A report just came out and listed the top 8 cryptocurrency transaction (in order).  They surprised my how about you?

1. Speculation

2. Dark Web Transactions

3. Money Laundering

4. Ransomware (payments)

5. Evading Sanctions

6. Theft of Cryptocurrencies

7. Hacking Cryptocurrency Infrastructure

8. Legal Goods & Services Transactions

That is really a dark picture of what is going on in the cryptocurrency marketplace.  It is likely and likely will continue to have a negative impact on the global acceptance and use of cryptocurrencies in business.

IBM announced their entry into the commercial quantum computing marketplace. At the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Los Vegas, they took this huge step and showed-off IBM’s Q System One quantum computing created to address the increased computing needs of today and well into the future. This is the world’s 1st commercial quantum computer that is now available.  As this technology matures and additional commercial systems become available, programs and projects will become more common.  Even with just IBM's cloud offering of quantum computing capabilities, they will start growing shortly.

LINK: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/283427-quantum-computing-goes-commercial-with-ibms-q-system-one

Please take a moment and complete my most recent poll here on ProjectManagement.com   Thank You

https://www.projectmanagement.com/polls/515400/How-would-you-feel-about-having-a-droid-with-artificial-intelligence-as-a-project-management-assistant-that-looks-over-your-shoulder-and-provides-advice-and-gives-recommendations-

We are all familiar with the old tradition of counting down the last few seconds remaining until the dawning of the new year.  Far less familiar is the uniqueness of the 2019 countdown!  This year there were two noteworthy countdowns that took place.  The first was the traditional to welcome in the new year and the second was the countdown until a close encounter unlike anything we have seen before.  Scientists, astrophysicists, engineers and astronomers were among those that counted down the last few hours, minutes, and seconds until NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted a flyby of the most distant object ever explored.  The oddly shaped object named Ultima Thule is a mere 30 km in diameter and is about 1 billion miles from Pluto and 4 billion miles from the sun.  Traveling at a speed of over 31,000 mph New Horizons will pass just 2,200 miles from the surface of Ultima Thule and collect sensory data and imagery as it passes and beam all that data/imagery back to ground control.  The birth of the Ultima Thule mission came when New Horizons completed it exploration of Pluto, and mission control wanted to make use of the small amount of fuel remaining.  While serving on the Science and Technology Advisory Panel (STAP) at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (JHU/APL) I got to see the New Horizons space craft under construction and got briefed on the mission.  Think about all the science and engineering that had to go into the New Horizons missions, the calculations and then think about the multi-year program and project management that had to be in place since the mission’s conception.  The Innovation that went into this was incredible.The scope, complexity and level of detail boggled my mind and still does!   

I have an idea for and interesting project.  It would be very interesting to see what New Horizons would be like if it was created now given all the advances in technology that has taken place that would influence the design.  I wonder if that could get funding from NASA?

GREAT JOB - NASA and JHU/APL

Reference: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Ultima/Ultima-Thule.php#page-top

Now this is a very interesting metric that may signal what is just around the corner for project managers.

"479% increase in projects completed under Smart Cities Mission over a year"

https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/479-per-cent-increase-in-projects-completed-under-smart-cities-mission-over-a-year/story/305121.html