have never left the village and nor do they want to. they say they already have everything they need. jessica washington out to 0 in midwinter village, west java after a week long battle and an online voting scandal. the competition to crown the fattest bear in an alaskan park has ended with a winner brown by 747, nicknamed bear force. one got the most votes wearing around 635 kilograms. he beat his nearest challenger band. i know one by more than 10000 votes. it's impossible. many didn't make it to the final because of an unprecedented case of voter fraud in the semi finals. officials say they pounced early on the problem and were able to correct the results. thousands tuned in to watch the bears gorge themselves ahead of winter. north american brownback were now in fact, reserves to survive hibernation over the course of the season. on our website, our 0 dot com. and that's updated to 24 hours a day who watches live by clicking on the live like

a reminder, the top stories on how to 0 a jury in the u. s. as ordered right wing conspiracy theorist alex jones to pay $965000000.00 in damages after he claimed falsely. the 2012 sandy hook school massacre was a hoax. jones, a radio host claimed for years that the school shooting was staged as part of a government plot to take away americans. guns, 20 young children and 6 members of staff were killed by gunman at sandy hook elementary school in connecticut. in 2012. the families that i've been associated with for 10 years through this tragedy and those beautiful people you'll ever encounter and their children, if their moms and their wives are the most beautiful people you could ever get to know. all i can really say is that i'm just proud that what we are able to

accomplish is just to simply tell the truth and it shouldn't be this hard. and it shouldn't be the scary you in general assembly especially overwhelmingly, to condemn russia's move, to annex parts of ukraine after sham referendums, $143.00 countries voted in favor of a resolution, but also reaffirm the sovereignty independence, unity and territory integrity of ukraine within its internationally recognized borders for joined russia and voting against it. and 35 of st. western allies vowed to deliver new air defense systems to ukraine as fast as they can to boast to protection against russia, missiles, at least 26 people have been killed in russia, strikes on 12 cities across ukraine since monday. miss alt mostly targeted civilian infrastructure. defense system announced came from nature's 1st major gathering

since russia's attempted annexation of ukrainian regions. security forces of fod tear gas to try to disperse anti government demonstrators in the capital. terror on the protest triggered by the death of a woman in police. custody have continued for almost a month, despite a deadly state crackdown, protest to say 22 year old mother. many died after being beaten by morality. police for not wearing her head scarf properly. to be meter, i told ali how many has dismissed nationwide protests as scattered riots planned by rons enemies. there's the top stories to stay with us around to 0. people in power is up next for now. which side is winning chaos or control? i. what does the new forever proxy war mean for america and nato? as long as americans keep consuming prices are going to keep going up. why didn't joe biden see inflation comic? how did you get so much wrong? the quizzical look with us on the bottom line.

when bitcoin and other crypto currencies 1st period, well over a decade ago, few people could have mentioned how widespread they become. now these various forms of digital money are in common use, if not yet universally understood, but where exactly do they come from? who uses them? and what for better or worse might be the long term consequences. we sent reporter rory challenge in search of answers. i

the in any will to create a currencies. money's got strange. the 13 years and big coins creation of being a roller coaster ride. born from the financial crashes, money liberation from central banks. bitcoin is a person to person, electron cash system. think of them like token the buy. like very much. now of course, this is just a prop crypto currencies are purely digital and we access them in a digital wallet. we can send them anywhere in the world in a flash. if a business accepts it, you can buy goods and services. you can think it's built on the block chain, a decentralized database of transactions that's transparent and secure, but bitcoin can get pretty wild crypto currencies have no controller except the markets. people have made fortunes and lost them, their value can go. 6 way, way,

way up. oh, come crushing dough. but where does it come from? what does it cost the planet? is it the future of money or the useful has money? it's all. my name is rory challenge, and i want to find out who's my 1st destination. pennsylvania, the u. s. states that is fully embraced crit bitco, and he's going to take over the, well, it'll have to conquer america. and it's making good progress. recent survey suggest about a 5th of american adults for the already bought into crypto. so now that i'm here, i better get some right, this is shane bytes inside is a man who's trying to make buying big cohen as easy as possible eyes. hey, rory, let me check. i don't mean to like very much. so the machines. yes they are. you want to use one i do because i don't have,

i don't have any back going. so what do i do? this is brave you over me. first is click on the screen. get it started. yeah. you're gonna buy the coin. you like how much you want to buy. so here we go. 10 bucks. lots of the big spenders just in there. so that's that, that's it. and then you can look on your wall and you can see you got to the queen who. oh, said his pending. yep, that's it. i mean you got it. erick grill has been buying and selling bitcoin since the early days. now he runs a company that makes crypto currency atm standpoint, solves one of the problems that we've faced for years and years and years, which is the government controls money. and you have a central authority controlling money. and so what that means is that people, you know, they just print it, devalue it, and you can't count on anything like, i don't know how many dollars they're going to print next year. but i know exactly how many big ones are going to be issued. so can we call that currency, should we call it? can't say it's, it's the best currency the just on the planet. but a tendency needs to be spindle,

and i'm going to put this to the test. 50 is supposedly one of the most crypto friendly places in the states. the man is talking about the city having its own digital coin. basketball team is sponsored by crypto dot com. so using my new bitcoin here should be easy. a checkout coin map, a website that says it shows every business in the world that takes coin for the philly area as a list of only around 20 or pick up the phone and start calling them. 1 6 1 ringback oh, out of that, good afternoon, calling this payment. yeah. you doing? all right, thank you very much, bye. as we move through the list as similar story now. okay, well, do you guys accept bitcoin as payment there? now we do not know did, did you ever we used 2 years ago and then what happens, why did you stop? the technology was too hard to maintain,

regularly enhanced the staff is ensure what bitcoin really is. so think does not billy like using it, is like between evangelists, may say, is the feature of money, but the vast majority of business is listed as accepting it. don't. until do you guys accept bitcoin as payments? you do? they invited us down for lunch. this is the some pay food truck, the home, so they say some of the best barbecue sandwiches in town. what can i get? so we have brick, pork and chicken. jessica and her partner began accepting bitcoin in 2015 and say, unlike others, they will continue to do so. can i pay with? yes, you can. or this next amazing. thank you very, very much. a lot of the people that were accepting the coin in the city and they stopped, you know, they saw how to cycle and how it kept fluctuating. and i think it really scared

a lot of people away, but you kept us, but we kept at it. yeah. why, i don't know, it's just something we believe in. we just believe that crypto is the future. do you worry a total about the security of it or the whether it's a scam and anyway, i worry more about the dollar than i do bitcoin. i do believe it's going to be the currency of the world, but if it is bit going, has a long way to go. few american seem to be spending it for most is just another investment. but why does big coin come from anyway? i'm heading into the pennsylvania countryside to find out when i get their future finance is a little money than i'd imagined. i just i make a note or what is that noise? what you're hearing are the klein miners the, the big one is in the next one liners. you can see all the little fans in there.

there's a little computer on each one of those fans. jeff campbell is the lead engineer at stronghold digital mining. it has 12000 specialized computer processes. we're looking for $200.00. this is a long number and everybody in the world is working on the same equation. they're all trying to find the same number. and if you get it, if you get it, you get 6.25 bit point right now. and how often do you get it every time that it's somebody on in the world finds that number is high tech lottery says to function, mine is race to verify the newest transactions made everywhere on the bitcoin network. the winner is rewarded in bitcoin. it's an entirely digital process, and it used to be done by amazon enthusiasts on home computers. but these days, it's big business, and the u. s. does more of it than anywhere else. worldwide, we're going through more combinations of numbers and there are grains of sand on the earth. so you can say it's profitable if you can find that grain of those

profits are putting in bigger and bigger, operates as a 21st century gold rush. but here's the catch. bitcoin was designed on a system called proof of work. the more processes get thrown at it, the heart of the algorithms become, the harder the algorithms become more computers and needed. it's an energy guzzling arms race. and this is how strong holds operation gets his power, their own dedicated power station it burns fossil fuels, coal waste, with all the greenhouse gas emissions that entails stronghold ceo greg beer takes me into the hissing, roaring heart of the beast. vocals me the oldest kind of brute industrial power is just going to make something that you can't even touch it. it's a digital currency that kind of plates around and then in the spare it is after the

old world, industrial mates near will finance. but what's the environmental cost of all this cambridge university says, bitcoin pumps out as much c o $2.00 per year as a country like the czech republic and consumes as much energy as the whole of highlands. then greg tells me something astounding when we started the project. 4 or 5 years ago, the mining economics for bitcoin were really enough to support the plant. thankfully the state of pennsylvania in a, in a bipartisan way, modified the rules a bit to allow us to earn more of a, what's called the renewable energy credit. and that isn't that plus higher power prices was a port is running today. pennsylvania not only coals coal waste and alternative energy source, it actually subsidizes stronghold to burn the stuff to make bitcoin. how can this

be? oh, because of this in the toxic legacy of nearly a century of coal mining coal fat, the furnace is a pennsylvania is once mighty steel industry. and this waste, sprawling across the state in vast sly keeps, is the low quality material left over from the mining acid and poisonous heavy metals. leach out at them, bill spends his strong whole digital mining chairman. i feel as if america had in the world had a party here, and then we will come the next morning with the residual garbage leftover and they're having to clean up after the party like the state of pennsylvania. he won't seize heaps gone. he says he's using the states alternative energy incentives and the profits from big coin mining to make that happen. but coal is the dirtiest

source of power there is. and coal waste is especially inefficient. so i asked bell the obvious question. do you think that the c o 2 emissions are a justifiable byproduct of clearing this landscape? i absolutely do. and what i'm asking you is just stop a minute. look at this. i understand where people say it's not perfect, but how many things in life are perfect. i, i mean, rory, i mean don't let perfect be the enemy of very good. so do you consider yourself an environmentalist? i absolutely consider myself an environmentalist or bill and his colleagues firmly convinced that they're doing what is best for this area. i have a feeling people campaigning against climate change. i'm going to disagree who i'm on my way to meet one has another coal waste power station. right?

