Greek lore tells the tale of Medusa — a fearsome monster who could turn mortals into pillars of stone, should they be unfortunate enough to gaze upon her. For the digital age, there’s something similar. Check out the Bitcoin remix of Rebecca Black’s ‘ Friday ,’ from cryptocurrency comedy songwriters (that’s a thing, apparently) Crypto Finally .

At least, I think I’ve turned stone. I’ve barely moved since I heard it. Like a Windows 95 computer trying to open a 100MB PDF file, I’m completely frozen, desperately trying to process what I just heard.

Was it real? Am I hallucinating? Did I snort some ketamine and touch the void? Is the bridge to the chorus really “ They don’t take cryptocurrency. They should take cryptocurrency. Excuse me sir; what currency will you take? ”

Should you want to sing along at home, Crypto Finally helpfully left the lyrics in the video bio.

When the cryptocurrency bubble eventually reaches zero, I hope the repo men take Crypto Finally’s microphones.

Australian bank used blockchain to ship 17,000 kilos of almonds to Germany

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced it has successfully completed a new blockchain-powered trade experiment at a global scale, as spotted by CoinDesk .

The bank confirmed it tracked a batch of 17,000 kilograms (approximately 37,000 pounds) of almonds using a private blockchain built on the Ethereum network.

The use of blockchain allowed the shipment to be tracked from its source, in Sunraysia in Victoria, Australia, all the way to its delivery in Hamburg, Germany. According to the announcement, CBA partners could check in on the location, temperature, humidity, and other metrics of the shipment at any point in real-time, regardless of where it was.

“Our blockchain-enabled global trade platform experiment brought to life the idea of a modern global supply chain that is agile, efficient and transparent,” CBA exec Chris Scougall said. “We believe that blockchain can help our partners reduce the burden of administration on their businesses and enable them to deliver best-in-class services to their customers.”

In 2016, CBA, Wells Fargo and Brighann Cotton successfully completed the first interbank transaction which made use of blockchain and smart contracts alongside the Internet of Things. With the CBA’s continued focus in technological development and continued investment in blockchain, it’s likely that we’ll see them develop further use cases in future.

How that blockchain future will look like remains to be seen, but with the successful tracking of almonds – as mundane as that may sound – the technology is one step closer to real-world use cases.

Despite calling the experiment a success, CBA has yet to roll out the technology for the rest of the world to use. But judging by this latest pilot, we might not be all that far away from that point.

CBA claims that participating nodes were placed at numerous strategic points across the supply chain, but it stopped short of explaining precisely how the nodes operate – or what would happen if one were to fail. But the concerns don’t end here. Factoring in that the system runs on Ethereum, it remains unclear how costly it is to log tracking data in the system, given that a transaction must be made for each instance of communication.

This news comes only a couple of weeks after the Bank of England announced that it would be exploring the use of blockchain, and distributed ledger technology in attempts to rejuvenate their Real-Time Gross Settlement system (RTGS). Clearly, the affordances offered by the tech are not going unnoticed by the world’s largest banks.

Cardano talks blockchain innovation with Mongolian government

Cardano is not quite done introducing blockchain technology to developing countries. Founder Charles Hoskinson revealed he recently visited Mongolia to discuss ways to use the technology to innovate the country’s government and business sectors.

Hoskinson, who was part of the original Ethereum founding team, took to Twitter to share a photo of his meeting with Mongolian minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar.

Unfortunately, he refrained from sharing any specific details of the meeting – other than confirming the pair chatted about “business,” “blockchain,” and “innovation.”

Go figure.

So cute – bonding over a cup of tea!

Cardano has devoted a significant chunk of its time towards building blockchain pilots for the world’s poorest nations.

Back in May, the company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Technology. If it pans out, the agreement will see Cardano train a new generation of blockchain developers in Ethiopia.

Hoskinson previously revealed the first group of Ethiopian blockchain devs is expected to graduate by the end of the year. The hope is that they’ll end up actively contributing to Cardano’s code.

It is yet to be seen how much of an improvement Cardano’s tech can bring to developing countries. While there are tons of companies seeking to use blockchain to innovate, not every attempt so far has been a success.