Crypto ownership surges among youths

 

Modern method: Pedestrians on Orchard Road in Singapore. Among the older generation of crypto users, 42.9% of them use crypto for P2P transactions, followed by 35.7% for online shopping and 17.2% for bill payments. — Bloomberg

SINGAPORE: More people in Singapore own cryptocurrencies and younger users among them are leading the way in using the asset for daily financial needs, such as online shopping and bill payments, a new study shows.

The number of Singapore residents who own cryptocurrencies is on the rise, with 26% of them owning digital assets in 2024, up from 24.4% in 2023.

Of those who hold crypto, a majority, or 52% of them, have paid for goods and services with it, and 67% of them plan to increase usage of crypto for payments in the future.

Gen Zs and millennials, or those aged between 16 and 44 years old as at 2025, lead in crypto ownership, with about 40% of them holding crypto.

Of this group of people, 41.1% of them use crypto for online shopping, 35.9% for bill payments and 27% for in-store retail goods.

While younger consumers use crypto to pay for retail goods and bills, the older generation – those aged 45 or older in 2025 – uses crypto more for peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions such as those made between friends and family.

Among the older generation of crypto users, 42.9% of them use crypto for P2P transactions, followed by 35.7% for online shopping and 17.2% for bill payments.

These were some of the findings from the study by Singapore-based crypto payments firm Triple-A, based on a survey of 1,006 residents in Singapore.

Singapore has seen a notable increase in crypto payments, with merchant services receiving nearly US$1bil (S$1.3bil) in crypto in the second quarter of 2024, much higher than any other quarter in the past two years, according to data from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

A separate Chainalysis report in September 2024 noted a growing adoption of crypto as a payment method in Singapore.

“The combination of regulatory clarity and merchant adoption suggests that Singapore is positioning itself as a major hub for digital assets, which could eventually attract more global businesses and investors,” Chainalysis said.

AXS, in partnership with Triple-A, allows its app users to make top-ups or pay bills in digital currencies such as bitcoin, ethereum, USD coin and tether. Other merchants that have partnered Triple-A to offer the crypto payment option include fashion brand Charles & Keith on its eCommerce platform and Apple products reseller iStudio at its retail stores.

The findings from Triple-A also noted that 37% of respondents cited global acceptance as a key benefit of crypto payments.

Higher transaction speed (29%) and lower fees (20%) were also important factors, particularly for cross-border and time-sensitive transactions. But there are concerns about the crypto ecosystem.

The complexity involved in using crypto was the top challenge cited by 63% of respondents. For instance, users need to figure out the use of private keys, or passwords that allow them to access and manage their crypto funds.

Security concerns (60%) and lack of merchant acceptance (54%) were also factors of concern.

The crypto payments trend comes against a backdrop of a rising number of digital payment token (DPT) firms being licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), fuelling new roles in the growing Web3 industry.

Web3 companies are those that use blockchain technology to build products and services.

As at end-November 2024, MAS had issued a record 13 new DPT licences in 2024, raising the total number of DPT licensees from 16 to 29, a report from blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs released in December 2024 said.

Despite a global slowdown in hiring with mass layoffs in 2024, more than 75% of local Web3 companies want to expand their workforce in 2025 as they continue developing products and services for global and regional markets.

This is according to a report led by the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA), Web3 business account platform HQ.xyz as well as Web3 builder communities SG Builders and Superteam, which conducted surveys and case studies with 53 Web3 companies.

Of these companies, 60% are looking to expand their current workforce by half or more, the report said.

SFA, which facilitates collaboration between market participants and stakeholders in the fintech ecosystem, told The Straits Times that the hiring plans are driven by growing institutional adoption, ongoing technology improvements in blockchain, and the expansion of applications for Web3 technology.

Moves that increased institutional adoption of digital assets include the US Securities and Exchange Commission approving the first US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds launched by Blackrock, Fidelity and others in January 2024.

A total of 2,433 individuals are currently employed in the local Web3 sector, excluding those working in Web3 roles in non-Web3 native firms.

