Insights March 23rd, 2018

In The Future of Dead ICOs we see dead ICO projects, explosive growth in solar installations, will we want to eat lab-grown meat, the taxi of the future, and Nikolas Badminton talking about UBER and other developments of the week
By the way, last week’s ‘The Future of…’ post was wrong. Sierra Leone did not use Blockchain in their election.

Nearly Half of 2017’s Cryptocurrency ‘ICO’ Projects Have Already Died

Last year was without a doubt the Year of Bitcoin, as exploding interest in cryptocurrency fueled a massive market runup. As if that wasn’t enough excitement, some speculators took the further leap to investing in cryptocurrency projects through a lightly regulated process called an “ICO,” or initial coin offering, in which a startup sells its own crypto token to raise money.
We here at Fortune have cast a curious but frequently skeptical eye on ICOs, which from the get-go were ripe for scams. It turns out that skepticism was well warranted: cryptocurrency news site Bitcoin.com has surveyed last year’s ICOs and found that of 902 tracked by TokenData, 142 failed before raising funding, and another 276 failed after fundraising.
Read more at FORTUNE

The world will add 70,000 solar panels every hour in the next 5 years

It is estimated that global solar power capacity will triple by 2022, driven by Chinese demand and the ever-falling cost of buying and installing solar panels.

According to the International Energy Association (IEA), photovoltaic solar power grew faster than any fuel in 2016, and there will be far more solar capacity added in the next four years than any other type of renewable energy, including wind and hydropower.

China is expected to add 40% of the world’s new solar panels between now and 2022, despite having already surpassed its solar power target for 2020.

Lab-grown meat is inevitable. Will we eat it?

Tetrick said that while he once stood behind clean meat, he’s come to think that it might not be the best term for it. But he also doesn’t like cultured meat or “lab-grown meat.” “Most people, most of my friends, don’t really have an understanding of what the word ‘cultured’ means, in connection with meat,” he said. So now he’s leaning toward just calling it meat and adding a description of what makes it different. He said that once it becomes more accepted, that’s probably where the term will end up anyway. “When smartphones first came out, it was a smartphone, but today I don’t refer to my phone as a smartphone. I say it’s my phone,” said Tetrick. “So I bet tomorrow, when it’s normalized, we’ll just call it meat.”
Read more at Engadget

This Could Be The Taxi Of The Future

This could be the taxi of the future. The EZ-GO is a concept by Renault. It’s a fully autonomous ride-hailing service. It doesn’t require a driver to be present. And if necessary, it could be controlled remotely.