Dynamic Wealth Management Headlines: Cars Speed Past Computers in Lithium-Ion Market

Lithium-ion batteries are going mobile—auto-mobile, that is.
The automotive industry will pass computer manufacturing as the leading market for lithium-ion batteries in the next four years, according to a report from business information firm IHS. The firm projects the batteries, which power most portable electronics and laptop computers, will continue falling in price over the next decade and, as a result, become the most popular choice for electric car manufacturers by 2020.
“Lithium-ion at present is much more expensive than alternative energies,” IHS analyst Satoru Oyama said in the report. “However, lithium-ion pricing will decline much more rapidly than the other technologies,” making it the “battery technology of choice in future electric and hybrid vehicles.”
Lithium-ion batteries offer several advantages over the alternatives, in that they are typically lighter, maintain full capacity even after a partial charge, and are generally considered more environmentally friendly than other technologies.
Sales of lithium-ion batteries for cars are projected to reach $11.9 billion in 2015, nearly double the amount spent on the batteries for notebook computers ($6.6 billion). In total, according to the report, lithium-ion battery revenues will grow from $11.8 billion last year to $31.4 billion in 2015, then up to $53.7 billion in 2020.

dynamic wealth management: Dynamic Wealth Management Headlines: Bitcoin: Virt...

dynamic wealth management: Dynamic Wealth Management Headlines: Bitcoin: Virt...: Hear about the $500,000 heist of online currency this month? Not only was the digital dough stolen, the theft was followed by a major hack ...

Dynamic Wealth Management Headlines: Bitcoin: Virtual money gets hacked and heisted

Hear about the $500,000 heist of online currency this month? Not only was the digital dough stolen, the theft was followed by a major hack at an exchange website that led to a precipitous drop in the currency’s actual value.

Bitcoin, “the first decentralized digital currency,” suffered a personal data breach at the largest Bitcoin-to-real-money exchange, Mt. Gox, that caused values to drop from $17 to $0.01 per Bitcoin credit. The news was coupled with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s decision to stop accepting donations using the virtual currency, partially because, “We don’t fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system.”

If Bitcoin is a virtual currency, how and why can it have value — let alone lose value — and be stolen? And why should you — let alone anyone — care? If censorship, illegal drugs and hacker heists pique your interest, here’s what you need to know.

Is this whole virtual currency thing new?

Hardly. Bitcoin — both the virtual money and the open source software it requires — came out in 2009. But virtual currency has long been used (in one for or another) in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft to simple social network games like FarmVille.

Bitcoin has real currency value outside the virtual environment, and on occasion, has a value several times higher than the U.S. dollar, the British pound, and the Euro.

So, how is Bitcoin virtual money “made?”