Metaplanet announces join study to bring BTC-powered digital credit to Japan

Cryptocurrency & Free Speech Finance

“The four companies will examine issues in product design, the need for proof-of-concept initiatives, and the possibility of future issuance,” Metaplanet said in a statement. “At this time, nothing has been determined regarding issuance timing, terms, yield, product details, distribution methods, or the form of collaboration.”Japan’s traditional credit market leans in favor of large corporations with public bond offerings. Mid-sized and growth companies often face high costs and operational burdens around issuance, sales, investor management, interest payments and redemptions, according to Metaplanet.Digital credit could open the debt market to these smaller companies, bridging traditional capital markets with onchain technology, enabling…

Media & Culture

The Social Security Fix That Would Send Tax Rates Soaring

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R–Ohio) recently announced that he was working with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) to eliminate the cap on Social Security taxes. Moreno would be a very odd Republican if he thinks this is a good idea, or else he simply doesn’t understand the math. Under current law, employees and employers each contribute 6.2 percent in Social Security payroll taxes on the first $184,500 in income. By eliminating the cap, that 6.2 percent tax would become a new top marginal tax rate. For example, a taxpayer in California would pay a 37 percent federal income tax rate, a 13.3…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM/swiss-image.ch/Jolanda Flubacher Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition wants to impose what it calls “institutional neutrality” on the country’s universities. The proposals – which could become reality within a month – would prevent higher education institutions from taking political positions, organising strikes or suspending teaching in response to political developments. University presidents would themselves be barred from expressing views that might be perceived as political or could encourage others to be. All of which sounds more like “neuter” than “neutrality”. There’s a concession: lecturers and students can express themselves politically and “participate in public discourse” provided that the activity is done privately “and is not specific to the institution or done by virtue of their academic or administrative role and does not harm the institution’s regular activity”. These are very broad caveats, which will still leave people very exposed. There’s nothing subtle about these plans. They’re clearly designed to stop campuses mobilising against controversial government measures, of which in Netanyahu’s Israel there are now many. They will also chill academic freedom more broadly. After all, universities are not meant to be impartial spaces. They are meant to be intellectually independent and curious. They are meant to question orthodoxies, challenge power and create conditions in which difficult ideas can be tested. In the words of poet Stephen Spender in his op-ed that launched Index, “universities represent the developing international consciousness which depends so much on the free interchange of people, and of ideas.” Israeli academics understand the danger. One organisation opposing the proposals described them as “the essence of dictatorship, tyranny of silencing and instilling fear in those whose nature is independent thought”. They warned: “History will remember who was in positions of power and did not turn over every stone to prevent the elimination of Israeli academia and democracy.” This is not the first attack those within Israeli universities faced. As reported by our writer Akin Ajayi, Palestinian academics and students within Israel have already experienced harassment in various forms. This led to one person telling us “silence is the best option”. Then there’s the destruction of Gaza’s higher education system, which has been described by some as “scholasticide”. The assault is not confined to academia either. I read about the plans in Israel’s leading, left-leaning newspaper Haaretz. The following morning came news that the newspaper’s offices had been vandalised after a masked man threw a brick through its entrance. Haaretz has repeatedly been targeted, while only last week a similar attack struck Channel 12 News in Tel Aviv. In May this year, Israeli journalist Oren Persico wrote for us about how Israel’s targeting of Palestinian journalists had helped create an atmosphere in which Israeli journalists increasingly found themselves under attack too. His argument echoed Martin Niemöller’s famous warning: once repression becomes normalised against one group, it rarely stops there. Hence what we’re seeing in universities – both the continuation and the escalation of Netanyahu’s assault on freedom of expression. READ MORE

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