Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

Smells like NFT spirit? Look Labs launches first digital fragrance

An NFT version of Cyber Eau de Parfum is now available for auction on Rarible. The NFT was designed in collaboration with Montreal-based artist Sean Caruso.　　Look Labs, a contemporary beauty and lifestyle studio founded in Berlin, Germany, has launched the first digital fragrance encoded into a non-fungible token, or NFT, offering further evidence that the digital art craze continues to grow.　　The fragrance is a digital version of the unisex Cyber Eau de Parfum, which was launched in October 2020 with a strong focus on environmental sustainability. The NFT collectible was designed in collaboration with Montreal-based artist Sean Caruso.　　The scent of physical Cyber Eau de Parfum was “extracted using near-infrared spectroscopy and is represented in the art piece itself in the form of spectrum data,” Look Labs explained.　　Regarding the NFT design, Caruso said he was inspired by the original packaging of the physical perfume bottle. He explained:　　“For the NFT, I was inspired by the original packaging and bottle of the Cyber Eau de Parfum. I wanted a photorealistic render of the bottle with the illuminated label and the NIR data represented as a colorful spectrogram, contrast to the Gigeresque styled platter.”　　Only ten NFTs are available for auction on Rarible. Each of

2021-03-29Deep Dive

NFTs are not just for art: As technology matures, more uses will emerge?

Before the age of smartphones allowed the average person on the street to snap a selfie with their favorite celebrity, autographs and signed memorabilia were highly sought after by collectors. Naturally, the value of these real-world, authentic and rare keepsakes are high and remain so today.　　However, thanks to the utility of blockchain technology, digital collectibles are becoming the modern-day autograph or the one-of-a-kind, priceless piece of art. People need to look no further than the $69 million paid at auction for the now-famous “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” a digital collage created by digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple.　　The auction of the digital art piece, which featured some 5,000 pieces of digital art created by Winkelmann, is the most expensive NFT ever sold at auction by world-renowned auctioneers Christie‘s. In one swift strike of the auctioneer’s gavel, a piece of crypto art not only rocked the world of digital collectibles but instantly brought NFTs into mainstream consciousness.　　The world of art is not the only industry to be enjoying the fruits of NFTs popularity. Various sporting icons, brands and teams have entered the fray by minting trading cards and digital memorabilia that have also attracted million-dollar bids from sport-loving

2021-03-29Deep Dive

DeFi TVL sets new record as BSC-powered protocols add billions

According to data aggregator DeFi Llama, nearly $79 billion in assets are currently locked in decentralized finance protocols.　　As such, DeFis TVL is currently equal to roughly twice the capitalization of third-ranked crypto asset Binance Coin, nearly one-third of Ethereums market cap, and on-par with the capitalization of top 200-ranked global company Snap Inc — the company behind Snapchat.　　The majority of TVL growth for the past week appears to have been driven by a handful of platforms, with only three of the sectors 10-largest protocols posting growth.　　Binance Smart Chain-native DApps continue to lead the sectors growth, with fourth-ranked PancakeSwap adding roughly 29% or $1.3 billion to its TVL last week. Newcomer stablecoin DEX, Ellipsis Finance, has also attracted significant capital — representing $1.9 billion and ranking 13th by TVL less than one week after launching.　　Significant gains were also posted by a few Ethereum-based projects, with 11th-ranked Instadapp doubling its TVL to add $1.05 billion, 14th-ranked Yearn Finance also doubling i TVL with a roughly $850 million increase, and 18th-ranked Vesper Finance increasing by 84% to surpass $1 billion within six weeks of launching.　　While the combined TVL of DeFi protocols is up roughly 10% over the past seven days, data from crypto

2021-03-29Deep Dive

Think of NFTs as the Birth of the Virtual Economy

You already live in a virtual world, you just dont know it yet.　　You talk to your friends through your smartphone, you speak to your colleagues in Slack, you jump on video conferences over Zoom, you tweet at people you‘ve never met, you record events in your Google calendar, you date through an app, and if you’re bored, you play games against other people online.　　This isn‘t all happening in a single virtual world, like Second Life, but it’s not that far off.　　Humans are already closer to technology than we think. When Tesla CEO Elon Musk discussed his brain-machine interface company Neurolink on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, he half-joked that humans are becoming cyborgs; when we leave our phones at home, we get missing limb syndrome. The problem Neurolink solves is how quickly we can transmit data to our gadgets, since typing is so slow. But the point Musk made is that we are already deeply intertwined with technology.　　So the question is not “when will a virtual world arrive”—it‘s already here. And while we don’t live in a Ready Player Oneuniverse yet, our lives are moving in that direction. The real question is: Which technology will push us closer down this

2021-03-29Deep Dive

Why Bitcoin Is a Better Risk Bet Than a Stack of Penny Stocks

Volatility is a measure of risk, and thats often measured in relation to returns. By that measure bitcoin is a beast so far this year.　　Bitcoin is getting boring at a time when annualized 30-day volatility as of Thursdays close has seen a sharp downward dip, in a March with its own type of (weather) volatility.　　Source: CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index　　To emphasize the point, have a look at the chart above, which shows the volatility of bitcoin daily returns for the past month. To be fair, Im employing a little chart crime here, starting the y axis at 40% in order to accentuate the drop between March 24-25, as all but the last days of February have disappeared from the 30-day look-back on the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index.　　The boredom engendered by a tame month sparked a mild disagreement with “First Mover” show host Lawrence Lewitinn about penny stocks versus bitcoin. We were discussing the benefits of using indexes weighted either by price or by market cap. Price-weighted indexes can be more volatile because smaller-cap components can have a greater impact. I said a crypto index doesnt need more volatility because crypto assets already have the volatility of penny stocks.　　Naturally, I had to

