What’s next for digital collectibles?
Summer might be coming to an end, but the crypto and NFT season surely isn’t!
During last week’s podcast, Eddie, Mark and I were talking about how many NFT projects were emerging and stealing the spotlight.
This week’s protagonists in the NFT and Crypto space are definitely OpenSea that reached the $3 billion mark of transaction volume on Ethereum and Terra’s LUNA Token — I thought Cardano was going to be this month’s key protagonist, but little did I know LUNA would skyrocket up to 265% in the last month.
Meanwhile, Washington lawmakers are still trying to kill the enthusiasm: remember when we talked about the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill bound to pass?
Last Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, announced her commitment to have the bill passed by the end of September 2021.
So, how would this Bill affect the BTC mining industry?
It should be primarily brokers that should be concerned about this bill passing through, but the fact is, that the bill has an ambiguous language when it comes to defining who a ‘broker’ actually is:
“Any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person.”
This being said, miners are definitely not brokers, however they do receive Bitcoin as compensation for providing this computation service…which would automatically include them in this category.
It’s also important to note, that if this bill were to pass, it would be simply impossible for miners to respect the law:
The bill would require mining companies to provide the same information that a broker is required to provide, such as taxable net gain or loss, identity of the buyers/sellers as well as the amount and location of the transaction. This would be impossible, as miners only validate blocks, and are not able collect user information due to the nature of decentralization.
Currently, the U.S. crypto mining industry is increasing exponentially, but if this bill passes, and requires miners to respect this law, we could be seeing a massive crypto miner exodus, similar to what we have witnessed in China a few months back.
The end of September will be decisive for the US economy…In a good or bad way? Let’s just hope they make some changes by then…
But if on one hand we’ve got some detractors, on the other side we’ve got some huge promoters of this industry!
Visa just released a whitepaper focusing on NFTs as a medium for fan engagement in the Crypto and Commerce spaces.
And speaking of perfect timing, this whitepaper was released alongside the announcement of their first ever NFT purchase — CryptoPunk 7610 — for $150,000.
The reasons behind this purchase? Probably some good old FOMO we all know so well.
To this question, Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa answered: “We want to have a seat at the table as the crypto economy evolves.”
The NFT industry captured Visa’s attention during the pandemic, when most entertainment sectors found themselves forced to shut down. And that’s exactly where the value lies: NFTs have created a whole new way for fans to be part of a community and engage with their favorite sports players/artists but not only — it is a great opportunity to diversify revenue and capture business growth opportunities.
Back in January, CEO Al Kelly had reaffirmed his commitment to crypto payments & fiat on-ramps, so this is just one of Visa’s first steps in its long term vision to support the digital asset class.
Book Club with Izzy
We’ve been talking a lot about DeFi and our investments lately, so in this week’s edition of Book Club with Izzy I’d love to suggest a book to you that gives you some useful hacks:
Here’s the cool part – this is the version for beginners, or those simply looking to review their knowledge, but there is also an advanced version available.
I have started off with the beginner one, and must say that it is the best guide when it comes to learning from scratch about the DeFi world, and especially on how to invest.
The book starts off with a comprehensive explanation of the differences between Centralized and Decentralized Finance, to then jump into the layers of Defi.
But my favorite part about this book is the fact that it includes clear, step-by-step visual examples in each chapter, extremely useful when it comes to setting up your wallet for the first time. I’m not an expert yet, but definitely expect me to read the advanced version soon to give you some insight on that version as well.
Let’s DeFi!!
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