Bitcoin Pulls Back as Record Rally Triggers Profit Taking
The cryptocurrency declined as much 3.2%, the most in more than three weeks, and was trading at $117,386 at 12:40 p.m. in Singapore on Tuesday. Second-ranked Ether was down 1.4% and other smaller coins including XRP, Solana also dropped nearly 2% each.
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Nvidia, AMD Stocks Rise on US-China Reversal
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Why Solana is so fast and cheap
Solana isn't trying to be everything. It's doing one thing well: high-speed, low-cost transactions that actually work at scale. Most blockchains force a tradeoff. You either get speed or you get decentralization. Solana restructured that equation by introducing a different way to reach consensus. Instead of waiting for blocks to line up, it uses a cryptographic clock called Proof of History. This lets validators agree on the order of events with less back-and-forth. That small shift in architecture changed everything. Solana processes thousands of transactions per second. Not just in testing, but under real-world load. The chain holds up during mints, token launches, or trading spikes. While other networks slow down or price users out, Solana keeps going. On Solana, transaction fees are so low they're not even part of the conversation. You don't need to check gas prices before clicking. You're paying fractions of a cent per transaction, even when traffic is high. This isn't a temporary discount. It's a result of network efficiency. With a design that avoids bottlenecks and parallelizes execution, Solana keeps the cost of computation down without relying on external scaling solutions. This changes what's possible. You can build things that wouldn't work on high-fee chains. Real-time trading. Micro-payments. Dynamic on-chain games. Use cases that demand constant interaction and low latency start to make sense on Solana. Speed means nothing if it's unstable. Solana performs well, but more importantly, it performs consistently. Block times average under 500 milliseconds. Finality is fast. Fees are stable. You don't need to optimize for variable gas or build fallback logic into every contract. Developers can rely on the network to behave the same way every time. That consistency has a compounding effect. Apps become more reliable. Dev cycles shorten. Users stop noticing they're interacting with a blockchain at all. 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And the answer depends on what you're comparing it to. Solana requires more powerful hardware to run a validator. That's not a secret. But that doesn't mean it's closed off. Anyone with the technical and financial resources can spin up a node and participate. There are over 3,000 active validators right now. The code is open source. The upgrade process is community-driven. No blockchain is perfectly decentralized. Solana leans toward performance, but it still maintains a level of openness and security that protects the integrity of the network. For a while, Solana had the tech but not enough usage to match. That's changed. You're now seeing real products that rely on Solana's speed. Not clones of Ethereum apps, but experiences that wouldn't be feasible on slower chains. On-chain order books. Native memecoins with real-time movement. NFT projects that update instantly without waiting for confirmation. Games that feel like normal apps, not turn-based transactions. 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Closing The Digital Skills Gap: How UNICEF And Partners Empower Youth
As digital technology rapidly transforms the workforce, a global digital skills gap is leaving many young people behind, especially girls and young women. UNICEF and committed private sector partners are equipping the next generation with essential digital, entrepreneurial and AI skills, empowering them to become innovators, leaders and changemakers. Anjali poses with the sewer cleaning robot protoype that she developed at the Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) at her school in Chhattisgarh, India. UNICEF, along with private sector partners, supports ATLs across India to foster a culture of learning, skilling and entrepreneurship. Why digital skills are essential for today's youth As digital technology reshapes work, too many adolescents and young people are falling behind. Globally, 65 percent of teens lack the digital skills needed for 90 percent of today's jobs, with the widest gaps in low- and middle-income countries and among girls. 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Private sector partners collaborate with UNICEF in many ways, supplying the knowledge, tools and finances that complement UNICEF's strengths and accelerate young people's path to economic security and opportunity. Trusted private sector partners allow UNICEF to plan long term and scale up programs more effectively. True collaboration and bold innovation can lead to powerful solutions, while UNICEF remains committed to promoting and upholding children's rights as AI policies and practices evolve. How public-private partnerships are transforming youth opportunities Public-private sector collaboration can scale programs from concepts to solutions and achieve greater impact at an accelerated pace than either sector can by working alone. Since 1999, fewer young people around the world have been working, even though the number of young people has grown. 