The Weekly Stack 24th to 30th December

Summary

🤖 Deepfakes of Elon Musk promoting crypto coins are rampant.

📉 Biggest fall in a month since 94’ with indices down 4.3%.

🔎 Twitter Files reveal groundbreaking secrets about the company.

Read Time: 3 min 20 sec

1. Fake Elon Musk

Fake Elon Musk promoting cryptocurrencies

30% of the world population don’t know what a deepfake video is. Deepfakes use deep learning AI to replace the likeness of one person with another in video and other digital media.

While deepfake is growing in popularity, cybercriminals are already starting to phish people into investing in shady coins.

There is enough content exposed on social media to create deepfake models for millions of people. There are AI-generated videos of Elon Musk promoting coins floating around the internet right now.

Crypto community is at risk, says Binance CEO

Binance CCO said that sophisticated hacking teams have used previous news interviews and TV appearances over the years to create a deepfake of him.

There’s been a recent spike in hackers pretending to be Binance employees and executives on platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, etc.

Recently, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on Twitter said that only 50 out of 7,000 users claiming to be employees of Binance on LinkedIn are real.

Our Opinion: Do not make an investment just because an influencer is promoting it, regardless of whether it’s a deepfake or not. Research is essential. It’s still possible to identify a deepfake video, but it will only get more difficult as AI improves.

2. NIFTY’s Cold December

India's Stock Market Struggles Amid Global Headwinds

India's stock market indices suffered their worst monthly losses since 1994 in December 2022 due to global challenges including COVID-19 and potential rate hikes by central banks.

The Sensex and Nifty fell 4.37% and 4.32%, respectively. It is expected that the Indian stock market will be volatile in 2023.

Indian market predictions for 2023

According to Forbes,

• Long-term investors may be rewarded in 2023 due to India's strong domestic consumption and opportunities for growth and investment.
• Banking, automobiles, and real estate sectors may perform well
• Interest-influenced instruments such as bonds and mortgage-backed securities may rise in value
• Risk of debt defaults in fixed-income market, particularly in corporate bonds
• Technology and healthcare sectors may offer investment opportunities

Our Opinion: The market decline is expected to recover in the coming time. Sectoral allocation in banking, tech, and healthcare will continue to benefit in 2023 while debt instruments have a slight risk. It’s advisable to continue SIP investments in long-term portfolios consistently in 2023.

3. Twitter-Leaks

Twitter colluded with the Democrats

The files revealed that Twitter colluded with the Democratic Party to suppress tweets that were against the party's interests during the run-up to the 2020 election.

Twitter Deputy General Counsel, former General Counsel for the FBI, played a role in vetting the release of the Twitter Files without the knowledge of Twitter's new management.

Secret blacklists & shadowbanning

The practice, referred to internally by Twitter as "visibility filtering," was allegedly used to block searches of individual users, limit the discoverability of certain tweets, and prevent certain users' posts from appearing on the trending page or in hashtag searches.

Our Opinion: The Twitter Files is going to make the public more aware of what they read on Twitter. But with Elon’s plan of reducing anonymity on the platform and free speech agenda, there is hope for the platform. Twitter might stand out from other social media platforms with this new regime, and could potentially be a great investment opportunity for retail investors when the time comes.

It's time to grow your wealth

At Stack, we invest your wealth like the top 1% with

• expert portfolio management
• exclusive investment opportunities
• no fees, no lock-ins
• access to advisors 24*7