From July this year, the digital driver’s license will be used for reissuing and renewing licenses, so in time it will become the norm. In the meantime, however, users can opt in by registering their details on the app, which will form a digital license showing the user’s photo, a QR code and a bar code. Security features include screen capture prevention tech, a constantly-moving animation layer and code resets. Users will only be able to use one smartphone when registering for the service, and blockchain tech will help protect sensitive data.

Right now, the PASS app serves as a useful and convenient wallet alternative — cash and ID wrapped up in a device you’d be carrying anyway. But it’s got a lot of potential for further applications. In a statement, Oh Se-hyeon, vice president and head of blockchain and authentication at SK Telecom, said, “Going forward, we will work closely with diverse institutions and enterprises to promote its use in non-face-to-face services, which have surged since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“I’m really interested in meaningful work and I think the best way to do that is in a startup,” Imran says. Eventually she wants to run her own company, perhaps serving the developing world. College may or may not be part of the equation, at least not before a gap year.

This is Imran’s first time in Las Vegas, first CES and somewhere between her 10th and 15th tech conference in the last year, she thinks. She flew here from the suburbs of Toronto — where her parents moved from Pakistan when Imran was six — to receive an award as a “Young Innovator to Watch” from Living In Digital Times. Many of the winners turn out to be children of immigrants, says LIDT founder Robin Raskin, and this year’s teenagers also developed screening for respiratory diseases and an app for sexual assault survivors.

Imran’s project HonestBlocks uses blockchain to track healthcare supply chains and prevent counterfeit medicine. She came to Vegas with her chaperone Navid Nathoo, co-founder of The Knowledge Society, a program for talented kids which Imran credits with giving her a direction beyond the pointlessness of school clubs and grades.

In school, she even started a nonprofit for girls in STEM, but soon realized she didn’t want to be standing on stages instead of solving problems. “I didn’t feel my work was making a real impact,” she said. “Doing events will only go so far.” She tells me it’d be good to write this article about what she was like then versus now.

“People are impressed by that?” she says, quite seriously. “The only cool thing is the quantum computer.”

On Wednesday, Imran roams the convention center, an ocean of middle-aged men. Her prime goal is to network. “That’s the only utility in conferences,” she says. There’s a concentration of experts on emerging tech here, and she’s got a list of relationships to build, with Google, Uber and IBM.

Also, she’s psyched to see the quantum computer, a regular CES appearance. “It’s gonna be an iconic picture,” she says.

First, the networking. She meets a blockchain expert at IBM, gives her standard intro and listens with arms folded, legs crossed, standing upright. “You definitely know your stuff,” says the man. “How old are you?”

She tells him. He tells her to apply to IBM.

“You definitely know your stuff,” says the man. “How old are you?”

Off again, through the Las Vegas Convention Center. Imran walks past Sharp’s 90-inch transparent TV, attendees buzzing all around.

“People are impressed by that?” she says, quite seriously. “The only cool thing is the quantum computer,” she adds, more in jest this time.

Eventually, she finds the glistening chandelier of a machine. She takes the photos and texts Nathoo her excitement. She talks to a quantum consultant and notes down a paper about lithium sulphur batteries. A man appears — several earrings, mildly spiked hair — and says he helped assemble the quantum computer.

“Can you explain how it works?” Imran asks.

“What do you want to do first, qubits or cooling?” he says.

She replies: “Let’s do qubits.”

On top of this, Griffith supposedly planned to streamline Ethereum exchanges between North and South Korea while knowing this would violate US sanctions. He apparently called on other Americans to visit North Korea (including for the crypto conference) and signaled plans to renounce his US citizenship while buying citizenship elsewhere.

Griffith is charged with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and, if convicted, could face up to 20 years in prison.

Whether or not the allegations hold up, it doesn’t look good for Griffith. There have been multiple reports of North Korea stealing billions in cryptocurrency and conventional money to help fund its nuclear program — Griffith couldn’t feign innocence about what the country might want from him. And with an explicit warning to avoid going, he was in trouble regardless of what he said.

Volvo Cars will work with its two global battery suppliers, CATL of China and LG Chem of South Korea, and blockchain technology firms to trace its cobalt production. The data in the blockchain will include the cobalt’s origin, attributes like weight and size, as well as the chain of custody.

“We have always been committed to an ethical supply chain for our raw materials,” Volvo Car’s Head of Procurement Martina Buchhauser said in a statement. “With blockchain technology we can take the next step towards ensuring full traceability of our supply chain and minimising any related risks, in close collaboration with our suppliers.”

Volvo Car says it will begin using the blockchain traceability system this year. The companies involved have agreed to use the system to cover the supply of batteries over the next decade, for next generation Volvo and Polestar models, including the XC40 Recharge. Volvo Cars expects half of its global sales to be fully electric cars by 2025, and the company has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 40 percent per vehicle by the same year. Those goals will require more batteries and more ethically-sourced cobalt.

