Charted: U.S. Consumer Debt Approaches $16 Trillion
Why Investors Tuned Out Netflix
Satellite Maps: Shanghai’s Supply Chain Standstill
Objects of Desire: Record Breaking Auction Sales in 2021
Visualizing Ukraine’s Top Trading Partners and Products
The Top Downloaded Apps in 2022
Synthetic Biology: The $3.6 Trillion Science Changing Life as We Know It
How Do Big Tech Giants Make Their Billions?
How Much Radiation is Emitted by Popular Smartphones?
How the Top Cryptocurrencies Performed in 2021
Charted: U.S. Consumer Debt Approaches $16 Trillion
Objects of Desire: Record Breaking Auction Sales in 2021
The Richest People in the World in 2022
Who Are the Russian Oligarchs?
The World’s Billionaires, by Generation
Visualizing How COVID-19 Antiviral Pills and Vaccines Work at the Cellular Level
Mapped: The Most Common Illicit Drugs in the World
Visualizing The Most Widespread Blood Types in Every Country
Pandemic Recovery: Have North American Downtowns Bounced Back?
Ranked: The Most Prescribed Drugs in the U.S.
Mapped: Solar and Wind Power by Country
How Far Are We From Phasing Out Coal?
Mapped: U.S. Wind Electricity Generation by State
Visualizing the History of Energy Transitions
Interactive Map: Crude Oil Pipelines and Refineries of the U.S. and Canada
Mapped: The State of Global Democracy in 2022
Mapped: Solar and Wind Power by Country
Mapped: Gas Prices in America at All-Time Highs
Mapped: Global Happiness Levels in 2022
Mapped: All the World’s Military Personnel
The 50 Minerals Critical to U.S. Security
Visualizing China’s Dominance in Clean Energy Metals
The Periodic Table of Commodity Returns (2012-2021)
Visualizing the Abundance of Elements in the Earth’s Crust
Rare Earth Elements: Where in the World Are They?
Synthetic Biology: The $3.6 Trillion Science Changing Life as We Know It
How Far Are We From Phasing Out Coal?
Visualizing All Electric Car Models Available in the U.S.
Mapped: U.S. Wind Electricity Generation by State
Visualizing the World’s Loss of Forests Since the Ice-Age
Published
on
By
The following content is sponsored by NFT.com
NFTs took the world by storm in 2021, bringing forth a digital art revolution while becoming one of the fastest growing asset classes of the year.
The technology of non-fungible tokens has enabled artists to offer digital originals without relying on middlemen, all while being able to receive royalties on secondary sales of their work. But this use-case is just the beginning of the functionality non-fungible tokens bring to the blossoming world of web 3.0.
This graphic sponsored by NFT.com showcases the evolving utility of NFTs, and how they are already building communities, enabling unique and tradeable game assets, and laying the foundations for ownership and identity in the metaverse.
NFTs provide a complete history and proof of ownership for digital assets or any other asset that is represented by a non-fungible token. This functionality enables the creation of unique digital assets and items that anyone can buy or sell freely on an open marketplace.
Today NFTs have already evolved to provide further utility across a variety of industries:
As the online world shifts from web 2.0 to web 3.0, NFTs are building the foundations of digital communities, economies, and assets.
One of the first evolutions in NFT use-cases came in the form of using non-fungible tokens as “membership passes” to a digital community. Ownership of NFT profile picture collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) naturally became linchpins around which communities of holders formed.
Today, profile picture NFT collections like Oni Ronin have built on this idea, providing access to exclusive workshops and ceremonies, free airdrops of other NFTs, and prize raffles for holders of the Oni Ronin NFT collection.
Along with access to online communities and events, NFTs have been used to provide exclusive access to in-person events. Since NFTs provide immutable proof of ownership on the blockchain, the technology is primed to solve large issues in the world of event ticketing like forging and digital theft.
Gaming is one of the key sectors where NFTs have been providing utility for players by enabling ownership of purchased in-game assets. Projects like DeFi Kingdoms on the Harmony blockchain have NFTs “heroes”, that players can buy, sell, and rent out on an open market.
