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When Jack Dorsey revealed that he would be stepping down as CEO of Twitter on Monday, everyone was taken aback. The long-time CEO of the firm he created had led it to new heights, making it one of the social media behemoths. However, it appeared that his tenure was coming to an end when he announced his resignation and that software developer Parag Agrawal would take over.

The reason for Dorsey’s decision has sparked discussion in the cryptocurrency community. Many speculated that the ex-CEO, who has been highly involved in the crypto area, would stepping down as CEO of Twitter to focus more on his other crypto-focused projects, including Bitcoin. According to Square’s most recent release, this has proven to be the case.

Square Inc., like Square Crypto, has changed its name to Block. On Wednesday, a press statement announced the name change. This was done to distinguish the corporate body from its other operations. With the name change, there will be no organizational adjustments. Square Inc. (now Block) will continue to function as usual, as will all of the brands that fall under its umbrella.

Dorsey, who just departed Twitter, appears to have assumed sole responsibility as CEO of Block. Dorsey stated in the statement, “We established the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs.” Block has a new name, but our goal of economic empowerment hasn’t changed. We will continue to design tools to assist broaden access to the economy, regardless of how we grow or evolve.”

Square Crypto has announced that it would be completely rebranded. The company’s name was changed from Square Crypto, which has become a well-known name in the crypto field, to Spiral as part of this rebranding. The firm noted in the release that the redesign was long overdue, adding that “Square Crypto was never the appropriate name for our team.”

The name change was made in an effort to remove the direct link between the firm and its corporate patron. This will allow Spiral to stand independently without being constantly identified with its corporate sponsor.

The process of selecting a name turned out to be considerably easy than most. Aside from the fact that “it looked and sounded the coolest,” there was no deeper purpose behind the name, in addition to the blue spiral being the company’s preferred emoji from the start.

As the year draws to a close, businesses have begun to make preparations for the following year. The year 2022 will be a year of expansion for Spiral, as it will be working on a variety of initiatives in the new year. Spiral (previously Square Crypto) intends to quadruple the number of full-time developers in the coming year to accomplish this.

The Lightning Development Kit (LDK), the Bitcoin Development Kit (BDK), the grant program, and the Bitcoin Design Guide and Community are among the initiatives on which the developers will be working. Spiral’s purpose has always been to attach the Lightning Network to anything as simple as possible, and these initiatives help achieve that goal.

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American movie theatre chain Regal Cinemas has partnered with payments network Flexa to bring instant and risk-free cryptocurrency payments for moviegoers around the world.

By using the Flexa network, Regal can accept cryptocurrency payments due to its “guaranteed settlement, flexible integration options and fraud-proof architecture”, which is backed and collateralised by the network’s native token, AMP.

Through the partnership with Flexa, Regal is enabling instant payments using an array of leading cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE); stablecoins such as USD Coin (USDC) and Dai (DAI) and other altcoins such as Chainlink (LINK), Cosmos (ATOM) and Basic Attention Token (BAT).

Flexa is also working closely with Regal to enable better payments for “as many different assets and across as many different protocols” as possible, including the Lightning Network for faster Bitcoin payments.

Regal Cinemas – a subsidiary of the UK-based Cineworld Group – is one of the largest theatre chains in the US, boasting 7,000 screens across more than 500 theatres nationwide. According to the cinema chain, patrons visiting movie theatres can “easily pay for movie tickets, popcorn, and more using a wide variety of digital currencies” on an instant basis and “with zero risk of fraud”.

It added that by introducing and adopting digital currencies for payment in its theatres, it can offer “more convenience and choice for movie-goers than ever before”. Regal also revealed that patrons paying with Flexa-enabled apps will soon have the option to link their Regal loyalty account for “special rewards”.

Ken Thewes, Chief Marketing Officer at Regal, said that Regal remains committed to making itself ‘The Best Place to Watch a Movie’, and expanded further on the partnership with Flexa.

“As more of our customers demand digital asset solutions and safer payment methods, we are grateful to have found a partner in Flexa, a company that is revolutionising digital payments with cutting-edge software and an innovative business platform,” he said.“This exciting partnership enables us to easily and seamlessly accept digital currencies–including Dogecoin, stablecoins and Bitcoin –across our theatre footprint in a simple and completely contactless way, providing our guests with the flexibility and safety they deserve as we embark on a new era.”

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.

Patreon CEO and co-founder Jack Conte and Chief Product Officer Julian Gutman spoke on a panel at The Information’s 2021 Creator Economy Summit yesterday, where they were asked about the membership platform’s plans for crypto.

“There’s clearly enormous innovation happening in the crypto and NFT space,” Gutman said. “Obviously there’s the art market and precious goods market that we’re seeing, with crazy pricing, evolve. It’s unclear if that is sustainable across the entire creator economy, but there’s some fundamental technological components to NFTs as a way to sell value to your audience and sort of continue to gain value from that from secondary sales as what you do becomes more and more important to the world.”

Last month, Patreon floated the idea of creator coins to its creator community in advance of a quarterly Creator Policy Engagement Program livestream, which allows creators to weigh in on platform policy changes. But the concept was proposed alongside a more pressing crisis related to Mastercard’s new standards for adult content, which prevented the company from engaging in a more in-depth conversation with creators about the topic.

“We’re right now not talking about creating any type of initial coin offering, which is specifically not allowed under Patreon’s current guidelines,” Laurent Crenshaw, Patreon’s head of Policy, had said on the Patreon Connect livestream. “But we’ve heard from a number of creators who have been interested in the opportunity to offer exclusive memberships and benefits to their patrons through a coin or token, a digital item that they can hold onto that shows that they are part of your fan club. And so we thought that at the very least, we could explore the opportunity of making that type of offering allowable under our guidelines.”

While Patreon allows creators to share personal investment stories or advice, its guidelines currently prohibit coins for the purpose of the direct financial benefit for a creator or patron, coins offered as part of an investment scheme, or any explicit incentives to purchase or obtain cryptocurrency. But if creators were to express interest in offering creator coins, Patreon would consider changing these policies.

A creator coin is a kind of crypto-based social currency — companies like BitClout, Roll and Rally have worked on creating individual tokens, which essentially allow fans to invest in creators’ success. So, if you buy a creator’s token early, and then they become a superstar, you reap benefits too.

“One thing that I think Patreon has always been committed to at its core is making sure that we’re creating a sustainable, long-term path for creators, right? It’s not just a burst of monetization,” Gutman said at The Information’s summit. “So I think we’re certainly interested in evaluating and understanding how NFTs or some of the underlying technologies help us create that sustainable long-term earnings for creators. But I think when it comes to the hype around sales of individual assets and what not… not that we wouldn’t offer that if we felt it was really valuable to creators, as part of the broader portfolio of what they can offer… but I think for us, really thinking through how we’re continuing to ensure we’re creating a sustainable recurring future for creators is why we’re evaluating the crypto space more broadly.”

Some crypto initiatives are focused on offering more ownership to creators over their work — for instance, an artist will continue to earn royalties on an NFT every time it is sold, while the same usually isn’t true for more conventional fine artists.

“What I will say about crypto and NFTs in general is I really love the idea of creators owning their media and owning their content. I love the idea of creators having leverage and control. I love the idea of creators owning their audience data instead of platforms. I love the idea of a lot of this underlying infrastructure empowering creators for independence. I love the idea of shifting power away from institutions and toward individual creative people,” Conte said during yesterday’s event. “I think that’s what a lot of this technology is getting at, and what I think is really deeply exciting about it.”

Still, many creators winced at the idea of Patreon adding the ability for creators to dabble in crypto when it was proposed last month, mostly due to the environmental cost.

“The idea of adding crypto worries me, because the reputation of crypto in artist communities is absolutely destroyed, even if it is beneficial at face value. I worry I would lose patrons due to them not agreeing with Patreon’s use of adding crypto to the platform,” a creator wrote in a public chat on the livestream.

The Information’s Laura Mandaro, who moderated the panel, asked Conte if Patreon has any full-time employees working on crypto.

“No comment is what I will say about that, but we’re thinking about it,” Conte said.

Photo Credit: Pexels/ Rodanne Productions

NFTs are digital collectibles that can be bought, sold, and traded in cryptocurrencies

Highlights Companies taking a pro-crypto approach is on the rise Patreon may allow patrons to reward creators in crypto Patreon is trying to incorporate crypto culture in everyday work

Patreon is currently evaluating ways to reward content creators using cryptocurrencies as well as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Jack Conte, the CEO and co-founder of Patreon, as well as the company's Chief Product Officer Julian Gutman, elaborated on their interest in the crypto space while speaking at the The Information's 2021 Creator Economy Summit on November 7. The company based out of San Francisco, US, provides a platform for people to reward their favourite content creators with donations and presents.

“There's clearly enormous innovation happening in the crypto and NFT space. It's unclear if that is sustainable across the entire creator economy, but there's some fundamental technological components to NFTs as a way to sell value to your audience and sort of continue to gain value from that from secondary sales,” Gutman said during the event. NFTs are virtual collectibles that can be bought using cryptocurrencies.

The CEO further said that he believes that NFTs can pave a long time earnings path for content creators.

FBI Issues Public Warning About Increasing Crypto Scams in US

Like Walmart and AMC Theatres, Patreon has also seemingly decided to take a ride on the cryptocurrency wagon.

For now, the company is contemplating the launch of a digital token – Patreon has now allowed creators on its platform to provide tokens or creator cash, as a membership benefit for patrons.

“We're right now not talking about creating any type of initial coin offering, which is specifically not allowed under Patreon's current guidelines,” Laurent Crenshaw, Head of Policy, Patreon had said earlier this year. "But we've heard from a number of creators who have been interested in the opportunity to offer exclusive memberships and benefits to their patrons through a coin or token, a digital item that they can hold onto that shows that they are part of your fan club. We could explore the opportunity of making that type of offering allowable under our guidelines."

The company is considering to allow creators issue their individual coins – each token locked with a fixed value, that could be bought by their followers.

BitClout, Roll and Rally are among other companies that are working on such “creator coins” to allow followers to financially support content creators.

