Online Blockchain (LON: OBC) shares are up 5% this morning. OBC shares have tended to move alongside the Bitcoin price for the obvious reason that the corporate results are leverage to that BTC price. As we’ve said before about Online Blockchain: “This is, we’re afraid, just one of those things about being in a commodity market. Everyone’s individual Bitcoin is exactly the same and therefore sells for exactly the same price. That means that Bitcoin companies are price takers - which is rather what being in a commodity business means. So, when the bitcoin price changes so will the value of the company. And that, we’re afraid, is simply how it works. “
As we also said back then Online Blockchain is working to get out of that commodity market. Which is probably a good thing - we’re not great fans of the long term prospects for Bitcoin e have to admit. So, prospects for thing at OBC that are not cybercoin related seem to us like a good idea.
Online Blockchain share price from Google Finance
The announcement: “Synthia, the whole-life AI Assistant being developed by Online Blockchain, is utilising ElevenLabs' AI-powered text-to-speech models to generate high quality, human-sounding dialogue. No more robotic, incongruous, high latency speech, Synthia AI's voice calls and website interactions are natural and intuitive and have potential to be nearly impossible to distinguish from a real-life assistant. Online Blockchain is also looking at deploying ElevenLabs' tech so Synthia users can 'train' their own models to fully customise their AI assistant, and installing its new multilingual voice generation model, which is capable of accurately producing AI audio in nearly 30 languages. This has the potential to make Synthia accessible to many more millions of users.”
And, well, yes. Our view here is that AI really is going to change the world. But w’re also horribly aware that it’s consumers, not producers, who do best our of technological developments and shifts. The reason being competition. So many attempt to produce with hte new techs that no one then makes a profit. OK, “no one” is a bit excessive, but very few. So, while we see AI as a hugely important shift we’re insistent that absolutely all plans to invest around it are hugely high risk.
Yes, there will be profits and near all of them will flow to consumers.
