May 5, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • Elon Musk changing his profile picture to a group of BAYC NFTs sent the collection’s floor price surging by 10 ETH.

  • The IMF says the Central African Republic’s adoption of BTC as legal tender is challenging.

  • Yuga Labs refunded ~$265,000 in gas fees for users who failed to mint an Otherdeed NFT.

  • Details for Yearn v3 were released.

  • $120 million in assets fled digital asset investment vehicles last week.

  • Kazakhstan is ordering crypto miners to register with authorities.

  • Marathon Digital may start to sell BTC.

  • Coinbase’s NFT marketplace is now open to all.

  • Terra will be providing liquidity for UST on SynFutures.

  • Dfinity is suing Meta over its logo.

  • NFT aggregator Genie is accusing its competitor, Gem, of conducting a distributed denial-of-service attack against the firm.

  • Native parachain transfers are now live on Polkadot.

  • Bitcoin payments firm Strike announced a new email spam solution.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

  • Select Gucci stores to accept BTC and DOGE, along with other cryptos, as part of an experiment.

  • An executive order in California will start the process of creating a crypto regulatory framework.

  • Binance secured regulatory approval to operate in France.

  • Valkyrie Investments launched an Avalanche-focused trust.

  • Hawaii approved a task force to examine BTC and crypto tech.

The $$$ Corner…

  • Messari alum Ryan Watkins and investor Daniel Cheung have raised $85 million for a new crypto hedge fund.

  • Amberdata, a digital asset data provider, raised $30 million in a Series B.

  • Stakes, a sports NFT platform, raised $5.3 million.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Starbucks Wants In On Web3

Starbucks announced web3-centric plans this week. According to a blog post, the coffee behemoth’s imagination has been “captured” by NFTs.

Notably, Starbucks views NFTs as a tool for community building and access passes – rather than just being a vehicle for speculative investments in art.

“We believe NFTs have broad potential to create an expanded, shared-ownership model for loyalty, the offering of unique experiences, community building, storytelling, and customer engagement,” the team explained. “And, while doing so also being a source of accretive business that can benefit a number of stakeholders in the process, while creating a new type of digital ecosystem to complement Starbucks current digital platform offering.”

The blog post did not specify the exact semantics of the NFT collection. As of now, all that is known is that Starbucks NFTs will be released as a series of “branded” collections that will come with “community membership,” along with “exclusive experience and perks.” The team noted that its Rewards system has over 27 million active users – which is nearly 25xthe number of registered users on mainnet OpenSea.

In addition to the NFT announcement, Starbucks hinted that a “Starbucks Digital Community Web3 platform” could have the potential to unlock the company’s platform to engage with customers in new and fun ways. And interestingly, the team made sure to clarify that any future plans would be “multi-chain or chain agnostic.”

The first Starbucks NFT collection will be launched later this year.

Recommended Reads

  1. ShapeShift on DeFi 2.0:

  1. David Phelps on how to make a token valuable:

  1. @mattigags on selling a web3 product:

On The Pod…

RAC and David Greenstein on Why Music NFTs Are Better Than Spotify

 

André Allen Anjos, who is better known as the crypto-friendly artist RAC, and David Greenstein, co-founder of Sound.xyz, a web3 music platform, analyze the current state of the web3 music scene and discuss how artists can leverage web3 tools to get paid at fair market value for their art. Show highlights:

  • RAC’s experience in the traditional music industry

  • why David believes music is the most undervalued sector in the world – and how Sound and crypto can help value it correctly

  • the different types of NFTs with which musicians like RAC are experimenting

  • what Sound.xyz is and how it is helping artists unlock their fanbase and community

  • why David is so passionate about creating a social experience when it comes to music NFTs

  • Sound.xyz’s decision to allow artists to deploy their own smart contracts

  • what RAC has made in NFT drops compared to Spotify streams

  • why Sound.xyz was built with “editions” as the most common format for NFTs sold on the platform

  • what makes blockchain technology well-suited for the music industry

  • RAC’s crypto adventures: $TAPE, $RAC, and more …

  • how the famous “Amen Break” sample would work as an NFT

  • what artists will be measured by in the NFT world

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians