Fed Powell cut central bank cut rates on yesterday for the first time in ten years, due to continued uncertainty and a slowdown in the global markets. However, this wasn’t anything surprising as everyone and my Grandma expected the cut. However, it was his language that did surprise the Markets. He pretty much said, I’m throwing the markets a bone, but don’t necessary expect more bones.
This was a dovish tone in terms of more rate cuts and so the US dollar moved higher on the news as worldwide investors moved money into the currency (the US dollar) offering the greatest return. Although the US Feds cut rates, everyone around the world is cutting as well, but a faster pace.
So where is the US dollar heading next, lets go to the charts?
Bigger picture, the US dollar is moving towards the weekly demand at $99. This is key as there is room for the US dollar another $1 higher before potentially reversing. Which means Gold, Oil, Wheat, Soybeans, the Euro dollar, etc. should move lower as these assets are inversely correlated to the US dollar.
Based on the daily chart, potential turning points are between $99.40 and $100.40 as highlighted by the daily supply zones marked in white.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
A rule embedded within litecoin’s (LTC) code is set to soon reduce rewards for the miners who today ensure transaction processing on the world’s fourth-largest blockchain by total value.
In approximately five days, litecoin will undergo a scheduled reward halving – a process aimed at preserving cryptocurrency’s purchasing power. The mining reward is currently set at 25 litecoins ($2,500) per block and will drop to 12.5 litecoins ($1,200) per block on Aug. 5.
With that transition, the protocol will be adding significantly fewer litecoins to the market after Aug. 5.
Yesterday, ethereum celebrated its fourth birthday.
Four years ago, on July 30, 2015, the world’s first general-purpose blockchain platform went live. Called ethereum, the platform was the first of its kind to feature a Turing-complete virtual machine and native programming language able to deploy code of any algorithmic complexity.
“Before ethereum, developers had to design and write extremely complex software,” blockchain researcher Mihailo Bjelic told CoinDesk. “Ethereum introduced a generic programmable layer which abstracted this whole process and enabled developers to build decentralized applications by only writing their applications’ core logic.”
There are roughly 800 monthly active developers building on the ethereum blockchain, according to new data from investment firm Electric Capital.
Eric Conner, founder of information site ETHHub and product researcher at blockchain startup Gnosis, said:
“I think in four years, Ethereum will be moving past the hardest parts of its ambitious goals around proof-of-stake and scaling. At that point, the network will be able to onboard more users and we’ll start to grow beyond the use cases we are seeing today.”
Lightning-centric bitcoin wallets are gaining traction in 2019 and making small transactions affordable by reducing network fees.
The bootstrapped Spanish startup Bluewallet garnered 35,000 downloads so far this year, according to co-founder Nuno Coelho, a significant jump from the 5,000 users it had in 2018.
Coelho told CoinDesk the wallet’s built-in lightning marketplace, offering connections to external services like the crypto exchange ZigZag, the blog Yalls and games like Lightning Roulette, facilitates nearly 10,000 referrals a month. So far, BlueWallet users have completed more than 100,000 lightning transactions.
Bitcoin (BTC) now has 85% of its supply in circulation as of August 1, leaving just 3.15 million new coins for the next 120 years.
3.15 million bitcoins, 120 years
According to data from monitoring resource Blockchain, Thursday saw Bitcoin miners extract the 17,850,000th unit as part of the transaction validation process.
As a result, due to the number of coins awarded to miners per block decreasing over time, the remaining supply will only be unlocked in the year 2140. Bitcoin has a total fixed supply of 21 million units.
“Scarcity is about to kick in,” the crypto trading account known as Rhythm on Twitter commented on the event.
The current Bitcoin supply means only a maximum of 17,850,000 people can own an entire coin. In reality, however, some of the existing mined supply is not in circulation and never will be, as users lose access to private keys.
Because of its pseudo-anonymous, censorship-resistant nature, cryptocurrency has become a popular payment method in the adult entertainment industry. Porn sites, webcam sites and online sex shops have been using crypto to reduce their dependence on traditional payment services, which often impose restrictions and high transaction fees on these kinds of businesses — which are considered to be high risk.