The creator coins could also benefit the followers, especially if the artist they have purchased the coin of becomes an overnight success, making those coins more valuable.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on Twitter, Facebook, and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Patreon, content creators, creator coins, cryptocurrency, NFTs Radhika Parashar Email Radhika Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More Pegasus Scandal: Israeli Government Distances Itself From Blacklisted NSO Group WhatsApp Said to Be Working on New Community Feature, Will Allow to ‘Group Other Groups Easily’ Related Stories OnlyFans: Doomed by Its Own Porn Ban? 25 Aug 2021 Internet

Cardano’s price jumped by 134.85% in a month, from US$1.32 on August 1st to US$2.32 on September 2, 2021, when the token achieved numerous milestones. It hit a new high of US$3.10, which is a new all-time high. Due to the stock price collapse of Chinese real-estate giant Evergrande, there has been a negative crypto market mood in the past two weeks of September. However, October will be a significant month for the new currency that is at the heart of the peer-reviewed blockchain technology that seeks to tackle real-world problems.Litecoin (LTC)

When crypto whales began to pour more money into the different altcoins, the price of the Litecoin currency, called the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, surged by 60.6117% in one month, from August 1 (US$144.51) to September 6 (US$232.10). LTC has been one of the cryptocurrencies struck hard by economic news from Asia, as well as a lack of trust in keeping digital tokens, in the final two weeks of September. Because of its low pricing, Litecoin might still be considered a low-barrier-to-entry cryptocurrency for traders and investors. The third quarter of 2021 concludes in September, while the fourth and final quarter begins in October.

After its introduction in 2019, Solana (SOL) went from being one of the projects labeled as an Ethereum Killer to becoming a top 10 digital asset globally. Solana took advantage of institutional demand for cryptocurrencies along with the desire of inexperienced traders and investors to end the pandemic year at US$1.51 after launching on April 10, 2020. On September 9, 2021, SOL achieved an all-time high of US$214.96. This made SOL one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies in 2021. Year-to-date, SOL has returned an amazing 14,135.8%. Solana is one of the cryptocurrencies that might ignite your investment portfolio with fresh advancements in its ecosystem.

The EOSIO ecosystem’s new coin is called EOS. EOS is a transactional currency that developers must utilize to create decentralized applications and access resources inside the ecosystem. This helps to explain why the token is still used in hundreds of transactions every day. EOS is one of the most widely traded cryptocurrencies. In September, the daily trading volume of the digital coin averaged US$1 billion.

In 2021, AAVE was one of the rare crypto tokens that returned more than 600 percent to investors. The innovative token (AAVE) has averaged US$200 million in daily trading volume as one of the most well-known decentralized lending services in the sector (Aave). This is significantly higher than other DeFi tokens’ volumes. In the near run, purchasing AAVE in October may result in a return of at least 125%.

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Regal, a subsidiary of Cineworld Group and the operator of one of the largest and most geographically diverse theatre circuits in the United States, announced today that it has partnered with Flexa, a crypto payments network, to offer patrons the ability to pay with cryptocurrency.

Now, across its entire footprint of nearly 7,000 screens in more than 500 theatres, Regal is helping customers to easily pay for movie tickets, popcorn, and more using a wide variety of cryptocurrencies — from bitcoin and ether to dogecoin and Dai.

Through its partnership with Flexa, Regal is enabling payments using dozens of cryptocurrencies such as:

Cryptocurrencies including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), and dogecoin (DOGE);Digital dollars and stablecoins including USD Coin (USDC), Dai (DAI), and Gemini dollar (GUSD); andTokens including LINK, ATOM, Basic Attention Token (BAT), plus more.

Flexa is working to help Regal facilitate the acceptance of different assets, across many different protocols (including the Lightning Network). Also in the works, when paying at Regal with Flexa-enabled apps, guests will soon have the option to link their Regal Crown Club loyalty account for special rewards.

“Flexa is committed to helping merchants enable easier, faster, and safer payment options for their customers, and that’s just one of the reasons we’re incredibly proud to work with Regal, whose dedication to creating an enjoyable and widely accessible cinematic experience for their loyal patrons is second to none.” – Trevor Filter, Co-Founder of Flexa

Source:flexa.networkRelated NewsCrypto PaymentsInComm Payments connects with Flexa to allow its merchants to accept crypto 07/07/2021Crypto PaymentsRewards now live on retail crypto payments network Flexa 12/17/2019LitecoinCrypto payment network for U.S. retailers Flexa adds Litecoin (LTC) 07/04/2019Vendor TechnologyFlexa goes live with cryptocurrency payment network and mobile app 05/13/2019 Load More Leave Comment Where to Exchange Leading Spanish Bitcoin ExchangeVisit Recommended Exchange for XRP TradesVisit European Bitcoin ExchangeVisitExchange & Buy 150+ CryptocurrenciesVisit America's First Regulated Bitcoin ExchangeVisitDecentralized VPN network Mysterium set to launch mainnet on Ethereum and Polygon 11/18/2021Crypto.com launches new OTC trading trading portal for large orders 11/22/2021Crypto payment platform CoinGate integrates Shiba (SHIB) token 11/18/2021Flexa app adds Regal to offer cryptocurrency payments for movies & more 11/23/2021Kaiko launches decentralized exchange (DEX) trade data feed 11/23/2021Flexa app adds Regal to offer cryptocurrency payments for movies & more 11/23/2021Marex integrates Coinbase Prime to broaden crypto derivatives capabilities 11/23/2021Crypto exchange Bit2Me to store assets with custody solution of Prosegur Crypto 11/23/2021

Photo Credit: Pexels/ Rodanne Productions

NFTs are digital collectibles that can be bought, sold, and traded in cryptocurrencies

Highlights Companies taking a pro-crypto approach is on the rise Patreon may allow patrons to reward creators in crypto Patreon is trying to incorporate crypto culture in everyday work

Patreon is currently evaluating ways to reward content creators using cryptocurrencies as well as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Jack Conte, the CEO and co-founder of Patreon, as well as the company's Chief Product Officer Julian Gutman, elaborated on their interest in the crypto space while speaking at the The Information's 2021 Creator Economy Summit on November 7. The company based out of San Francisco, US, provides a platform for people to reward their favourite content creators with donations and presents.

“There's clearly enormous innovation happening in the crypto and NFT space. It's unclear if that is sustainable across the entire creator economy, but there's some fundamental technological components to NFTs as a way to sell value to your audience and sort of continue to gain value from that from secondary sales,” Gutman said during the event. NFTs are virtual collectibles that can be bought using cryptocurrencies.

The CEO further said that he believes that NFTs can pave a long time earnings path for content creators.

FBI Issues Public Warning About Increasing Crypto Scams in US

Like Walmart and AMC Theatres, Patreon has also seemingly decided to take a ride on the cryptocurrency wagon.

For now, the company is contemplating the launch of a digital token – Patreon has now allowed creators on its platform to provide tokens or creator cash, as a membership benefit for patrons.

“We're right now not talking about creating any type of initial coin offering, which is specifically not allowed under Patreon's current guidelines,” Laurent Crenshaw, Head of Policy, Patreon had said earlier this year. "But we've heard from a number of creators who have been interested in the opportunity to offer exclusive memberships and benefits to their patrons through a coin or token, a digital item that they can hold onto that shows that they are part of your fan club. We could explore the opportunity of making that type of offering allowable under our guidelines."

The company is considering to allow creators issue their individual coins – each token locked with a fixed value, that could be bought by their followers.

BitClout, Roll and Rally are among other companies that are working on such “creator coins” to allow followers to financially support content creators.

The creator coins could also benefit the followers, especially if the artist they have purchased the coin of becomes an overnight success, making those coins more valuable.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on Twitter, Facebook, and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Patreon, content creators, creator coins, cryptocurrency, NFTs Radhika Parashar Email Radhika Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More Pegasus Scandal: Israeli Government Distances Itself From Blacklisted NSO Group WhatsApp Said to Be Working on New Community Feature, Will Allow to ‘Group Other Groups Easily’ Related Stories OnlyFans: Doomed by Its Own Porn Ban? 25 Aug 2021 Internet Patreon Evaluating Ways to Reward Content Creators With Digital Tokens, NFTs Comment Share on Facebook Tweet Snapchat Share Reddit Email Comment

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Patreon – a US platform that allows fans to directly reward their favorite content creators with donations and gifts – has recently launched ‘Social Tokens’ and is evaluating how cryptocurrency and NFTs could be used to pay creators. 

The topics were discussed at a recent tech event attended by the platform’s chiefs, whilst social tokens or ‘Creator Coins’ – a type of crypto-based social currency that allows fans to invest in their idols’ success – were recently announced on Patreon’s site.

The fan membership site is the latest in a long line of companies to explore cryptocurrency options, from banks to social media sites, with some offering the ability to purchase cryptocurrency through their services whilst others have created a currency themselves. 

Why Patreon is Considering Crypto and NFTs

Patreon CEO Jack Conte and Chief Product Officer Julian Gutman took questions from the crowd at The Information’s Creator Economy Summit last week, an event that also featured talks from representatives at YouTube, VSCO, and Pinterest. 

This gave them the opportunity to speak candidly on whether the platform had considered permitting the use of cryptocurrencies and NFTs – a tradeable digital ‘souvenir’ verified by blockchain technology – as a means of payment.

“There’s clearly enormous innovation happening in the crypto and NFT  space…Obviously, there’s the art market and precious goods market that we’re seeing, with crazy pricing, evolve” – Julian Gutman, Chief Product Officer, Patreon.

Gutman continued “there’s some fundamental technological components to NFTs as a way to sell value to your audience and sort of continue to gain value from that from secondary sales as what you do becomes more and more important to the world”.

The Chief Product Officer was careful to qualify his enthusiasm by clarifying that Patreon was simply ‘evaluating’ how NFTs or similar technologies could be used to create “sustainable long-term earnings for creators”.

Creator Coins Have Arrived

Creator Coins, a type of crypto-based social currency that appreciates in value the more famous a given creator gets – gained traction this year. Creator Coins effectively allow fans to bet on (or invest in) the success of creators, rather than currencies themselves, and their coins will appreciate in value the more famous an influencer becomes. 

The topic was discussed in September’s Creator Policy Engagement Livestream, a quarterly event Patreon hosts to give creators the opportunity to vocalize their thoughts on platform changes.

Laurent Crenshaw, Patreon’s policy chief, said in the livestream that the company’s decision to evaluate this new method of payment sprung out of influencers showing interest in some sort of coin or asset that their fans could purchase, but that “We’re right now not talking about creating any type of initial coin offering”.  

Indeed, Patreon’s Benefit Guidelines currently state that “Patreon was not designed to launch an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) or create an investment scheme”, and that platform users cannot offer “Coins as part of a benefit or making your patrons an investor.”