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Since 2022, the SAP and UNICEF partnership has reached over 815,000 and helped improve the lives of 250,000 more through engagement with foundational and digital skills for youth. Overall, thanks to SAP and other partners' support, Yoma has reached over 5 million engagements, which include registering more than 500,000 youth in over eight countries registered to access skilling, earning and impact opportunities through the Yoma ecosystem. Muhammad Abdullahi applies skills he learned from UNICEF Youth Agency Marketplace (Yoma) in Bauchi State, Nigeria, to his work as a health care innovator and employer. Yoma is a digital marketplace for youth to gain individualized learning and align opportunities with their aspirations. Muhammad Abdullahi, a health educator from Azare in Nigeria's Bauchi State, uses his Yoma-acquired skills to inspire change around him. Bauchi State has a high number of children who are out of school. 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A UNICEF Skills4Girls program is teaching Bolivian girls to design and build robot prototypes. In Bolivia, only 24 percent of students in technological and scientific careers are women. Skills4Girls is working to improve that reality and build a better future by teaching Bolivian girls to design and build robot prototypes. 15-year-old Mary Luz from La Paz, Bolivia, dreamed of seeing nearby Lake Titicaca clean – free from pollution and plastic waste. Driven by that vision, she created a prototype robotic boat that collects trash from rivers and lakes. Mary's invention is equipped with weather sensors, a live camera and an anemometer to measure wind speed. With support from UNICEF, her creativity and determination led her to represent Bolivia at the world's largest robotics tournament. Grassroots innovation, generational power Partnerships are a means to an end, not the end itself. Each UNICEF and private sector initiative is a dynamic collaboration to lead young people somewhere better than where they started. And when young people are actively involved in crafting solutions, that goal is often reached faster. Crocs, Inc., one of UNICEF's newest skills partners, has committed to a 3-year partnership to support UNICEF's UPSHIFT, a social accelerator that prepares young people between 10 and 24 to become community changemakers and innovators. UPSHIFT aligns with Crocs, Inc.'s Step Up To Greatness program values and goals to support building skills and confidence in young people to unlock their potential. UPSHIFT equips youth with professional and transferable skills through experiential learning. Participants identify challenges in their communities and devise local, innovative solutions to address them. For example, in Ukraine, where approximately 1.5 million children are at risk of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, UPSHIFT has equipped young people to take action to address issues they care about the most. One solution is Teenage Island – created by teens for teens – on the social platform Discord. Teenage Island provides a safe virtual space for young people to connect over shared struggles. 'You can get away from unwanted reality. For us, that is the war,' says Oleksii, 22, a Teenage Island member. ofia, 17, hosts a podcast on Teenage Island, a teen-led virtual space offering connection and psychological support to young Ukrainians. UNICEF UPSHIFT participants identify challenges in their communities and devise local, innovative solutions. On Teenage Island, adolescents and young people can talk to a psychologist in group sessions, explore creative writing or dive into fantasy role-playing adventures. The team also launched a podcast series in which Sofia, a 17-year-old Ukrainian, openly discusses grief, mental health and war with a psychologist. Teenage Island exemplifies how partner funding doesn't just support immediate needs but can strengthen systems and services for sustainable progress long after UNICEF's interventions end. Partnering for a brighter future UNICEF's public-private sector partnerships for youth can bring the tech, experience and talent, and critical investment needed to supercharge skills development. Together, UNICEF and partners create scalable, forward-thinking solutions that fast-track young people's access to opportunity and build a brighter future for the next generation. Learn more about UNICEF's private sector partnerships that help bridge the digital divide and support every child's right to learn. UNICEF does not endorse any company, brand, organization, product or service.
