The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently revised its global growth forecasts for 2018 and 2019, citing an increase from 0.2 percentage points to 3.9 percent.

This recent revision reflects an increased global growth momentum and the expected impact of the recently approved U.S. tax policy changes, as reported by the IMF in its World Economic Outlook report, published just before the World Economic Forum took place in Davos, Switzerland in mid January 2018.

“We’re pretty sure we’re seeing very broad based growth in global economy.”

– Maurice Obstfeld, IMF Chief Economist

Drop in Corporate Tax Rates = Increased Consumer Spending

The recent predictions see the corporate tax rate decreasing from 35 percent to 21 percent and are predicted to boost consumer spending and U.S. growth. For business owners, the time is now to take advantage of this global economic growth. The worst thing would be to do nothing, leading to a missed opportunity.

Obstfeld, warned that while there will likely be a cyclical upswing in the global economy, it is still, in fact, cyclical. Therefore, the uptick may be temporary in nature. He went on to state:

“We think that policymakers should not sit back and rest on their laurels (and) think that we’re in a new normal where everything will be great. They have to look ahead and look at the broad range of policies that can make growth stronger, and more resilient” he said.

There is no time like the present to take advantage of this global economic growth!

Reference:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tax-overhaul-will-accelerate-global-growth-imf-says-1516629601

Launched by Brendan Eich, JavaScript creator, co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox, Brave browser is introducing a new solution called Blockchain (Bitcoin Technology)-based digital advertising.

What is Brave Browser?

Brave browser is a new browser and a new system for properly valuing user attention that uses blockchain (Bitcoin Technology)-based digital advertising.

Problems with Online Advertising

According to Eich, online advertising used to be simpler. It consisted of: advertisers, publishers and users. Today, digital advertising has evolved into an opaque and inefficient marketplace. Publishers, advertisers, and users are all being harmed by this system.

Eich points out the average mobile phone bill is going towards all of the bandwidth spent on ads and trackers – up to $23/month, according to the NY Times. Additionally, popular media sites have as many as 70 trackers calling out, using your battery, using up bandwidth and slowing your page load, increasing your data costs.

Users are now trying to protect themselves with ad blocking. It’s on over 600 million phones and desktops, and it’s rising.

The solution? Blockchain (Bitcoin Technology)-based digital advertising.

Eich and his team realized something needed to be done, and their solution involved a decentralized transparent, digital ad exchange based on the blockchain (Bitcoin Technology).

Brave is implanting this in stages.

STAGE 1 – Block Ad Trackers – Reward Sites for User Attention

The first stage is already in the Brave browser, which blocks ads and trackers but also has a ledger system for rewarding sites based on user attention.

STAGE 2 – Decentralized Ad Exchange

The second phase attempts to move towards a decentralized ad exchange, which involves a new kind of currency for user attention: the Basic Attention Token.

The token is derived from and therefore denominates user attention. Attention is defined, in this sense, as focused mental engagement – on an advertisement – on great content – on whatever the user is looking at.

The browser can anonymously and privately monitor your attention as you view the pages in tabs, and it can do this in a way that is highly accurate and highly private. Eich thinks this is essential to avoiding fraud and “malvertising” problems.

Publishers will be notified when ads are viewed. Users will also get a share for their attention if they choose to receive ads. From that share, they can then donate back to publishers they wish to support. They also see publishers, paid in tokens, be able to use those tokens to reward users to promote their content. And if they like, they can charge for premium content that is paid in tokens.

A New Standard for Valuing User Attention

According to Eich, blockchain (Bitcoin Technology)-based digital advertising should become a new standard that is used. He believes that this combination of blockchain(Bitcoin Technology), smart contract, browser analytics and accountable, open source code and audit ability is the future of advertising on the Internet.

See Also:

Bitcoin Halving 2020