Dear colleagues, clients and partners,
We would like to draw your attention to the fact that from February 1, 2023, our company is moving to a new domain. From now on, our website is located at the web address https://rlaservices.co.uk, and for communication please use the e-mail doc@rlaservices.co.uk. These changes will not affect our accounts in social networks and instant messengers.
Remote work is still relevant at the beginning of 2023, and judging by research by The DealBook Newsletter, the practice of home offices around the world will remain for a long time, if not forever. Three years have passed since the beginning of the COVID-19 era. Due to severe restrictions, companies around the world were required to transfer 70-90% of all employees to a home office. Panic from the pandemic has already receded, so many entrepreneurs wanted to return all office workers back, however, as the study showed, a large number of people are more productive working from home. The study led to this decision: “Hybrid work is establishing itself as the new normal”. The practice of reducing the hours that workers need to spend in the office has spread around the world. Many IT giants like Amazon and Google have decided to allow everyone to work from home if the work position allows, but remote workers will need to attend meetings, workshops and other similar events.
RLA Services team wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 
Investors are betting that the easing of COVID restrictions in China will be furious but fleeting. China’s stocks and currencies have jumped and global banks have become more optimistic about its outlook as Beijing moved to a higher zero-COVID policy while slashing virus testing and quarantines after it faced massive anti-lockdown protests. Zhang Kexing, general manager of Beijing Gelei Asset Management, said he has bet big on duty-free shopping, household goods, food and beverages that would benefit from simpler COVID rules, but some of them are just short-term.
The authorities of Kazakhstan have decided to take seriously the regulation of the activities of cryptominers and crypto traders. Over the past few years, the popularity of cryptocurrencies in the republic has grown exponentially. Due to low utility tariffs for electricity, even by the standards of the CIS, and the complete absence of regulatory laws, the country has taken a leading position in mining and cashing cryptocurrencies (often “under the hood”). On October 12, the lower parliamentary house passed a law according to which any cryptocurrency activity is now subject to mandatory licensing. For such activities, from now on, you will have to create a legal entity, obtain a license and register with the tax office. The bill itself is long-term, it will still be written down and worked out, so far there are no details. The first real changes will be introduced only by the beginning of 2024. The authorities are aware that such a decision can be perceived negatively, so they promise to provide huge support to licensed crypto traders.
Last Saturday, September 17, representatives of the RLA team attended the #bizmanana conference in Prague. We thank the organizers – Franch and Board, as well as all the speakers, for an extremely rich and interesting program! 
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said he wants to make the company 20% more efficient and that could include headcount cuts as it reckons with a slew of economic challenges as well as years of rapid hiring. However, prior to that, employees early in the year had given the company’s leadership particularly poor marks on pay, promotions and execution, citing the company’s growing bureaucracy, which executives acknowledged at the time. “Across everything we do, we can be slower to make decisions,” Pichai said Tuesday. “You look at it end-to-end and figure out how to make the company 20% more productive.” Pichai also gave more specific examples of how he hopes to do that. He gave a past example of aligning YouTube Music and Google Play Music into one product.
The value of Ethereum cryptocurrency exceeded $1900 after the team of blockchain developers reported on the successful update of the Goerli test network. After the test network will be transferred to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model – the upcoming event is called Merge, and with it the classic cryptocurrency mining of this currency will be a thing of the past. The Ethereum 2.0 network will get higher performance, significantly increased energy efficiency – electricity consumption will be reduced by more than 99% and scalability will increase. The main Ethereum blockchain is scheduled to migrate to the new algorithm on September 19, 2022.
What strange times we live in…
$1 is worth more than €1 for the first time since 2002. According to the Forex Capital Markets trading platform, the minimum price of €1 was $0.99 (-0.37%). On July 14, the euro exchange rate updated the anti-record, continuing to fall below parity against the dollar. At the minimum, the value of the European currency fell to $0.9952. The dollar on Thursday evening is growing against other major world currencies, but the pace of growth has slowed down slightly, according to trading data.
Cryptocurrency markets have crashed to record lows. On June 13 alone, global market capitalization fell 12% to $977 billion. Crypto lending platform Celsius has stopped withdrawing funds and Binance has suspended operations in bitcoin, crypto investors are complaining about losing millions, which is understandable. For two weeks, all crypto owners have been waiting for the situation to normalize, but, as most major analysts assure, trust in digital currencies has already been undermined, which means that without another high-profile event, nothing will change for the better. El Salvador, the country that recognized bitcoin as the national currency, is likely to have a default. Due to the sharp decline in interest in mining, video cards have become much cheaper, and electricity consumption in countries where mining has been actively engaged has fallen by 15-30%.