makes spect chimney. there are plenty of bitcoin miners who say their operations are green, but most tend to seek out the cheapest energy, whatever it source. this is russell's ebay, who works for the clean air council. the interesting thing about bitcoin is you could do it in the cleanest way possible, or you can do it in the dirty way possible. and as long as there are government subsidies to do it, in the dirtiest way possible, people will keep burning coal waste. generate big coin was supposed to be moving towards the next 0 future, reducing carbon emissions to nothing by 2050. how does that fit with bitco? it's huge energy consumption. it does not the introduction of crypto currency and its energy consumption is such

a massive step backward for environmental efforts efforts to confront climate change. russell says several states in the us or considering banning bitcoin mining, but not pennsylvania globally, as a growing list of countries that have already outlawed it. china being the most significant one of the other things i've heard about big coin. it's a haven of criminals. crypto links crime says to record levels in 2021 up 79 percent from the year before. i want to know what's behind this. got us greg is a former f b i. agent who now works for a company investigating crypto crime. criminals are using crypto, the very same reason why the vast majority of crypto users use it for that speed, liquidity, and cross border nature. what are the kind of crimes that we see around crypto? they're doing everything in this virtual asset world that they were doing in the regular world, particularly scans and frauds,

make up the largest category of elicit use of crypto. but you don't think this actually is a problem with crypto itself. yeah, there's nothing inherently evil or bad about crypto itself is just simply another method for value transfer. criminal stole $14000000000.00, encrypt currencies last year. or we see any kind of state involvement in this, we have seen, elicit use of hacking by north koreans. for example, in fact, they're responsible for hacking over a $1000000000.00 in exchange hacks in the past. but galvis also says the transparent nature of crypto is blocked. chain ledger actually gives investigators a treasure trove of data to work with. so for example, if there was an elicit transaction where a little lady was scammed out of her money and they, and she said no, i paid them in bitcoin. well they, they can look at that transaction and see where that woman's bitcoin went to. and from there they can then engage legal process to either freeze that account or seek

recovery from that victim. and that's why that's so important. ah, my next stop is london, one of the wells financial hubs. i want to see what government and central banks think of this brave new world. easier said than done. we are central banks both in the united states and here in england to talk to us about that like know why. while many central banks are undecided what to do about a technology designed to break the control of money, i've come to meet harriet baldwin, a british conservative m p, a former investment banker, and a member of the treasury select committee which examines government's economic policy. do you think the central bank should be scared to correct that kind of things? i think they're all looking at it. i think it's going to be important to coordinate the approach amongst the developed world. busy central banks. i think, you know, there is also the risk that's being currency could end up being the, you know,

the hewlett bulbs of the 21st century 15. if i was, you mean it could be a bubble. people could be buying something for way above the value that someone else will pay in the future to take it off the hands and they could lose a lot of money in the process and end up with something that they discover. it's actually just lines of code and doesn't have intrinsic value because no one else will accept payments. does crypto currency development poses threats to financial stability? it could be potentially, if it becomes a much more significant size in the well financial markets at the moment. all the evidence we've had on the treasury select committee is that it's still a very small proportion of the world's asset base. and so therefore we've been told that it doesn't pose a threat to financial stability at this level box. what happens when a nation state does jump with both feet into this weird new world? in our home, in the german, at this point. i

have come to a country that boldly gone with no other his dad and turned self into a unique fiscal petri dish. ha, is assigned to take our beach now this, this is where the experiment started for l. salvador. 3 is back. a clique of crypto converts began transforming the surf town of els on tape. they persuaded people to join a local circular economy based on bitcoin. but all of el salvador is bitcoin beach. now, last summer, the countries president, i had be kaylee, rush through a law that elevated bitcoin to legal tender alongside the us dollar. know how the government has taken such a gamble with national finances. i'm interested to hear what the founders of bitcoin beach think of it all. roman martinez is one of them was beautiful. that

dream that started super small now is more bigger than our sub or and mainly people around the world dreaming with our country. and i think me for tracy and this visionary, 70 percent of some other into for world blankets. and that means they've got your bank account right now. bank account, any kind of financial service a now as soon speaking a ride in our community will start to seen. people say, be modern people transacting digital people, receiving and making digital payments. people buying an asset, the for the 1st time people sending money from all saba to the us from the us each other because b is the monetary net or the humanity ever hot. you know,