These roles include those in partnerships, marketing strategy, and sales to help Web3 companies go to market with their solutions, said SFA.

Product managers as well as developers and software engineers are also key roles being hired.

“We also see jobs being created in the professional services sector that support Web3, which include legal, advisory, and consulting roles,” SFA said.

Companies also outlined what they hope to see improvements on as the acceptance of Web3 grows in Singapore. — The Straits Times/ANN

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How A.I. Chatbots Like ChatGPT and DeepSeek Reaso

 

An illustrative image showing the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT on a smartphone in San Francisco. In September of last year, Open AI released a new “reasoning” version of its ChatGPT chatbot that was designed to spend time “thinking” through complex problems before settling on an answer. Now other companies like Google, Anthropic and China’s DeepSeek offer similar technologies. — KELSEY MCCLELLAN/NYT

In September, OpenAI unveiled a new version of ChatGPT designed to reason through tasks involving math, science and computer programming. Unlike previous versions of the chatbot, this new technology could spend time “thinking” through complex problems before settling on an answer.

Soon, the company said its new reasoning technology had outperformed the industry’s leading systems on a series of tests that track the progress of artificial intelligence.

Now other companies, like Google, Anthropic and China’s DeepSeek, offer similar technologies.

But can AI actually reason like a human? What does it mean for a computer to think? Are these systems really approaching true intelligence?

Here is a guide.

What does it mean when an AI system reasons?

Reasoning just means that the chatbot spends some additional time working on a problem.

“Reasoning is when the system does extra work after the question is asked,” said Dan Klein, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and chief technology officer of Scaled Cognition, an AI startup.

It may break a problem into individual steps or try to solve it through trial and error.

The original ChatGPT answered questions immediately. The new reasoning systems can work through a problem for several seconds – or even minutes – before answering.

Can you be more specific?

In some cases, a reasoning system will refine its approach to a question, repeatedly trying to improve the method it has chosen. Other times, it may try several different ways of approaching a problem before settling on one of them. Or it may go back and check some work it did a few seconds before, just to see if it was correct.

Basically, the system tries whatever it can to answer your question.

This is kind of like a grade school student who is struggling to find a way to solve a math problem and scribbles several different options on a sheet of paper.

What sort of questions require an AI system to reason?

It can potentially reason about anything. But reasoning is most effective when you ask questions involving math, science and computer programming.

How is a reasoning chatbot different from earlier chatbots?

You could ask earlier chatbots to show you how they had reached a particular answer or to check their own work. Because the original ChatGPT had learned from text on the internet, where people showed how they had gotten to an answer or checked their own work, it could do this kind of self-reflection, too.

But a reasoning system goes further. It can do these kinds of things without being asked. And it can do them in more extensive and complex ways.

Companies call it a reasoning system because it feels as if it operates more like a person thinking through a hard problem.

Why is AI reasoning important now?

Companies like OpenAI believe this is the best way to improve their chatbots.

For years, these companies relied on a simple concept: The more internet data they pumped into their chatbots, the better those systems performed.

But in 2024, they used up almost all of the text on the internet.

That meant they needed a new way of improving their chatbots. So they started building reasoning systems.

How do you build a reasoning system?

Last year, companies like OpenAI began to lean heavily on a technique called reinforcement learning.

Through this process – which can extend over months – an AI system can learn behavior through extensive trial and error. By working through thousands of math problems, for instance, it can learn which methods lead to the right answer and which do not.

Researchers have designed complex feedback mechanisms that show the system when it has done something right and when it has done something wrong.

“It is a little like training a dog,” said Jerry Tworek, an OpenAI researcher. “If the system does well, you give it a cookie. If it doesn’t do well, you say, ‘Bad dog’.”

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, in December for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)

Does reinforcement learning work?

It works pretty well in certain areas, like math, science and computer programming. These are areas where companies can clearly define the good behavior and the bad. Math problems have definitive answers.

Reinforcement learning doesn’t work as well in areas like creative writing, philosophy and ethics, where the distinction between good and bad is harder to pin down. Researchers say this process can generally improve an AI system’s performance, even when it answers questions outside math and science.