Along with providing ownership for the in-game asset, these NFTs are also productive assets, and can be sent on quests where they earn in-game items and cryptocurrency for the player. These items can be exchanged for cryptocurrency, or used to craft other items to power up heroes.
The integration of NFTs into blockchain games like DeFi Kingdoms, Axie Infinity, and Crabada has created vibrant in-game economies where NFTs are valued based on their attributes and statistics that dictate the amount of cryptocurrency they earn. Playtime is rewarded in these games, as levelling up NFT assets results in increased earnings and higher chances of rare and valuable item drops.
Worried about someone taking your username in the metaverse? NFTs have already enabled ownership of custom “.eth” Ethereum wallet addresses through Ethereum Name Service (ENS), with more than 671,000 unique “.eth” addresses registered so far.
As an NFT, these custom addresses are integrated in other decentralized applications and simplify previously complex wallet addresses to be personalized and much easier to remember.
Rather than a long string of numbers and letters like “0x0079784df055a06EC5A76A90b24”, ENS allows for much simpler wallet addresses like “visualcapitalist.eth”.
Other projects like NFT.com are using NFTs to provide users with custom ownership of a personal profile like “www.nft.com/yourname”, where users can show and share their NFTs on a decentralized social network.
Along with usernames and wallet addresses, non-fungible tokens are becoming the foundational technology for assets in the metaverse. Metaverse project, The Sandbox, is already using NFTs to represent digital land, items like furniture and decor for virtual spaces, and much more.
In March of 2022, The Sandbox generated more than $24 million in sales of NFTs representing metaverse real estate, with top brands and celebrities across sectors like Atari, Snoop Dogg, and the South China Morning Post all owning plots of digital land.
NFTs have only just begun to revolutionize the ownership and exchange of digital assets, and are laying the foundations for digital communities, tradeable in-game assets, and the economy of the metaverse.
>> NFT.com is building the decentralized social network of the NFT world, governed and owned by the community.
9 Factors Sparking the Future of Mining and Mineral Exploration in British Columbia
Investing in the New World of Remote Work
Building Balanced Exposure to the Blockchain Economy
The Richest People in the World in 2022
Visualizing the Biggest Gaming Company Acquisitions of All-Time
How the Top Cryptocurrencies Performed in 2021
Blockchain Applications: Tokenization of Real Assets
Visualizing Americans’ Financial Assets by Age
The U.S. alone generates ∼12 million tons of asphalt shingles tear-off waste and installation scrap every year and more than 90% of it is dumped into landfills.
Published
on
By
Asphalt, also known as bitumen, has various applications in the modern economy, with annual demand reaching 110 million tons globally.
Until the 20th century, natural asphalt made from decomposed plants accounted for the majority of asphalt production. Today, most asphalt is refined from crude oil.
This graphic, sponsored by Northstar Clean Technologies, shows how new technologies to reuse and recycle asphalt can help protect the environment.
Pollution from vehicles is expected to decline as electric vehicles replace internal combustion engines.
But pollution from asphalt could actually increase in the next decades because of rising temperatures in some parts of the Earth. When subjected to extreme temperatures, asphalt releases harmful greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere.
Asphalt paved surfaces and roofs make up approximately 45% and 20% of surfaces in U.S. cities, respectively. Furthermore, 75% of single-family detached homes in Canada and the U.S. have asphalt shingles on their roofs.
Similar to roads, asphalt shingles have oil as the primary component, which is especially harmful to the environment.
Shingles do not decompose or biodegrade. The U.S. alone generates ∼12 million tons of asphalt shingles tear-off waste and installation scrap every year and more than 90% of it is dumped into landfills, the equivalent of 20 million barrels of oil.
But most of it can be reused, rather than taking up valuable landfill space.
Using technology, the primary components in shingles can be repurposed into liquid asphalt, aggregate, and fiber, for use in road construction, embankments, and new shingles.
