Latest news with #SilkRoad
South China Morning Post
16 hours ago
- General
- South China Morning Post
This week in PostMag: Bangkok, Japan, the Silk Road and more top travel ideas
One of the saddest things about becoming an adult is losing summer. Of course, there's still the season, which honestly I'd happily lose in Hong Kong, its oppressive humidity and all. But the deliciously lazy six to eight weeks of nothingness and boredom I remember from childhood vanish for most of us in the workforce. (Though, perhaps they've already disappeared for the modern era's chronically overscheduled children, too.) Somewhere in the midst of these lazy weeks, there might be a family trip to break the glorious banality of doing nothing. A day at the seaside, a visit to grandparents, perhaps an exotic journey abroad, if you're lucky. In that spirit of those adventures both big and small, allow me to introduce our summer travel special. Whether or not you have your travel plans booked, or even if you're staying in the city throughout, I hope this issue inspires you as it did me. I loved reading about the renewed energy sweeping Bangkok's Chinatown neighbourhood. Vincent Vichit-Vadakan talks to the next generation who are driving the change, restoring heritage buildings and transforming the area with forward-thinking restaurants, bars and art spaces. From what people have been telling me, there's been no better time to visit Bangkok than now and this has me convinced. With his gorgeous photography, Christopher Wilton-Steer documents the last leg of his 40,000km journey along the Silk Road. In his recently published book, he travels eastward from Italy all the way to Beijing, weaving together the famed trade route's history with the present day. Here, Wilton-Steer has shared the final portion of his odyssey from the Pakistan border into China. The far western reaches of the mainland are not an area I've visited yet, but the striking landscape of Dunhuang and the Gobi Desert are calling. Cameron Dueck treks through Japan's largest national park, Daisetsuzan. I'll be honest, the prospect of brown bears lessens its appeal for me but I have faith you might be braver. What does the height of indulgence look like to a newly christened Hongkonger? The solitude and vast expanses of wilderness that he encounters.
The Independent
a day ago
- General
- The Independent
Decoding the sands of time
The Taklamakan Desert, China's largest desert, in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, was once central stage for numerous legends along the ancient Silk Road. However, as environmental conditions changed, the once-thriving human settlements were abandoned, standing in the wilderness with only sand and wind as companions. It was not until the late 19th century when foreign explorers ventured into the desert that people began to uncover many of its cultural heritage sites. After more than a century, professionals are visiting these sites one by one. They tread on the sand, braving strong winds and enduring scorching sun as they work to investigate and document their conditions. They belong to a team of the fourth national census of cultural relics in China, which records the cultural heritage in the Taklamakan Desert, especially in its heartland. 'Many of the sites lie deep in the heart of the desert, inaccessible by regular vehicles like those used by other census teams,'' says Hu Xingjun, head of the team, who is also a researcher at the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. 'We organised a team focusing on these sites. This ensures we fulfil the census mandate of 'taking census of all those that should be covered'.' The national census began in 2023 and will end next year. Field investigations started in Xinjiang in May last year. Census takers visit the sites to survey and map them using real-time kinematic devices, take aerial photos with drones and other photos recording details, measure the size of sites, collect specimens and record detailed information in the census database. With more than a dozen members, the team's work started recently and was due to run until the end of May. Team members must repeatedly enter the desert, often for several days or even weeks at a time. They usually invite experienced drivers to form a fleet of sport utility vehicles stocked with fuel, food and water, equipment and daily necessities to enter the desert's depopulated zones, rest in tents, and survey each site firsthand. Matyvsup Emirhazi, 31, a team member and a researcher at Hotan Museum, says they have to make careful plans for each day in the desert, follow plans strictly and carry supplies for several extra days beyond their initial estimates to deal with unexpected situations. In a desert in which footprints are easily left, they pay close attention to not leaving traces in their photos. 'We usually take the panoramic photo at first, without entering the site,' Matyvsup says. 'We then set foot on the sites to measure and take photos of details.' They are especially careful with protecting the environment by burning garbage and taking away items that cannot be incinerated. At the end of every day's work they report the all-clear with satellite phones to cultural heritage authorities. Another team member, Matkasim Tumir, 57, says they often have to save water, a scarce commodity. Sometimes camels join to help carry goods and materials. 