“It gradually learns what patterns of reasoning lead it in the right direction and which don’t,” said Jared Kaplan, chief science officer at Anthropic.

Are reinforcement learning and reasoning systems the same thing?

No. Reinforcement learning is the method that companies use to build reasoning systems. It is the training stage that ultimately allows chatbots to reason.

Do these reasoning systems still make mistakes?

Absolutely. Everything a chatbot does is based on probabilities. It chooses a path that is most like the data it learned from – whether that data came from the internet or was generated through reinforcement learning. Sometimes it chooses an option that is wrong or does not make sense.

Is this a path to a machine that matches human intelligence?

AI experts are split on this question. These methods are still relatively new, and researchers are still trying to understand their limits. In the AI field, new methods often progress very quickly at first, before slowing down. – ©2025 The New York Times Company

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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De-dollarisation - Digital renminbi RMB, (数字人民币 Chinese Yuan)

 

 

Digital renminbi 

BIG BREAKING

the People's Bank of China suddenly announced that the digital RMB (Renminbi, Chinese Yuan) cross-border settlement system will be fully connected to the ten ASEAN countries and six Middle Eastern countries, which means that 38% of the world's trade volume will bypass the SWIFT system dominated by the US dollar and directly enter the "digital RMB moment". This financial game, which The Economist called the "Bretton Woods System 2.0 Outpost Battle", is rewriting the underlying code of the global economy with blockchain technology.

While the SWIFT system is still struggling with the 3-5 day delay in cross-border payments, the digital currency bridge developed by China has compressed the clearing speed to 7 seconds. In the first test between Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi, a company paid a Middle Eastern supplier through digital RMB. The funds no longer went through six intermediary banks, but were received in real time through a distributed ledger, and the handling fee dropped by 98%. This "lightning payment" capability makes the traditional clearing system dominated by the US dollar instantly look clumsy.

What makes the West even more frightened is the technical moat of China's digital currency. The blockchain technology used by the digital RMB not only makes transactions traceable, but also automatically enforces anti-money laundering rules. In the China-Indonesia "Two Countries, Two Parks" project, Industrial Bank used digital RMB to complete the first cross-border payment, which took only 8 seconds from order confirmation to funds arrival, 100 times more efficient than traditional methods. This technical advantage has enabled 23 central banks around the world to actively join the digital currency bridge test, among which Middle Eastern energy traders have reduced settlement costs by 75%.

The deep impact of this technological revolution lies in the reconstruction of financial sovereignty. When the United States tried to sanction Iran with SWIFT, China had already built a closed loop of RMB payments in Southeast Asia. Data shows that the cross-border RMB settlement volume of ASEAN countries exceeded 5.8 trillion yuan in 2024, an increase of 120% over 2021. Six countries including Malaysia and Singapore have included RMB in their foreign exchange reserves, and Thailand has completed the first oil settlement with digital RMB. This wave of "de-dollarization" made the Bank for International Settlements exclaim: "China is defining the rules of the game in the era of digital currency."

But what really shocked the world was China's strategic layout. Digital RMB is not only a payment tool, but also a technical carrier of the "Belt and Road" strategy. In projects such as the China-Laos Railway and the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, the digital RMB is deeply integrated with Beidou navigation and quantum communication to build a "Digital Silk Road". When European car companies use digital RMB to settle freight through the Arctic route, China is using blockchain technology to increase trade efficiency by 400%. This virtual-real strategy makes the US dollar hegemony feel a systemic threat for the first time.

Today, 87% of countries in the world have completed the adaptation of the digital RMB system, and the scale of cross-border payments has exceeded 1.2 trillion US dollars. While the United States is still debating whether digital currency threatens the status of the US dollar, China has quietly built a digital payment network covering 200 countries. This silent financial revolution is not only about monetary sovereignty, but also determines who can control the lifeline of the future global economy!


👉 This is very big news  It means De-dollarisation in a big way. It can completely re-set the world

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