Sex performers, who often struggle to set up regular bank accounts, can receive crypto payments directly from their clients, counting on the immutability and censorship resistance of blockchain technology.
Monthly interest distribution by Auxilium Interest Distribution Platform for coinholders. Also supports charity.
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
The STEEM that we know since months now is back. The BTC is having a nice UP but the STEEM is not really following, even we had a little UP move which has been now cancelled. However, the more important is to don’t break our support line around 0.24$. If we continue like that, the UP will come back at one moment.
Faced with public pressure over contributions to plastic pollution, Coca-Cola and PepsiCohave both left the Plastics Industry Association, the former stating it withdrew “as a result of positions the organization was taking that were not fully consistent with our commitments and goals.”
Last year, household products company Clorox, medical device firm Becton Dickinson, and hygiene and cleanings tech company Ecolab ended their memberships, some citing disagreement with the lobbying group’s efforts to prevent plastic bans.
The withdrawals come at a time where the plastic pollution debate is becoming much more heated in state legislatures, with five more states passing laws banning or taxing plastic bags, while several other states are passing laws limiting or preventing such actions by local governments.
Analysts and comments
According to Greenpeace, in 2018, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé were the world’s biggest producers of plastic trash, mostly of polystyrene, which goes into packaging, and PET, which is used in bottles and containers.
The companies have now made various pledges to reduce plastic waste and facilitate recycling, with Coca-Cola, for example, partnering with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and pledging to make all its packaging recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025.
You can find the latest news on Ellen MacArthur’s New Plastics Economy Global Commitment here. At 3m metric tons in 2017, Coca-Cola currently has the highest disclosed plastic packaging volume among the signatories who have made a disclosures (followed by Nestlé and Danone).
Of the 150 companies who have signed up to MacArthur’s global commitment to reduce plastic pollution, the majority still refuses to publicly disclose figureson their own plastic packaging production (including Pepsi Co, H&M, L’Oréal, Walmart and Marks & Spencer).
The Plastics Industry Association, through the American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA), an arm of the group, has been advocating against plastic bag bans, arguing that conventional plastic has the least environmental impact compared with other bags, requiring 70% less energy and 96% less water to make than paper bags, according to its website.
Bitfinex and Tether have spent half a million dollars just on finding documents for the New York Attorney General’s (NYAG) office, a new letter by its lawyers says.
In the letter filed with the New York Supreme Court Tuesday, attorneys Jason Weinstein and Charles Michael of Steptoe and Johnson LLP, and David Miller and Zoe Phillips of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius LLP, urged Judge Joel M. Cohen to rule against immediately compelling the crypto exchange and stablecoin issuer to produce all the documents the NYAG demanded.
Cohen previously ruled that Bitfinex and Tether would need to preserve and turn over a subset of those documents, staying the rest of the NYAG’s injunction.
During today’s United State Senate Banking Committee hearing on the regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and blockchain, Cointelegraph will be updating live with the most important developments.
The July 30 hearing, titled “Examining Regulatory Frameworks for Digital Currencies and Blockchain,” follows the previous hearings in mid-July that examined the regulatory hurdles surrounding Facebook’s Libra.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire will be a witness today in front of the Senate Committee on Banking, House, and Urban Affairs on behalf of The Blockchain Association, along with Rebecca M. Nelson, a specialist in international trade and finance, and Mehrsa Baradaran, a professor of law at University of California, Irvine School of Law.
For more detailed information on the witnesses, Cointelegraph has a dedicated analysis here.
The Russian Federal Customs Service has opened a criminal investigation into an importer of bitcoin miners for potential underpayment of customs fees.
The Far-East Trading and Industrial Company, or DTPK, may have failed to pay about $1.2 million on 6,012 Bitmain-manufactured ASIC miners imported from August 2017 to February 2018, according to a search warrant obtained by CoinDesk.
DTPK, based in Moscow, showed customs officers falsified documents with the incorrect prices for the equipment, which included Bitmain’s Antminer S9-13.5, L3+ and D3 models, along with power elements for them, says the search warrant, dated July 17.
Coinbase executive Tim Wagner is leaving the crypto exchange after slightly over a year on the job. Other high-ranking engineering staffers are leaving too, CoinDesk has learned.
