The most loved (and hated) cryptocurrency in every country

Cryptocurrencies have been gaining more and more popularity in recent years, with many people investing in different types of digital currencies.

But not all cryptocurrencies are created equal. And they’re certainly not thought of as equal.

Some are widely loved by investors and enthusiasts, while others are met with a fair amount of scepticism and criticism.

But which of those cryptos do people love the most? And which digital tokens do they absolutely hate?

Those are the two questions that inspired the latest study from the crypto experts at CoinKickoff. And they found the answers by turning to that great arbiter of 21st-century public opinion - Twitter.

The CoinKickoff team ran nearly 1 million tweets mentioning the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap through the AI-powered sentiment tracking software HuggingFace.

Then they translated all that data into several global maps showing the most loved and hated crypto in every country.

Let's take a look at the results.

The most loved cryptocurrencies

Ethereum and Solana tie for first place. They ranked as the most loved coins in 10 countries. The love for Ethereum and Solana is particularly strong in Sweden, Chile, and Costa Rica.

Cardona and Tezos are the most loved cryptos in six countries, putting them in joint third place.

Elrond makes a surprise appearance. Elrond is a cryptocurrency and blockchain platform designed to handle high volumes of transactions. It's one of the more complicated smart contract platforms, requiring deep technical expertise to appreciate. Still, it managed to come out on top in 5 countries. They include Bangladesh and Australia.

Bad news for Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency and remains the largest by market cap.

And - at least in crypto terms - it has a strong track record of stability and growth. Back in 2011, you could have picked up a whole Bitcoin for just $1. And despite an 80% drop in value since the 2022 high, that $1 would still be worth over $20,000. Not a bad investment.

Bitcoin is also on the verge of mainstream adoption. Companies such as PayPal and Square have started allowing their customers to buy and sell Bitcoin on their platforms, while institutional investors such as Goldman Sachs and BlackRock have started offering investment products tied to the price of Bitcoin.

Another factor driving mainstream adoption is the growing number of merchants and businesses accepting Bitcoin as payment. This includes everything from small online retailers to large brick-and-mortar stores, as well as a wide range of service providers such as law firms, accountants, and real estate agents.

The increasing regulatory clarity and support of governments and central banks towards Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are also contributing to its mainstream adoption.

But despite its strong fundamentals, Bitcoin still sits at the top of CoinKickoff's most hated crypto list.

According to Twitter sentiment, Bitcoin is the most hated crypto in 16 countries, including Finland, Vietnam, Finland, and Uzbekistan,

Crypto users in Qatar appear to have the biggest issue with Bitcoin. More than 1 in 5 (20.4%) of Bitcoin-related tweets coming out of this Gulf State contain what Bitcoin enthusiasts call fear, uncertainty, and doubt - a.k.a - the FUD. That's the highest percentage of negative tweets from anywhere in the world.

The world's most hated cryptos

Axie Infinity is the second most hated crypto. According to the CoinKickoff data, it's hated more than any other crypto in seven countries, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game that allows players to breed, raise, and battle fantasy creatures called "Axies." Players can also earn cryptocurrency by participating in the game's economy, such as by breeding rare Axies or farming in-game assets.

But why do so many people hate Axie? Well, it's probably down to the price - with an emphasis on the down part. Investors who bought in during the crypto summer of 2022 have seen the value of their coins drop by 1300%. Ouch.

The network also suffered a major cyber attack in 2022, with hackers stealing more than $620million.

Uniswap, XRP, and Apecoin share third place on the most hated list. They're hated in six countries each.

Crypto sentiment in the USA

Around 20% of adults in the USA own cryptocurrency.

And if this study is anything to go by, we can bet that many of them hold a little bit of Stellar. Almost 70% (68.72%) of US-geotagged tweets mentioning Stellar were analyzed as positive by HuggingFace.

Stellar Lumens (XLM) is a digital asset and cryptocurrency that facilitates transactions on the Stellar network. The Stellar network is an open-source, decentralized payment protocol that allows for fast and cheap cross-border transactions.

The Stellar network uses its native digital asset, XLM, as a bridge currency to facilitate transactions between different fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies. The Stellar network also allows for creating and issuing custom tokens, making it useful for various use cases such as remittances, micropayments, and mobile money.

When it comes to negative crypto sentiment in the USA, Axie Infinity makes another unwanted appearance. Just under 1 in 3 (32.34%) of US tweets mentioning the coin were less than flattering; that makes Axie Infinity the USA's most hated crypto.

What does the study tell us about the future of crypto?

It is worth noting that the data from CoinKickoff is based on a survey of a relatively small sample of individuals and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Additionally, the crypto market is highly dynamic, and the sentiment towards a particular cryptocurrency can change quickly depending on the market conditions or recent news.

