing the real mortgage interest rates and home prices around the world

With inflation slowing down in 2024, central banks in major economies have begun cutting interest rates, yet the cost of mortgages is still discouraging people from purchasing a home. However, home buyers in some countries benefit from low interest rates on house loans in combination with relatively high average income, whereas in struggling economies, purchasing […]

AI’s Power Demand: Calculating ChatGPT’s electricity consumption for handling over 156.4 billion user queries every year

AI startup OpenAI recently revealed that its groundbreaking chatbot, ChatGPT, has reached 200 million weekly active users, doubling the number it had in the last fall season. This rapid growth has made ChatGPT one of the fastest-growing and most popular apps of all time. Beyond answering basic questions, this powerful tool can compose entire essays […]

Gold’s 2024 Rally: Mapping central banks’ demand for the precious metal in 2024

As gold topped $2,500 per troy ounce for the first time in history this August, it pushed the price of the large, 400-ounce gold bars to $1 million. The expectations for rate cuts by the Fed, however, helped propel the price to new record highs last week despite the decision of China’s Central Bank to […]

Bitcoin whales on the move: The number of sleeping BTC giants that woke up in 2024 has more than doubled since last year

In early June, Bitcoin surged to over $71,000 sparking widespread enthusiasm across the financial world and in crypto markets, in particular. The cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of $75,750 on March 14, marking a 178% increase from the same day in 2023. These bullish jumps in price did not go unnoticed and everyone from crypto […]

2024 Tech Layoffs: Over 260,000 jobs slashed globally since January

Last year, the tech industry faced a brutal wave of layoffs, with 167.6 thousand employees losing their jobs in the first three months alone, exceeding the total number of layoffs for all of 2022. This trend of job cuts has continued into 2024, driven by economic challenges, high interest rates, and rapid advancements in artificial […]

Race to $4 Trillion: Math predicts the first company to reach $4 trillion valuation

As of early August 2024, only seven publicly traded companies have market capitalisations of $1 trillion or more. Save for oil giant Saudi Aramco, they are U.S.-based firms operating in the technology sector. Among them, American chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA), which joined the coveted trillion-dollar club in May 2023, recently made headlines by temporarily surpassing Microsoft […]