Crypto

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.Top Stories This WeekCrypto markets tag $3T combined market cap for first timeAt the start of this week, the combined cryptocurrency market cap broke $3 trillion for the first time. The market has fluctuated heavily this year, previously topping out at $2.62 trillion during the height of the bull run in May, before crashing down to as low as $1.24 trillion in mid-July. CoinGecko’s data tracks 10,418 digital assets across 518 cryptocurrency exchanges, and the surging momentum in the latter half of 2021 comes on the back of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Polkadot (DOT) and Solana (SOL) all pushing past new all-time highs.Bitcoin still remains the dominant force in crypto, with its $1.21 trillion market cap being more than double that of second-ranked Ethereum at $550 billion. Meanwhile, the combined capitalization of all other crypto assets sits at roughly 40%, or $1.24 trillion. BREAKING: Mastercard launches crypto-linked cards across Asia-PacificOn Tuesday, Mastercard announced that it will be launching crypto-linked payment cards across the Asia-Pacific region that will enable users to instantly convert their digital assets into fiat currency. The cards are being launched in collaboration with three crypto service providers: Amber Group and Bitkub in Thailand, and CoinJar in Australia. Mastercard hasn’t outlined what crypto assets will be supported at this stage but did hint that Bitcoin and Ether would be at the top of the list. “Rather than directly transferring cryptocurrencies to a merchant, cardholders will now be able to instantly convert their cryptocurrencies into traditional fiat currency which can be spent everywhere Mastercard is accepted around the world, both online and offline,” Mastercard said. NewYorkCityCoin launching this week with Mayor-elect Eric Adams’ blessingNewYorkCityCoin (NYCCoin) launched on Thursday, with Mayor-elect Eric Adams giving the coin’s issuers, CityCoins, a public endorsement ahead of the rollout. Adams stated last week that he wanted to have a CityCoin for NYC that mirrors Miami’s MiamiCoin.  While Adams welcomed the project to New York this week, CityCoins has yet to officially partner with the local government. It may want to do so soon, however, as the NYCCoin project will divert 30% of its mining rewards to a custodied reserve wallet that the local government can use to support whatever initiatives it chooses.  “We’re glad to welcome you to the global home of Web3! We’re counting on tech and innovation to help drive our city forward,” Adams said. Elon Musk offloads $1.1B in Tesla stockAccording to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, erratic billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk offloaded more than 934,000 Tesla shares worth around $1.1 billion on Thursday. Musk made around a 180% gain on his sold shares with an average sale price of around $1,170, marking his largest fire sale of Tesla stock to date. The CEO had teased a potential sale over the weekend after polling his 63 million Twitter followers about whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock. The poll was in response to public pushback against billionaires who may or may not have paid their fair share of tax. This sale only accounted for 1% of Musk’s holdings, and the filings show that he planned to sell the stock as part of his tax obligations back in September. The world now awaits if he will sell another 9% to appease the 58% of respondents who voted “yes” to his poll. Zimbabwe may be the next country to embrace Bitcoin as legal tenderZimbabwe’s government was rumored to be looking at utilizing Bitcoin as a legal tender to meet growing demand in the country, according to local news outlets. The news, reported on Nov. 7, suggested that discussions with local businesses are already underway. Retired Brigadier Colonel Charles Wekwete, permanent secretary and head of the e-government technology unit in the office of the president and cabinet, was confirmed as the source of the speculation. A couple of days later, however, news also surfaced that Zimbabwe was not looking to adopt Bitcoin whatsoever, and was instead exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Zimbabwe’s minister of information, Monica Mutsvangwa, had the unfortunate job of quashing the rumors and providing a major buzzkill for Bitcoin maxis.   Winners and Losers  At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $63,185, Ether (ETH) at $4,577 and XRP at $1.17. The total market cap is at $2.75 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Loopring (LRC) at 100.64%, Kadena (KDA) at 99.70% and Livepeer (LPT) at 80.35%. The top three altcoin losers of the week are OMG Network (OMG) at -25.57%, Arweave (AR) at -16.86% and Cosmos (ATOM) at -15.68%. For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.   Most Memorable Quotations “For the second time in five months, we announced the seizure of digital proceeds of ransomware deployed by a transnational criminal group. This will not be the last time — the U.S. government will continue to aggressively pursue the entire ransomware ecosystem and increase our nation’s resilience to cyber threats.”Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general “If Apple were to add support for #Bitcoin to the iPhone and convert their treasury to a Bitcoin Standard, it would be worth at least a trillion dollars to their shareholders.”Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy “The crypto community is ambitious, daring and full of potential. Innovation is about synergy. It’s beyond technology and about people. It’s about us.”Kristina Cornèr, editor-in-chief at Cointelegraph “I believe that in the next three to five years, the DeFi industry will grow massively. It’s already growing rapidly, but the advantages of peer-to-peer technologies can and will be more widely experienced.”Anton Bukov, co-founder of 1inch Network “If the results of this ‘development’ phase conclude that the case for CBDC is made, and that it is operationally and technologically robust, then the earliest date for launch of a U.K. CBDC would be in the second half of the…

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and we throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes! This week, our 6 Questions go to Daniela Barbosa, general manager for blockchain, healthcare and identity at the Linux Foundation and executive director of Hyperledger.At Hyperledger, Daniela is responsible for the overall strategy and operations of the organization, including staff, programs, expansion and the execution of Hyperledger’s mission. Daniela has more than 20 years of enterprise technology experience. She has a master’s degree in library (remember those?) and information science, which she put to work in the 1990s when the internet was becoming nascent for consumers and enterprises alike. An active voice in the industry, Daniela has been a featured guest speaker at many key blockchain conferences worldwide and advises the Hyperledger community on the use of open-source technologies.  1 — What is the main hurdle in the way of the mass adoption of blockchain technology?Onboarding. For enterprise blockchain, it is no longer a question of if the technology will work. We have seen plenty of proven enterprise networks across many use cases — in supply chain, trade finance, digital payments, healthcare and more. It is how those networks are governed as active growing networks beyond the POC stage and how you onboard a diverse ecosystem of both small and large players. In crypto, usability has a long way to go, as anyone who is not deep in the tech and has tried to set up their own wallet might tell you. Third-party services are certainly making some usability aspects easier, especially to buy and hold, but then we are getting ourselves back into the same game. 2 — Looking at the top 100 projects in crypto by market cap, which ones stand out to you — and for what reason?Great, thanks for the question. I just spent 30 minutes falling down the rabbit hole. There are more than a handful on that list today that are leveraging our Hyperledger ecosystem… However, I had to pick one, it is Ethereum. The Hyperledger community has been part of the Ethereum ecosystem since the Hyperledger Foundation started in 2016. From 2018 onward, we have worked closely with the key stakeholders defining Ethereum-based solutions and use cases in the enterprise. In early 2017, our Technical Steering Committee approved the Hyperledger Burrow project, which was our first Ethereum-derived project that supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Then, in 2019, we welcomed Hyperledger Besu, a code contribution by ConsenSys. Hyperledger Besu is an Ethereum client developed under the Apache 2.0 license and written in Java that runs on the Ethereum public network, private networks and test networks and is designed to be enterprise-friendly for both public and private permissioned network use cases. 3 — Do you subscribe to the idea of Bitcoin as a means of payment, as a store of value, as both… or as neither?I obviously subscribe to the idea of Bitcoin (BTC) as a means of payment, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent all my first Bitcoin in 2012…. Today, I think it is both a store of value and a means of payment, especially outside of the United States. Just wished I had stored more of it… 4 — Who makes sense to you, and who makes no sense whatsoever?The young climate activists who are fighting for their (our) right to live on a habitable planet make sense. We need to support climate action initiatives, in the streets and with global funding for innovation and sustainable development. People who stick with their “principles” without looking at facts and science make no sense. Even after being clearly proven wrong, they just double down. 5 — What was the most embarrassing moment of your life?I traveled halfway across the globe for a meeting, padding in about 36 hours before the meeting to be well rested. I then showed up two hours late because I had the wrong address and stayed at a hotel on the other side of town from the actual meeting location. Forever a Road Warrior. 6 — Think of a favorite poem or song lyric. What is it, and why does it speak to you?Bob Dylan’s “I used to care, but things have changed.” As Bob said when he received the Academy Award for best original song for “Things Done Changed” in 2001, it “obviously is a song that doesn’t pussyfoot around nor turn a blind eye to human nature.” Yes, indeed. People are crazy, and times are strange. A wish to the blockchain community:Keep building.