Wagner, Coinbase’s vice president of engineering, will be departing in the next two weeks, a Coinbase spokesperson confirmed. The departure will leave a vacancy on the company’s leadership team.
Previously, Wagner served more than six years at Amazon Web Services, making him one of most senior alums of big tech to join the cryptocurrency industry. Wagner joined shortly after Coinbase acquired Earn.com and made Balaji Srinivasan its chief technology officer.
Nasscom, a major Indain trade organization, has said that it is against a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies, which was recently proposed by a governmental panel in the country According to a report by local financial periodical The Economic Times on July 30, Nasscom commented:
“Nasscom believes that the recent proposal of the inter-ministerial committee of the government to ban all cryptocurrencies barring those that are backed by the government, is not the most constructive measure. […] Instead, the government should work towards developing a risk-based framework to regulate and monitor cryptocurrencies and tokens.”
As per the report, Nasscom claims that crypto projects can always be tested in regulatory sandboxes prior to launch. Nasscom also reportedly believes that banning crypto will only serve to push away legitimate businesses who are already pro-compliance.
SubstratumNode v1.0.0 RC1 release expected in July.
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
It is nice to see that we are sitting on that line since days now. I don’t mean that I like that value for the STEEM but at least it looks a good level to allow the STEEM to consolidate and prepare the next move which we hope will be a nice UP.
Let’s hope the BTC won’t make a massive correction which will destroy that support line, this is the only risk that we have now at short term.
Beyond Meat priced its initial public offering at $25 and now the stock is up more than 800% since the IPO. Beyond Meat, a maker of plant-based meat products is the new IT THING on Wall Street because they are trailblazing a new secular movement away from animal protein.
Beyond Meat had their second
quarterly earnings announcement yesterday.
Although they reported a second quarter loss of $9.4 million, sales
nearly quadrupled from a year ago. In
additional, Beyond Meat raised its revenue guidance for 2019 to $240 million on
Monday, up from more than $210 million previously.
“Growth in net revenues for the second quarter of 2019 was driven primarily by an increase in sales of the Beyond Burger, expansion in the number of retail and food service points of distribution, including new strategic customers, as well as greater demand from our existing customers,” Chief Financial Officer Mark Nelson said in a conference call Monday afternoon.
However, shares tanked in after hours trading after they announced that it would be selling an additional 3.25 million shares of common stock. Three million of these shares are held by current stockholders, and 250,000 shares will be newly issued and are set to trade on August 1. Although the additional shares dilute earnings/profits, the money will go towards expanding the business.
However, it didn’t matter as investor took profits and short sellers took the opportunity to short the stock because they say the stock price as being overvalued.
That valuation is higher than that of roughly 25% of the companies in the S&P 500 index, including decades-old industry stalwarts like Molson Coors, Viacom, Under Armour, and JetBlue. At its Friday morning levels, Beyond Meat’s market cap was twice the size of Macy’s.
But while investors might still be hungry for this stock, experts’ appetites are starting to wane.
“My understanding is it’s a good product, but … from a valuation standpoint, it’s beyond ridiculous,” Quint Tatro, chief investment officer at Joule Financial, said Thursday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” “The company is trading at 100 times sales, 300 times cash, so … it’s not a matter of whether it’s justified at this price. It’s can they actually keep growing to justify this valuation?”
For context, Microsoft — which, at over $1 trillion, is the most valuable company in the market — trades at eight times sales and eight times cash. Amazon, a $970 billion company, trades at about four times sales and 20 times cash, Tatro said.
All in all, his thesis on Beyond Meat is simple: “It’s a no-touch.”
Personally I think it was a great move to raise capital to expand aggressively because the competition is coming. If you believe Beyond Meat is a 10 year story vs. the latest fad, there are two daily demand zones to pay attention to for an opportunity to go long.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Not-for-profit organisation OpenAI (co-founded by Elon Musk) and Microsoft have formed a $1bn strategic partnership focused on integrating Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform with its on-going work.
The two firms will jointly develop Azure AI supercomputing technologies, but also focus on creating artificial general intelligence(AGI).
