It is a big irony: a decentralized currency could be muted by a centralized asset called energy. Yes, as Kazakstan protests and Iran stays in the crosshairs of the Vienna meeting, Bitcoin will wobble; both countries mine 25% of total BTC after the great China exit.

This is a black swan on this fledgling currency because if the Nordic follows as planned, this winter for hodlers may be really long! Sure, if truly a “decentralized” currency, you will hope hodlers can mine it from their home power sockets.

The next 6 months could be extremely important for BTC and it has nothing to do with the exchanges and national “bans”, but all to do with nations that provide electricity to mine the stuff. Be on alert!

China’s crackdown on Bitcoin mining last year, culminating in a full ban in September, unleashed a diaspora of producers seeking new homes. Many flocked to green sources in the Nordic nations, while others tapped coal and natural gas in Kazakhstan, Iran, Kosovo, and tiny Abkhazia; by last fall, more than one-quarter of all of the signature currency’s coins were being minted in Kazakstan and Iran alone.

But in the past few months, those formally welcoming venues have been booting miners en masse. The newcomers are hoarding gigantic volumes of electricity, creating shortfalls that are spreading blackouts from Tehran to Almaty. The trend is especially bad news for enthusiasts who predict that the Bitcoin industry will soon solve its pollution problem by running mainly on renewable energy. In a new twist, Scandinavian nations are claiming that they can’t meet clean energy goals if crypto is hogging such a huge and growing share of their wind, energy, and geothermal resources. (Fortune)

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Comment: Given that people in different countries get their energy from different sources, energy is not centralized. And it is distributed. During the Kazakhstan protests, Bitcoin hashrate made a new high, and has since not dropped as it did in the China ban times not even close. The network learns about weak spots and route around things like that. Even the internet was out too, yet blocks were still broadcast by some miners through eg: blockstream satellites. Oh the price drop may be correlated with the KZ protests not caused by it.

Response: Certainly, Nigeria is not powered from the same source as Iran. And Brazil is not getting energy from the same source as Canada. The concept of “centralized” energy is not defined by the geographical distribution of the global population, rather the total energy received from the national grid per population within a nation (in my understanding)

So, when I said energy was centralized, I was saying that the bulk of commercial and industrial energy sources are not disparate but largely delivered from national grids within the economies. In other words, those sources are not in people’s backyards. That does not mean that Nigeria and Ghana and USA and Canada are getting energy from the same source.

Let me also leave a formal definition of centralized energy from United States EPA: ““Centralized generation” refers to the large-scale generation of electricity at centralized facilities. … The electricity generated by centralized generation is distributed through the electric power grid to multiple end-users.” It is not defined based on global population or national sources of energy at global scale.

I do think that my usage is in order; I will not edit it. Thanks

At the very start, a business may have zero revenue streams but it should have a plan detailing how it plans to make money and keep the business afloat. I have said a bit about what a revenue model is in one of my previous posts. It is the strategy a company will use to create and manage its revenue streams, and the resources it will require to sustain it.

It could be based on sales, adverts, subscriptions, referrals, and the likes, but it will generally be a strong determinant of your long-term profitability. It should come up at the time you are drawing your business plan because revenue generation will determine the financial projections in your business plan.

It is quite important that you decide on the Revenue model first before having each department or sub-teams present you their own model. For instance, imagine that your tech team builds an application with features in line with a Freemium model. On the other hand, you have the sales or business development team presenting you a plan or strategy that drives on the Affiliate Revenue Model or Subscription Revenue Model. The situation can get even worse when your CFO now presents you with financial projections based on Direct sales or Transactional Revenue models.

Trying to merge all their plans together would be your perfect recipe for disaster. Instead, first, create a revenue operating model for the business and then have each of the teams work based on that model. You can sit with your team heads or your partners, or even speak to a consultant while trying to decide what revenue model will work best for your business.

Do proper research and speak to experts while reaching the decision, because once you hit the ground running, it is not easy to change your revenue model until you have stabilized as a business.

With the revenue model in place, staff can be properly briefed as they onboard and will know what is expected of them early enough. You will also now have a template upon which the subteams will develop their plans, strategies, and products. If you choose the subscription-based model, the product development team knows on time what features to merge into the product. The marketing and business development team also develops their plan based on this model and this way you have the entire team working in sync.

Linda Ikeji is peerless in understanding how social media and blogging work. I do not read her works because the focus is not my interests. Yet, I wanted to know why she was successful. Most Nigerian companies put Linda Ikeji on their tags to get traffic. I spent time and saw an interview where she explained her minor secrets. One key point is: “To succeed in blogging, you must reveal your identity.”.

This observation looks simple until you put it in perspective. When she started blogging more than a decade ago, most people blogged with pseudonyms or simply ‘editors’: Linda used her real name, and went ahead to name the blog after herself. She brought authenticity and connected with people, as they knew who was writing.

Simply, the greatest innovation form Linda Ikeji was not the content, but REVEALING herself and going bold to name it after herself in a world where everything was hidden. She was ahead of her time. Recall… many years ago, CVs or resumes were like classified assets. But when LinkedIn came, that veil was taken off.

LinkedIn normalized that secret asset to be visible to other employers as the construct of one-company-worker was broken. So, we all revolted, and went via LinkedIn to tell other employers that we’re here: come and get us as we’re not sure this current one can keep the agreement till retirement.

How do you do digital marketing? You got authenticity on that brand?

Improving the Performance of Your Digital Marketing

In this digital age, supply is largely unbounded and distribution channels are unconstrained. As I have noted, winning the business game would be anchored on controlling demand since it would be hopeless to try to control supply. Yes, to have any chance, digitally, you need to have a separation.