Trading on TurboXBT, the short-term trading platform that guarantees instant profit within minutes requires more than meets the eye. In order not to sound too critical, TurboXBT is as easy as is being flaunted as the digital asset exchange is arguably one of such with the friendliest user interfaces around today. However, to stay consistently profitable requires some extra work, some of which will be discussed in this article. Back to the title again, $10,000 is a large sum of money, but it is easy to make. Traders, both new and old should first understand that there is no money making guarantees anywhere, however, with the continuous application of a winning strategy, it is very likely, and possible that a trader will remain profitable most of the times. The beauty of TurboXBT lies in the fact that it permits several traders to be entered and closed almost every 30 seconds. This implies that, provided the underlying market condition is favorable, a trader can enter as many 4 trades in an hour, if the maximum time frame permissible on TurboXBT is set. This high frequency margin makes it easy for traders to turn profits every now and then, when compared with other trading platforms/models in which trades are open for a much longer period of time. Here is a perfect example of a successful trade on TurboXBT; a user who commits $1000 to an UP contract on the BTC/USD pair for example at a payout rate of 55 to 90% will cart away with a total of $1,900 should the price of Bitcoin close upward within the defined time frame. At a positive close, the TurboXBT algorithm will calculate the percentage gain based on the price moves as influenced by the underlying market forces. The $1900 takehome encompasses both the trading capital, and a 90% return. Five 5 Key Drivers of Profitability This factors are more like the basic provisions on the TurboXBT trading platform that can aid the user in maximizing his earnings on the exchange. I am assuming that the users reading this post understands how to open an account on TurboXBT as well as how to enter into UP or DOWN contracts on the platform. This been established, let’s dive into the 5 factors in no particular order. Utilizing Demo Account A Demo account comes with every successful registration on the TurboXBT platform. Our internal research has shown that users who utilize these demo accounts are more likely to have stable and successful winnings compared to users who dive head-on into committing their funds.  The simplicity with which TurboXBT permits users to place trades should not serve as a yardstick for expertise, the journey to making $10,000 or any sustainable profit is dependent on how versed you are with how each trading pair moves, how fundamentals and technical analysis impact market movement, all of which can be practised beforehand with the demo account. Wide Range of Trading Pairs TurboXBT is designed as a one-stop-shop for all traders irrespective of the primary market they trade. The platform supports 17 assets cutting across cryptocurrencies, Forex, commodities and indices. Depending on the trader’s preferred strategy, it is essential to trade on a market one has a full understanding of the forces that move the market per time. Cryptocurrencies While still largely unregulated in many countries, digital currencies like Bitcoin (BTC), and Ethereum (ETH) represents some of the easiest avenues to record massive gains due to their inherent volatilities. Trading crypto must be preceded with enough practice as their impact could be bi-directional, and could make, or mar the user. Withdrawals and Time Frames As highlighted earlier, the shorter timeframes that TurboXBT permits can be used as a veritable tool by traders to record massive profits that can be placed on repeat. Trades on TurboXBT spans for as little as 30 seconds to a maximum of 15 minutes per trade respectively. TurboXBT does not take any commission on withdrawals, and by implication, traders can gain additional value on their winnings. The removal of withdrawal fees may be subjected to network charges which TurboXBT does not control. Either way, the empowerment provisions remains unmatched in the digital asset trading industry today. Blog TurboXBT has a dedicated blog post with a core focus, “to provide the right resources that can usher in our users to the path of profitability. At TurboXBT, we believe in the power of a rich library, and we are confident that utilizing our resources can add to the user’s potentials to record as much as $10,000 income per month. Conclusion In conclusion, TurboXBT provides one of the easiest and stress-free pathways to making a good and sustainable income per month. However, while the title connotes easy steps, the onus lies on the trader to do all due diligence in line with the factors highlighted, and other independent researches, before making and committing to a trading strategy.

