Tech, Business, Finance and Everything Else
Solana is a protocol that is on the rise. Adoption of Solana in terms of developers and DApps have been increasing over the past few years at breakneck speeds – and this leads to more users needing a good wallet solution – step in Phantom.
Phantom is a a crypto wallet focused towards the Solana ecosystem. Here is a great beginners guide to the Phantom wallet – how to signup and how to use the wallet in browser.
Opensea have just announced their own Venture fund, Opensea Ventures. The fund will seek investments in startups working in domains such as NFTs, DeFi, blockchain, and others. OpenSea co-founder Alex Attalah will lead the venture fund.
The fund will focus on startups that produce NFTs, create NFT protocols, produce blockchain and metaverse games, and develop NFT analytics.
This seems like a natural next step to build out an ecosystem fast and potentially tie down some assets for exclusive sale in the Opensea platform.
Players at the Australian Open Mens Doubles Final ask for an unruly fan to be ejected from the stadium and on the third time of asking he finally is!
Apple is reportedly going to allow iPhones to start accepting contactless payments. This is huge news!
It will dramatically affect any card company and how they collect their fees – as well as companies like Square and other POS services.
Apple has reporting been working on this service since 2020, when it purchased a Canadian startup called Mobeewave. Mobeewave’s technology only needs an app and the phone’s NFC to work.
I expect that Apple will roll out such a service as part of Apple Pay.
Game changer!
It has been announced that China’s state-backed Blockchain Services Network (BSN) will soft launch infrastructure for NFTs in China.
BSN said the infrastructure, known as BSN-Distributed Digital Certificates (BSN-DDC), would offer “a diverse, transparent, credible and reliable” one-stop-shop for businesses to mint and manage their own NFTs without relying on cryptocurrencies, which are banned in China.
This will be a very interesting experiment from the Chinese Government as the vast majority of NFTs in the world at the moment are based off the Ethereum network.
No.
Audius has been live for over 3 years now and it is still yet to have a full payment system for artists and record labels.
Audius provide tokens to 5 top artists each week, but that has little to no value for any artist that is going to use their platform with the hopes of reaching more fans and making money from their music.
This feels like it is a completely dead project – even though they have over $1 billion stakes in the platform with a market cap of now less than $500 million.
This has to be one of the most interesting Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and NFT video I have ever seen. It runs through a huge amount of topics and structures and explains them in a very simple way.
After watching the video – there are some points that stand out as great points and others which are kind of irrelevant.
Even after the first 10 minutes there are points in which the previous financial bubble seems to be the exact same structure as what is occuring with NFTs at present. Interesting.
However, this is REALLY WORTH THE WATCH
I came across On Running when Roger Federer invested in the company. I have done a bit of research into the founder and the company in the past and they seem to be driving in the right direction on all fronts.
On Running is listed on the NASDAQ market in the US under the ticker – ONON. The company is already selling over $650 million worth of shoes per year (which is three times larger than Allbirds at approximately $250 million).
This videos provides a good breakdown of the company, its founder and its history.
Im very bullish on On. It has a lot potential and could move into many markets.
Very interesting question to Warren Buffett – in which he then provides a very interesting (yet simplistic) answer.
Shareholders need to act like owners – and in nearly all cases in America – this is forgotten. People forget that when they buy a stock in a business that they are becoming an owner in that business.
Today Australia has cancelled the visa of Novak Djokovic again.
“Today I exercised my power… to cancel the visa held by Mr Novak Djokovic on health and good order grounds, on the basis that it was in the public interest to do so,” Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said in a statement.
Novak now has the right to appeal, but it isn’t clear if he will do so and if he will be able to play the Australian Open in the meantime.
Deportation means that Novak won’t be able to return to Australia for 3 years (thus missing even more Grand Slams for a while to come).
My Thoughts:
I must admit that at Grand Slams its always good to have the best players in the world there. However, he has lied on entering the country on several occasions and then thrown his own agent under the bus and blamed it on him. He must leave!
It will be interesting to see if he faces any repercussions in Serbia – as he admitted to breaking isolation laws.