However, a recent post on Patreon’s Benefits & Tiers page seems to confirm a change of heart. It explains that ‘Social Tokens’ or ‘Creator Coins’ can be offered by creators: 

“As of October 2021, creators on Patreon can offer tokens or creator coins, as a membership benefit for their patrons” – Patreon

However, the page also states that “Patreon is not the developer, issuer, or distributor of the coins, and cannot change the supply of the coins” and advises creators interested in creating a coin for themselves to explore third-party that exist to issue them. It also confirms that cryptocurrency is still not available as a means of donating to or paying creators. 

Were Creator Coins Inevitable?

The eerily dystopian idea of a coin with a value tracked against an individual’s fame feels like something you'd find inside an episode of Black Mirror. 

But it’s actually pretty unsurprising this sort of idea – as well as things like NFTs – have followed on so directly from the crypto boom. Millions of people under the age of thirty spent large chunks of their childhood trading various types of digital items with fluctuating values – from FIFA cards to Habbo Hotel furniture – both in-game and on forums and market pages. 

With Social Tokens seemingly up and running, where Patreon’s foray into the digital currency space will end remains to be seen – but it’s unlikely we’ll see the option for crypto payments any time soon. However, plenty of other businesses have adopted crypto-currency, and with mainstream payment portals and point of sales applications making it easier than ever to accept the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, we wouldn't rule it our entirely.

Regal, a subsidiary of Cineworld Group and the operator of one of the largest and most geographically diverse theatre circuits in the United States, announced today that it has partnered with Flexa, a crypto payments network, to offer patrons the ability to pay with cryptocurrency.

Now, across its entire footprint of nearly 7,000 screens in more than 500 theatres, Regal is helping customers to easily pay for movie tickets, popcorn, and more using a wide variety of cryptocurrencies — from bitcoin and ether to dogecoin and Dai.

Through its partnership with Flexa, Regal is enabling payments using dozens of cryptocurrencies such as:

Cryptocurrencies including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), and dogecoin (DOGE);Digital dollars and stablecoins including USD Coin (USDC), Dai (DAI), and Gemini dollar (GUSD); andTokens including LINK, ATOM, Basic Attention Token (BAT), plus more.

Flexa is working to help Regal facilitate the acceptance of different assets, across many different protocols (including the Lightning Network). Also in the works, when paying at Regal with Flexa-enabled apps, guests will soon have the option to link their Regal Crown Club loyalty account for special rewards.

“Flexa is committed to helping merchants enable easier, faster, and safer payment options for their customers, and that’s just one of the reasons we’re incredibly proud to work with Regal, whose dedication to creating an enjoyable and widely accessible cinematic experience for their loyal patrons is second to none.” – Trevor Filter, Co-Founder of Flexa

Source:flexa.networkRelated NewsCrypto PaymentsInComm Payments connects with Flexa to allow its merchants to accept crypto 07/07/2021Crypto PaymentsRewards now live on retail crypto payments network Flexa 12/17/2019LitecoinCrypto payment network for U.S. retailers Flexa adds Litecoin (LTC) 07/04/2019Vendor TechnologyFlexa goes live with cryptocurrency payment network and mobile app 05/13/2019 Load More Leave Comment Where to Exchange Leading Spanish Bitcoin ExchangeVisit Recommended Exchange for XRP TradesVisit European Bitcoin ExchangeVisitExchange & Buy 150+ CryptocurrenciesVisit America's First Regulated Bitcoin ExchangeVisitCrypto.com launches new OTC trading trading portal for large orders 11/22/2021Decentralized VPN network Mysterium set to launch mainnet on Ethereum and Polygon 11/18/2021Lydia app leverages BitPanda white label solution to provide its users access to crypto 11/22/2021Crypto exchange Bit2Me to store assets with custody solution of Prosegur Crypto 11/23/2021Tatum’s C# SDK is now live to quickly build blockchain apps for 40+ protocols 11/26/2021Animoca and Hex Trust form JV to offer GameFi crypto wallet service 11/25/2021Crypto exchange Bitfinex adds FIX gateway connectivity 11/25/2021Crypto wallet Exodus integrates sports betting with SportX 11/24/2021

This week, Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH), Bitcoin Cash (CRYPTO:BCH), and Litecoin (CRYPTO:LTC) each saw impressive gains. These tokens appreciated between 20% and 47% at their intraday weekly highs. Indeed, in the crypto world, such moves aren't necessarily surprising. However, the common catalyst driving these three cryptocurrencies higher may be worth looking at.

The catalyst in question happens to be a key announcement from AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC). The theater chain announced in September that the company would soon accept these three cryptocurrencies at theaters across the country. 

Image source: GETTY IMAGES.

However, via a tweet on Thursday, AMC CEO Adam Aron pointed out that these three cryptocurrencies are available right now for settling payments at AMC theaters.

Unsurprisingly, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin all popped on the news.

So what

Currently, the option for patrons to pay for tickets and other AMC-related purchases in cryptocurrency is only available online. However, according to initial data from AMC's CEO, 14% of all online transactions took the form of crypto since the announcement.

This is certainly a big deal for crypto enthusiasts betting on wider adoption among these core cryptocurrencies. As more data rolls in with regards to the scale of crypto usage for online purchases, investors may be able to put a more accurate value on the network effects and what utility such cryptocurrencies actually have for real-world commercial applications.

Now what

This recent high-profile adoption of cryptocurrency for online payments by a large corporation is a positive signal for crypto bulls. This goes double for those heavily invested in Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, or Ethereum.

As real-world use cases continue to emerge and adoption becomes more widespread, the potential for continued capital flows into the crypto sector increases. Investors in these three top cryptocurrencies appear to like the network effects created by this week's announcement. Accordingly, these three cryptocurrencies are likely to be on watch again in the coming weeks.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the “official” recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. We’re motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

Patrons of restaurants including Bubba Gump Shrimp, Morton's The Steakhouse, and the Rainforest Cafe will soon have the option to earn bitcoin every time they buy a steak – or a beer.

Restaurant giant Landry's is partnering up with crypto custody firm NYDIG to power a bitcoin loyalty rewards program at its 500 locations nationwide. Diners earn a point for every dollar spent, with 250 points translating to a reward of $25 worth of bitcoin.

Bitcoin touched a new all-time high of over $68,500 late Monday and is up nearly 350% from a year ago.

"Many Americans don't own bitcoin yet, because they haven't been comfortable going to an exchange and creating an account or they're not sure about investing their money," said Patrick Sells, Chief Innovation Officer at NYDIG.

"And now they're able to just say, 'Hey, let me get exposure by dining at a restaurant that I love, or trying a restaurant maybe I haven't been to,'" continued Sells.

Landry's tells CNBC it's hoping to go live with the new bitcoin program before Thanksgiving. It will be available to the 3.2 million members of Landry's loyalty program – Landry's Select Club.

"This is a wonderful way to play without really putting anything at risk," said Trey Zeluff, Director of Digital Asset Strategy at Landry's.

Zeluff says the program is designed in part to help customers "gain comfort with the volatility" of bitcoin by watching their points grow and fall in purchasing power.

"With our legacy point system, their value was static, and in the context of inflation, they could even depreciate," continued Zeluff.

Landry's is also making a personal bet on bitcoin.

The company plans to hold a portion of its treasury reserves in bitcoin through NYDIG, though the company wouldn't share how much it plans to invest.

Landry's CEO and Chairman Tilman Fertitta, who also owns the Houston Rockets, has been bullish on bitcoin for a while. His NBA team takes bitcoin among other cryptocurrencies at its official online store, and Fertitta's luxury car dealership in Houston which sells Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Bugattis has accepted the digital coin since 2018.

"It's amazing how simple the transaction is, and it is here to stay. This is where it is, and it's inevitable that this was going to happen," Fertitta previously told CNBC.

Fertitta also offers bitcoin-backed loans for those who don't want to liquidate their crypto stake, in order to buy a car.

People choosing to transact in any cryptocurrency should exercise caution, according to accountants.

The Internal Revenue Service treats virtual currencies like bitcoin as property, meaning that spending bitcoin is considered the same as selling it.

"The one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that whenever you spend cryptocurrencies to buy a cup of coffee, or any type of consumer item, that triggers a capital gains event," said Shehan Chandrasekera, a CPA and head of tax strategy at CoinTracker.io, a digital currency tax software company that helps clients track their crypto across virtual wallet addresses and manage their corresponding tax obligations.

There's always a difference between how much you paid for the cryptocurrency, which is the cost basis, and the market value at the time you spend it. That difference can trigger income capital gains taxes, in addition to the other taxes you have to pay, such as sales tax.

VIDEO2:0302:03NYC Mayor-elect Eric Adams vows to take his first three paychecks in bitcoinThe News with Shepard Smith

Patrons of restaurants including Bubba Gump Shrimp, Morton's The Steakhouse, and the Rainforest Cafe will soon have the option to earn bitcoin every time they buy a steak – or a beer.

Restaurant giant Landry's is partnering up with crypto custody firm NYDIG to power a bitcoin loyalty rewards program at its 500 locations nationwide. Diners earn a point for every dollar spent, with 250 points translating to a reward of $25 worth of bitcoin.

Bitcoin touched a new all-time high of over $68,500 late Monday and is up nearly 350% from a year ago.

"Many Americans don't own bitcoin yet, because they haven't been comfortable going to an exchange and creating an account or they're not sure about investing their money," said Patrick Sells, Chief Innovation Officer at NYDIG.

"And now they're able to just say, 'Hey, let me get exposure by dining at a restaurant that I love, or trying a restaurant maybe I haven't been to,'" continued Sells.

Landry's tells CNBC it's hoping to go live with the new bitcoin program before Thanksgiving. It will be available to the 3.2 million members of Landry's loyalty program – Landry's Select Club.

"This is a wonderful way to play without really putting anything at risk," said Trey Zeluff, Director of Digital Asset Strategy at Landry's.

Zeluff says the program is designed in part to help customers "gain comfort with the volatility" of bitcoin by watching their points grow and fall in purchasing power.

"With our legacy point system, their value was static, and in the context of inflation, they could even depreciate," continued Zeluff.

Landry's is also making a personal bet on bitcoin.

The company plans to hold a portion of its treasury reserves in bitcoin through NYDIG, though the company wouldn't share how much it plans to invest.

Landry's CEO and Chairman Tilman Fertitta, who also owns the Houston Rockets, has been bullish on bitcoin for a while. His NBA team takes bitcoin among other cryptocurrencies at its official online store, and Fertitta's luxury car dealership in Houston which sells Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Bugattis has accepted the digital coin since 2018.

