• A legacy carmaker just impressed me…
  • Google is putting crowdsourcing to good use for once…
  • This is awful news for the digital asset space…

Dear Reader,

Tonight’s the night. At 8 p.m. ET, I am putting on a special event that we are calling The Cure.

As we have been discussing in these pages, this is a breakout year for the biotechnology industry. And that is paving the way for the 2020s to be the decade of biotech.

Fortunes will be made on the world’s best biotech companies in the years ahead. We’ll see regular investors make life-changing gains in this space. And we will see new biotech-focused venture capital funds and hedge funds spring up like wildflowers to capitalize on this trend.

At Brownstone Research, we are going to be there every step of the way. And it all starts with an incredible breakthrough that’s about to happen.

I’m not kidding when I say that this breakthrough could upend the medical industry forever. After this, there won’t be any going back to the way things used to be done.

And at the heart of this story is a small, little-known biotech company.

I would wager that not one in a thousand people would recognize this company’s name. But that’s about to change…

When this company announces its big breakthrough, it is going to become a household name. I have no doubt about that.

And given how small it is, I believe this company’s share price will soar. Based on my analysis, we could see gains of over 1,000% in the weeks after its big announcement.

If I could only recommend one biotech stock, this would be it. This stock absolutely needs to be in every tech investor’s portfolio.

For all the details, please join me at 8 p.m. ET tonight.

I’ll talk with viewers about this big breakthrough, how it will disrupt the medical industry, and how bleeding-edge technology is making it all possible. And, of course, I’ll also share the details of the small biotech company that’s pushing it all forward.

Looking forward, I also hope that this presentation will give investors all the tools they need to navigate the coming “golden age” of biotechnology.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity in front of us right now. I want all my readers to be poised to capitalize on it.

For investors who would like to join me, just go right here to reserve your spot.

This incumbent’s new patent surprised me…

I never thought we would talk much about Ford Motor Company here in The Bleeding Edge. There hasn’t been anything interesting about this legacy incumbent for a long time.

But Ford just announced an innovative new patent that gives us a possible view on the future of the automotive industry…

Ford’s new patent envisions a system that uses blockchain technology, digital assets, and smart contracts to enable autonomous vehicles that can communicate and transact with each other.

We may ask – why in the world would vehicles need to transact with each other? After all, don’t we get along fine on the roads as it is?

Well, if we think about a world in which autonomous vehicles are widespread, there are plenty of useful applications for this technology.

In a fully self-driving world, we will see organized traffic patterns. We won’t see cars weaving in and out of traffic like we do today. Instead, self-driving cars will follow each other in an orderly fashion. Accidents will be greatly reduced, traffic jams will be far less likely, and overall transportation will be a much more relaxing experience.

But what if one car carries a passenger who is running late for a meeting? Or if someone has a medical emergency?

In that instance, the passenger could instruct the car to pay for priority. It could initiate a smart contract with the other vehicles on the road. This contract would promise to release a set amount of money to each vehicle that allows it to “cut” in front of the line. Of course, that payment would be in the form of a digital asset. We can think of it like a payment for any inconvenience caused.

The same thing could happen in a city.

Suppose a bus was running late and got stuck at a stoplight. It could instantly initiate a smart contract with the other vehicles on the road, paying for priority to have the light turn green sooner. Inconvenienced cars would be compensated by a small amount, and a bus could maintain its tight schedule.

The same concept would apply to parking. Rather than having to pay a fee and get a ticket from a kiosk, the system Ford envisions would allow our cars to instantly pay for parking by connecting with a parking infrastructure system. We wouldn’t have to worry about anything.

These are just a few examples of what would be possible if our cars could communicate and transact with each other. I’m sure people and companies will come up with all kinds of other interesting applications.

This is quite a visionary patent coming from Ford. I never thought I would see that.

And what I love about this idea is the convergence of self-driving technology, blockchain, digital assets, smart contracts, and – I must mention – fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology.

That’s right. 5G, or potentially some other kind of RF wireless technology, would be necessary for cars to interact with each other in real time.

This is going to be an area of interest in the automotive industry that we should keep an eye on. Fleets of shared autonomous vehicles and self-owned autonomous vehicles will change the landscape of personal transportation dramatically.

And if any of my readers haven’t yet positioned themselves for the coming 5G boom, go right here to find out more about my top recommendation in this space.

Google is putting 3D-sensing technology to practical use…

We have talked about the rise of 3D-sensing technology in these pages several times before, most recently with the release of the iPhone 12 Pro.

