Here's some light amidst the darkness...
GM, we take the latest Web3 news and translate it into plain old English - so you can stay up to date, without your eyes glazing over.
In today’s edition:
This is big! Crypto is about to become tax free in the EU's largest economy.
Take me down to Paradise Bitcoin City...
RESOURCE: Explaining the Metaverse in under 10 mins
Napster is back baaaby! (as a Web3 music app)
Terms used (click for translation):
Blockchain, Web3.
This is big! Crypto is about to become tax free in the EU's largest economy.
Have you ever been a part of a workplace that has achievement incentives?
Eg: employee of the month gets a $100 Amazon gift card? Or hit X goal and you all get donuts at the end of the week?
On paper, they're not very valuable to the employee.
A $100 gift card in exchange for increased work output, five days a week for a month straight? That's a net gain of $5 per day - if you win.
Even if you haven't experienced this sort of incentive first hand, you likely still understand it. Because it's a common practice.
(And it's a common practice, because it works)
What is incentivized, is realized.
In the race for blockchain dominance around the world, we've started to see similar incentive structures being adopted.
El Salvador and The Central African Republic recognized Bitcoin as legal tender, Portugal charges 0% tax on crypto and Malta charges 0% tax on any crypto held longer than 12 months.
That's cool! But these are all relatively small economies and their incentives are often created to attract businesses to build within their borders.
(Something that larger economies don't need to practice as much).
So when Germany (the EU's largest economy) announced on Tuesday that the sale of Bitcoin and Ethereum, held for 12+ months, will not be taxed - it was a big deal!
Why? It's all in the subtext:
Germany sees blockchain technology playing a big part in the global economy's future.
So much so, that they're happy to lose money in the short term, if it means they can become a center for blockchain development.
A move like this, within an economy like Germany's, could well set a precedent for regulation within the EU and around world.
Some 'long term' light amidst the 'short term' darkness of the current market crash?
We love to see it.
More please.
Take me down to Bitcoin City...
'...where the grass is green and everything's powered by a volcano'.
Ok.
We've asked it before, and we'll ask again: WHERE'S ASHTON!?
Surely we're getting Punk'd.
El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, has announced his plans to create a Bitcoin City, that will be:
'The first bitcoin trading hub fueled by geothermal energy from a volcano.' - bitcoinist.com
Here's Bukele's vision of Bitcoin City, from above:
And here's the 'volcano viewing deck' (?):
...does anyone else get the feeling we're living in a simulation that is using James Bond novels and Black Mirror episodes to inform its world building?
In all seriousness, this is a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal), and for that reason, we love it.
Fingers crossed it becomes a reality.
Resource of the day
Explaining the Metaverse in under 10 mins
Napster is back baaaby! (as a Web3 music app)
Be honest...when you buy vitamins, do you buy the Flinstones gummies?
We'll just come right out and say it: we do!
But what the hell do the Flinstones have to do with vitamins?
And how do they relate to us personally?
(The show was a bigger fixture in our parents childhoods than it was ours).
The answers to the above questions are...
They have nothing to do with vitamins.
The nostalgia was handed down to us from our folks.
But it's a common formula:
Take a beloved/nostalgic brand -> attach it to your product.
And we're starting to see this practiced in the crypto world.
First with the acquisition of the 'Limewire' brand, and now with Napster.
So what do these file sharing apps from the 90's/00's have to do with Web3?
Nothing.
But we have a certain amount of nostalgia attached to these brands, and for companies like Hivemind and Algorand (buyers of the Napster IP), this acquisition is a brand recognition 'shortcut'.
Smart! Let's hope the app is half decent.
Your Daily Dose of Web3
Ecosapiens, a Web3/NFT platform raises $1.5m to help consumers fight climate change
‘$DAI will die’ tweet twisted back on Terra’s Kwon as UST loses $1 peg
What is the hype about play-to-earn games & do they actually pay out?
Latin America’s largest digital bank will allocate 1% to BTC, and offer crypto investment services
Weekly NFT sales plunge 64% to $505 million amid crypto bear market
Alright, that’s it for today!
Love to the family,