My first impression of the book was “THAT’S A GREAT USE OF AN NFT”. For those who aren’t familiar with the colourful squiggly line and think that the book is just another manual, I recommend them to “never judge a book by its cover”. The cover artwork is a Chromie Squiggle minted on Art Blocks, a generative art NFT platform that is home to Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza collection which has an impressive 62ETH floor price. 🔷
Without revealing too much about the content of the author’s work, Amanda led by example, used her Chromie Squiggle #2172 as a book cover, and got her target audience (in this case, me) to #ConnectWallet and write a post about it. It would’ve been amazing if the book itself was minted as an NFT, but I got the next best thing – I claimed an NFT that grants me access to an exclusive book-owners’ Telegram chat. 📖
The Web3 world is evolving daily. I look forward to the day when the next 100 million people are onboarded, and when terms like Web2.5/Web3/Web4/Web5 can be retired. 🌎🌍🌏
We also surveyed some crypto enthusiasts in this video, who tried out Animoca titles incl. @TheSandboxGame and shared their reservations about blockchain games going mainstream https://t.co/lwZ7DRSJAo
“Why is our metaverse better than Facebook’s? To me, this is not even a question.” Gaming giant Animoca Brands has hit $6 billion valuation after a round of funding this year. And it’s betting on blockchain as the next evolution in the industry. (Source: Bloomberg)
A growing number of developers and entrepreneurs are seeking to rebuild and decentralise the financial system using blockchain – databases distributed over many computers around the world and kept secure by cryptography. With huge shoes to fill, can DeFi lay the foundations for a decentralised economy?
Short for decentralised finance, DeFi is an umbrella term for financial services offered on public blockchains like Ethereum. Like traditional financial institutions, DeFi applications allow anyone in the world to borrow, lend, earn interest, and trade derivatives. With the help of smart contracts, agreements can be automatically executed and individuals can transact peer-to-peer without trusting centralised intermediaries such as banks and brokers. The DeFi space has seen exponential growth and it is becoming too big to ignore for governments and financial institutions. According to blockchain research firm Blockdata, a trillion dollars could flood into DeFi if the world’s 100 biggest banks invested as little as 1% of assets under management.
Around the world, regulators begin to turn their attention to cryptocurrencies. Some countries have shown a positive attitude toward crypto, while others wield the crackdown hammer. Earlier in September, El Salvador has become the first country to accept bitcoin as legal tender. In the US, the SEC is reportedly investigating Uniswap Labs, the development firm behind the biggest decentralised crypto exchange. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler also warned that DeFi projects aren’t immune to oversight. On the other side of the world, the People’s Bank of China issued a notice that deemed all crypto transactions to be illegal. However, this isn’t the first time that China has ‘banned’ crypto. Despite the recent ban, traders are able to find alternative ways to invest.
If you decide to join the meeting, please come prepared – read more on the subject, take notes, write down some thoughts and points that you would like to bring for the discussion and share with the group.
We will not have a speaker on the topic, so your self-preparation is key for an intelligent and quality discussion within small groups of 4 people.
Fee:HKD30, it is also suggested that every attendee buys a drink as a courtesy to the venue.
The Economic Club is a community of intellectually curious people in Hong Kong. Learn more about the Economic Club on https://www.econclubhk.org/
Geoffrey Cheng 