"It's amazing how simple the transaction is, and it is here to stay. This is where it is, and it's inevitable that this was going to happen," Fertitta previously told CNBC.

Fertitta also offers bitcoin-backed loans for those who don't want to liquidate their crypto stake, in order to buy a car.

People choosing to transact in any cryptocurrency should exercise caution, according to accountants.

The Internal Revenue Service treats virtual currencies like bitcoin as property, meaning that spending bitcoin is considered the same as selling it.

"The one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that whenever you spend cryptocurrencies to buy a cup of coffee, or any type of consumer item, that triggers a capital gains event," said Shehan Chandrasekera, a CPA and head of tax strategy at CoinTracker.io, a digital currency tax software company that helps clients track their crypto across virtual wallet addresses and manage their corresponding tax obligations.

There's always a difference between how much you paid for the cryptocurrency, which is the cost basis, and the market value at the time you spend it. That difference can trigger income capital gains taxes, in addition to the other taxes you have to pay, such as sales tax.

VIDEO2:0302:03NYC Mayor-elect Eric Adams vows to take his first three paychecks in bitcoinThe News with Shepard Smith

Patrons of restaurants including Bubba Gump Shrimp, Morton's The Steakhouse, and the Rainforest Cafe will soon have the option to earn bitcoin every time they buy a steak – or a beer.

Restaurant giant Landry's is partnering up with crypto custody firm NYDIG to power a bitcoin loyalty rewards program at its 500 locations nationwide. Diners earn a point for every dollar spent, with 250 points translating to a reward of $25 worth of bitcoin.

Bitcoin touched a new all-time high of over $68,500 late Monday and is up nearly 350% from a year ago.

"Many Americans don't own bitcoin yet, because they haven't been comfortable going to an exchange and creating an account or they're not sure about investing their money," said Patrick Sells, Chief Innovation Officer at NYDIG.

"And now they're able to just say, 'Hey, let me get exposure by dining at a restaurant that I love, or trying a restaurant maybe I haven't been to,'" continued Sells.

Landry's tells CNBC it's hoping to go live with the new bitcoin program before Thanksgiving. It will be available to the 3.2 million members of Landry's loyalty program – Landry's Select Club.

"This is a wonderful way to play without really putting anything at risk," said Trey Zeluff, Director of Digital Asset Strategy at Landry's.

Zeluff says the program is designed in part to help customers "gain comfort with the volatility" of bitcoin by watching their points grow and fall in purchasing power.

"With our legacy point system, their value was static, and in the context of inflation, they could even depreciate," continued Zeluff.

Landry's is also making a personal bet on bitcoin.

The company plans to hold a portion of its treasury reserves in bitcoin through NYDIG, though the company wouldn't share how much it plans to invest.

Landry's CEO and Chairman Tilman Fertitta, who also owns the Houston Rockets, has been bullish on bitcoin for a while. His NBA team takes bitcoin among other cryptocurrencies at its official online store, and Fertitta's luxury car dealership in Houston which sells Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Bugattis has accepted the digital coin since 2018.

"It's amazing how simple the transaction is, and it is here to stay. This is where it is, and it's inevitable that this was going to happen," Fertitta previously told CNBC.

Fertitta also offers bitcoin-backed loans for those who don't want to liquidate their crypto stake, in order to buy a car.

People choosing to transact in any cryptocurrency should exercise caution, according to accountants.

The Internal Revenue Service treats virtual currencies like bitcoin as property, meaning that spending bitcoin is considered the same as selling it.

"The one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that whenever you spend cryptocurrencies to buy a cup of coffee, or any type of consumer item, that triggers a capital gains event," said Shehan Chandrasekera, a CPA and head of tax strategy at CoinTracker.io, a digital currency tax software company that helps clients track their crypto across virtual wallet addresses and manage their corresponding tax obligations.

There's always a difference between how much you paid for the cryptocurrency, which is the cost basis, and the market value at the time you spend it. That difference can trigger income capital gains taxes, in addition to the other taxes you have to pay, such as sales tax.

VIDEO2:0302:03NYC Mayor-elect Eric Adams vows to take his first three paychecks in bitcoinThe News with Shepard Smith

From 15-21 November Lugano Living Lab, the digital innovation laboratory of the City of Lugano, promotes an unprecedented exhibition that explores the fascinating world of NFT and Crypto Art with an exhibition, events and dedicated workshops. An unmissable opportunity to look into this new sector of digital art, discover protagonists, languages, application fields and try to understand it strong> “Bitcoin Has No Intrinsic Value”. Then What Gives Bitcoin Value?

Lugano is increasingly a Blockchain & Crypto-Friendly City. After the launch at the end of 2020 of the MyLugano app, the LVGA Points citizen payment token and the recent creation of 3Achain, the institutional blockchain promoted by the city, this time it is the turn of the NFTs with a review between art and technology entirely dedicated to the understanding of this emerging and extremely topical phenomenon.

Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) are a cryptographic system that allows you to provide proof of authenticity and ownership. Applied in the field of digital art, they make it possible to certify the uniqueness and scarcity of a work, which as digital is easily replicable or reproducible, but which is, so to speak, made rare by its registration in the Blockchain. NFT is therefore not the work or even an artistic phenomenon, but the corresponding certification registered on the blockchain.

It is an epochal paradigm shift that opens up new and interesting scenarios for the art market and that among its merits has had that of unleashing enormous creative potential by providing a dimension to artistic languages, expressions and grammars hitherto marginalized by the system of traditional art, thanks to a strong push from below.

The exhibition promoted by Lugano Living Lab, the digital and technological innovation laboratory of the city of Lugano, will be held from 15-21 November at Villa Ciani with exhibitions, events and workshops dedicated to understanding this phenomenon.

On the ground floor of Villa Ciani there will be the exhibition entitled “The Future is Unwritten”, curated by Ivan Quaroni and Linda Tommasi. In this context, a selection of works chosen from the hundreds that make up the collection of the Poseidon Group, one of the largest and most conspicuous in Europe, will be proposed. Among these, patrons will be able to admire the works of internationally renowned artists who have played a key role in the explosion of the phenomenon of Crypto Art such as Beeple, XCOPY, Hackatao and Dangiuz, Federico Clapis, Skygolpe, Fabio Giampietro, Raphael Lacoste, Giovanni Motta , Andre Chiampo together with two specimens of the famous Cryptopunks from Larva Labs. Alongside this exceptional team, the curators have selected a core of young artists or newcomers in the NFT universe, such as Niro Perrone, Nicola Caredda, Giuseppe Veneziano, Adriana Glaviano and Giò Roman, for the quality and originality of their works.

Recommended AI News: ZF Accelerates Digital Transformation Of Its Products And Processes Worldwide Via Microsoft Cloud

The first floor of Villa Ciani will instead be dedicated to Gaming enthusiasts with an exhibition of digital and collectible works. Visitors will thus be able to discover NFTs developed by Lugano-based companies, including Crypto Heroes, a game based on NFTs and the NFT Gaming protocol by Noku, the online 3D entertainment platform The Nemesis by UNDO Studios, which combines the technology of worlds virtual to gaming and gamification, as well as NFT of products from the world of luxury and jewels, real “passports” of authenticity and ownership, made by Luxochain.io.

It will also be possible to see the NFTs of Axie Infinity, the most famous NFT blockchain game in the world, as well as Cryptogene and Scriblet Clubhouse with Shifty Shepherds designed by Juliet Duplessie developed by Sortium, three projects to which Pangea, a fund specialized in investments in blockchain projects with offices in Lugano participated with investments in seed capital. Finally, for sports enthusiasts it will be possible to admire the NFTs of Topps, a multinational leader in the field of sports collectibles for years.

On the first floor there will also be a station where the digital subjects of the first Crypto Stamp of the Swiss Post (a physical stamp associated with NFT digital representations) developed by the Post and which will be launched on November 25th will be previewed.

Within the exhibition, throughout the week, it will also be possible to participate in the creation of the first NFT citizen of Lugano by taking part in the creation of a collective artistic work. This first “NFT Luganese” will then be created in a limited series and a numbered copy will be sent to all those who have contributed to its creation.

The exhibition will be inaugurated on Wednesday 15 November starting at 17:00 and will be accessible free of charge until 21 November, during the week from 11: 00-18: 30 and during the weekend from 09: 00-18: 30.

As part of the Lugano Living Lab exhibition, it proposes a Talk entitled “The NFT World” in which experts from the business and academic world will explore various application fields of the tool and a workshop “Create your NFT” to allow anyone who wishes to create their first NFT in a few simple steps. For info and reservations

The Mayor of the city of Lugano, Michele Foletti, declares:

“We have always followed the development of new technologies very closely and we have identified blockchain as a topic of great interest for both multinational and local companies, citizens and businesses. We believe that a city must be at the service of citizens and with these initiatives we intend to place Lugano as a top-level player on the international scene, for all applications related to this technology “.

Robert Bregy, Secretary-General of the City of Lugano:

The financial sector has always had a very close link with technology which has strengthened especially in this last period. In particular, since bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have become a concrete reality, we have discovered and learned about the potential of blockchain technology in many different sectors. And, from our privileged vantage point, it seemed right to us to chart the path of innovation in this direction and build a system that can support businesses and citizens, and become a pole of attraction at an international level.

Davide Baldi, CEO of Luxochain – interviewed following the announcement, comments: “we are honored to have contributed to the realization of this initiative, which contributes to the city plan to make Lugano a reference center of blockchain technology on the international scene”.

Read More About AI News : NSAV Announces Launch of Virtuabroker’s Blockchain Launchpad Platform, for Premium Projects on Binance Smart Chain

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This past weekend, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced plans for the world’s first “Bitcoin City.” The municipality will be set up like a tax haven for wealthy crypto investors – no income, property, capital gains or payroll taxes, only a 10% value-added tax (VAT) – and pay for its keep partially by net-zero, volcano-powered bitcoin mining. Construction will be financed primarily by a $1 billion bitcoin bond issued on Blockstream’s Liquid network, a Bitcoin sidechain. Here’s how that may play out.

Bd. Buenos dias. A stream of sunlight filters in from the eastern window in the luxury co-op that I’ve taken up residence in. The building, like many others in “Bitcoin City,” which is situated on the Gulf of Fonseca at the southeastern tip of El Salvador, erupts from the ground like a lightning bolt – a jagged architecture in reference to one of the city’s primary benefactors, Jack Mallers’ Zap. There’s a remote control to lower the shades, but the batteries died ages ago and they’re hard to replace. Bitcoin is a battery, they said.