Take-Two Interactive have announced that they are planning to acquire Zynga for $12.7 billion.
This deal will bring the two worlds of Mobile Gaming and Console and PC Games together to make a powerhouse!
“We are thrilled to announce our transformative transaction with Zynga, which significantly diversifies our business and establishes our leadership position in mobile, the fastest growing segment of the interactive entertainment industry,” said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two, in a statement. “This strategic combination brings together our best-in-class console and PC franchises, with a market-leading, diversified mobile publishing platform that has a rich history of innovation and creativity. Zynga also has a highly talented and deeply experienced team, and we look forward to welcoming them into the Take-Two family in the coming months. As we combine our complementary businesses and operate at a much larger scale, we believe that we will deliver significant value to both sets of stockholders, including $100 million of annual cost synergies within the first two years post-closing and at least $500 million of annual Net Bookings opportunities over time.”
“Combining Zynga’s expertise in mobile and next-generation platforms with Take-Two’s best-in-class capabilities and intellectual property will enable us to further advance our mission to connect the world through games while achieving significant growth and synergies together,” added Frank Gibeau, CEO of Zynga. “I am proud of our team’s hard work to deliver a strong finish to 2021, with one of the best performances in Zynga’s history. We are incredibly excited to have found a partner in Take-Two that shares our commitment to investing in our players, amplifying our creative culture, and generating more value for stockholders. With this transformative transaction, we begin a new journey which will allow us to create even better games, reach larger audiences and achieve significant growth as a leader in the next era of gaming.”
Novak Djokovic has won his appeal with the Australian Government over his visa refusal.
I think this whole situation stinks!
If any other tennis player in the world asked for this exemption then they wouldn’t have received it!
Masayoshi Son is one of the best investors in the world and he is known for his very bold bets. Masayoshi Son has done so much and he always seems so humble as he is trying to also make the world a better place.
Short Answer = No
All music distributors (RouteNote, CDBaby, Tunecore, etc) take the same amount of time from the moment a track leaves the distributors server and is packaged to be delivered to a DSP (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc). On average the DSPs will take between 24-48 hour to ingest the content once it is uploaded to their servers.
The ONLY way a music distributor can speed up the process is by pushing tracks through its internal moderation process faster.
Great little video about why Warren Buffett started a partnership and not a mutual fund. Its all about the terminology.
This is a great interview with Adam Neumann – who is the former CEO and founder of WeWork. This is his first interview since he tried to take the company public and the valuation of the company halved overnight. He talks about the situations around that previously failed IPO attempted and what is happening now with WeWork.
Rippling has one of the best HR based platforms in the world. Its built from the ground up to help companies look after their employees at all stages.
However, it’s only available in the USA!
I run a company in the UK – and I really wish Rippling was available here. I understand there are a lot of complexities around compliance when you are talking about Payroll and HR globally, but it seems like no one has been able to sort that out on a global basis for all employees as of yet.
Alex Bouaziz the co-founder and CEO of Deel has just announced some of their recent numbers on Twitter.
In 2021 –
That is one of the craziest years I have ever heard.
Tencent is a giant in the world of Chinese technology and beyond. Today they have announced that they will be selling most of its stake in JD.com.
Tencent will reduce is staking from 17% to 2.3%.
The proceeds will help Tencent provide shareholders with a $16.4 billion dividend.
After long being JD’s largest stakeholder, Tencent will give the title to Walmart.
This seems to be a Tencent strategy that has paid off in the long term. Instead of Tencent looking to acquire many companies in adjacent industries – they have decided to acquire minority stakes in a huge number of technology companies globally.
Why?
Its far easy to own more when you own a minority. If Tencent were to acquire more companies – they would have issues with Government and regulator approval.
There has been a lot of talk recently about Stablecoins – how they are being managed and backed against real world assets.
Today the CEO of Circle – that controls the stablecoin USDC – testifies before the House Financial Services Committee
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire confirmed that Circle’s USDC stablecoin is “100%” backed by cash and US debt. Circle shifted the composition of the reserves backing its USDC in September.