Separation means you need to be unique and be you. Simply, in the sea of players, you must be distinguishable and be known for something. If you can accomplish that, the world will reward you.

But today, the game has shifted from control of supply to control of demand for web-anchored consumer firms. And only companies with capabilities to control demand are going to win big. As shown in the table below, most of the greatest internet companies are simply controlling demand and that means controlling how supplies reach users and consumers.

You cannot be the next Linda Ikeji because she has controlled that world. You need to find yours. If you do, the society would reward, not just in writing but other areas of life. You need to improve your webinality (webinality = web + personality) if you want to play a key role in this digital era.

A social media account is a business tool and companies have understood that speaking from the human element is more impactful. A post shared from the personal account of CEO of BBB will get more traction than one shared by BBB. With that understanding, BBB will put efforts to nurture the CEO social media accounts.

For you, as a small business owner or entrepreneur, you need to evolve out of your shells. If you think you will hide and run a good social media marketing, you will not succeed. All those nice contents on your company accounts are there but people do not pay attention, because no one knows the human elements behind them.

How To Improve Your Webinality

The following are some suggestions on how to build a professional online persona. It is establishing your web personality (webinality) to explain that person you are.

Presence: Open at least one social media or blog account.

Specialize:  Define an area of interest and build around it. A five-minute online search should reveal what you represent. You need to differentiate yourself and showcase your core skills and unique capabilities to potential hiring managers.

Accuracy: Always remember that once that post goes online, you may not control who sees it. If you lie on your accomplishments, your classmate or co-worker is just an IP address away from challenging it. Make it accurate – always, otherwise, you will destroy your persona.

Comprehensive: While blog should be short, once in a while, develop comprehensive articles in your field and post them online. It could mean expanding a class project you worked on, adding more contents, and fully proving your expertise. Half-baked contents will not take you too far.

Judgment: What you post or share online defines who you are. Your profile defines you – values, interests and reliability. For employers, they want reliable team leaders and you must not offer less in your web personality.

Vertical Integration: Seek to connect with people ahead of you professionally while building a horizontally network.

Generosity: Share and exchange good ideas. Invite people to your network and be generous to promote good ideas from others. Write professional reviews on books, journals and articles. In no distant time, people will reward you.

Policy Matters: If you are working, ensure you adhere to policies on using the company’s name online. There is a threat that you could be a source of data leakage that can hurt competitiveness. Your profile must not be another portrait of your employer – you must be wise to separate both, where necessary.

Continuity:  Professional online branding is a continuous work-in-progress that requires constant tune-ups of networks, contents and profiles. It must be constantly nurtured.

All Together / Beyond LinkedIn

As we pursued separation, we wanted to create a brand, Tekedia. Though most contents are synced to LinkedIn, I made sure I was not just LinkedIn. To make that possible, my contents cannot just be on LinkedIn which is not easily searchable and discoverable.  If we had hosted all contents on LinkedIn, there would not be an identity.

But having them here provides an identity which drives that separation. It is that separation that most remember even beyond the contents. Riding on that separation, someone can build a business model on the contents. This is a hobby but that does not mean that it has to cost me money to support; at least, it has to be expense-neutral.

Yes, without this blog, we will not have Tekedia Mini-MBA and Tekedia Capital.

Recall that we reported that according to the autopsy report, it was medically certified that Junior died as a result of chemical intoxication hence corroborating the family’s allegation that their son was poisoned by his colleagues for his refusal to join their gang.

According to the first autopsy which was carried out by a consultant pathologist at the Central Hospital Warri, Clement Vhriterhire, the result revealed that Sylvester died of “acute lung injury due to chemical intoxication in a background of blunt force trauma.”

Subsequently, another autopsy was conducted by the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) and the result revealed that Junior died of Septicaemia, lobar pneumonia with acute pyelonephritis and pyomyositis of the right ankle.”

These autopsy reports have laid to rest the allegation of murder against the accused persons as it has exonerated them from the crime. The implication of the autopsy reports is that Junior wasn’t poisoned or beaten to death as alleged by the family and friends and even if he was beaten or poisoned by his colleagues, his death can not be linked to the above accusation.

In the Nigeria criminal justice system, for the offense of murder to be successfully  established against the accused, the prosecution must satisfy these three conditions; first establish that there is death ie, the victim died, secondly the victim died from the actions and inactions of the accused ie, the acts of the accused must be directly linked to be the cause or causative effect of the death of the victim and finally the victim must have the intention or knowledge that his actions or inactions will cause the death or grievous body harm to the victim or that the death or grievous body harm will be the forseable effect of the accused actions.

The prosecution was unable to establish that second condition which is linking the accused to the death of Junior, hence the reason the accused was exonerated and which brings the murder case of Junior to a close and the accused exonerated for not been guilty of the death of the young lad.

This is definitely not how we want this case to turn out, we all want justice for the boy and his family compensated and the accused persons (the alleged bullies) to face the brash and harsh side of the law but “lex lex” (the law is the law) and we can’t say or do otherwise rather than obey it.

Moreover, when we talk about justice it should be known that justice is three-sided; justice for the aggrieved, justice for the society i.e. the government and also justice for the accused or the alleged offender. The accused or alleged offender, though accused to have committed a crime, still deserve justice and fair hearing so that there won’t be a wrongful conviction or an innocent man getting punished. As the saying goes, that the law would rather let ten guilty men go scot free than to convict one innocent man.

We will keep our ears to the ground to see what else will come of this case and we will always keep updating you and educating you on its legal implications and what the law says in that regard as your lawyer.