OpenAI will port its existing services to Microsoft’s cloud and use Microsoft as preferred partner for marketing commercialised AI technologies.
Analysis and Comments
The main difference between AI and AGI is that AGI is not developed for a specific application and therefore more multi-functional in nature. So, while an AI can be incredibly good at one task (e.g. screening scans for cancer), the aim for AGIs is to have the ability to perform any task that a human can.
Some experts have predicted the development of an AGI to be achieved as early as 2030, however, most lean towards later dates, such as the year 2060 or even 2099.
Regardless, OpenAI has already achieved several impressive milestones in the AI world, for example, by setting new benchmarks for robot dexterity, with one of its video gaming bots recently beating human champions at Dota 2, while one of its text-generation systems can write anything from fake news articles to convincing song lyrics and short stories.
The chief of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Division of Enforcement’s Cyber Unit, Robert A. Cohen, has stepped down from his role at the commission.
According to an official announcement by the SEC, Cohen served as the first chief of the Cyber Unit since its inception in 2017.
The Cyber Unit is in charge of securities violations pertaining to cryptocurrency and digital assets, in addition to cyber-related trading violations and cybersecurity disclosures and procedures.
Regarding Cohen’s work as chief of the Cyber Unit, the Division of Enforcement’s co-director Steven Peikin said:
“The Cyber Unit has been a great success under Rob’s strategic leadership […] Soon after its creation, the Cyber Unit immediately began filing impactful cases that protect investors and demonstrate the SEC’s ability to respond nimbly to new and difficult challenges.”
Bitcoin’s three-day chart is reporting a golden cross, a long-term bull market indicator, for the first time since February 2016. A similar crossover seen six months ahead of the August 2016 mining reward halving paved way for a mega bull run. History may repeat itself with mining reward halving due in less than 12 months.
BTC may rise back to $10,000 in the next 24 hours or so with short duration charts signaling seller exhaustion.
A UTC close above $11,120 is needed to revive the bullish view. On the downside, key support is seen at $9,049 (July 17 low).
Bitcoin witnessed a golden cross in the three days to Feb. 3, 2016 – six months ahead of the mining reward halving – following which the cryptocurrency charted its way to a record high of $20,000 by December 2017.
With another reward halving (effectively, a supply cut) due in less than 12 months, history may just repeat itself.
As of writing , BTC is changing hands at $9,500 on Bitstamp, down 31.55 percent from June’s high of $13,880. The cryptocurrency could rise to $10,000 in the next 24 hours, according to the short-duration technical charts.
Square Crypto is focused on bitcoin, not the publicly traded company’s specific products.
That was the message Monday during a Twitter ask-me-anything (AMA) with the head of Square’s crypto team, Steve Lee.
The unit’s playful Twitter account fielded questions from its followers as well as crypto-community luminaries. With tweets signed simply “Steve,” it was Lee’s first set of public remarks on the team’s broad objectives since being hired in June.
The product we're focusing on is Bitcoin. It has been up and running for over 10 years… but there’s still a lot that needs to be done before we reach mass adoption. – Steve https://t.co/oU0yzhpWqX
Chinese importers in Russia are buying up to $30 million a day of tether (USDT) from Moscow’s over-the-counter trading desks.
They use the cryptocurrency to send large sums back to their home country, which has strict capital controls. Previously the merchants used bitcoin for this, but when the market crashed in 2018 they switched to tether, which is designed to maintain parity with the U.S. dollar.
Despite longstanding questions about USDT’s collateral, in this market “nobody actually cares if tether is backed or not,” says one Moscow trader.
Justice Joel M. Cohen of the New York Supreme Court (NYSC) has ruled to extend the preliminary injunction in the ongoing case of crypto exchange Bitfinex and Tether’s parent company, iFinex, against the New York Attorney General (NYAG), on July 29.
Cohen reportedly decided to give a 90 day extension to the case, which apparently means that OAG can continue investigating. Lawyers of Tether tried to appeal to dismiss the motion immediately, but Cohen rejected their appeal.
Speaking before the court, iFinex also argued that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction because Tether is not a security or commodity as there is no futures market. The companies’ defense also stressed that Tether and Bitfinex are two different companies with two different business models, and that it is not proper to treat them as a single entity as the OAG does.
