#31 Gucci to Start Accepting Crypto Payments. Binance: making amends in Europe
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The Juno Typo - $36M Sent to the Wrong Wallet
Juno, a Cosmos based blockchain, is the latest to have funds lost (maybe not really, stay tuned till the end) due to a typo. The story goes like this: someone was able to claim around $100M in tokens from an airdrop happening on Juno. The community found out that this person was actually running an exchange and was using its balances to qualify for the airdrop, leading to the massive payout. The community voted to revoke these tokens from the “culprit” and send them to a community-controlled address. A bad copy-paste caused the funds to actually be transferred to an address nobody owns. You can read the full story on CoinDesk.
First of all, the obvious reaction is: this is what makes Crypto even more risky; one typo and you lose your funds; you can’t call Customer Support to reverse a transaction; not sure how people are ever going to get comfortable with this kind of payment system. And I think it’s a fairly accurate one. However, there are other things at play here as well.
My reaction to reading the news was: how can a community (any community) vote to move someone’s tokens from their wallet? Is that some sort of particularly designed token to support this? What gives?
If I send you 1 ETH, there’s no contract call that a community can vote for to take away your 1 ETH. They are there to stay until you decide to move them - or you sign some hacker’s contract, allowing them to move your funds. But you have to sign something, regardless. So what happened here?
It turns out that the proposal the community voted on was not about an on-chain action, the kind of things that DAOs vote (e.g. “buy 1000 APE using tokens from the treasury”). It was actually about a code upgrade to the chain itself. The upgrade code actually changes the balance of the person voted against and moves their balance to the new, wrong address. They essentially did a hard fork. You might remember when ETH did this.
This situation opens a can of worms I won’t get into - whether it is right for such a thing to happen or not. What do you think?
I will, however, leave you with something else - remember how I said the funds might not really be lost? Well, since we know that the Juno community has the power to essentially rewrite history (their own, at least), why not give it another shot - but with the right address this time?
Mihnea
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Binance: making amends in Europe
On May 4th, Binance announced that it has received regulatory approval to operate as a Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) in France. The move comes as an answer to pressure from regulators in several countries to formalize its status.
At the same time, in a likely “appreciative” manner, Binance has picked Paris to be its regional hub in Europe and will expand its existing office of 50 people by bringing in some key engineering and tech staff and recruiting up to 250 people. This was part of CZ’s vision for the past couple of months. He mentioned that France is a good European hub for Binance because of its size, strength of the regulator and a pro-business mindset. Moreover, last month, he spoke at Paris Blockchain Week, and confirmed a €100m investment into France’s blockchain ecosystem along with a partnership with the nation’s leading start-up incubator, STATION F.
Nonetheless, this is a key step for Binance on the regulatory front and it might prove to be a turning point, as it worked 18 months to get approval from France’s financial regulator (AMF). CZ mentioned in a recent interview that “This is a huge step. (...) This opens the door for us to get more licenses in Europe and elsewhere in the world”. The regulatory approval from its first G-7 member nation would likely give Binance extra leverage in dealing with regulators and expanding its services in other countries. Prior to the approval, Binance had been operating in France, but couldn’t advertise its services. CZ noted that the registration will facilitate its access to banking and payments services, given tradFi providers typically require dealing with licensed partners.
Razvan
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The Emotional Market
We live in a world dominated more and more by emotions, news, and acting on impulse. What happened last week with BAYC, APE, OtherDeeds, and ETH Gas Fees is just but a small example. Let me explain.
On the 23rd of April, when the price was around 14, going down from 16 after the FOMO of the Otherside Metaverse starting its engines on the 30th, more details came in.
In the Thread published on the 26th, the fact that the Otherside Land, called Otherdeeds will be purchased with APE exclusively came up, and also that the selling process will be a dutch auction (which has proven multiple times to be far from an optimal idea).
People started to speculate about the price, the most common belief being that the Land Plots will cost between 600 and 700 APE each because we all know that dutch auctions start with a bigger price, but when the FOMO is so big, it might not even have the chance for the price to go down once. Furthermore, there were no details about the max cap of Plots per wallet.
Initially, it was told that a preapprove system will be put in place so that people can save gas money. (we all know about the ETH gas fees)
Now, if I was KYC-ed (the only people able to buy the Otherdeeds), I would think to accumulate at least some APE for 2-3 Otherdeeds, around 2000APE altogether. There were around 130k KYC-ed wallets, but in the end, only 40k with the money prepared. Enough tough to skyrocket the price all the way to 26$ in a matter of a few days.
And when all was nice and shiny, the next tweet came in:
Each Otherdeed will have a fixed price of 305APE and no dutch auction will be set in place. OpenSea implemented the option of Ape payment and this triggered a massive APE sell from the people that were accumulating for the Otherdeeds. Knowing no dutch auction will happen, everybody started to feel what was about to happen: ETH Gas Wars.
