Bitcoin’s Most Anticipated Software Upgrade, Meituan Autonomous Technology, Google’s foray into Healthcare

1.) Bitcoin’s Most Anticipated Software Upgrade is Nearing Activation

One of the most talked about software upgrade for the Bitcoin network is happening is about a month into activation called Taproot. Benefits of the Taproot will include reduced transaction fees, increased privacy and more wallet functionality. Gregory Maxwell, former CTO of Blockstream and early contributor to Wikipedia first proposed Taproot to help accelerate Bitcoin’s scale it’s transaction capacity is finally coming into fruition as Bitcoin’s core technology has historically suffered from a lack of well-funded developers.

From Bitcoin’s last major upgrade since the SegWit in 2017, Singular believes Taproot along with Schnorr Signatures will improve Bitcoin’s digital signature scheme. The result will be making Bitcoin transactions indistinguishable whether it is on the Lightning Network channel, peer to peer or with complex smart contracts.

Here’s a visual map of the current Taproot activation and for this to happen, miners have to signal their support for Taproot upgrade. As of today, 90% of hash rate that has mined is signalling support for Taproot. However, only 80% have signaled support during this epoch. If there is not enough support for Taproot’s activation, the activated might have to wait for one of next three epochs.

Follow Taproot’s real time map to activation here.

2) Google enters healthcare partnership with HCA, will develop algorithms using patient records

This week, Google continues its foray into the healthcare sector ad the company announced a multi-year partnership with HCA to gain access to patient records to codevelop an advanced analytics platform and build new machine learning models to make a more “science-informed decision support”.

The result, the partnership will help physicians and nurses with deeper insights via the existing network of 90,000 mobile devices already running software from HCA. The same week, England’s National Health Service (NHS) will make every patient record in England, about 55 million patients to third parties.

Singular believes this confluence of events could accelerate the historically difficult to disrupt healthcare industry that is worth $3 trillion. Although critics have voiced concerns over NHS bold digital move, the decision by NHS could increase adoption of innovation in the healthcare sector and likely spawn a new wave of healthcare companies streamlining operations and providing better quality of healthcare services to improve patient outcomes.

3) Amazon will buy legendary Hollywood studio MGM marking it’s 2nd Largest Deal Ever

Amazon is buying MGM Studios for $8.45 billion making Amazon’s most ambitious move yet in the entertainment business. The MGM Studios deal comes second-largest since Amazon’s first deal of paying $13.7 billion for Whole Foods in 2017. AMazon’s move to leverage MGM’s storied filmmaking history of 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows will help Amazon strengthen its ability to increase retention and viewership of it’s current 200 million Amazon Prime members.

This week, we are also seeing a consolidation of media assets with WarnerMedia merger with Discovery to form a streaming behemoth that includes HBO, CNN, TBS and TNT. This merger could pose a thread to existing streaming platforms like Disney Plus.

4) Meituan Makes Progress in Autonomous Technology, JDL’s Hong Kong Strong Debut

This week, JD Logistics (JDL) had a strong debut in Hong Kong as a newly listed company. JDL’s mission-critical, technology-enabled logistics infrastructure that supports JD's demanding e-commerce fulfillment requirements from its parent company JD.com , a Chinese e-commerce giant should increase efficiency and better consumer experience. According to its IPO prospectus, JDL processed and delivered approximately 90% of JD orders within 24 hours.

JDL’s move to offer integrated logistics could signal hopes for another Chinese tech giant preparing to sell shares in Hong Kong including ride hailing leader Didi Chuxing and NetEase’s music unit Cloud Village and Nasdaq listed Vishop (VIPS). With JDL’s retail portion collecting order for 716 times the shares on offer and the institutional portfolio of 10.8 times, the company plans to use proceeds from the IPO to expand its network and further develop its technology in state-of-the-art integrated logistics, proprietary automation and predictive technology. In sum, improving the end users e-commerce experience and reducing JDL’s complaint rate to less than 10% than it’s competitors average at 0.002 per million parcels delivered compared to the industry average of 0.22.

Meanwhile, the Tencent-backed firm, Meituan reported first quarter strong earnings and highlighted its ambition to quadruple daily deliveries to 100 million orders by 2025 with a focus on autonomous technology, particularly drones. Last month, Meituan raises $10 Bn. convertible bonds sale aiming to build a fleet of self-driving cards and drones to reduce its cost per delivery even further. Currently, Meituan has lowered its cost per delivery to $0.70 on an average order value of $7.50. This compares to a leading US food delivery operator with close to $3 cost per delivery on $30 average order value. As a result, food delivery accounts for 20% of total restaurant and dining industry in China, well below 9% in the US.

Although Meituan might be piling into an already crowded pool with leading firms like Tesla to China’s domestic players like Nio, Xpeng and Li Auto, Singular believes the biggest breakthrough and opportunities for the next decade will be in the automotive industry. However, if Meituan focuses on using most of it’s capital updating its delivery system, it could solve the rising cost of human drivers in China which will soon be unaffordable for the company as labor costs continue to rise in China.