“Sign up today for the first episode scheduled for July 30th at 2 pm EST/8 pm CEST!”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
We are still testing that support line at 0.24$ since several days now and till now, we didn’t have a real break of it, even sometimes with a correction on the BTC.
What do you think? Do you think the marketis thinking that 0.24$ is low enough for the STEEM? Do you think it is just a pause before the next correction? Your TA or opinions are welcome.
Three months ago, Google reported revenue of $36.3 billion, up 17% over the previous year. Google’s ad revenue consisted of 85% of that revenue or $30.7 billion which was up from $26.6 billion. The company said they remain focused and excited by significant growth opportunities across their other business. However, Wall Street didn’t want to hear that. They wanted to know why the ad revenue growth decelerated from 24% a year ago to 15%. I think what really pissed Wall Street off was Google didn’t have any real answer, so the they dropped the price big time.
This past week, Google reported their second quarter earnings. Revenue increased 19.3% year over year to $38.944 billion, accelerating from 16.7% growth in the first quarter, beating estimates by nearly $800 million. Net income for the quarter climbed to $9.947 billion, up nearly 21% year over year and ahead of expectations. Equally important, ad revenue rose 16.1% to $32.601 billion.
In the second quarter, annual paid click growth for Google properties continued slowing, dropping to 28% from a first-quarter level of 39%. But this was more than offset by the fact that CPC only fell 11% — a much smaller decline than 19% in the first quarter and also the smallest drop Google has seen in three years.
Porat mentioned on the call that “the benefits of applying machine learning” have boosted ad sales on Google properties, but didn’t offer additional details. In the past, Google has talked up its use of machine learning to help advertisers (including small businesses) optimize their ad campaigns based on goals such as maximizing ad clicks, sign-ups or revenue.
Price is back in monthly supply, but the chart suggests, potential all the unfilled sell orders have been used up and so Google has a shot of reaching all time new highs in the near future.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
As Bitcoin dropped an additional 8% on Saturday, naysayers claim the rally to a new all-time high is over. So what is it that’s keeping market analysts bullish in the face of a 33 percent correction?
Bitcoin price bears draw a line at $10,000
Bitcoin’s most recent price action has been less than satisfactory, unless you’re a bear. To date, the top digital asset is down 32% from it’s 2019 high of $13,739 and short term price action remains overwhelmingly bearish.
Over the past two weeks Bitcoin formed an M-top at $13,739 and $13,177 before dropping to the neckline around $9,600. Most traders expect that Bitcoin will retrace to the 61.8% and 50% Fibonacci Retracement level which is also near the CME futures gap. It’s possible that the group think surrounding the CME gap is causing it to function as a magnet, drawing BTC price nearer to the $8,500 – $7,500 range.
Dormant Bitcoin wallet address hit new all-time high
Earlier this week Coin Metrics released a report showing Bitcoin’s untouched supply reaching a new all-time high of 21%.
Not everyone supports this conclusion, however. Adamant Capital founding partner Tuur Demeester countered saying that: “I’m not so sure […] 5 years without updating your cold storage method is a long time in Bitcoin. Imo most of these coins are likely lost.”
Start of new bull markets coincides with miner capitulation, data shows
On Saturday expert crypto-analyst PlanB tweeted a rather intriguing chart that he and ParabolicTrav worked on.
According to the analysts, after a BTC/USD rally reaches its peak, a massive amount of Bitcoin is available at lower prices. The start of new Bitcoin bull markets have coincided with miner capitulation and Bitcoin price tends to rise from these bottoms to grow 100 times.
According to PlanB:
“We saw difficulty bottoms (miner capitulation) in Dec 2011 ($4.6), May 2015 ($230) and Dec 2018 ($3,896). Price continues to rise from these bottoms until ATH around 100x […] Implying a continuing uptrend until $370,000 ATH.”
In last week’s column — my third on Libra — I referred to a core dilemma confronting the cryptocurrency project’s financial inclusion goals: the impossibility of being both pro-privacy and pro-KYC.