'In the past when we didn't have SUVs, camels played a big role helping us carry goods,' Matkasim says. 'I still think they're the best partners you can have in the desert, because vehicles can break down or struggle with sand dunes, but camels' adeptness at traversing the desert is unmatched.' Ediris Abdurusul, 74, an archaeologist who has led nearly 100 expeditions in the desert over the past 46 years with no notable mishap, works as a consultant with the team. He has led many breakthrough discoveries in Xinjiang, including the excavations of the Xiaohe cemetery, a site of Bronze Age cultural remains from 4,000 to 3,400 years ago. He is also renowned for the discovery of a naturally preserved female mummy called the 'princess of Xiaohe' 20 years ago.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht to Bitcoiners: ‘Freedom is Worth the Struggle'
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has a message for the crypto community: if you want to maintain your freedom, you must remain unified and decentralized, and you must be prepared for a struggle. In a heart-felt keynote speech closing out Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Thursday, Ulbricht, addressing the public in-person for the first time since being released from prison in January, shared a story to illustrate his three guiding principles — freedom, decentralization and unity. Ulbricht explained that, in the early days of the Silk Road, he wanted to grow hallucinogenic mushrooms to stock the darknet marketplace with, so he rented a remote cabin. The cabin, he said, was infested with wasps. He set out to deal with the wasps, using a trick his father had taught him that involved trapping the wasps' nests under a towel. 'My heart was pounding,' Ulbricht said. 'I selected the nest that was furthest from the others, because I didn't know if the other nests would come and sting me, spread out the towel, got as close as I could — ready to flee if I had to — but when I wrapped up the nest, nothing happened. It was as if the other wasps didn't even notice.' Ulbricht said that the wasps were strong because they were free: 'It was impossible to keep track of so many individual wasps, a sting could come from any direction. They were strong because they were decentralized, across seven nests." But, Ulbricht said, the wasps were ultimately weak because they were not unified, and did not react when their fellow wasps were taken down. 'Had a single wasp dared to come sting me when I reached for that first nest, I would have fled … but they didn't. Thank god you are not wasps,' Ulbricht said. Before being pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump in January — the result of a promise Trump made on the campaign trail in 2024 — Ulbricht spent 12 years behind bars. His speech on Thursday marked the 10-year anniversary, to the day, of a New York judge sentencing the then-31-year-old Ulbricht to two life sentences, plus 40 years, for owning and operating the dark net marketplace. During his keynote speech, Ulbricht, who has been free for four months, still seemed buoyant with his newfound freedom. In a video montage ahead of his appearance on stage, clips of Ulbricht experiencing life outside prison — traveling, surfing, spending time with his wife — played on screen, each showing a beaming Ulbricht. 'Winning your freedom feels as amazing as losing it feels awful,' Ulbricht said, crediting the crypto community for advocating for his release. 'I'm free, and it's because of you. You made this moment possible…Thank you, thank you, thank you.' After more than a decade behind bars, Ulbricht likened himself to Rip van Winkle, admitting that he was overwhelmed with all the technological advancements since he went to prison. 'There are dozens of new cryptocurrencies and blockchains, each one fascinating in its own right, and thousands more I'll never have time to learn about. There's DeFi and Web3 and AI to help me navigate it all. It's nuts,' Ulbricht said. 'I mean, just a few months ago, when I walked out of prison, I'd never seen a drone … It's all hitting me at once, freedom, the new technology, the fact that I have a future again.' Ulbricht closed by telling the audience about gangs and factions in prison, saying that he quickly came to understand that the prison wardens like inmates to be divided. 'The only times I saw the wardens show respect to the prisoners was when we were united,' Ulbricht said. 'Those that oppose decentralization and freedom love it when we're divided, I promise you, so stay united. So long as we can agree that we deserve freedom, and that decentralization is how we secure it, then we can be united…stay true to these principles and the future is ours.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Last year, Trump promised bitcoin bros a seat at the table. For better or worse, he wasn't lying