Providing the construction industry with clean, sustainable processing solutions is also a big business opportunity. Canada alone is a $1.3 billion market for recovering and reprocessing shingles.
Northstar Clean Technologies is the only public company that repurposes 99% of asphalt shingles components that otherwise go to landfills.
Cultured meat could become a $25 billion market by 2030, but investment into the technologies that underpin the industry is required.
Published
on
By
Cultured foods—also known as cell-based foods—are expected to turn our global food system as we know it on its head.
In fact, the cultured meat market is estimated to reach an eye-watering $25 billion by 2030 according to McKinsey, but only if it can overcome hurdles such as price parity and consumer acceptance. To do so, significant innovation in the science behind these products will be crucial for the industry’s growth.
In the graphic above from our sponsor CULT Food Science, we provide a visual overview of some of the technologies behind the creation of cultured meat products.
To start, cultured meat is defined as a genuine animal meat product that is created by cultivating animal cells in a controlled lab environment—eliminating the need to farm animals for food almost entirely.
“Cultured meat has all the same fat, muscles, and tendons as any animal…All this can be done with little or no greenhouse gas emissions, aside from the electricity you need to power the land where the process is done.”
—Bill Gates
Because cultured meat is made of the same cell types and structure found in animal tissue, the sensory and nutritional profiles are like-for-like. Let’s dive into how these products are made.
The main challenge facing the cultured meat market is producing products at scale. But thanks to the vast amount of research in the stem cell biology space, the science behind cultured foods is not entirely new.
Given that we are in the very early days of applying these learnings to producing food products, those looking to invest in companies contributing to the industry’s growth stand to benefit. Here is an overview of some of the technologies that underpin the industry that you should know:
This is the process of using living cells and their components to create new products. According to experts like the Good Food Institute, bioprocess design holds the key to unlocking cultured meat production at scale.
Specifically, innovation in bioreactor (where the cells grow) design represents a massive opportunity for companies and investors alike.
Tissue engineering techniques are used to produce cultured meat that resembles real meat textures and flavors. The first step is taking tissue from the animal for the purpose of extracting stem cells and creating cell lines.
The extracted stem cell lines are then cultivated in a nutrient rich environment, mimicking in-animal tissue growth and producing muscle fibers inside a bioreactor. The muscle fibers are processed and mixed with additional fats and ingredients to assemble the finished meat product.
Cell lines refer to the different types of cells that can be propagated repeatedly and sometimes indefinitely.
Access to cell lines is a major challenge facing the industry today and is an area that requires significantly more research. This is because there is not just one cell type that can be used in cellular agriculture to produce cultured food products.
Cells (or cell cultures) require very specific environmental conditions. Cell culture media is a gel or liquid that contains the nutrients needed to support growth outside of the body.
More research in this space is needed to determine optimized formulations and make these products more affordable.
Scaffolds are 3D cell culture platforms that mimic the structure of complex biological tissues, such as skeletal muscle. This platforms can be created through the use of 3D Bioprinting.
Scaffolds are predominantly made up of collagen and gelatin. The problem is these are both animal-derived ingredients which defeats the purpose of cell-based products. Therefore, more sustainable plant-derived options are also being explored.
CULT Food Science is an innovative investment platform advancing the technology behind the future of food with an exclusive focus on cultured meat, cultured dairy, and cell-based foods.
The company’s global portfolio spans four continents and includes exposure to a diverse pipeline:
>>>Want to stay updated? Click here to subscribe to the CULT Food Science mailing list.
How Do Big Tech Giants Make Their Billions?
Visualizing All Electric Car Models Available in the U.S.
Satellite Maps: Shanghai’s Supply Chain Standstill
Visualizing Companies with the Most Patents Granted in 2021
Mapped: U.S. Wind Electricity Generation by State
Mapped: Solar and Wind Power by Country
Timeline: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the Hummer
Why Investors Tuned Out Netflix
Copyright © 2022 Visual Capitalist
Author
Administraroot