The iPhone 12’s claim to fame is that it’s the first 5G-enabled iPhone. But as we discussed, the Pro models are powered by light detection and ranging (lidar) technology, which provides advanced 3D sensing and depth perception.

This technology is most often associated with autonomous driving and augmented reality (AR), which I am very excited about. But Google’s new application for the proliferation of 3D-sensing tech just caught my eye for a different reason.

I’m sure many readers are familiar with Google’s Street View software, which is contained within its Maps application. This is the feature that allows users to “drop down” and see what a given area looks like from the street. Users can “walk” around and see what the buildings look like from any major street around the globe.

To make this feature possible, Google has spent the last five years trying to map out every street on the planet. It has been taking in loads of satellite imagery. And it has sent countless cars out to every corner of the world, each equipped with cameras and sensors on the roof taking 360-degree videos.

Google Car Recording Street View Video

Source: Science Magazine

It has been a Herculean effort. And pursuing it has been quite expensive.

But guess what? The buildings on the streets around the world change every year. Old shops close and new ones open. Houses are built. And other changes can make the landscape evolve. That makes Street View impossible to keep current.

And that’s where 3D sensing comes in.

Google is now asking users to contribute photos and videos to Street View using their smartphones. It has opened up the app and asked people to upload videos of their surroundings to keep Street View current.

What a clever way to get people to work for free.

And, of course, this works best when the videos are captured using a smartphone equipped with advanced 3D-sensing technology. It’s a smart and practical application for the tech.

I usually don’t have nice things to say about Google’s business practices, but I must admit that Street View is very useful. I have used it before in my own research to make sure that a business is operating at the address it has listed.

This seemingly simple task actually led me to avoid recommending a company in one of my research publications, as it had falsely listed an incorrect address as its corporate headquarters.

For more practical purposes, many consumers use it to make travel plans and scout hotels and restaurants in advance by getting a real “look” at the property before making decisions.

This is a great release and a smart use of crowdsourcing by Google.

A new bill in the House takes aim at stablecoins…

We have to wrap up today with some disappointing news about stablecoins.

We have talked quite a bit about stablecoins this year. For the sake of new readers, these are digital currencies backed one-to-one by national fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar.

Well, there is a new bill in U.S. House of Representatives called the Stablecoin Tethering and Bank Licensing Enforcement (STABLE) Act. If approved, it would require stablecoin issuers to secure a bank charter in order to operate.

This is awful. This is heavy-handed regulation that would severely impede innovation in the blockchain industry in the United States.

Of course, the representatives who proposed this bill claim that they are protecting low- and middle-income Americans. The reality is that this bill would do precisely the opposite.

The whole point of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology is to remove friction from the financial system. They lower the costs of participating in financial services and make new services easily accessible to low- and middle-income classes around the world.

The point is to remove power and control from large, centralized financial institutions.

Stablecoins allow users to trade and transact without having to go through an expensive middleman whose sole function is to siphon fees from every transaction. In this way, the technology wrestles power away from the large banks and empowers individuals.

And remember, stablecoins allow consumers easy access to cheap transactions. This is especially important for people investing in digital assets.

It is very expensive to convert fiat currency into digital assets and vice versa. There is a spread, and there are large conversion fees involved. Stablecoins allow investors and traders to “park” money in the digital asset space without having to worry about volatility.

This legislation would be devastating by driving up costs for everybody. It would eliminate many of these advantages for consumers and normal investors. There are several reasons why this is the case.

Some stablecoin issuers would not be able to afford a bank charter. This would remove their stabelcoin from the market entirely.

Issuers who are able to secure a charter would incur not only an up-front cost but also ongoing costs necessary to comply with banking regulations.

These issuers would certainly need to pass the extra costs on to consumers, which would drive the cost of using stablecoins up for everybody. This would likely come in the form of higher transaction fees, which hurt low- and middle-income folks the hardest because they can least afford the extra costs.

And who benefits? Companies like JPMorgan, Facebook, and other large corporations with their eyes set on launching their own digital currencies.

These companies can easily afford the regulatory costs while most blockchain upstarts can’t. In fact, established companies like these already have large departments set up to handle regulatory issues and maintain relationships with regulators.

So this legislation would effectively grant a monopoly to these large incumbents. And these companies have proven time and again that they are no friend to consumers and small investors. The customer-first upstarts in the blockchain space would be squeezed out.

What’s more – this legislation would move even more blockchain innovation, and the entrepreneurs driving it, offshore. That would be a detriment to the overall U.S. economy as well. Why not keep the jobs and the money here?

Again, this is awful legislation any way you slice it. It’s terrible to see this kind of nonsense being proposed.

Regards,

Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge

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