Eureka (Intergovernmental Network)

European Innovation Council

European Innovation Council

As of December 12, 2022, one of the main crypto firms in the US (FTX) went bankrupt as its founder and former CEO was accused of multiple fraud charges involving the company. It is considered one of the largest financial crimes in American history as the founder, Bankman-Fried, designed a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme to take advantage of US and global investors and customers, making them lose billions of dollars. Consequently, in a matter of a few days, the company’s valuation dropped from $32 billion to bankruptcy. This news has shaken the crypto market and, therefore, has led it to lose billions in value (it has dropped below $1 trillion). It has also become even more volatile. FTX’s collapse is expected to impact cryptocurrencies in the near future, however, VCs are still willing to keep investing in crypto and more crypto funds are being launched. But why is that?

Society has changed a lot in the last 100 years. While it used to be normal that a woman could neither study nor run a company, now it is normal that women have the same job opportunities as men. That’s the theory at least. In practice, even if the situation has greatly improved in most countries, progress still needs to be made. And in today’s world, where new trends and beliefs are born every day, society does not limit to men and women anymore, but is expanding beyond the traditional genres. For example, the LGBT community is adding letters to their initials as the group becomes bigger and bigger. And given that genre inclusion and gender equality are currently trending topics, debates and controversies around the matter do not cease to appear in regard to business.

There has been some uncertainty around the EIC calls for 2023, however, on December 7, 2022 the European Innovation Council finally announced the 2023 Work Programme, with funding opportunities totaling €1.6 billion (including the budget for the EIC Accelerator, the EIC Pathfinder and the EIC Transition) to help disruptive innovations scale up and create new markets.