This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk’s daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here.

Today is the dedication ceremony of the Chapel of Jimmy Song, named for the bitcoin educator and patron saint of cowboy hats. It’s a modern church that towers above Satoshi Square, the central-most point of the city. From its bell tower, it’s said, you can make out the shadow of Solana Seastead, an experimental techno-kingdom floating 21 miles off the coast. We’re at war.

Announced at the height of 2021′s “supercycle,” Bitcoin City is now half the age of the eponymous Bitcoin network. It’s the first and most developed crypto city, which isn’t saying much. Construction has been scattershot and slow going – more of a result of the competing interests of the municipality’s primary backers than of its unique financing. But we’re learning on the fly. The bitcoin bond, immediately graded “junk,” actually paid for itself – early investors are still getting a coupon payment.

See also: Are El Salvador’s Bitcoin ‘Volcano Bonds’ an End Run Around the IMF? | The Breakdown

What to build? Where to build it? An overriding commitment to the ideals of decentralization and self-sovereignty, and a lack of faith in the local government’s ability to allocate resources effectively, meant it was up for markets to decide. But finding consensus over the use of scarce resources is hard when the rules aren’t hard-coded. There’s plenty of money, but limited space and no zoning laws.

Sure, there was a general architectural plan – a giant “b” bisects the city – but each building is a fiefdom of its own. People like it that way. Bukele’s government spent the proceeds of the $1 billion bitcoin bond to buy land and finance a conjoined, geothermal bitcoin mining facility and power station, but then the city mostly “decentralized itself out of existence.” That is, except for the state-run pet hospitals (it’s fine to throw the “Trojan horse” ruler a carrot).

Promised residential areas, shopping centers, restaurants, “everything built around bitcoin,” we live with what the market provides. Some things are prioritized. Housing is either high-end or tiny, stacked hexagonal pods. There’s a McCafe on every block. It’s probably easier to buy a second passport than groceries. When the digital economy is paramount, and the population mostly globe-trotters, not many businesses can remain going concerns.

Walking down the main thoroughfare of Bitcoin Boulevard, you’ll see holograms of Alexander the Great, Tony Robbins and Adam Back. There are a lot of figures who contributed to the city’s founding. A virtual projection of Bukele flickers outside City Hall, a neoclassical building cut out of orange and black stone. You can scan a QR code, deposit a satoshi or two, and he’ll tip his signature white baseball cap. Thanks for investing in the future.

See also: The Future of Bitcoin: 12 Scenarios From Bullish to Bearish

The whole idea of bringing in institutional dollars was shut down after Moody’s downgraded the country. The only firms willing to buy distressed sovereign debt were the true believers – but as Blockstream’s Samson Mow said onstage at the “Feel the Bit” conference in 2021 – there are plenty of whales. But they all want a return on their tax-free investments.

Although Bukele said, “Bitcoin City is committed to free and equal access to everything,” in practice that’s a little less true. Ideological libertarians may be willing to build a public library, but they’re less committed to public health care. The transient population, the limited VAT taxes actually collected and the lack of buyers for Salvadoran sovereign debt mean the country is living under austerity.

I may sound pessimistic, but that’s only because you’re still living with the fiat mindset. A truly fair economic system recognizes that inflation is the greatest sin, that taxation is theft and that governments are hedonistic machines with a monopoly on violence. An economy based on scarce money makes sense for a world with limited resources, contrary to the last century of American hegemony.

The startup cities that have been founded over the past odd decade present a new way for organizing the world. They treat citizens as customers, and what customers really want is a tax haven. It’s game theoretical, it’s inevitable, it’s as sure as the sun will set in the West.

LUGANO, Switzerland, Nov. 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- From 15-21 November Lugano Living Lab, the digital innovation laboratory of the City of Lugano, promotes an unprecedented exhibition that explores the fascinating world of NFT and Crypto Art with an exhibition, events and dedicated workshops. An unmissable opportunity to look into this new sector of digital art, discover protagonists, languages, application fields and try to understand it better.

Lugano is increasingly a Blockchain & Crypto-Friendly City. After the launch at the end of 2020 of the MyLugano app, the LVGA Points citizen payment token and the recent creation of 3Achain, the institutional blockchain promoted by the city, this time it is the turn of the NFTs with a review between art and technology entirely dedicated to the understanding of this emerging and extremely topical phenomenon.

Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) are a cryptographic system that allows you to provide proof of authenticity and ownership. Applied in the field of digital art, they make it possible to certify the uniqueness and scarcity of a work, which as digital is easily replicable or reproducible, but which is, so to speak, made rare by its registration in the Blockchain. NFT is therefore not the work or even an artistic phenomenon, but the corresponding certification registered on the blockchain.

It is an epochal paradigm shift that opens up new and interesting scenarios for the art market and that among its merits has had that of unleashing enormous creative potential by providing a dimension to artistic languages, expressions and grammars hitherto marginalized by the system of traditional art, thanks to a strong push from below.

The exhibition promoted by Lugano Living Lab, the digital and technological innovation laboratory of the city of Lugano, will be held from 15-21 November at Villa Ciani with exhibitions, events and workshops dedicated to understanding this phenomenon.

On the ground floor of Villa Ciani there will be the exhibition entitled "The Future is Unwritten", curated by Ivan Quaroni and Linda Tommasi. In this context, a selection of works chosen from the hundreds that make up the collection of the Poseidon Group, one of the largest and most conspicuous in Europe, will be proposed. Among these, patrons will be able to admire the works of internationally renowned artists who have played a key role in the explosion of the phenomenon of Crypto Art such as Beeple, XCOPY, Hackatao and Dangiuz, Federico Clapis, Skygolpe, Fabio Giampietro, Raphael Lacoste, Giovanni Motta , Andre Chiampo together with two specimens of the famous Cryptopunks from Larva Labs. Alongside this exceptional team, the curators have selected a core of young artists or newcomers in the NFT universe, such as Niro Perrone, Nicola Caredda, Giuseppe Veneziano, Adriana Glaviano and Giò Roman, for the quality and originality of their works.

The first floor of Villa Ciani will instead be dedicated to Gaming enthusiasts with an exhibition of digital and collectible works. Visitors will thus be able to discover NFTs developed by Lugano-based companies, including Crypto Heroes, a game based on NFTs and the NFT Gaming protocol by Noku, the online 3D entertainment platform The Nemesis by UNDO Studios, which combines the technology of worlds virtual to gaming and gamification, as well as NFT of products from the world of luxury and jewels, real "passports" of authenticity and ownership, made by Luxochain.io.

It will also be possible to see the NFTs of Axie Infinity, the most famous NFT blockchain game in the world, as well as Cryptogene and Scriblet Clubhouse with Shifty Shepherds designed by Juliet Duplessie developed by Sortium, three projects to which Pangea, a fund specialized in investments in blockchain projects with offices in Lugano participated with investments in seed capital. Finally, for sports enthusiasts it will be possible to admire the NFTs of Topps, a multinational leader in the field of sports collectibles for years.

On the first floor there will also be a station where the digital subjects of the first Crypto Stamp of the Swiss Post (a physical stamp associated with NFT digital representations) developed by the Post and which will be launched on November 25th will be previewed (find out more at address https://crypto-stamp.post.ch/).

Within the exhibition, throughout the week, it will also be possible to participate in the creation of the first NFT citizen of Lugano by taking part in the creation of a collective artistic work. This first "NFT Luganese" will then be created in a limited series and a numbered copy will be sent to all those who have contributed to its creation.

The exhibition will be inaugurated on Wednesday 15 November starting at 17:00 and will be accessible free of charge until 21 November, during the week from 11: 00-18: 30 and during the weekend from 09: 00-18: 30.

As part of the Lugano Living Lab exhibition, it proposes a Talk entitled "The NFT World" in which experts from the business and academic world will explore various application fields of the tool and a workshop "Create your NFT" to allow anyone who wishes to create their first NFT in a few simple steps. For info and reservations visit the website https://my.lugano.ch/it/eventi.

The Mayor of the city of Lugano, Michele Foletti, declares:

"We have always followed the development of new technologies very closely and we have identified blockchain as a topic of great interest for both multinational and local companies, citizens and businesses. We believe that a city must be at the service of citizens and with these initiatives we intend to place Lugano as a top-level player on the international scene, for all applications related to this technology ".

Robert Bregy, Secretary-General of the City of Lugano:

The financial sector has always had a very close link with technology which has strengthened especially in this last period. In particular, since bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have become a concrete reality, we have discovered and learned about the potential of blockchain technology in many different sectors. And, from our privileged vantage point, it seemed right to us to chart the path of innovation in this direction and build a system that can support businesses and citizens, and become a pole of attraction at an international level.

Davide Baldi, CEO of Luxochain - interviewed following the announcement, comments: "we are honored to have contributed to the realization of this initiative, which contributes to the city plan to make Lugano a reference center of blockchain technology on the international scene".

Media contacts Davide Baldi [email protected] +41 78 659 60 51

SOURCE Luxochain SA

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With modern occasions pointing toward a possible trade within the Bitcoin consensus policies, it is essential to remind customers that, now more than ever, there are multiple benefits to walking a full Bitcoin node. It is helpful that customers run the well-known Bitcoin middle consumer, as there can be positive dangers to walking a good deal less notable clients like Bitcoin limitless. A Few days ago, a malicious program changed into and exploited the unlimited Bitcoin client, which led a massive part of BU nodes to move offline.

The hassle turned into constant, and the BU node relies on it to think about recovering. Some other worms became additionally located within the BU client some weeks inside the beyond, giving rise to the Bitcoin.Com reservoir to mine an ineffective block of more than 1 MB. Hiking a Bitcoin inner node can be the most closed intention in centrist of those contemporary sports. crypto exchanges here is the luck that can bring you to the easiest way of investing money. Not unusual, more significant Bitcoin nodes translate correctly into a quicker, extra strong, and more decentralized community.

On foot, your complete private node is the most straightforward manner to have full control and ensure that every one of the guidelines of Bitcoin gets accompanied. Nodes do this with the aid of rejecting blocks and transactions that don’t examine the consensus guidelines and via leaving connections from pals that deliver them (or to many of them). Nodes are more critical than hash electricity as they confirm that the blockchain follows the guidelines. Even with the longest evidence-of-paintings chain, nodes will decide if said chain follows the rules and whether or not or no longer it is customary or disregarded.