Future investing in crypto

Despite the scepticism and criticism that some cryptocurrencies face, it’s clear that digital currencies are here to stay. Bitcoin and Ethereum, in particular, have established themselves as major players in the crypto market, and are likely to continue to be popular among investors and enthusiasts.

However, it is important for investors to do their own research and to be aware of the risks and controversies associated with certain digital currencies before making any investment decisions.

Read next: Bill Gates Admits ‘Being Rich’ Can Make You Out Of Touch Despite Supporting The Billionaire Status
by Web Desk via Digital Information World

Is Instagram Over? Only 10% of the World’s Most Popular Influencers Use Instagram as Their Main Platform, Study Reveals

For decades, influential celebrities have been employed by businesses as part of a bigger promotional strategy. However, there has been a shift in recent years, with corporations wanting to collaborate with more social media influencers to attract an audience. But why and when did this become the era of the influencer?

Television was, for a long time, the main form of entertainment as well as the most widely used platform for the dissemination of marketing and advertising messages. Until YouTube was established in 2005.

One of the Internet's fastest-growing websites, YouTube quickly eclipsed Facebook with its estimated 2 billion active users per month. YouTube was first made available as a platform for sharing videos with people across the world, making it the first website where users could find online material produced by other people who shared their interests.

The influencer craze started in 2009, just 4 years after YouTube's debut, with the likes of Zoella, Alfie Deyes, Tanya Burr, and Caspar Lee sweeping the world and igniting the movement.

Social media platforms have expanded in accessibility for users as the Internet has grown. It should therefore come as no surprise that influencer culture has expanded to each of them, resulting in the success of today's most well-known influencers using a variety of online channels.

In an effort to determine which social media platforms have produced the largest full-time creators of all time, Higher Visibility has examined the influencers with the highest follower counts on each of the most well-known influencer-led social media platforms and tracked back to where they started their influencer journey.

Here are some key insights from the report:

• A mere 10% of the world’s most popular creators use Instagram as their main social media platform.
• 65% of the world’s biggest online creators leverage TikTok as their main platform as of 2023.
• Of the top-performing creators of 2023, 35% started their careers on YouTube.
• 10% of the world’s most popular creators began their careers on Vine.
• 80% of popular creators who began their careers on YouTube have stayed on the same platform .
• Though Instagram is seen as an ‘influencer platform’, just 10% of the most popular creators in 2023 currently use it as their main platform.
• Vine has created more popular full-time creators than Instagram.

Higher Visibility initially wanted to learn which of today's influencers had the most followers in order to determine which social media platform was producing the most full-time creators and influencers.

The winner was Khabane Lame, a social media star who became well-known in 2020 after quitting his job as a factory worker due to the coronavirus outbreak and starting to post videos on TikTok under the moniker "Khaby Lame." Using the app's stitch feature, Lame made popular responses to "life hack" videos. He rose to the position of the most-followed creator on TikTok on June 22, 2022.

Charli D'Amelio, a fellow TikToker, gained popularity on the video-sharing app and currently has 149,200,000 followers.

If we look more closely at particular platforms, we can see that many of the creators in the top 10 on TikTok really started their careers on the same app.

Even though TikTok only debuted in 2017, the app reportedly attracted its one billionth user just four years after becoming global. It had previously taken Facebook and Instagram over a decade to collect the amount of a user base as TikTok did, so it is not surprising that the number of creators on this app is also increasing quickly.

Although Vine was a short-form video-based platform, it’s interesting to note that many of the most popular personalities now utilize Instagram as their main platform.

The majority of popular YouTube creators in 2023 began their careers on YouTube. So, is it more difficult to build a following outside of YouTube once your influencer career has started there, and is it best to gain fans on YouTube from the start if you want to have a great career there?

Instagram is frequently considered an "influencers platform." In fact, according to recent research, as of 2022, the app would still account for 94 per cent of influencer marketing initiatives.

Instagram was the only social media network examined during the study where all of its top creators found their initial success on a single platform and stayed. The average number of followers held by users who were successful on the app, at 22,170,000, was the lowest of any app in the study.

This begs the question; does obtaining followers on other platforms become more difficult if you are successful on Instagram? And although TikTok's growth rate vastly outpaces Instagram's, does gaining Instagram followers present a chance to forge deeper connections with loyal fans?

TikTok ranked #1 overall among the platforms examined for having the greatest average number of followers among the top 10 influencers on the app. When compared to platforms like Instagram, which has a reported organic reach of 13.51 per cent, TikTok's reported organic reach for brands is 118 per cent. What effect, if any, does TikTok's "virality" and organic reach have on the success rate of the platform's full-time creators when this is taken into account?

