Fifty-seven million dollars. Let that number sink in. Or at least, that’s how much Donald Trump personally earned from the now-bankrupt World Liberty Financial (WLF) on his newly-released financial disclosure. While some might see this as a victory for DeFi, I can't help but wonder: at whose expense? Or is...
Royalties: A Golden Handcuff?Jack Butcher’s recent reinterpretation of NFT royalties is making waves, and with good reason. His main point is that basing your funding strategy on royalties is the equivalent of getting paid on churn. Ouch. It's a provocative take, and it forces us to question the fundamental assumptions...
It's not just about Bitcoin anymore. It's a revolutionary tool, and if the US gets its act together, it could radically change the lives of artists around the world, especially those struggling in developing nations. Picture Southeast Asia, where the talent is plentiful and boundless, but the opportunity frequently is...
This isn’t really about protecting consumers; it’s about protecting the status quo. Unfortunately, the Illinois Digital Assets and Consumer Protection Act (DACPA) shows us all too well what a harsh, regressive reality looks like. That’s especially true in Senate Bill 1797 and House Bill 742. Yet this legislation, wrapped in...
It feels like only yesterday that I met Anya for the first time in Yangon last year. She’s a ferociously talented nature painter. Today, she plays with AI art generators, imagining a mash-up of time-honored Burmese designs meeting transcendent, forward-looking forms. The dubious pay-as-you-go model of most AI platforms proved...
Last week I had the pleasure of talking with Anya, a young, extremely talented digital artist from Myanmar. She makes beautiful, culturally-influenced works, but her pain points of having a difficult time breaking through to the Web3 world is really tragic. She is demoralized by the scarcity of resources and...
I’ll never forget walking into a tiny indie art collective in Yogyakarta a few years ago. There are so many talented artists there. Last year they had a hard time just keeping the doors open, dependent on pitiful tourist-season sales and sporadic grants. Their stories, filled with passion and frustration,...
JD Vance, Bitcoin 2025. Sounds impressive, right? A sitting VP gracing a crypto conference. But let's cut the hype and ask the question nobody seems to be yelling from the rooftops: Does this actually mean anything for the artists struggling in Southeast Asia's burgeoning creative scene?Forgotten Voices Finally Heard?We've seen...
The art world, if we’re real for a moment, can be a pretty impenetrable place. A tiny group of wealthy gatekeepers, some of whom have never even released a game themselves, choose who gets promotion, and who gets… well, rekt. What if the blockchain, and in particular, ostensibly frivolous stuff...
So the US Senate really just punted on the crypto regulation playing field. Again. The GENIUS Act, which was supposed to restore a modicum of order to the stablecoin wild west, isn’t going anywhere. This is not only a question of Bitcoin bros losing their shirts. This is about Nandar,...