This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations.  It was a quiet week in the mainland as much of the Chinese crypto community was either lying low, off in Lisbon, or recovering from a week-long hangover following the Shanghai Blockchain Week that concluded over last weekend.The largest blockchain-related news was the $130 million hack of DeFi platform Boy X Highspeed, or BXH for short. BXH is a decentralized exchange running on BSC, Ethereum, HECO, and OKEx.  🚨🚨We are sorry to announce that BXH was attacked on #BinanceChain. Other chains assets are safe. We are cooperating with BSC and Peckshield to follow up and trace.#BXH @HECO_Chain @BinanceChain @AnyswapNetwork @O3Swap @renprotocol @cz_binance @peckshield pic.twitter.com/jNo8C53DM0— BXH (@BXH_Blockchain) October 30, 2021  Even more peculiar than the platform’s name itself is the nature of the hack. It appears that the attacker somehow gained access to the admin key, which leads to plenty of questions about the security and decentralization of the project. Based on this and the fact that the Chinese project claims to have enlisted the help of Chinese law enforcement, there are suspicions it could be the result of an inside job. BXH has offered a large bounty of up to $10 million for those who can help return the funds.   This reward announcement was later announced on the BXH Twitter Huobi not giving up on moon missionVolumes on Huobi continued to drop, at times falling behind Coinbase Pro and Korean exchange Upbit. Last week Huobi was roughly 60% of the volume on FTX, but it sat on Wednesday at around 40%. It’s also around one-third the volume of major competitor OKEx. Huobi is now less than two months away from its own deadline to close accounts belonging to Chinese users. Huobi will need to dramatically reshuffle to win back the market share it has slowly lost to exchanges with fewer regulatory risks.   Even with falling volume, it’s hard to bet against the longstanding giant of CeFi  In a strong marketing push, Huobi has announced a contest to send one user into space onboard a private spacecraft. Not all the details were given, but this announcement comes as the exchange celebrates its eigth anniversary, making it one of the older trading institutions in the sector.  PlatOn claims a partnership with Google CloudOne of China’s more low-key public chains announced on Twitter it is partnering with the large cloud service provider Google Cloud:“We will work together to provide basic application technology and enterprise-level platform services for global users, as well as the research and development in blockchain technology, privacy protection, and ecosystem building.”The announcement didn’t gain much attention, as it’s unclear how much actual reciprocation is happening from Google Cloud’s end. Despite the announcement, the token was down around 6% on Thursday. Mining in Southeast AsiaThe Southeast Asia country of Laos is exploring cryptocurrency mining in the aftermath of China’s mining crackdown. A pilot project between the government and the private sector is expected to bring in roughly $194 million towards the country’s total domestic revenue projected for 2022. Laos shares a small southern border with China’s Yunnan province, an area where a lot of miners are still leaving following the announcement from the Energy Administration of Yunnan in June that clarified the national policy would apply to Yunnan itself. Contacts report that though a lot of miners have left China already, a portion has been laying low, waiting to see if the regulatory environment changes or a better opportunity presents itself. Countries like Laos are interesting potential destinations as regulations are still quite ambiguous. Traditionally, Southeast Asia has been home to a lot of China’s “offshore” businesses, such as gambling or casino games seeking to avoid regulations or law enforcement. CBDC gaining tractionChina’s central bank is once again boasting about the traction of its centralized digital currency, the e-CNY.  Announcements at Hong Kong’s Fintech week revealed that now more than 140 million people have access to accounts, with over 62 billion transactions processed. This is a large jump from the previous year and should come as little surprise considering the amount of trial programs that have been rolled out around the country. Many franchise restaurants and retailers are already advertising e-CNY at point of sale devices throughout the country.It seems likely that number will continue to rise, challenging private apps Alipay and WeChat, both of which claim over 1 billion users each. Supplanting those two will be a difficult task, mainly due to the feature-rich nature of the super-apps. However, the central bank currency surely has a lot more patience and the advantage of regulatory policy-makers that can tilt the market in its favor. 