You are walking any form of Bitcoin pockets that do not require you to run a whole node manner. It would be best to place an excellent diploma of belief in the issuer company, some element that shouldn’t be vital with Bitcoin. A web-primarily based pockets for you to take into account the applicable node via which your transactions get broadcast, or even lightweight clients like Electrum require that you consider their servers.

In the feasible occasion of a hard fork wherein both blocks, chains live lively with economic activity on each facet, like Ethereum. Ethereum traditional, jogging a full node is the first-class manner you may validate the brand new or vintage blockchain guidelines, consistent with your choice. On foot, a full node of the customer you assist is also an indirect vote casting, which suggests to miners what rule the clients overwhelmingly said.

The use of centralized, lightweight, or perhaps SPV pockets will by no means be as private as running a complete node since you depend upon zero.33-birthday celebration servers to broadcast your transactions for you, the one’s servers will be aware of which addresses belong to you. These are airlines wallets and lightweight clients. SPV nodes that depend on bloom filters leak massive statistics about the lessons of Bitcoin customers.

To less than tech-savvy customers, jogging a complete node can also look like a challenge. However, flying a Bitcoin centre entire node is more significant than downloading the cutting-edge Bitcoin middle patron version and strolling it. The Bitcoin blockchain is over 100GB in the period, so it could take some time to synchronize your node first of all. However, the middle’s current release is v0.14.Zero improves validation pace and community propagation overall performance, leading to shorter sync and preliminary block download times.

Walking a node could require you to preserve your computer on always – or at the least for most people of the day. Even as you can generally turn your node on and stale at will with this selection, it isn’t a very sensible one. Some customers have also resorted to website hosting nodes on some distance less annoying machines than pc structures. This individual, for instance, is walking a full Bitcoin node on his Raspberry pi3 by pruning the blockchain (deleting pointless facts about transactions that get indeed spent).

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DoinGud, an NFT ecosystem focused on inspiring creativity and positive social impact, launched its full platform featuring NFT artists from H+ Creative, a women led boutique creative studio that represents a tight-knit roster of top-tier, diverse international artists.

The platform also welcomed the top charity in America United Way, an international network of more than 1,800 local nonprofit fundraising affiliates, as another in-network beneficiary. Following the NFT market’s record breaking $10.7 billion in sales last quarter, DoinGud hopes its platform will incentivize more projects to donate and align with charitable or social causes for more positive impact. 

“We are just scratching the surface on NFTs’ potential to empower communities, nonprofits and social causes,” said Manu Alzuru, DoinGud founder. “The art world is experiencing a huge shift with digital creations. Creatives are quitting their jobs and building communities full time thanks to the rapid growth of the NFT market and DAOs. Now, those same creatives are looking to align their mission with positive social outreach. Through DoinGud, leading artists are delegating large portions of their proceeds to amazing organizations that are generating positive social impact.” 

The platform was launched this week in celebration of Giving Tuesday, the day after Cyber Monday and Black Friday weekend, which is regarded as the world’s largest day of generosity. It was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Over the past nine years, this idea has grown into a global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people and has turned into a global movement centering around giving, collaborating, and celebrating generosity. Last year, patrons donated more than $2.7 billion to U.S. nonprofits. The current NFT boom has given rise to a new way for people to donate to nonprofits and do good for the planet. 

DoinGud incentivizes creators to donate a portion of their proceeds on every sale and streamlines the process with all donations being transparent and on-chain. Not only can creators choose to allocate up to 100% of their initial sale to humanitarian efforts; they can also allocate a percentage of royalties from each secondary market sale to fund charitable causes in perpetuity. Creators also benefit from 0% minting and platform fees. The DoinGud platform itself is environmentally conscious by utilizing “lazy-minting” where NFTs are only minted once they are purchased. 

“United Way is helping more people rebuild their lives better and stronger after the economic fallout of COVID-19 and other crises,” said Edwin Goutier, Vice President of Innovation for United Way Worldwide. “Giving to United Way through DoinGud means those who are in need will get the help they need, including food, shelter and access to essential mental health services. Our community is strongest when we’re United and we are grateful to DoinGud for providing a modern platform for uniting the community.”

TagsCharityDoinGudGiving TuesdayNFTFacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsAppPrevious articleDirector of Information Technology at BitGo (United States)Next articleSenior Fullstack Developer at DRW (Montreal)StaffStaff Writer posting jobs, articles and collaborative content.RELATED ARTICLESCryptocurrencies Estonia is Latest Country to Allow Citizens to Buy and Trade CryptoWieke Beenen - 5 Estonia is now the latest country to adopt Bitcoin as their largest bank, LHV, allows customers to buy and trade crypto. Starting from next...Read moreNews Peru Joins Forces with India, Singapore and Hong Kong to Develop CBCDWieke Beenen - 47 The president of Peru’s central bank, Julio Velarde, has indicated that the country will be joining forces with India, Singapore, and Hong Kong to...Read moreNews New Cambridge-built Decentralized Carbon Credit Marketplace will Support Reforestation to Meet Glasgow Climate GoalWieke Beenen - 46 Now that the climate top in Glasgow has been wrapped up, and world leaders all flew home to their respective countries, we are kind...Read more28 Comments

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Ian Khan is a futurist who expects that blockchain, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things will merge together to create an entirely new type of world. 

He’s the inventor of the Future Readiness Score, the author of eight books and the chairperson of the Money 20/20 fintech conference.

His first film, Blockchain City, is far from an underground production. The 42-minute film, which is available on Youtube and Amazon Prime, is a businessy, optimistic and somewhat sanitized take on the industry. It focuses decisively on piercing the nebulous concept of “blockchain technology” while largely dodging the sometimes controversial phenomenon of cryptocurrency, promoting blockchain as an efficient tracking mechanism furthering the interests of “the establishment.”

Khan’s positioning in the industry is therefore very much in contrast to the cypherpunk movement — the old guard of the blockchain revolution.

These original torchbearers of the industry were not eager to see the technology used to improve governance systems but to circumvent and effectively overthrow them by turning their outdated systems and processes against them. Such an imagined technological overthrow is, however, unlikely to succeed with the likes of Khan advising governments on how to prevent disruption by way of future readiness.

At a fundamental level, Khan considers blockchain-based systems as “a way to do things in a better way.” The main reasons for this are the efficiency benefits derived from a network that confirms its own accuracy, and the trust that no unauthorized user has been able to manipulate records. 

Notably, he does not give central praise to commonly lauded themes like decentralization [away from governments] or the perceived benefits of online anonymity. Instead, he emphasizes how blockchains can be used by governments to better secure private information and prevent things like identity theft.

500 years of basic accounting principles are going to be disrupted. Are you ready? Learn more from @IanKhanFuturist and his presentation from ACI Learning’s 2021 Audit’s Future virtual conference. Watch the full session on demand. https://t.co/jSHgj9xJVE pic.twitter.com/Dvy4hOMpCN

— ACI Learning (@ACI_Learning) August 8, 2021

When it comes to “the last 100 years off, how we’ve been doing business,” for Khan, blockchain is “something that does things better in 1,000 different ways.” On the part of improving government processes, “the efficiency part will come up as a result of the exchange of data between government entities — incredible government services will happen as a result of that.”

Back to the Futuracy

This talk of efficiency and the future does not come from a vacuum, as Khan runs a Toronto-based company future-readiness business called Futuracy, which he describes as “an emerging technology educator” that has worked with corporations and governments around the world. The prolific author is also a key figure in the Dubai GITEX technology conference — such a key figure, that he was serving as the stage manager as I arrived to deliver a keynote on the history of the blockchain movement at the event in mid-October. While I was looking to the past, his head was (and is) firmly in the future.

The firm creates a Future Readiness Strategy for each client. These strategies are tailored based on the answers to 200 questions put to the clients which are designed to reveal weak systems and processes which may be disrupted by advancing technology. Depending on the scale of the organization, minor weaknesses can have outsize impacts.

“If there’s an inefficiency in government, common people will suffer,” he explains, noting the need for future-readiness analysis in preventing disruptions to important functions such as medical care and education — both of which have been impacted by the pandemic.

Meet Dmitry: Co-founder of Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin November 16, 2021 6 Questions for Anton Bukov of 1inch Network November 14, 2021 Crypto kids fight Facebook for the soul of the Metaverse November 11, 2021 6 Questions for Daniela Barbosa of Hyperledger November 7, 2021 MetaMask founder Joel Dietz is a true Renaissance man November 5, 2021

Khan is also looking at other phenomena that promises to shape the future of his clients, namely the Future of Work and Artificial Intelligence The Next Frontier, both of them also titles of his two upcoming films. For him, ideas such as digitization, the Internet of Things, blockchain and artificial intelligence are not standalone innovations. Instead, they are connected and it is only a matter of time until they combine and integrate to form an entirely new tomorrow for the way governments, companies and institutions function. 

“It’s very easy to paint the picture where we can talk about the world that is powered by AI that has blockchain in it,” Khan mentions casually as if the idea is in no way terrifying. It’s about efficiency, as AI-blockchain integration will be “saving lots of time, energy and effort,” and information will be less likely to be stolen, according to Khan.

Thoughts from the future

Much of Khan’s recent work has been in Dubai, a city he says “is always trying to do things in a different way.” An early patron of the blockchain movement, “Dubai was one of the first countries with a blockchain strategy at the government level,” Khan says.

Khan believes that the best way for governments, large companies and institutions to ease into the blockchain age is for them to provide all employees with an understanding of the technology “whether they are decision makers or not,” because if an organization is to survive in a changing environment, it has to “become a learning entity.” 

My take on The past year and Future Readiness. #futurereadiness #future #change #win #success #strategy pic.twitter.com/JpZs7bixYk

— Ian Khan Futurist (@IanKhanFuturist) August 23, 2021

The effective way to learn about new paradigm-shifting technologies like blockchain, according to Khan, is to start with examples of successful technical implementation with the goal to “massively simplify the understanding of these big giant buzzwords, so that people can relate” to what the technology is actually capable of and useful for. In practice, this could mean investing in education courses — perhaps beginning with watching his film. 

Despite his emphasis on learning the basics, Khan concedes there is no need for everyone to have more than a surface-level knowledge. After all, blockchains are horribly complex, but the way we interact with them could be made a lot simpler. Just as not all car users need to understand exactly how a combustion or electric engine works, in the future it will be the “blockchain that is taking care of things underneath the hood,” he says.