I promise a break this week from Libra and its controversial founder, Facebook. But I want to dive deeper into that dilemma because the problem is hardly unique to that project. As “know-your-customer” rules have steadily encroached into their world, all cryptocurrency startups trying to expand financial access for the poor are hamstrung by requirements to identify and track the people they seek to serve.
This contradiction stems from tough policies contained under Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism rules (AML-CFT), which were tightened worldwide after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and then again after the financial crisis. Since virtually every bank needs access to dollars, KYC rules everywhere tend to follow models laid down in the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and in guidelines of the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.
Further internationalizing pressure comes from the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, which sets the regulatory standards by which countries pressure each other to comply.
“It’s not a surprise to me that inevitably corporations are going after creating their own tokens but for Facebook to be one of the first big ones is is pretty much a surprise,” said Lukka CEO Jake Benson told us when news of Libra began to spread. The world shared his surprise when Facebook unveiled its wild cryptocurrency dreams last month. But that surprise quickly turned into concern and condemnation as politicians started thinking about what it meant for a company to run its own mint.
Facebook’s reaction to the hearings was also surprising. The usually-reticent social media giant sent their best fighter – Libra co-creator David Marcus – into the ring to defend the currency and the battle raged for two days as the U.S. Congress and Senate took turns bringing up their concerns.
The result? A stalemate… for now. token transactions.
Initial coin offering (ICO) consultant CoinLaunch has agreed to pay $50,000 to the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), according to documents published on the regulator’s website dated July 24.
According to commercial litigator and former programmer Evan Thomas, CoinLaunch was consulted on two ICOs, BCZERO (raising funds for a Czech off-road truck racing team) and ECOREAL (raising funds for a Portuguese resort), both of which were found to be securities. CoinLaunch reportedly created the tokens, white papers and websites, advised on the sale structure and made introductions, including to crypto exchanges for listings.
According to Thomas, the OSC found that the service was an act in furtherance of the trade of the security tokens since it was instrumental to the solicitation of investors. The consultant agreed to pay a $50,000 fine under a settlement.
The hedge fund of famous investor Bill Miller saw 46% growth in the first half of 2019, reportedly in some part from investing in Bitcoin (BTC).
Citing an investor document, Bloomberg reports on July 26 that Miller achieved such outstanding results by investing in Bitcoin among other high-performing stocks. Alongside Bitcoin, other investments in the Miller’s fund reportedly include Amazon, security system firm ADT, as well as Avon Products.
The 69 year-old investor reportedly found success by following a similar investment strategy as he used during his three-decade run at Legg Mason, which envisions investing in securities that trade at a large discount to their intrinsic value.
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STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
The STEEM is still sitting on the support line at 0.24$, waiting for the next move from the BTC. I’m really afraid that the BTC will continue it’s correction so yeah, I’m little bit pessimist about that support line at 0.24$. However, I really wish that I’m wrong and that this support line will keep us upper but be very carefull in the coming hours.
As the oil major BPis expanding its footprint in EV charging, the company has stated it is focusing on reducing charging times, “…to have a battery in a car by 2021 that can be charged completely in five minutes – for a lot more than 100 kilometers”.
After its acquisition of BP Chargemaster for US$170m, BP is now in the process of installingultra-fast EV chargers at service station in China, Germany, and the UK.
BP is also investing in biofuel development, as it considers the technology to be “the best way of decarbonizing long-distance jet transport”.
Analysis and Comments
This level of super fast charging is the holy grail of EVs. As cost comes down, and as the charging network grows, the last big barrier to overcome is the inconvenience of the time it takes to charge.
This shift, if achieved, could open up the EV market to those city dwellers who don’t have off street parking (so no easy home charging option).
To be clear, the BP target is just that; a target. The article claims, that the technology from a BP investment in an Israeli company called StoreDotalready allows ultra high speed charging of mobile phones but the EV version seems to be work in progress.
The technology (FlashBatteries) seems to be a combination of the use of organic compounds in the cathode (plus Silicon?) and some form of capacitor technology (those of you with good memories will recall that Tesla recently purchased Maxwell Technologies – a global leader in ultra and super capacitors).
Normally, I would be sceptical about such claims – the “we have found a way of producing super batteries” story appears on a regular basis in the tradepress. But with BP money behind them, perhaps this approach has a future.
