Living Smart

014 015 I ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY data through transmitting and decoding sonar signals, which cause vibrations. Despite technical difficulties that are pending to be solved completely, underwater devices, in particular robots, are still a much desired alternative to humans in hazardous or extreme circumstances. For example, the cleanup of the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011 tsunami will take years, or even decades, to complete, but the high radiation level in the innermost areas of the reactors mean they are “no man’ s land.” Without the help of underwater robots, the world would have known much less about what had happened and what needs to be done. Similarly, in deep-sea exploration, underwater robots have carried sensors and equipment to plunge into some of the deepest oceanic trenches on Earth where humans fear to tread and collected valuable data to let us know what it sounds or looks like down there. In Hong Kong, underwater robots have the potential to be a game changer in many fields, as much of the underground drainage and sewers work, as well as beach maintenance that are still carried out by humans today. In September 2018, a lifeguard drowned while scuba diving to clear waste from a shark-prevention net off Tsuen Wan. My hope is that it does not take any more tragedies for us to realize the value of underwater robot technology. Published on January 09, 2019 Loss looms on flip side of this coin Prof. Allen HUANG Associate Professor, Department of Accounting H ongkongers’ enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies has been dampened when investors claimed to have been tricked by a high-profile businessman into buying mining machines for the cryptocurrency “Filecoin.” They discovered that Filecoin was not yet tradable on the market and promises of refunds were not honored. What could investors do to reduce their investment risk then? Since early 2017, many early stage blockchain-related investment projects have devised a funding method called initial coin offering (ICO). They issue tokens on blockchain to investors, and unlike initial public offerings, where investors receive stocks representing part of the ownership of the issuers, these tokens only provide holders with the right to use the project’ s service in the future. Therefore, the issuers claim that ICOs are not subject to securities regulation. As there are no regulations for most ICOs, their marketing documents or “white papers” do not disclose assets or liabilities (probably because most of them have none), and there are no audited statements or investment reports written by chartered financial analysts. In some cases, ICO issuers even feature themselves in celebrity photos, or describe their investors as donors to avoid being labeled as offering securities. In fact, a recent study conducted by Ernst & Young, one of