“Everybody needs to be at the basic minimum level of understanding of technology — it doesn’t matter if they don’t work in the same department. I think education of basic technology concepts and the value it creates is important.”

Another way in which organizations, especially governments, can harness the benefits of blockchain is to open up the ideation process by giving as much creative freedom to their people as possible, in order “to come up with ideas that can really change the way they do things.”

On this virtue, Khan gives special praise to Estonia, a small European country of only 1.3 million, where he says “there’s a lot of freedom to express” one’s ideas to the highest levels of decision making. As a small country with a huge emphasis on technology, as evidenced by the eResidency program making it easy for digital nomads to operate businesses from the country, Estonia has forged a reputation as a digital hub.

Meet Dmitry: Co-founder of Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin November 16, 2021 6 Questions for Anton Bukov of 1inch Network November 14, 2021 Crypto kids fight Facebook for the soul of the Metaverse November 11, 2021 6 Questions for Daniela Barbosa of Hyperledger November 7, 2021 MetaMask founder Joel Dietz is a true Renaissance man November 5, 2021

The third way, Khan says, is for organizations to continuously run small experiments and pilot projects “that prove a point,” even if there is no obvious short-term benefit or return on investment. As a prime example, Khan brings up Zug, a Swiss city of 30,000 which in 2016, adopted Bitcoin as an option for paying city permits. Due to the success of the experiment, Zug soon became known as “crypto valley” as blockchain companies from around the world opened offices there.

Kashmir to Canada

Instead of being a blockchain native, Khan is future-native. “I just love learning these things and understanding them and helping others understand them,” he proclaims.

He was born on the Indian side of Kashmir, a region whose other half lies in Pakistan. There, Khan recalls that he became interested in emerging technology at the age of six when he saw a computer at school. “It was a BBC Micro hooked on to a black and white screen that had Pac Man on, and my mind was completely blown,” he recalls.

He studied engineering at Kuvempu University in southern India between 1995 and 1999, obtaining a diploma in software at the same time. Soon after graduation, he moved to Bahrain where he worked in a sales and marketing role in the energy industry, while also working towards a diploma in journalism from the London School of Journalism which he received in 2003. In 2007, Khan moved to Canada, where he lives today.

In Canada, Khan tried his hand at a number of side hustles, upon which he founded Agnitio Solutions. He tried his hand at numerous projects and startups over four years, until “I got into the publishing industry and started a healthcare magazine,” he recalls. In his free time, he continued to study, earning a project management professional certificate from Humber College in 2009 and a certificate in public relations from the University of Toronto the following year.

Blockchain documentary

Khan had the idea to make a documentary about the blockchain revolution in 2018, around the time that he attended the first Future Blockchain Summit in Dubai, part of the larger GITEX technology convention for which Khan serves as Smart Cities Conference Chair. He saw that, in addition to blockchain being incredibly confusing to most people, “there’s lots of hype around it and there’s lots of misinformation around it,” he notes.

“The story needs to be told that clarifies things, brings some light to the situation and helps business decision makers, governments leaders and individuals understand this technology better”

Blockchain City – The Future of Cities Driven by Blockchain tells a “story of cities around the world and their shift towards being technologically powered through Blockchain.” In the 2019 film, he interviews representatives of various governments who speak on the wonders of blockchain technology and the opportunities it holds for making societal functions more efficient. 

In line with his mantra of teaching from real-life cases, blockchain use cases that were brought up include preventing over-fishing and child trafficking. These examples of the next level of the digitization of governance infrastructure can help global institutions “join hands and take the next steps together.”

While Blockchain Cities largely avoids cryptocurrency, he has made a separate documentary titled The Bitcoin Dilemma on that subject. It is technologically agnostic and neutral of any politics or ideology, which is known to permeate the cryptocurrency industry.

I recently spoke to the BBC about the International Monetary Funds (IMF) upcoming Global Financial stability report and its recommendations on Crypto. Also discussed was my new documentary film "Bitcoin Dilemma", El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption, and the ou…https://t.co/lBCKK5e6vV

— Ian Khan Futurist (@IanKhanFuturist) October 1, 2021

Meet Dmitry: Co-founder of Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin November 16, 2021 6 Questions for Anton Bukov of 1inch Network November 14, 2021 Crypto kids fight Facebook for the soul of the Metaverse November 11, 2021 6 Questions for Daniela Barbosa of Hyperledger November 7, 2021 MetaMask founder Joel Dietz is a true Renaissance man November 5, 2021

Tags: AIBlockchainblockchain citydocumentaryDubaiGITEXIan KhanMoney 20/20Youtube ShareTweetShareShareSend Elias Ahonen

Elias Ahonen is a Finnish-Canadian author who has lived and worked around the world while operating a small blockchain consultancy. His book ‘Blockland: 21 Stories of Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency’ tells the story of the crypto industry. He holds a degree in Political Science and is completing a Masters in International & Comparative Law. In summertime he can be found fishing from his wilderness cabin under the midnight sun.

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Digital art is a billion-dollar business, with everyone from Paris Hilton to Damien Hirst trading in ‘non-fungible tokens’. But are NFTs just a get-rich-quick scheme masquerading as culture?

Rosanna McLaughlinSat 6 Nov 2021 11.30 GMT

“It’s actually a lot simpler than you think.” It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and somewhat to my surprise, I’m on the phone to Paris Hilton, who is graciously explaining the world of NFTs.

Hilton is many things – a reality star, an heiress, an unlikely lockdown fitness guru who uses designer handbags instead of weights. But until now, she has never been considered a significant player in the art world. When artists have acknowledged her, often they’ve done so to fetishise her image. In 2008, Damien Hirst bought a portrait of her by the artist Jonathan Yeo, in which her body is constructed from collaged images cut from porn magazines.

Yet in the past year she’s become a surreal figurehead in the NFT scene: a world flush with crypto dollars and high on a promise to transform the worlds of art and commerce. When we speak, Hilton has just returned from a bitcoin conference in Miami, where customers paid up to $25,000 for VIP tables at the opening party to watch her DJ in a pair of diamanté-encrusted headphones. “NFT stands for non-fungible token, a digital token that is redeemable for a digital piece of art,” she explains. “You can have it on your computer server or your phone. I have these screens in my house where I display them.”

Sure enough, at Hilton’s Beverly Hills mansion there are screens displaying NFTs she made in collaboration with the digital artist Blake Kathryn. These include a video of a chihuahua on top of a rotating ionic column (a tribute to her deceased pet Tinkerbell) and an animated self-portrait of Hilton as a sparkling CGI Barbie floating in the clouds, a piece she’s called Iconic Crypto Queen, and which she sold in April for more than $1m.

Hilton first started investing in cryptocurrency in 2016. “I became friends with the founders of Ethereum,” she says. (Ethereum produces ether, the currency in which the majority of NFTs are traded.) Since then she’s thrown herself into collecting crypto art, and owns more than 150 NFTs.

To advocates of the NFT, the technology offers a revolutionary new way of selling art, and of circumventing snooty cultural gatekeepers whose resistance to a crypto future seems as square as the 19th-century Parisian art world’s disdain for impressionism. In this context, the relevance of Hilton’s brand to the NFT movement makes sense. Pink, jewel-encrusted, and openly motivated by being as rich and famous as humanly possible, she’s a far cry from the type of person whose work is typically exhibited in blue-chip galleries or hung in booths at art fairs.

Yet Hilton’s endorsement may also be ammunition for those who view the NFT as just another depressing example of the speculative logic of finance monopolising taste. To detractors, from critic Waldemar Januszczak to artist David Hockney, the NFT marketplace is a home for morally bankrupt, environmentally vandalistic money-grabbers whose creations barely qualify as art.

While most of us are still trying to remember what “fungible” means, a battle is under way to define how NFTs are understood. Are they a vital cultural product that tells us something profound about digital consumerism? Or are they just the latest cynical way to make absurd amounts of money?

A motley crew of celebrities have tried their hand at selling digital art, including Snoop Dogg, Lindsay Lohan and John Cleese. In July, it was estimated that sales of NFTs in the first half of 2021 rose by more than $2bn (£1.47bn) – a trend that prompted Christie’s and Sotheby’s to host their own NFT auctions and that is credited with driving contemporary art sales to an all-time high. But only a tiny proportion of the proceeds of art NFTs have ended up in the bank accounts of the galleries that have, in addition to auction houses, traditionally taken the lion’s share of art-market profits.

In March, the crypto firm Injective Protocol paid $95,000 for Morons, a physical artwork by Banksy depicting an auctioneer selling a framed picture bearing the words: “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit.” They then burned the picture before selling a digital token of the work for $380,000. The event was a marketing ploy, designed to stoke outrage, drum up publicity and turn a profit. Yet the symbolism was potent: digital art is here to replace its physical forebear, and its coming supremacy should be reflected by a higher price tag.

In essence, an NFT is a digital certificate of ownership, almost always bought and sold using cryptocurrency, to which any digital file – a jpeg image file, a video, a song – can be attached. That Hilton is able to display Iconic Crypto Queen in her home, despite having sold it, is part of the NFT’s appeal – and the challenge it poses to the established business model for trading and accessing art. With a simple Google search, anybody can find and download the file associated with an NFT for nothing, and store it on their phone or computer, but only the owner has the right to sell it. Each NFT is unique, and all transactions are logged on the blockchain, a type of database invented in 2008 for the purpose of recording the movement of cryptocurrency.

Unlike the commercial gallery business model, NFTs are designed to cut out the need for art dealers, enabling artists to trade directly online, typically via specialist auction sites. Crucially, in contrast to the contemporary art world, there is no “vetting” of collectors – a practice intended to stop the most speculative buyers flipping artworks by quickly reselling them at a profit. Anybody can buy an NFT, and prices, so often a thing of mystery in high-end commercial galleries, are listed as a matter of public record. Every time an NFT is resold, its creator also makes a profit – an inbuilt royalty system missing from the physical art world, where artists often feel as if they have been shafted when their work is resold on the secondary market.

A model for trading and sharing art, built on the principles of financial transparency, royalties and easy access for all may sound egalitarian. The reality has been rather different. As soon as it became apparent that almost anything digital could be labelled as art and sold, the circus rolled into town.