At least that’s the idea. While it’s not as intensive as mining Bitcoin, running a full node still requires a lot of computing power. In fact, HTC recommends only using the feature while the phone is connected to WiFi and plugged into its power adapter. The company also plans to roll out full node support to the original Exodus 1, as well.

The 1s can also store the entire Bitcoin ledger. To take advantage of this aspect of the phone, you’ll need a microSD card with at least 400GB of storage (sold separately). At the moment, the ledger takes up approximately 260GB, and it’s currently growing at a rate of 60GB per year. You need the entire ledger to verify and relay transactions without a third-party.

Like its predecessor, the 1s supports HTC’s Zion wallet. The software allows the 1s to store, send and receive a variety of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin and Steller, as well as Etherum-based ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens.

Besides its crypto-related capabilities, not much stands out about the Exodus 1s from a hardware perspective. Internally, the phone features a Snapdragon 435 processor, a chip that’s now more than three years old. Complementing the processor is 4GB of RAM and 64GB of built-in internal storage. The display measures in at 5.7 inches and features an 18:9 aspect ratio with 720p resolution. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack, a (shudders) MicroUSB port for charging and a rear-facing fingerprint sensor. For taking pictures, the 1s includes a single main 13-megapixel camera and a 13-megapixel selfie camera. The phone will ship with Android Oreo 8.1, software that is about two years old now.

In Europe, the Exodus 1s will cost €219 (approximately $244). The company also plans to sell the device in Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with more countries to come at a later date. Naturally, you can also pay for the phone using cryptocurrency, with HTC accepting Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Binance or Bitcoin Cash.

As a daily driver, the Exodus 1s won’t make sense for most people, even for die-hard crypto-enthusiasts. But it might find some runway as a secondary phone for those that want to dip their toes in the ecosystem. It’s just hard to imagine how that’s enough to move the needle for HTC.

Block.one has agreed to pay the fine, but has neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s findings. The company has also been granted a waiver which means it won’t be subject to any ongoing restrictions that would usually apply to a settlement of this kind. It’s not the first such penalty to be levied by the SEC, however. Earlier this year it announced it was suing messaging service Kik for failing to register its ICO — part of its ongoing investigation into the way cryptocurrency companies conduct their fundraising activities.

Audius already has backing from some big names, like deadmau5, Rezz, 3LAU and The Stafford Brothers. But to start the library is small, just a few hundred artists. For now, Audius is free, and artists can’t make money. By early 2020, the company may run ads or offer a subscription. According to TechCrunch, the plan is that eventually 90 percent of the revenue will go to the artists.

Audius seems to mainly be focused on reclaiming a spirit that SoundCloud seems to have lost, and part of that hinges on its open source blockchain protocol. As TechCrunch explains, Audius won’t host the music. Instead, it’s decentralized across nodes. “Because the network is decentralized and secured by the blockchain, the attribution metadata remains safe, verifiable, and immutable,” the company explains.

While SoundCloud definitely hit some roadbumps — from financial woes to questionable contracts, unpaid royalties and hot mess subscriptions — it does have the advantage of being established. Audius will also have to compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, which have 100 million and 60 million paid subscribers respectively.

It’ll rely on a two-tier split, with the People’s Bank on top and commercial banks below, ostensibly to help deal with the sheer size of China’s economy and population. Also, it won’t rely entirely on the blockchain that forms the backbone of cryptocurrencies. It just couldn’t deliver the throughput needed for retail, Changchun said.

There’s no mention of just when the currency would be ready.

China does have a motivation to roll out the monetary format sooner than later. The nation has reportedly argued that cryptocurrency creates disorder, with speculators selling off regular currency and buying up the virtual kind. This new approach might create stability. It’s also no shock that the Chinese government would want a digital currency system it could control. Officials have spent years trying to increase China’s independence from foreign tech, and this would be the next logical step.

It didn’t even take 48 hours after Facebook announced its cryptocurrency scheme for the government to raise an eyebrow. House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters called for Facebook to halt development, and now the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs has scheduled a hearing to cover both Libra/Calibra and privacy issues.

The committee did not list the names of witnesses it plans to call, but Reuters reports that Facebook’s blockchain exec David Marcus is expected to testify. Will it be a worthwhile exercise that reveals more information about the plan and digs up useful information about how Facebook will manage the information generated or will it be another embarassing episode of political grandstanding? We’ll find out on July 16th at 10 AM ET.

The congresswoman also said that Facebook executives should testify about Libra as part of that oversight.

We’ve asked Facebook for comment. As part of the announcement, though, it launched a Libra Association whose aim is to oversee the currency outside of Facebook’s control. Calibra, the digital wallet for the new monetary format, is supposed to share only limited data with Facebook and have “strong protections” such as automated fraud checks.

Those measures might not satisfy politicians. Numerous federal and state regulators are investigating Facebook’s behavior in recent years, and there’s no question that the internet giant has been awash in privacy debacles even after the Cambridge Analytica scandal had seemingly wound down. Waters and others just don’t have much of a historical basis to trust what Facebook says, even though it appears to be learning its lessons.