Author: Phil Stafford

Phil is a long-standing Australian journalist with specialised experience in business, finance, travel and popular culture.

Categories
Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs Sports

Liverpool FC Launches NFT Collection Dubbed ‘LFC Heroes Club’

Following the lead of Manchester City, Barcelona and Paris Saint Germain, Liverpool is the latest major football club to launch its own collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

The LFC Heroes Club – launched in partnership with Sotheby’s Metaverse – features generative imagery of each of its 24 players in what the club says is an “innovative way to celebrate being an LFC fan from anywhere in the world”.

Better Reds than dead: LFC Heroes Club NFT. Source: liverpoolfc.com

‘Lower’ Price Points From $75 Per NFT

The collection will also feature 24 “Legendary” one-of-one editions, one for each player, to be auctioned off individually on March 30. The remaining NFTs will be sold at lower price points (from US$75) in a move the club hopes will make them accessible to its broader fan base.

The LFC collectibles will be available to purchase across a three-day sale window from Wednesday, March 30 to Friday, April 1. Half of the proceeds will go to the LFC Foundation, in addition to 10 percent from the ‘Heroes’ sale and all future resale royalties.

Backlash Begins Within Minutes

Within minutes of the NFT news breaking, however, disgruntled Liverpool supporters took to Twitter to air their misgivings:

Backroom Sports Deals Linking NFTs and Fan Tokens

When FC Barcelona announced its NFT auction in November last year, some claimed it was a desperate measure to offset the club’s US$1.56 billion debt crisis. The move was seen as part of a fire sale that resulted in star player Lionel Messi leaving the club to join Paris Saint Germain, which in itself saw PSG’s token price surge 50 percent. Messi was reportedly paid US$35 million in $PSG fan tokens as part of the transfer deal, and went on to launch his own NFT collection.

Categories
Crypto News Cryptocurrency Law NFTs Real Estate

‘Satoshi Island’ Crypto Utopia Receives 50K Citizenship NFT Applications

The four-man team of entrepreneurs behind the ‘Satoshi Island’ project in the South Pacific claims to have already fielded 50,000 NFT visa applications to become permanent residents of the mooted crypto paradise.

The team’s declared vision is of a fiat-free, true crypto-economy where everything will be paid for in cryptocurrencies and all land ownership on the island represented by non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

As first reported by Crypto News Australia in January, it’s intended that Satoshi Island – so named for the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto – will host events year round, house and headquarter crypto projects, as well as being a gathering place and residence for crypto enthusiasts worldwide.

The Satoshi Five-Year Plan

The Satoshi Island vision took flight during the 2017 bull run, though a tight checklist of objectives had to be met over ensuing years before it could become a reality:

  • the island had to be remote enough for privacy but not so remote that development would be too difficult;
  • it should ideally not be at risk of climate change and be protected from natural disasters; and
  • the slog to find an adequate location was compounded by the knowledge that the team “had to be realistic”.

Options Narrowed Down to Vanuatu

Most importantly, the government managing the territory where the island was located had to be open to the idea of a “crypto city”. After years of searching, the team settled on Vanuatu: “The government showed a willingness to innovate and were open to discussions right away.”

Pacific island nations in general are building a reputation for being crypto-friendly. Nearby, in Tonga, the prospect of Bitcoin becoming legal tender could happen as soon as November this year, while the neighbouring Marshall Islands are open to decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).

Proposed waterfront prefab villas on Satoshi Island. Source: satoshi-island.com

However, as with any proposed utopia, there are hurdles ahead for the developers of Satoshi Island. Vanuatu passed a law last year that allows companies to gain a special licence to deal with crypto assets. The Vanuatu Financial Services Commission, which provides those licences, recently issued a media release stating that Satoshi Island has not been granted one, and that it “could be a scam”.

Vanuatu’s Finance Minister has said that “proper policies” around cryptocurrency and blockchain still needed to be worked out:

It’s a new form of doing things and from our perspective it’s something Vanuatu will have to think seriously about. We need to have legislations updated so they can absorb the implementation of the cryptocurrencies.

Johnny Koanapo Rasou, Minister of Finance, Vanuatu

Moreover, NFT residency does not automatically confer citizenship of Vanuatu, where the government stipulates that actual citizenship costs US$130,000 for each aficionado who wishes to bid farewell to fiat and say hello to a crypto life in the sun.

Categories
Australia Banking Crypto News DeFi Hedera

ANZ Bank Exploring Hedera DeFi Services For Its 8.5 Million Customers

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), one of Australia’s ‘Big Four’ banks, is tapping into the growing demand for decentralised finance (DeFi) via the Hedera Hashgraph testnet.

Speaking as a member of an Australian Blockchain Week panel on DeFi, ANZ’s portfolio lead Nigel Dobson said his bank was exploring how best to offer DeFi services to its 8.5 million customers.