In March, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, a collage of previous artworks by a 40-year-old American named Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, sold for $69.3m at Christie’s New York. After that, Kate Moss sold a gif of herself for more than $17,000. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, sold an image of the first ever tweet for $2.9m. A Brooklyn film director managed to sell an audio file of his own farts for $85. Dominic Cummings even threatened to use the technology against Boris Johnson, by releasing what he said was evidence of government malpractice in the form of an NFT.

Along the way, the market became gratuitously inflated. Bidders at the top end included Vignesh Sundaresan, a blockchain entrepreneur who bought Beeple’s $69m NFT. A considerable number of small-time enthusiasts were also buying at the affordable end of the market, keen to celebrate the technology by investing in blockchain art. It didn’t take long before the bubble burst. By May, daily sales of NFTs had dropped by 60%. Crypto art’s reputation has also taken a knock because of its awful environmental track record. (The annual energy consumption of Ethereum is estimated to equal that of Iceland.)

Despite this, advocates still believe NFTs can mount a challenge to the monopoly on trading art held by commercial galleries, and even create a future where physical artworks are replaced by their digital counterparts. As Hilton puts it: “There are paintings out there that are $100m or more, but if you think about it, it’s really just canvas with paint.”

In the beginning, before the circus pitched up, there were nerds. Inevitably, because this is the internet, there were also cats. CryptoKitties, to be precise, is an online game launched in 2017, enabling players to trade and “breed” unique cartoon felines, sold as NFTs, using blockchain technology. Although the first NFT was created by a man named Kevin McCoy in 2014, CryptoKitties attracted attention and money, with some cats trading for hundreds of thousands of dollars. During 2020, as cryptocurrencies boomed and the pandemic accelerated our transformation into a species of screen-obsessed zombies, interest in NFTs rapidly picked up pace. As a consequence, the value of work by a relatively small number of artists already on the scene rocketed.

Among them was Trevor Jones, a 51-year-old painter who lives in Edinburgh. You’ve probably never heard of Jones, but he’s the most successful NFT artist working in the UK. He started making NFTs in 2019. “Five years ago, I was struggling to pay the mortgage,” he tells me. “I went from having to borrow money from friends to pay the bills to making $4m in a day.”

Jones has made a name for himself combining painting with digital technology, often producing pastiches of famous artworks with a crypto twist. In 2020, Bitcoin Bull – an animated painting of a Picasso-inspired bull, decorated with bitcoin logos and Twitter birds – was bought by a prominent crypto collector named Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile for $55,555.55.

Jones is warm, unguarded, and stunned by his rapid ascent. “I grew up in a little logging community,” he says of his childhood in western Canada, a place he describes as “rough”. “When I was 25, a friend of mine ended up getting into a fight at a bar and was killed.” He left soon after, eventually settling in Edinburgh, where he worked at the city’s Hard Rock Cafe as a waiter and later as a manager.

Jones tells me about the mental health crisis he suffered in his early 30s. “My girlfriend and I broke up and it kind of all came crashing down. At that point, it sounds cliched, but I decided I needed to find something to save me.”

He set his heart on becoming an artist and “begged” his way on to an art foundation course at Leith School of Art, which he followed with a degree at the University of Edinburgh.

Things began to look up for Jones in 2012, when he had the idea of incorporating QR codes into his art, painting the scannable barcodes in Mondrian-like colours on canvas. Scanning the paintings takes viewers through to an online gallery, where anybody can upload their work. “People were laughing at me at the time,” he says. While gallery audiences turned their noses up, he gained a new following online, one that would turn out to have deep pockets.

In 2019, Jones began working with animators to turn his paintings into short videos that he sold as NFTs. Among his most successful works is Bitcoin Angel, an NFT based on Bernini’s baroque masterpiece The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, which he sold in 2020 for the equivalent of more than $3m (all of Jones’s NFTs are bought using cryptocurrency). In Bernini’s marble sculpture, a nun has been stabbed in the heart by an angel with a spear. She leans backwards, overcome by the sublime ecstasy of being penetrated by a heavenly body. When the arrow pierces the heart of Jones’s nun, she bleeds bitcoin.

To sell Bitcoin Angel, Jones used a website called Nifty Gateway, one of a number of online auction sites designed for trading NFTs that are now flooded with aspiring crypto artists. I dedicated an afternoon to scrolling through the lots, each one flashing and jiggling in the hope of attracting the attention of collectors. I saw gifs of muffins transforming into dogs, spinning trainers, sycophantic portraits of Elon Musk and an abundance of naked, big-boobed cyborgs. The art critic Dean Kissick described the male-dominated NFT scene as “Etsy for guys”, and on this evidence it’s easy to see why. Aside from the headline-grabbing sales, Nifty Gateway provides a platform for aspirational entrepreneurs and hobbyists, who practise their craft on computers rather than knotting macrame plant hangers.

While those – like Jones – who successfully rode the NFT wave were busy counting their crypto dollars, over the past year the conventional art world has suffered a decline. During the pandemic, with audiences unable to physically attend exhibitions and fairs, art dealers have struggled to make online viewing rooms interesting or lucrative. As a consequence, global sales of art fell by 22%. To rub salt in that wound, millions of crypto dollars were exchanging hands for a natively digital art form. “The technology is designed against the existing art world,” says Noah Davis, a specialist at Christie’s New York. “It’s an art form that doesn’t need a gallery.”

It was Davis who helped to sell Beeple’s $69m NFT, the first piece of crypto art ever listed by a major auction house. He views his own impact as pivotal: “I introduced NFTs to the Christie’s audience and thereby the world,” he says. The artwork was sold during an online auction in March that took two weeks to close. Bidding opened at $100, and within an hour that figure had risen to $1m – the result of a vast number of bids all happening digitally. “I’ve never seen anything so spectacular. You can’t bid that quickly at auction unless you just shout out: ‘A million bucks,’” Davis says, “and that’s impossible to do online. So all that bidding had to happen in increments and manually.

“I look at my life as pre-Beeple and post-Beeple,” he adds. “The same way the world thinks about before Jesus Christ and after. Beeple is kind of my Jesus.”

In the months since, Christie’s has continued to cash in on NFTs. In May, it achieved $16.9m for nine pixellated cartoon characters from the CryptoPunks series, early examples of NFT art that have become sought-after collectibles. Christie’s has also attempted to unite the crypto and modern art markets. This spring, it hosted a sale of digital artworks made by Andy Warhol in the 1980s. The images, which had been recovered from floppy disks and transformed into NFTs, include drawings, made on the artist’s Commodore Amiga computer, of bananas, flowers, and of a Campbell’s soup can that alone sold for more than $1m.

In general, the commercial gallery world has been understandably cagey about adopting technology designed to circumvent it. Behind the scenes, however, a number of galleries have attempted to woo Jones. He has declined their advances. “What can a commercial gallery do for me?” he asks. “Having a gallery exhibition before, I worked a year creating paintings, I paid for all the framing, the overheads for the studio. I had the paintings delivered to the commercial gallery. I may or may not sell, the gallery takes 45 to 55% commission, and they might pay out a month, six weeks, two months later.” And now? “I sell something and three minutes later I’ve got the money in my digital wallet.”

At times, the divide between the two art worlds seems more profound than a difference in business model: it’s an all-out culture clash. “Few of these cyber-millionaires could tell the back of a Rembrandt from the front,” wrote art critic Waldemar Januszczak. “There is no challenge whatsoever in NFT art,” conceptual art collector Pedro Barbosa told the New York Times, arguing that the ideas behind NFTs are often derivative, having “already been explored by artists like Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Duchamp”. David Hockney branded NFTs “silly little things” for “crooks and swindlers” – a curious accusation from an artist happy to embrace and monetise novel digital technology. Since 2009, Hockney has been doing a roaring trade in souped-up iPhone and iPad drawings.

Jones tells me that the crypto faithful, who, like Hilton, ardently believe that NFTs are the future of art, now use the dusty epithet “the legacy art world” to refer to their physical rivals.

As a painter, Jones is unusual among NFT artists. On occasion, this has allowed him the opportunity to sell the original painting on which an NFT is based, as well as the NFT. Pulling off this kind of double sale, however, must be handled carefully. Charging more for a painting than an NFT, and thus valuing physical art more highly than digital art, could provoke the ire of the crypto crowd. When Jones sold Bitcoin Bull to Rodriguez-Fraile, he also sold the original painting to the second-place bidder. In order not to offend his fans, he priced the painting at $55,000 – $555.55 less than the NFT.

A handful of established contemporary artists, notably those who have form when it comes to explicitly courting headlines and extreme wealth, have tried their hand at making NFTs – most prominently Damien Hirst, who released the project The Currency in July. Hirst put 10,000 NFTs up for sale, each corresponding to a unique spot painting, for $2,000 a piece. But there is a catch: after two months, the collector must decide if they wish to keep the NFT or the physical art work. Whichever one they don’t choose will be destroyed, forcing the owner to gamble on which version will be more valuable in the future.

The most shocking aspect of the NFT to the art intelligentsia is its brazen entanglement with finance. Trading art has always been a pastime of the wealthy. Much of what counts for art history consists of flattering portrayals of the rich and powerful, and artists have long been expected to perform what Tom Wolfe called the Art Mating Ritual – attracting the interest of wealthy patrons and conservative institutions, while simultaneously presenting as Bohemians and renegades. Yet with the NFT, the distinction between art and asset seems to have disappeared. In place of the curated exhibition is the auction website; symbols of the market have seeped into the aesthetic language of the art itself. Prices, not ideas, dominate.

Despite the promise of “art for everyone”, the final destination of the NFT might not actually be art. Art may simply be a useful way to advertise the possibilities of a new technology. “I’ve done everything from fashion, fragrances to endorsements,” Paris Hilton says, adding that NFTs are another way for “fans to have a piece of me”. As well as working with the rapper Ice Cube, Jones recently made an NFT for the whisky company Macallan, to be auctioned alongside a very expensive cask of scotch. This, it seems, is a taste of where NFTs may be heading: not a radical new model for trading art, but a digital marketing bauble.

Perhaps the most significant legacy of the NFT’s assault on the art market will be the questions it forces us to ask about the nature of art, and what it is that we want from it. How should art be traded and viewed? Who gets to ascribe value to art? Is there a moral or aesthetic code by which artists are expected to work, and who has elected themselves to define it? And why would anybody part with their money in exchange for a digital fart? Then there’s the biggest question: is there a meaningful difference between an artwork and an asset? The answer, perhaps, is not always – but if we want art to be more than a tool for prettifying finance and flogging merch, then it’s an ideal worth holding on to.

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