A version of this story appeared in CNN Business' Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. Last July, Donald Trump made a campaign stop that served as his crypto coming out party. Trump, a guy who has an aide follow him around with a portable printer so he can read the internet, got onstage at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville and promised the moon to a crowd of extremely online crypto-Libertarians. 'Oh, you're going to be very happy with me,' he said, before vowing to make America the 'crypto capital of the planet.' With the zeal of the converted, he rattled off crypto shibboleths, promising to 'fire' Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler (the Biden-era bogeyman the industry loved to blame for its problems), to create a 'strategic national bitcoin stockpile' and even pardon Ross Ulbricht — the creator of the Silk Road digital marketplace used primarily for selling drugs on the dark web, who was serving a life sentence. Since retaking office, Trump has kept all of those promises (technically — Gensler stepped down before Trump could fire him). And he's gone even further. 'Maybe the most important thing that we did for this community, we reject regulators and we fired Gary Gensler, and we're gonna fire everybody like him,' said Vice President JD Vance at a crypto conference on Wednesday. It's hard to overstate how much the president has changed his tune on crypto, which he criticized in his first term as 'highly volatile and based on thin air.' Now, Trump's personal wealth is estimated to include $2.9 billion tied to his digital asset projects — representing some 37% of his total fortune, according to an April report from the left-leaning State Democracy Defenders Fund. Bitcoin, a bellwether for crypto, has shot up 67% since Trump spoke in Nashville last year. This week, Trump deepened his financial ties to the alternative financial industry that his administration is tasked with regulating. His two oldest sons and Vance took his spot headlining this year's Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, where they reassured supporters that Team Trump is, in Don Jr.'s words, 'seriously long crypto.' On Tuesday, Trump's media company said it would raise $2.5 billion to buy bitcoin — a move that mimics a corporate cash-management strategy popularized by MicroStrategy (now known as Strategy) and Tesla. Two things to know about what's going on here. First: Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which owns the president's social media platform, Truth Social, is not a company in a traditional sense of, like, a business that makes money. It is a perpetually unprofitable entity that generates almost no revenue, but public interest in Trump keeps the company's stock market value elevated — much like a meme stock. By becoming more of a bitcoin holding company, TMTG offers traditional investors exposure to bitcoin's gains (and losses) without the hassle of actually buying bitcoin and managing it in a digital wallet themselves. 'Holding bitcoin on a balance sheet is part financial strategy, part cultural signaling,' said Temujin Louie, CEO of blockchain platform Wanchain. 'TMTG's move is more politically charged. Given its ties to President Trump, any decision must inevitably align with the current administration's rhetoric and embrace of cryptocurrencies as a populist tool.' Second: The bitcoin play adds another halo of legitimacy around an asset that investors are still afraid of. The appearance of credibility has long eluded crypto because, well, it's just so useful for doing crimes, and its advocates haven't done a great job articulating mainstream use cases for digital money that you can't actually buy much with. But having an evangelist in the West Wing seems to be changing that. Bitcoin hit an all-time high of over $111,000 last week, fueled in part by the advancement of legislations that would create the first federal rules around stablecoins, a subcategory of crypto, a key step the industry has been lobbying for. 'I'm here today to say loud and clear with President Trump, crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the White House,' Vance said Wednesday at the Bitcoin Conference. He also implored crypto fans to carry last year's voting momentum forward for the 2026 midterms, and boasted that he personally still holds 'a fair amount of bitcoin today.' Lawyers and ethics experts aren't mincing words when they say Trump's crypto ventures open the door to all kinds of potential corruption. 'The only reason this isn't a crime is because the criminal conflict-of-interest statute does not apply to the president or the vice president,' Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, told CNN. 'The president and his family are investing in crypto — riding a bubble that may someday burst. The systemic impact on the economy could trigger another financial crisis.' The White House has repeatedly said the president has no conflicts of interest, and lashed out at the media for even asking. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently said it was 'frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit.' CNN's Matt Egan contributed reporting. Sign in to access your portfolio
9 News
3 days ago
- Business
- 9 News
Last year, Trump promised Bitcoin bros a seat at the table. He wasn't lying
