It’s not a scam. It also won’t make you fabulously wealthy. Initiative Q wants a stable private currency for payments processing rather than a vehicle for speculation.
A lucky South Carolinian came forward to claim the $1.5 billion Mega Millions jackpot. Academic research has some suggestions about what the winner should do next.
The ‘lucky’ ticket may not be so lucky after all.
Reuters/Brendan McDermid
Bryan Keogh, The Conversation; Jeff Inglis, The Conversation e Nicole Zelniker, The Conversation
Bitcoin and other digital currencies have been running wild in recent years, soaring and then plunging in value. A few stories from The Conversation’s archive offer a glimpse into their world.
A gaming industry expert explains how casinos’ ability to hide the price of a slot spin ensures a reliable stream of revenue from even the savviest of gamblers.
A woman in Venezuela shows off the new two and five bolivar soberano bills.
Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Venezuela recently devalued its bolivar by 95 percent to tame rabid hyperinflation that has been sending prices on everyday goods through the roof. If history is a guide, it won’t work.
An employee counts Russian ruble banknotes.
Reuters/Ilya Naymushin
Global travelers are being increasingly asked if they want to pay for local purchases in terms of their home country currency. Here’s why you should resist the strong temptation to do so.
Scam emails and phone calls are on the rise as it becomes ever easier to orchestrate fraud from anywhere in the world. New research sheds light on what makes some of us more susceptible than others.
An addiction to accumulating money is every bit as powerful and destructive as a drug addiction.
Upsplash/Sharon McCutcheon
Wealth addiction is as powerful as any other, but instead of urging addicts to get help, we often admire them. Yet they do much more damage to the world at large than your average coke fiend.
This episode is all about bitcoin. Will it be the currency of the future? Who’s trying to capitalise on the legal loopholes of cryptocurrencies? And is it possible to make mining them more green.
You may have imagined the blockchain would lead to a world without governments or institutions veryifying transactions, research shows that it probably won’t.
An illegal money changer holds bond notes outside a bank in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare.
Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo
Years of political instability and economic mismanagement under the rule of ZANU-PF have left Zimbabwe’s financial system in chaos. The country is living on borrowed time and borrowed money.