The total value secured by the Chainlink network has officially surpassed $75 billion, marking a new milestone for the decentralized oracle solution that has become synonymous with price data services for the rapidly growing DeFi sector. With the milestone, Chainlink has become “one of the most value securing forms of decentralized consensus on the planet,” according to protocol co-founder Sergey Nazarov. Chainlink is also one of the fastest-growing networks in all of crypto, with smart contract value secured growing by a factor of ten since last year. 2020 was a year of record growth for the #Chainlink Network. Here’s an overview of key metrics, like our adoption in #DeFi, implemented research, & blockchain integrations. Thank you to our great community and the amazing smart contract developers we are lucky to work with. OK;LG pic.twitter.com/4E543ALVX6— Chainlink – Official Channel (@chainlink) December 31, 2020 Chainlink, which is comprised of independent oracle nodes, has seen rapid uptake across several leading blockchains, including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Avalanche. DeFi applications built on these and other blockchains use Chainlink oracle networks to power their smart contracts, bringing market data to on-chain financial applications. Related: Associated Press plans to launch Chainlink node to publish dataSince debuting its mainnet in May 2019, Chainlink has launched over 700 oracle networks, which have secured over 600 million data points across ten blockchains. As Cointelegraph reported in July, the oracle network has onboarded an average of 1.4 new partners each day in 2021.Demand for oracle services has grown exponentially with the arrival of DeFi, or decentralized finance. Measured by total value locked, or TVL, the DeFi sector is currently worth over $253 billion. The industry was virtually non-existent when Chainlink launched its mainnet two and a half years ago.The DeFi industry has charted exponential growth for the past two years. Source: defillama.comWhen asked about the growth of “metaverse” technology, which was punctuated by Facebook’s total rebranding to Meta, Sergey Nazarov told Cointelegraph that Chainlink “already powers multiple Metaverse applications across DeFi, NFTs and gaming.” He further explained:“We fully expect smart contracts to power the new relationships being formed in the metaverse, especially since these relationships need to be inherently trustless, due to the new level of identity that the metaverse makes possible.”Related: Axie Infinity, Decentraland and ‘metaverse’ cryptos rally after Facebook rebrands to MetaAs Nazarov explained, Chainlink is using the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, or CCIP, to connect various universes. CCIP “will use Chainlink oracles to enable users to move digital assets and execute smart contracts across the various chains used throughout the metaverse,” he said, adding:“I anticipate the trustless metaverse does require trustless data, trustless off-chain compute and the ability to utilize multiple chains, all of which Chainlink is being heavily relied upon for already.”

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and we throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes! This week, our 6 Questions go to Yoni Assia, the co-founder and CEO of eToro.Yoni Assia is the co-founder and CEO of eToro, the social investing network with over 23 million registered users from more than 100 countries. Yoni is widely acknowledged as a crypto pioneer, having co-written the Colored Coins white paper with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin in 2013. In 2018, Yoni founded GoodDollar, a nonprofit initiative created to develop a sustainable and scalable framework for bringing a digital, universal basic income to the world via new crypto asset technologies. He has long been a champion of different approaches to wealth and capital distribution, initially introducing the GoodDollar concept in a white paper called The Visible Hand in 2008. Yoni holds a BA in Management and Computer Science, and an MSc in Computer Science from the Reichman University (IDC Herzliya), Israel. 1 — What kind of consolidation do you expect to see in the crypto industry in 2021? We’re nearly at the end of 2021 and what a year it has been for crypto, with many coins reaching new ATHs, the launch of a Bitcoin ETF in the United States, and growing demand for crypto from both retail and institutional investors. We’ve seen more and more traditional companies embrace crypto and the blockchain technology that underpins it, and this will only continue. This year has been about continued growth and the mainstreaming of crypto but, as the industry matures, we will see consolidation. Ultimately, I am hugely optimistic about the outlook for crypto — blockchain technology will revolutionize finance.   2 — Which is sillier: $500k Bitcoin, or $0 Bitcoin? Why? $0 Bitcoin (BTC), easily. I bought my first Bitcoin in 2010, and 11 years later I’m still investing in Bitcoin and running a company that makes it easier for others to do so too. Crypto is still a nascent asset class and Bitcoin, the first and largest crypto, is only 12 years old. It may take some time to hit $500,000, but the future is bright for BTC and crypto more broadly. 3 — Which people do you find most inspiring, most interesting, and most fun in this space? I have to mention my eToro team. I’m lucky enough to work with some of the smartest, most dedicated and inspiring people in the industry. Looking beyond eToro, I recently attended the Milken Institute Global Conference. The event brought together many of the brightest and most influential minds in the world to discuss the most urgent challenges facing us globally. Entitled “Charting a New Course,” the conference focused on how recent disruptions can be “reframed” for a “thriving future.” I left feeling deeply inspired and even more determined to push forward with GoodDollar — a digital blockchain project which aims to make universal income a reality on a global scale. The income gap is a crisis of global proportions, and GoodDollar’s goal is to onboard the next 100 million people into the digital economy. 4 — What’s the most interesting place you’ve ever visited?In 2020, I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Warren Buffett in Omaha, Nebraska. It was an honor to meet one of my heroes and a life changing moment for me. The two key takeaways for me were:Investing can be simple when you invest in businesses you understand and believe in. If you follow the rules of value investing over a long period of time, you can succeed as an investor.The most important investment you can make is in yourself. 5 — Which two superpowers would you most want to have, and how would you combine them for good… or evil?I’m going to cheat and name three. I’ve always said I would want to be able to teleport, heal and have the ability to shake someone’s hand and know everything they know. I’m all about using power for good. 6 — Choose the single most memorable moment from your favorite movie.For me, it would be the scene from The Matrix (1999), directed by the Wachowskis, when the main character, Neo, has to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. 