According to Dobson, ANZ was taking a “blockchain agnostic” approach and had already experimented with minting, transacting and burning tokens on the Hedera Hashgraph testnet.

All Part of ANZ’s Sustainability Plan

With Bitcoin and Ethereum often criticised for their high carbon emissions, Hedera Hashgraph’s lower-carbon imprint fits with ANZ’s stated goals to be a more ecologically responsible bank:

With Hashgraph able to run Solidity smart contracts, existing smart contracts and applications on Ethereum could be ported over to Hashgraph to the advantage of a potential DeFi ecosystem.

ANZ’s Targets to 2025

On the subject of sustainability, ANZ has already set targets to:

  • fund and facilitate at least A$50 billion by 2025 towards sustainable solutions for its customers;
  • engage with 100 of its largest emitting business customers to encourage them to strengthen their carbon transition plans and enhance their efforts to protect biodiversity by the end of 2024;
  • develop an enhanced climate risk management framework that strengthens ANZ’s governance and is responsive to climate change, by the end of 2022; and
  • achieve ANZ’s 2021-2025 suite of environmental footprint targets.

Set the Course for DeFi

Last November, Dobson described competitor CommBank’s pacesetting move into the Australian crypto space as “bold”, suggesting it was just the start of a major shift in the financial system and something traditional finance would need to embrace or adapt to.

“We are moving to a more decentralised system that can generate new outcomes and business models that can’t be ignored,” Dobson said at the time. “The power of decentralised networks transcends all companies – you just need to choose whether to be part of it or ignore it … I think we have a much stronger bias to participate than ignore.”

Categories
Australia Crypto News DAO Regulation

Pro-Crypto Senator Bragg Says DAOs Threaten Australia’s Tax Base

Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) needed to be “recognised and regulated as a matter of urgency”, according to Australian Liberal Senator for NSW, Andrew Bragg.

Speaking at the Australia Blockchain Week conference this week, Bragg said DAOs posed an “existential threat to the tax base” since they are recognised as partnerships and as such are not liable to pay company tax.

Australia Cannot Rely on Company Tax to Raise Revenue

According to Bragg, Australia’s “reliance on company tax is unsustainable” given that it accounted for only 17.1 percent of total federal government revenue in 2020-21.

“DAOs are self-regulating and transparent, with an in-built system for governance,” Bragg said, adding that legal recognition of DAOs also guarantees a set of “minimum standards” that should be legislated. These would give consumers the ability to distinguish between retail and wholesale organisations.

Bragg called for the Australian Treasury to address those issues while also “leaving the field open for DAOs to continue to live up to their name”.

In 10 or 20 years’ time we may well be talking about the inverse situation – applying the rules for cryptocurrency to traditional finance.

Andrew Bragg, NSW Senator

By the end of this year, the Australian government is expected to receive a report on digital asset taxation and undertake a token mapping exercise. It will also examine the potential of DAOs and how they can be incorporated into existing legal and financial frameworks.

Bragg Also Pushes for Policy on NFTs and Blockchain

Earlier this month, Bragg said the country also needed to hear from artists on the best way forward for digital asset regulation. Addressing Sydney’s inaugural 3D art NFT exhibition, Satellite, Bragg said policy specifically relating to NFTs needed to be implemented to stave off a potential “brain drain” on Australia’s arts economy.

Bragg has also urged the Australian blockchain industry to “pick up the pace” or risk falling behind other developed nations, adding that Australia was likely to miss an opportunity to become a world leader in cryptocurrency if the government was not given more power to prioritise digital asset reform.

Categories
Crypto News DAO Ethereum NFTs Tokens

Time Magazine Releases First Ever NFT Magazine Issue, Featuring Vitalik Buterin

Time magazine is set to release its first issue in full non-fungible token (NFT) form, with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin – dubbed the “Prince of Crypto” – on the cover.

The double issue, datelined March 28/April 4, will be launched in collaboration with the LITDAO, an NFT project launched in December 2021 about which little is known. No roadmap has been revealed, nor any use case; one of the very few concrete facts to have surfaced about LITDAO is that it operates with its own native currency, LIT.

LITDAO has reported that LIT Genesis holders will be eligible to receive an airdrop of Time‘s “historic NFT” alongside TIMEPiece Genesis holder. The latter is a Web3 community initiative created by Time, launched in September 2021 with a collection called “Build a Better Future”.

The airdrop will roll out with support from Circle, the company behind stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), with Transient Labs acting as the project’s technical partner.

According to Time, the Buterin issue will “live on the blockchain”, on a decentralised protocol. Holders of the NFT magazine will be able to read the content and interact with it.

