Now picture Emily Nkrumah, a dynamic entrepreneur based in Accra, Ghana. Yet as much as she creates beautiful hand-made jewelry, her dreams are suffocated. Her profits are eaten up by crippling bank fees. International payments are a nightmare, and the constantly-changing Cedi (the Ghanaian currency) makes her sleep less than...
A CryptoPunk holder charged with tax evasion? So this is it, right — the beginning of the end for the wild west of NFTs? Wrong. While Waylon Wilcox's case is a stark reminder that the IRS is watching, it's an opportunity. A chance to create a more sustainable, governance-focused, and...
The Waylon Wilcox case is an important reminder that there’s more at stake than NFTs or crypto hype. He pleaded guilty to evading $3.3 million in income taxes on $13 million worth of CryptoPunk sales. It is a painful illustration of the tenuous social contract we all operate under, whether...
The Emirates Palace. Gold leaf. Royal patronage. Web3? Promax’s “Royal Token Banquet” looks like it could deliver on all of this future of finance hype. In reality, it’s a gold-plated birdcage atop quicksand. Such lofty language sounds appealing in a press release announcing “transformative initiatives” and “global luminaries,” but we...
Let's be honest, when you hear about a "Royal Token Banquet" in Abu Dhabi, hosted by a Sheikh, your first thought probably isn't Africa. Perhaps you imagine opulence, fountains of caviar, Lamborghini dealerships at every turn, and people shaking hands in darkened back rooms with the global elite. You likely...
A $10 million loss. Just gone. And that’s what just happened to the poor sap that spent $16 million on a CryptoPunk and just days ago sold it for $6 million. An NFT – a Non-Fungible Token. A digital certificate of ownership for a specific object or work of art,...
Let’s not kid ourselves, the past couple years had some vibes that crypto was in a regulator death grip. Once again, every two weeks it felt like Gary Gensler’s SEC was intensifying its enforcement blitz against some bad actor. This may have left innovators scrambling and investors anxious. With the...
Alright, now let’s talk about that elephant in the digital room. That’s how someone just took a $10 million dollar bath on a CryptoPunk. Ouch. Now maybe you’re saying to yourself, “NFTs are dead! I was right all along! And honestly, I get it. Seeing headlines like that one can...
Believe me, this ain’t your usual changing of the guard. It’s a potential paradigm shift, a rare opportunity to bring a little bit of that long overdue pragmatism into the wild west that is cryptocurrency. So let’s try to put the partisan bickering below us. This isn’t a left or...
Yes, the headlines are brutal. CryptoPunk #3100, once a $10 million NFT marvel, now languishes on the market for 0.5% of its value. You are witnessing NFTs that were purchased for millions of dollars being resold for what seems like a few bucks. Are NFTs dead? Not even close. This...