People started selling APE and accumulating ETH, putting the price down to $19. That was a great time for people following the news to buy and sell some APE and to be able to increase their APE supply.
An article with more details came in, saying there will be a limit in the 1st wave of 2 Otherdeeds per wallet, and if, after the 1st wave, some of the 55k deeds available for sale will still be out there, the 2nd wave will start and so on. But a basic math calculation said that 40k wallets filled with APE were ready to buy, 2 items each, 55k items total. So it was pretty clear that the 2nd wave will remain just a theoretical thing.
This took things to a whole other level, because
https://ethereumprice.org/gas/
In the few hours that people were fighting for the Otherdeeds minting, the ETH gas price per transaction was reaching astronomical levels, between 5000 and 6200 Gwei, people paying around 2ETH per each transaction in gas fees. Yes, you heard that right.
Do you think that could have been prevented? Of course.
How? I can think of a few solutions:
1. Just limit at 1 Otherdeed (Land Plot) per wallet: 40k wallets, 55k deeds, enough for everyone in the 1st wave.
2. Gary Vee Season2 style: make a White List of qualified people: if the number of people is bigger than the number of NFTs, create a random list of them. You might get unlucky, but it will come to your turn.
While I write this article, the Otherdeeds Floor Price is 3.9ETH. 2ETH in gas fees + 305APE ($19*305/2800= 2.06ETH). So, right now, you can buy one at the same price you would have bought one on that crazy night (I know, you would have gone for 2 and then sell one at 7-8ETH, as that was the price then).
But from the launch point of view, all these people's irrational emotional thinking could have been avoided. After all, data shows 64.000ETH spent on gas to buy 55k Otherdeeds. That's $175 million because people went crazy to get a better spot in line. They could have just done this:
Joke aside, from my point of view the launch was a total bust and, if you didn't have some serious ETH in your wallet or just gather some friends to buy some together, it would have been a really hard sell.
Moral of the story:
We are still a young market, easily influenced by an Ape twitter Elon profile picture that raises the APE by 25% in 2 min; try to do your best not to be just an emotional being.
Remember: when emotions go up, IQ goes down.
All thighs consider, a huge shoutout to our StakeborgDAO community, who managed, besides personal purchases of Crido or Daniel Cocris (each got 2 with a Koda on them) & others, to gather a big group of people that, together, purchased 4 Otherdeeds. And one of the four has a Koda on it. Shoutout MTK for coordinating the process.
One for all and all for DAO
Cosmin
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Gucci to Start Accepting Crypto Payments
In a report released by Vogue Business, Gucci announced that they are rolling out a crypto payment mechanism pilot in five stores across the U.S., including Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, Wooster Street in New York, and in Las Vegas, with plans to expand the service to its directly-operated North America stores in the near future.
The five stores will accept 10 digital assets including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, dogecoin, shiba inu and stablecoins. In-store crypto payments will be made with a link sent via email to the customer. The link contains a QR code that allows them to execute the payment from their crypto wallet.
This move marks a significant step toward Gucci blending its Web3 and physical communities and an important validation of digital assets from a leading luxury brand. Luxury brands have been exploring blockchain solutions for a while now. In the blockchain introductory course by Stakeborg Academy, I was talking about the Aura Blockchain Consortium founded by LVMH, Prada Group, and Cartier which aims to build a better future for the industry, reinforcing trust, enhancing transparency and pushing for sustainability for luxury brands.
A handful of other luxury retailers have started testing out crypto payments. In March, Off-White announced that flagship stores in Paris, London, and Milan had begun accepting payments including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins Tether and USD Coin. Philipp Plein is in the process of building out a London store that, in addition to accepting crypto payments, has an NFT gallery and offers people the option to upgrade certain purchases with a corresponding digital Decentraland wearable NFT. In February, Plein told Vogue Business that his brand completes at least one crypto transaction per day and has already amassed 150 bitcoin (equal to approximately $5.8 million at the time of writing) in revenue.
Offering in-store payments via cryptocurrency requires some upskilling for in-store associates. To that end, Gucci parent company Kering has this week introduced an in-house game, developed in collaboration with creative agency Al Dente, that educates employees on NFTs and Web3. Already, the number of employees who have signed up have exceeded expectations, according to a spokesperson. Gucci has recently built out a Web3-focused team, and has purchased and is developing digital real estate on The Sandbox.
Evelyne
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For more educational crypto content, check out the links below:
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Discord channel: https://discord.com/channels/901898461568442458/903006233584341052
StakeborgDAO Quarterly Reports: https://docs.stakeborgdao.com/reports/dao-quarterly-reports
Stakeborg Academy: https://academy.stakeborg.com/
Thanks as usual ! Brake the borders !
Tnx🧑🏽💻