Buterin Rails Against ‘$3 Million Monkeys’

Regarding said content, in the cover story interview with Andrew Chow, Buterin expresses concern about the dominance of DeFi and NFTs and the “shameless displays of wealth” driven by collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). He also worries about the rise in transaction fees and “overeager investors”.

In the TIME cover story interview, Buterin worries about “shameless displays of wealth” as exemplified by BAYC owners. Source: investing.com

“The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling,” Buterin says in reference to BAYC. “There definitely are lots of people that are just buying yachts and Lambos.”

Buterin tells Chow that his vision for the transformative power of Ethereum is at risk of being overtaken by greed:

If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable. And those are often far from what’s actually the best for the world.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin

Time Has Mixed History with Ethereum

Time‘s close association with Buterin and the Ethereum blockchain harks back to November last year, when the media giant revealed a deal with Galaxy Digital. As part of the deal, Time would hold ETH on its balance sheet.

Two months earlier, when Time announced a new collection of NFTs offering “unlimited access” to its website throughout 2023, all 4,676 tokens tied to the digital artworks sold out in minutes. But the sale rush also clogged the Ethereum blockchain, sending gas fees through the roof. So much so that buyers spent almost four times as much on transaction fees as they did on the NFTs themselves.

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News NFTs

Spotify Job Ads Hint At Move Towards Web 3.0

News that Spotify is looking to hire staff with Web3 expertise suggests the music streaming behemoth is preparing to defend its turf against blockchain music startups such as Royal, Catalog and Sound.XYZ, all three of which intend to sell music directly to fans as NFTs.

In two job vacancies posted online, Spotify is seeking a senior backend engineer who will “facilitate collaboration with product, insights, and design to uncover the next growth opportunity leveraging new technologies like Web3”, as well as a senior manager to form part of its Innovation and Market Intelligence team. Candidates for the latter position require “expert familiarity with emerging trends”, specifically Web3.

Musicians have increasingly looked to NFT technology as a way to boost their income from selling music, complaining that the streaming subscription model of services such as Spotify has lowered their earnings compared to potential sales of digital files as proposed by the blockchain music startups.

Spotify a ‘Business Model for Ants’

The NFT startups argue that Spotify’s system is a “business model for ants”. Musicians could earn way more, they suggest, by selling works directly to fans as NFTs.

Startup Sound.XYZ intends to sell music directly to fans as NFTs. Source: Sound.XYZ

Another reason Spotify appears to be expediting its Web3 plans is that YouTube confirmed its Web3 intentions in February, citing the technology’s “incredible potential” for content creators through the use of blockchain technology and NFTs.

Just this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed NFTs were coming to Instagram. Zuckerberg did not commit to a specific date but said users would “hopefully” be able to mint NFTs in the next few months.

Categories
Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

’90s Media Player ‘Winamp’ to Launch Original Skin as an NFT

Music fans of a certain age, Gen-Xers and Millennials in particular, may remember the Winamp media player, one of the earliest pieces of MP3 audio software.

Now, 25 years after its foundation, Winamp (yes, the brand still exists) is about to sell an NFT (non-fungible token) based on the original 1997 player’s graphical skin, making it the latest company to exploit the combination of nostalgia and crypto.

Auction on OpenSea in May, Proceeds to Charity

Winamp will put the NFT up for auction through OpenSea between May 16 and May 22, followed by a separate sale of 1,997 NFTs in total linked to 20 artworks derived from the original skin. Proceeds will go to the Winamp Foundation, which promises to donate them to charity projects starting with the Belgian non-profit Music Fund.

All Winamp NFTs will sell for 0.08 ETH (about US$220 at time of writing). The artists will receive 10 percent of any royalties on later sales, where sellers will set their own price. Buyers will have the right to “copy, reproduce and display” their image, but they won’t own the copyright. Similarly, selected artists will agree to transfer all intellectual property for their work to Winamp.

Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be

Winamp has evolved from its MP3 software beginnings and is now more of a mobile audio app. Peer-to-peer file-sharing service LimeWire also recently “relaunched” as an NFT marketplace but it bears no resemblance to its original early 2000s iteration.

Categories
Banking Crypto News Metaverse NFTs Payments

American Express Ventures into NFTs and the Metaverse

American Express has followed the lead of payments peers Visa and Mastercard in exploring Web3 applications and planting its digital footprint in the metaverse.

The world’s second-largest payments processor has filed seven trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office, each linking its distinctive Centurion logo to virtual services.

Included in the filings are requests by American Express to:

  • secure trademarks on software for credit cards, travel and concierge services;
  • create a virtual environment for recreation and entertainment;
  • establish an NFT marketplace;
  • offer wallet services for digital and blockchain assets;
  • set up a virtual currency exchange, and
  • provide digitised and utility token trading services.