2021-03-29Deep Dive

FD7 Ventures Adds DeFi Project Serum To Their Holdings

Crypto Investment Fund, FD7 Ventures added Serum (SRM) to their portfolio. Serum is a DEX, or decentralized exchange, and project ecosystem built on the Solana chain. It aims to be a faster solution with transaction fees that are as low as $0.00001, with sub-second trading and settlement times.　　FD7 Ventures has a crypto portfolio that includes Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT), Cosmos (ATOM), and now Serum (SRM).　　 FD7 Highly Impressed With Serum　　Prakash Chand, the Managing Partner of FD7 Ventures, is noted to be highly impressed with the co-creator of Serum, Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam is the founder of the crypto-derivatives platform FTX and CEO of quantitative crypto trading firm Alameda Research. Chand stated,　　“Beyond being a visionary and an incredible philanthropist, Sam is someone who gets things done. He has outlined an amazing roadmap to make Serum the fastest and cheapest DEX out there. Not just a little bit faster or more affordable, but exponentially so. In order to reach true scalability where 1B people are transacting in DeFi and crypto, the goal is to be a million times faster than Ethereum. From what Ive seen, I believe Sam and his team have the resources to get it done.”　　Sam is

2021-03-29Deep Dive

Joe Biden's USD 1.9T Stimulus Won't Reignite World Economy

The economic orthodoxy has long been that governments should try to balance their books and leave all the heavy lifting in managing their economies to central banks. We saw this writ large in the years after the financial crisis of 2007-2009, as most major powers pursued austerity while their central banks slashed interest rates and announced successive rounds of quantitative easing (AKA printing money).　　Yet this orthodoxy has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and now President Joe Bidens USD 1.9trn stimulus package has buried it. The reality is that “we are all Keynesians now” as there is widespread acceptance that governments around the world must spend more than they earn to stimulate their economies, which have been devastated by the pandemic and the restrictions to cope with it.　　The Biden stimulus, known as the American Rescue Plan, includes: a one-off payment of USD 1,400 for most Americans; extended unemployment support; increased food stamp benefits; increased tax credits; grants to businesses; and increased education funding. This is a major injection into the US economy that is not matched by a comparable withdrawal from increased taxation (although Biden is raising some taxes and considering more, especially on the wealthy).　　Many other countries are borrowing

2021-03-29Deep Dive

New York Launches a Blockchain-Powered COVID-19 Passport

Its available for free of use by businesses, and the implementation will be voluntary.　　New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last Wednesday the launch of Excelsior Pass, a blockchain-powered COVID-19 passport, for use across the state starting Friday, April 2.　　“New Yorkers have proven they can follow public health guidance to beat back COVID,” Governor Cuomo said in an official statement, “and the innovative Excelsior Pass is another tool in our new toolbox to fight the virus while allowing more sectors of the economy to reopen safely and keeping personal information secure.”　　Governments worldwide are mulling over the idea of “COVID-19 passports,” a piece of proof that a person is vaccinated or recently tested negative for COVID-19. But privacy risks and concerns about the practicality of carrying paperwork are often cited as downsides.　　According to Cuomo, however, the Excelsior Pass is the answer to many of those concerns: its built on IBMs blockchain-based digital health pass platform, and so the blockchain means that IBM—or any party for that matter—keeps no database of health records.　　“Secure technologies, like blockchain and encryption, are woven throughout Excelsior Pass to help protect the data, making it verifiable and trusted,” reads an official statement from the governor. “No private health

2021-03-29Deep Dive

NFT Watch Auction Could Change the Luxury Watch Industry

WISeKey will auction the first-ever NFT-secured watch on OpenSea NFT MarketPlace on March 31.　　Cybersecurity and IoT company WISeKey will auction the first NFT-secured luxury watch on March 31, the company announced on March 26. WISeKey will list the watch on OpenSea NFT MarketPlace, where it already sells NFT artwork.　　WISeKey specifies that the winning bidder receives the watch, which has an embedded digital certificate. The certificate uses a public-private key pair, which guarantees the authenticity of the watch.　　NASDAQ-listed WISeKey has been working in the luxury watch market since 2010. Its current technology combines dual-factor authentication with blockchain technology to establish the bona-fides of a watch. Moreover, the company provides watchmakers with NFC technology to let an NFC-enabled phone read and confirm the watchs identity.　　Watchmakers Keeping up　　Watchmakers have a difficult time with fake watches polluting the market. NFT watches are the latest in a long line of defenses against illegal copies.　　Hublot, for example, worked with KerQuest on a blockchain-based solution to authenticate their watches and even initiate the watchs warranty. The Ethereum-based Aura blockchain was developed by Microsoft and Consensys.　　Runs Like a Swiss Wallet　　In November 2020, Franck Muller introduced its BCH Encrypto timepiece. The watch features a two-piece Bitcoin Cash cold wallet.

2021-03-29Deep Dive

The Fed Plans to Unveil Digital Dollar Prototypes in July

The Federal Reserve is actively working on a central bank digital currency and some prototypes are near completion. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) plan to unveil two prototypes of a digital dollar as early as July.　　Digital Dollar Prototypes Coming Soon　　Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week as part of an event held by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) on central bank digital innovation that the U.S. central bank is actively exploring the launch of a digital dollar.　　The U.S. Federal Reserve has been actively working on a central bank digital currency (CBDC). At least two prototypes of a digital dollar are near completion, developed by officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They plan to unveil their research as soon as July, said James Cunha, who leads the project for the Boston Fed. He told Bloomberg:　　“The Boston Fed and MIT hope to unveil some of their work in the third quarter, including at least two prototype software platforms that could move, store and settle transactions made with digital dollars.”　　Once the prototypes are released, others will be able to see and build on the

2021-03-29Deep Dive

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