Although many believe that YouTube's creator culture is waning, Higher Visibility’s research shows that it is a platform that draws devoted, long-term followers. YouTube was one of the first widely used platforms that allowed users all over the world to create online video content. If you didn't first establish your primary following on YouTube, has the window of opportunity for building a successful career on the site closed? Although some YouTube full-time creators have switched to TikTok, they have generally had less success there.

The third-place finisher is Vine, which hosted some of the most well-known artists of the modern era even after it shut down in 2016 after three years of operation.

Instagram comes in last with the fewest followers on average. The glamorous, idealised lives offered through carefully curated feeds on the picture-sharing platform were reported to be "over" in 2019, with people searching for more realistic, real-life content on other platforms. This report demonstrates that, even if this platform may have once been the preferred tool for influencer culture, times are unquestionably changing.

Read next: What’s the Most Toxic Platform on the Internet?

by Web Desk via Digital Information World

Identity Theft Incidents Increased by over 41% in 2022

The Identity Theft Resource Center just released its annual report, and the findings in this report do not bode well for the future of personal data security in the US. According to this report, 422 million people ended up being the victim of data theft, and this led to many further issues including identity theft with all things having been considered and taken into account.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that this represents a 41.5% increase from the numbers that were seen last year. That’s despite a downward trend being noted for most of the year, but in December it was revealed that the personal data of 220 million Twitter users was available on the Dark Web which made the numbers much higher than might have been the case otherwise.

Twitter ended up representing the single biggest data leak of 2022, but in spite of the fact that this is the case there were many other companies that were responsible for something similar. Neopets, AT&T, Cash App as well as Beetle Eye all contributed to this trend, with these five companies representing the least secure platforms as far as user data is concerned.

This data includes things like social security numbers, full names and many other types of information that can lead to identity theft and fraud. Companies need to be more transparent about data leaks because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up helping the people who have had their data stolen to take the necessary steps to protect themselves.

34% of data breach reports contained precise details about what was leaked during the theft. That means that 2 out of every 3 data breaches have taken information that has not yet been made clear to the public. Transparency is key here, and until major tech corporations are able to take responsibility for all that they are doing, it’s fairly like that these incidents will keep occurring. Threat actors will be able to operate in secret which can make their actions all the more harmful.

Read next: What’s the Best Threat Protection Against Ransomware?
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Breaking Points: The Top 12 Ways We Damage Our Phones According To A New Survey

According to a recent study by AT&T, there are 12 most common ways that people break their smartphones. These range from accidents, such as drops and spills, to intentional damage, such as throwing the phone in anger. The study found that nearly half of all smartphone owners have broken their devices at least once.

Drops: The most common way that people break their smartphones is by dropping them, 25%.

Slips: Slips were the second-most common cause of smartphone breaks, accounting for 20% of all breaks.

Forgetting on Laps: It is the third major reason for smartphone breakage with 16% of all breaks.

Tumbled On Phone: Dropping things on the phone causes 10% breakage.

Throws: Throwing the phone in anger or frustration was the ninth most common cause of smartphone breaks, accounting for 6% of all breaks.

Stomps: Stomping on the phone was the tenth most common cause of smartphone breaks, accounting for 5% of all breaks.

Dropping In Bathtub: Dropping phones in the bathtub accounts for 5% of total breaks.

Picture Drops: Throwing phones while capturing was the fifth most common cause of smartphone breaks, accounting for 4% of all breaks.

Chews: Chewing on the phone by pets was the eleventh most common cause of smartphone breaks, accounting for 3% of all breaks.

Children Smashing Phones: Children breaking phones were the seventh most common cause of smartphone breaks, accounting for 2% of all breaks.

Forgetting Phones in Pools: Taking phones in pools was the eighth most common cause of smartphone breaks, accounting for 1% of all breaks.

While some of these causes of phone breaks might seem trivial or comical, the fact is that a broken phone can be a significant inconvenience, and in some cases, a financial burden. It's important to take proper care of our phones and be mindful of the ways we use them to avoid any damage.

It is also important to note that these are the most common ways of breaking a phone, but it is not an exhaustive list, accidents do happen and there's always a chance that your phone will break unexpectedly. It is always a good idea to have a protection plan in place, such as a warranty or insurance, to help cover the cost of repairs or replacement in case of an accident. It is also important to regularly back up important data on your phone so that it can be easily retrieved in case of a break.

In conclusion, the study by AT&T highlights the most common ways that people break their smartphones, and serves as a reminder to be mindful of how we use and handle our devices. By taking proper care of our phones and having protection in place, we can help prevent or minimize the inconvenience and financial burden of a broken phone.