these are the big claims, and i want to find out if the coin really has transformed this country. because beach seems the obvious place to start. but at the place i stop for lunch. crypto isn't welcome. if you're going to pay me, pay me money because i want to go to the grocery store. i want to go pay my dads. i want to make sure that it's being done. do you even consider it to be money? no. what is it? it's a fools, aaron. i asked at several other places to some accept it, but plenty don't. ah, the large majority of people in this developing country live on subsistence incomes . how are they responding to such a huge experiment? ok, quite a is an assistant professor of latin american studies at dartmouth university in the u. s. is also a salvador. him and jorge took us round the vibrant working class street markets of

the capital san salvador. i mean so far, because it has done very little to change, the dynamics of the marketplace is here in san salvador. you might see a couple of signs that say we accept big coin. but when you actually go up to the soles and asked, people have to take some point. they're like, you know, i'd appreciate if you dollars else. i, what was government sponsored, a national digital wallet called chiva. but early tech glitches put people off many checked in to cash out a $30.00 welcoming sweetener, and haven't touched it since we support still will achieve a sticker. i think that you told me that the sticker is there only to abide by the law that they have to take it if someone showed up. so what do you think the actual uptake, big on his name and in these kinds of environments and in the daily transactions that people know secret is not a presence at all. in march el salvador chamber of commerce said 86 percent of

businesses hadn't made any bitcoin sales. a really actually benefits are becoming so as big one is laid out. now most of that, the wealth generation and the wealth distribution goes to about 0.01 percent of all big coin owners. they're the ones who have about 27 percent of all big coin worldwide. so 0.01 percent of any tiny, tiny, tiny percent owns 27 percent. exactly. and that, that those are the big coin wales. those are many of the people who are behind big queen, booster ism and, and the ones who are creating all these different kinds of enterprises and businesses and ventures in places like el salvador. and presumably it's in the interests of coin owners to keep the height going. right. i think that's exactly right in salvador, bringing people into bitcoin. it's part of this process of trying to inflate the

value and trying to hit those kind of milestones that many of these lead bitcoin holders are hoping for to me that doesn't sound too different from there. it's a, it's exactly a pyramid scheme, multi level marketing where you need more people to enter into that space and things are gonna keep the value up and keep the party going. when bitcoin, critics say the whole things a pyramid scheme they point to the events laid on by crypto currency firms, events like this is called heels for bitcoin. and it's hosted by a company called packs full now is a good time to buy in the salvador in women. it's hold on it and other packs for event 3 days later. and the star guest is el salvador was youngest. ever congresswoman 27 year old donnie gonzalez, helped pass to bitcoin law here to make big coin legal tender. other countries also want to be like us, have other talking about a specific le. hello. has many critics though, doesn't it, sir? the i m f as recommended that alex i will go drop it because it's just too risky.

so why is it still operating our democratic country? and i mean, we have our president, our government are on congress. and any, this is shown made or comments made for other institutions around the world. i mean, there they are. are people who recommend things, but it doesn't mean though we're going to do those things. this is el salvador was tech enthusiast, president nyah, be kaylee. how much his bitcoin experiments has cost hasn't been disclosed. and this secrecy concerns many, the bill could be $400000000.00 a, some economists, and every dip below el salvador, bitcoin purchase price hits the country's coffers, dinner. how much money has been the host? lucy, and actually this is how get them works. we're waiting in the future for a have more gains are about be going. so it's just a matter of us dine. his comes to the very heart of the bit coin question. many

millions of people around the world have bought in typically hoping to ride a wave of riches. but they're using it as a speculative investment at a risky and environmentally damaging. one of that most people have never use, it has money, and it's difficult to see why they ever should. what is soaring in value? why would you want to spend it when it's plummeting in value? who would want to receive it? the thing that makes bitcoin so attractive to investors, the crazy lurch is invalid is the same thing that's holding it back from becoming mainstream currency. it's basically too exciting to be money. bitcoin needs to be boring. at the moment. it's anything bucks. ah,

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jazeera to wait for the wilcox meely home, as the main event gets closer. i'll just erase here every step of the way. i'm going to go with one month to go. we focus on asia teams can expect some strong support here in can cut out cope with the pressure of hosting with australia, make the most of squeezing in from the player. or will it be south korea, japan saudi arabia or iran progress for this? the world cup countdown on jessie, you know, when the news breaks, it's not just personal property, but also infrastructure that now needs fixing from power lines to water. me when people need to be heard and the story told they would get punished. they spoke ukrainian, i'm afraid i won't be able to return home with exclusive interviews. an in depth report south african penguins, one is in captivity. al jazeera has teens on the ground to bring you more.