American Express is also considering providing card payments, ATM services, other banking services and a fraud detection system to customers in the metaverse. “[We’re] always monitoring emerging technologies to see how they could benefit our customers, and the metaverse is a space we’re following closely,” an AmEx spokesperson told Business Insider this week.

Metaverse Could Generate ‘Up To $8 Trillion’

The metaverse holds a deep attraction for major financial firms, with Wall Street predicting it could be worth trillions of dollars – up to US$8 trillion, according to Goldman Sachs strategists, though JPMorgan more conservatively estimates it could generate up to US$1 trillion in annual revenue.

While some major banks have been hesitant when it comes to cryptocurrency, others – including Australia’s Commonwealth Bank – have engaged with blockchain-based technologies.

Last year, American Express began dabbling in NFTs, offering card members a limited series of 14 non-fungible tokens featuring the recording artist SZA, each costing US$100.

Categories
Charity Crypto News Cryptocurrencies DAO Ethereum

OnlyFans Donates 500 ETH to Wartorn Ukraine DAO

Racy online video subscription platform OnlyFans has donated 500 ETH (about US$1.27 million) to UkraineDAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation raising funds to support Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion.

Risque vs Reward: Personal Element to OnlyFans’ Altruism

The website says it has now contributed over US$5 million to various humanitarian efforts supporting the besieged country, its charitable effort led by OnlyFans’ Ukrainian-American owner Leonid Radvinsky.

Radvinsky bought a 75 per cent stake in OnlyFans’ parent company Fenix in 2018, before the platform witnessed explosive growth during the pandemic. In its embrace of Web 3.0, the platform has added an NFT feature that allows users to put up digital collectibles verified on the Ethereum blockchain as their display photos.

Since Russia’s invasion began last month, UkraineDAO has been a leading crypto contributor to Ukraine’s government, which has now received more than US$100 million in crypto donations from a range of sources.

UkraineDAO was formed by radical Russian art collective Pussy Riot and NFT studio Trippy Labs. OnlyFans’ 500 ETH contribution was counted as part of the largest single donation to date, from a US$6.5 million crowd-funded NFT sale on March 2.

CEO Extends Sympathy to Creator Community

“These tragic events have had a terrible impact on individuals, including members of our creator community,” OnlyFans CEO Ami Gan said in a statement.

Given our strong personal ties to Ukraine, we wanted to support in a way which felt true to who we are at OnlyFans, and which focused on getting aid and support to the Ukrainian people.

Ami Gan, CEO, OnlyFans
Categories
Australia Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum Investing Real Estate

How Crypto Helped a 23-Year-Old Aussie Climb the Property Ladder

A 2021 survey conducted by international cryptocurrency exchange Kraken found that 40 percent of Australian millennials preferred investing in digital assets over real estate.

Now a 23-year-old university graduate from Brisbane, Queensland has brought both elements together by using cryptocurrency to break into the city’s soaring property market.

Economics graduate and new homeowner Loi Nguyen. Source: news.com.au

Loi Nguyen first started investing in crypto in 2017 during his second year of an economics degree. After graduating from high school he had worked full-time as a bank teller for a gap year on a miserly salary of just A$28,000. But the best economic lesson he learned in that time came from observing his customers in the bank.

“I saw people being diligent with their savings and also saw people being very reckless,” Nguyen said. “You had people consistently putting savings away every week and others putting stuff on the stock market.”

Starts With ‘a Couple of Hundred Bucks’ Worth’ of Crypto

Nguyen augmented his own meagre savings by investing in stocks and cryptocurrencies, buying “a couple of hundred bucks’ worth” of bitcoin and ethereum in 2017. When the crypto market crashed a year later, he thought he’d done his money.

Crypto came back into my life when I learned about inflation at uni, and how bitcoin could be disinflationary. I was earning less than half a per cent on my savings account at the bank and wanted to protect my purchasing power … I knew I had to be smart, otherwise I would never break into the property market.

Loi Nguyen, economics graduate and new homeowner

When Covid-19 hit in 2020, crypto started to pick up again as panic hit more traditional markets. Nguyen spent an estimated A$18,000 over the ensuing months until he owned an entire bitcoin, then continued to invest in BTC and ETH.

The one-bedroom apartment Nguyen bought using crypto. Source: news.com.au

Before purchasing his one-bedroom inner-city apartment this year for A$430,000, Nguyen cashed out A$43,000 in cryptocurrency, less than half his overall portfolio, for the deposit on a home loan.

I’ve always wanted to own my own property and to be able live in it. Cryptocurrency allowed me to do that earlier.

Loi Nguyen, economics graduate and new homeowner

Crypto Millennials Aim to Retire at 50

According to a survey conducted by Pearler last May, a “significant number” of Australian millennials intend to retire at the age of 50 using their investments in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and cryptocurrencies. Nguyen is one such millennial who seems well on the way.