Would You Buy A Valentine’s NFT By A Metahuman?

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, February 14th, 2022, presented by Angie Lau. For the latest in blockchain & crypto news. On today's show: 00:00 Coming Up 00:53 Korean university to issue NFT graduation certificates. 01:45 Alibaba and Canaan team up on AI. 02:28 Auction data to make Valentine’s NFT bloom. 04:32 Tokenomics with Fusang --- A South Korean university is to issue an NFT graduation certificates. Samsung backed Sungkyunkwan University says its NFT certificates can be used as official proof of graduation without the risk of losing the original or forgery. Just three NFT certificates are to be handed out this Wednesday to students who have won in school competitions. According to Yonhap, the university plans to adopt blockchain technology for various kinds of certificates in an effort to enhance administrative efficiency. Over in China, two huge names plan to work together to develop operating systems for artificial intelligence or AI chips. Crypto mining rig manufacturer Canaan will partner with tech giant Alibaba on the project, although China has banned the crypto mining industry. Canaan is still actively expanding its chip business in the country. It's Kendryte series chips, for example, are used in fields including robotics and facial recognition. Auction house Phillips is getting in on the action with its Japanese inspired My Kawaii Valentine's sale, including one NFT piece that will be generated in part by the auction data. One artwork is to be created during the course of the auction by a virtual meta human influencer and artist named Momoc, developed by Hong Kong based Gusto Collective. Momoc will generate an NFT called Drowning in Love, using data created by the auction process. Phillips says Bitcoin and Ethereum will both be payment options in addition to Hong Kong dollars when buying one of the six NFTs. Angie Lau: Coinbase is a huge name among crypto exchanges, but when it comes to going for an IPO last April it went old school choosing to list on the Nasdaq. But its stock price took a dove in January this year, and it remains below its IPO reference price of US$250. So what went wrong? Who better to ask than someone with a passion to tokenize the world, Henry Chong, CEO of Fusang. Chong: I think they listed in the wrong place. Coinbase's mission has always been to make it as easy as possible to buy Bitcoin. And they've got tens of millions of users to come use their app, mobile and they want to interact with digital assets, blockchain based tokens. And that's why the is worth so many billions in the first place. That's why everyone was so excited about finally being able to actually invest into the company. But then they listed on Nasdaq, a very traditional exchange where they not only had paper shares pop up the other end, but you have to go and open a traditional brokerage account to go buy those shares and you can't do it through Coinbase. And I think that's just a very jarring customer experience. On the flip side, if Coinbase could have opened up their shares their tokens either directly to their own user base or maybe for exchanges like Fusang and allowed their own user base to not only buy those tokens directly, but buy it in a digital format with blockchain based tokens. I think they would be worth double. Lau: Do you think this is creating something of a mismatch in capital allocation when it comes to this? Chong: I think the real issue is that crypto markets ICOs, utility tokens, they have been forced to find alternative value drivers. They can't point to some kind of underlying equity value of value from being a real security. So the only value that they can create is by capturing a network effect, by capturing the value of a platform. And these are this are the reason why these platforms are so valuable in the first place and why people always get so excited about the opportunity to invest in them. If you could just actually issue you own shares as a blockchain based token and offer it potentially through your own platform, to your own stakeholder base, the people who already use your platform who would like it enough to pay you money. Lau: What role do you give SPACs? Chong: I think the SPAC trend that we're seeing in traditional capital markets is really, really important because it just goes to show that the same access benefits that people look for when they buy into an ICO. That same feeling like as a retail investor, I am somehow cut out of the juiciest parts of traditional capital markets and the fact that people are willing to invest into what is effectively a building pool of capital, right? Both SPACs and ICOs. I'm effectively investing off a white paper. I don't really know what I'm buying into, but I'm so hungry and desperate to get access to exciting investments that I couldn't. --- #Crypto #Blockchain #BlockchainTechnology #DigitalAssets #Cryptocurrency #DeFi #AI #Coinbase #NFT #Art #Valentines #Bitcoin #Canaan #MonoC #CryptoMining