Twitter / Getty Images / WIRED
âWhat exactly are people buying?â, is a question that keeps bugging anyone with the time or curiosity to check what is going on in cryptocurrency markets. The question pops up every hype cycle, and it never makes sense. In 2017 people were buying âtokensâ to spend on to yet-to-be-launched websites; in 2020 they were buying âyamsâ, memes play-acting as financial assets; last week, someone shelled out $69 million in cryptocurrency to buy a ânon-fungible tokenâ, or NFT, linked to a digital collage designed by graphic artist Beeple. Now there is an auction for a tweet; currently, the highest bid is $2.5m.
A couple of days
ago, the musician Grimes sold some animations
she made with her brother Mac on a website called Nifty
Gateway. Some were one-offs, while others were limited
editions of a few hundred – and all were snapped
up in about 20 minutes, with total takings of more than
US$6 million.
Despite the steep price tag, anybody
can watch or (with a simple right-click) save a copy of the
videos, which show a cherub ascending over Mars,
Earth,
and imaginary
landscapes. Rather than a copy of the files themselves,
the eager buyers received a special kind of tradable
certificate called a “non-fungible token” or NFT. But
What are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) - and why are they selling for millions? theweek.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theweek.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
So today I have had:
a txt alert 10 min after the local Tsunami Sirens started in my Community, about a half hour after the last quake that put my region in harms way. Excellent work
a txt alert once it was deemed safe to return home, gratefully received.
a PM begin a PRESS Conference (not a Covid briefing) of all the days happenings detailing some of todays important issues
an announcement of the carefully thought out by experts decision to complete the full 7 days lockdown as advertised (some people criticised the shortness of the previous 3 day lockdown)
Some people just love a good cheese with their half empty WHINE.
More evidence that UBIs work
The report is back on another Universal Basic Income trial, this time in the USA. And as with the others, it shows that this policy works:
After getting $500 per month for two years without rules on how to spend it, 125 people in California paid off debt, got full-time jobs and reported lower rates of anxiety and depression, according to a study released Wednesday.[…]
When the program started in February 2019, 28% of the people slated to get the free money had full-time jobs. One year later, 40% of those people had full-time jobs. A control group of people who did not get the money saw a 5 percentage point increase in full-time employment over that same time period.