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here BREAKING Man charged with murder after fatal Sydney house fire Last July, Donald Trump made a campaign stop that served as his crypto coming out party. Trump, a guy who has an aide follow him around with a portable printer so he can read the internet, got onstage at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville and promised the moon to a crowd of extremely online crypto-Libertarians. "Oh, you're going to be very happy with me," he said, before vowing to make America the "crypto capital of the planet". President Donald Trump has embraced crypto in his second term. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) With the zeal of the converted, he rattled off crypto shibboleths, promising to "fire" Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler (the Biden-era bogeyman the industry loved to blame for its problems), to create a "strategic national Bitcoin stockpile" and even pardon Ross Ulbricht — the creator of the Silk Road digital marketplace used primarily for selling drugs on the dark web, who was serving a life sentence. Since retaking office, Trump has kept all of those promises (technically — Gensler stepped down before Trump could fire him). And he's gone even further. "Maybe the most important thing that we did for this community, we reject regulators and we fired Gary Gensler, and we're gonna fire everybody like him," Vice President JD Vance said at a crypto conference overnight. It's hard to overstate how much the president has changed his tune on crypto, which he criticised in his first term as "highly volatile and based on thin air". Now, Trump's personal wealth is estimated to include $US2.9 billion ($4.5 billion) tied to his digital asset projects — representing some 37 per cent of his total fortune, according to an April report from the left-leaning State Democracy Defenders Fund. Bitcoin, a bellwether for crypto, has shot up 67 per cent since Trump spoke in Nashville last year. This week, Trump deepened his financial ties to the alternative financial industry that his administration is tasked with regulating. His two oldest sons and Vance took his spot headlining this year's Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, where they reassured supporters that Team Trump is, in Don Jr's words, "seriously long crypto". On Tuesday, Trump's media company said it would raise $US2.5 billion ($3.9 billion) to buy Bitcoin — a move that mimics a corporate cash-management strategy popularised by MicroStrategy (now known as Strategy) and Tesla. Two things to know about what's going on here. First: Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which owns the president's social media platform, Truth Social, is not a company in a traditional sense of, like, a business that makes money. It is a perpetually unprofitable entity that generates almost no revenue, but public interest in Trump keeps the company's stock market value elevated — much like a meme stock . By becoming more of a Bitcoin holding company, TMTG offers traditional investors exposure to bitcoin's gains (and losses) without the hassle of actually buying bitcoin and managing it in a digital wallet themselves. "Holding Bitcoin on a balance sheet is part financial strategy, part cultural signalling," Temujin Louie, CEO of blockchain platform Wanchain "TMTG's move is more politically charged. Given its ties to President Trump, any decision must inevitably align with the current administration's rhetoric and embrace of cryptocurrencies as a populist tool." Second: the Bitcoin play adds another halo of legitimacy around an asset that investors are still afraid of. The appearance of credibility has long eluded crypto because, well, it's just so useful for doing crimes , and its advocates haven't done a great job articulating mainstream use cases for digital money that you can't actually buy much with. But having an evangelist in the West Wing seems to be changing that. Bitcoin hit an all-time high of over $US111,000 ($173,000) last week, fuelled in part by the advancement of legislations that would create the first federal rules around stablecoins , a subcategory of crypto, a key step the industry has been lobbying for. "I'm here today to say loud and clear with President Trump, crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the White House," Vance said at the Bitcoin Conference. He also implored crypto fans to carry last year's voting momentum forward for the 2026 midterms, and boasted that he personally still holds "a fair amount of Bitcoin today". Lawyers and ethics experts aren't mincing words when they say Trump's crypto ventures open the door to all kinds of potential corruption. "The only reason this isn't a crime is because the criminal conflict-of-interest statute does not apply to the president or the vice president," Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, told CNN. "The president and his family are investing in crypto — riding a bubble that may someday burst. "The systemic impact on the economy could trigger another financial crisis." The White House has repeatedly said the president has no conflicts of interest, and lashed out at the media for even asking. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently said it was "frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit". cryptocurrency Bitcoin World finance Donald Trump CONTACT US Property News: 'Stressful': Perth mum's dilemma after rental mix-up.