Read next: What’s the Most Toxic Platform on the Internet?
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Business Openings Surpass Pre-Pandemic Highs, Here’s What That Means for Search Ads

The pandemic wreaked a lot of havoc for businesses, and it took a really long time for things to start to get back to normal. In spite of the fact that this is the case, it seems that the impact of the pandemic is finally starting to give way, with a massive uptick in the number of new businesses that are opening their doors for the first time.

This is based on data from Yelp which indicates that there has been a 12% increase in the openings of new businesses as compared to 2019. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that local services businesses are likely driving much of this growth, since night life, restaurant and other similar businesses have yet to pick up steam in the aftermath of the pandemic.

It should also be mentioned that this growth rate was seen across the entirety of the US, with practically every state seeing more businesses open than ever before. The South is experiencing an especially promising rate of growth, with businesses in that region growing faster than might have been the case otherwise.

However, things aren’t looking quite as rosy in a number of major US cities. For example, the growth rate for new businesses in San Francisco has yet return to pre-pandemic levels, let alone surpass them. That seems to suggest that the growth rate is not being distributed all that evenly with all things having been considered and taken into account.

Since there are so many new companies and businesses, they will very likely invest in search ads and digital ads because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up driving foot traffic.

These businesses are still in a very early stage of their life cycle, which means that they will need all the help that they can get in order to get things going. That might lead to a boost in the digital ad industry which is sorely needed considering how much turmoil it’s been immersed in.

Read next: 37% of Consumers Are Willing to Pay for Generative AI
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Cybersecurity Jobs Are Still Rising Despite Widespread Tech Layoffs

The tech industry is going through a pretty tumultuous time, with tens of thousands of workers now having been laid off. In spite of the fact that this is the case, there is a specific category of tech worker that is seeing a consistently high level of demand, specifically that of cybersecurity experts. The interesting thing about these jobs that are still available is that rather than a college degree they require a fair amount of experience as well as training that can be obtained online.

It really isn’t all that surprising that cybersecurity is reaching such new highs because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up keeping tech companies safe from a wide range of attacks. Research from CyberSeek revealed well over 700,000 job postings that focused on cybersecurity, or 755,734 to be precise.

That is actually a small decrease from the just under 770,000 job postings that were seen last year, but it still shows that the cybersecurity sector is going quite strongly with all things having been considered and taken into account. Cyber talent has been in short supply for a good long while now, and laid off tech workers can get their hands on six figure income jobs if they were to transition to this niche.

• Also read: 37% of Consumers Are Willing to Pay for Generative AI

In order to get a cybersecurity job, it might help to start with the right major in college. While there aren’t really any cybersecurity focused college majors being offered right now, certain majors can make it easier for you to get the job than might have been the case otherwise. Such majors include software engineering, computer science as well as IT.

Furthermore, hopeful candidates can try to get accreditations and qualifications online that can help them in the job search. These certificates are pretty easy to complete, and they can be instrumental in getting the ball rolling.

Tech workers will be looking for new sources of income, and this presents them with an opportunity to hit the ground running. Cybersecurity jobs will likely see an even higher level of demand in 2023 if current trends persist.

Read next: What’s the Best Threat Protection Against Ransomware?
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

The World Economic Forum’s insight on the largest global risks

The climate is changing dramatically all around the world, and the consequences of such changes have already begun to show themselves. It is expected that over the next 10 years, this drastic change and the outcomes that follow will become the biggest global risk.

According to the World Economic Forum, over 1,000 leaders from different areas, including academics, politicians, and businesspeople, were requested to analyze 32 global risk factors on the basis of how they’ll progress over the next two to ten years.

The data collected from the leaders was included in the survey on global risk perception. According to the responses, the ongoing inflation crisis will remain an important problem over the next two years, but in terms of a ten-year period, the issue won’t be much of a risk. Mainly because climate change will be responsible for the top 4 major risks.

The eighteenth edition of the Risk Report released by the World Economic Forum focused on groups of individual risks having significant impacts. Russia’s start of war against Ukraine is causing a shortage of food as well as other basic necessities. If the situation continues, then it can lead to more political and social unrest.

According to Saadia Zahidi, the MD of the World Economic Forum, surviving the ongoing crises is currently the focal point for everyone. She further added that the ongoing events are diverting attention from factors that pose a much larger risk in the next ten years. Deteriorating climate and ecosystems, health risks, and economic crises are events that need recognition and resources.

Global warming, followed by natural disasters and extreme weather causing large-scale damage and natural resources falling short, these are the events that are much more dangerous. Not only the climatic factors need more time, but geo-economic confrontation and increasing cybercrimes are also among the events that require more surveillance.

The aim behind the survey conducted by Forum was to bring everyone’s attention to risks that are either being neglected or need more awareness in order to take timely measures to prevent such calamities or to lower their impact when they arrive.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World