This “Crypto City” guide looks at New York City’s crypto culture, its most notable projects and people, its financial infrastructure, which retailers accept crypto, and where you can find blockchain education courses — and there’s even a short history of the controversial regulatory regime required to operate in the city. Fast factsCity: New YorkCountry: United StatesPopulation: 8.8 millionEstablished: 1624Language: English New York City is a bustling metropolis in the American state of New York. The city is divided into five separate boroughs — the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island — each with its own unique geography and culture. While the state’s capital is Albany, NYC is its most widely known city and is one of the most famous cities in the world.The most populous city in the United States, NYC is home to an estimated 8.8 million people, with an additional 1 million people traveling to the city every day for work (pre-pandemic). In 2019, the city also welcomed nearly 70 million tourists seeking to take in the bright lights of Times Square, see a Broadway musical, visit the Empire State Building, and enjoy NYC’s dining and nightlife, among the many other sites and attractions the city offers.New York City has been the setting for countless major films and television shows, which adds to its attraction as a tourist destination. Some of the most famous movies filmed in NYC include The Godfather, Ghostbusters, King Kong, Taxi Driver, West Side Story, Goodfellas, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Saturday Night Fever and many, many others. Sitcom classics Seinfeld and Friends were set in the city, and the long-running live sketch show Saturday Night Live broadcasts every weekend from 30 Rockefeller Plaza.With Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange located in lower Manhattan, the city is generally recognized as the financial capital of the United States, perhaps even the world. It’s also the nation’s fashion capital and one of its major technology, music, film and television hubs. Home to around 3 million immigrants, NYC is widely known for its cultural diversity, with the Statue of Liberty famously inscribed with the words: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  View of New York City skyline. Source: Pexels  The city’s status as a hot location for crypto and blockchain culture has a lot to do with it being a major junction where finance and technology meet, according to Michael Moro, CEO of digital asset prime brokerage Genesis: “New York City has always been the epicenter of the capital markets and, over time, has earned a global reputation for being an innovation and technology hub.”NYC is also a very wealthy city. “The advantage of the city is really Wall Street, right?” says Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks — an institutional digital asset custody, transfer and settlement platform. “You have a huge concentration of people who understand finance. You have a huge amount of capital flowing in from traditional finance into crypto. All the big venture capitalists are based in New York and are pushing into crypto.”    Crypto cultureNew York City has a long, well-established culture around cryptocurrency and blockchain. Way back on New Year’s Eve 2013/2014, Bitcoin Center NYC, a brick-and-mortar center dedicated to promoting and educating the public on the premier cryptocurrency, was launched by Nick Spanos — a real estate executive turned Bitcoin evangelist. The center quickly became a hub for fans of the still fairly underground cryptocurrency.Spanos tells Magazine that “Bitcoin Center NYC brought Bitcoin from the back alleys to Wall Street, from something hidden to something celebrated, from something unknown to something open and transparent.”Bitcoin Center NYC’s brick-and-mortar space. Source: Bitcoin Center NYCSpanos later also founded the Blockchain Center, which is dedicated to education on the power of blockchain technology. He adds that while Bitcoin Center NYC has been relatively quiet during the COVID-19 pandemic, “we have a new space and are looking at bringing back the popular Satoshi Square gatherings — with an embrace of the growing crowd of Wall Street blockchain specialists and new believers.”The Big Apple hosts a number of major blockchain and crypto conferences, including the annual New York Blockchain Week. Though it was ultimately canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, New York Blockchain Week 2020 was set to feature Consensus, the Digital Asset Summit, Ethereal Summit, The Block Summit, Magical Crypto Conference, ETH NYC and Smart Contract Summit #0. Some of the events went virtual, and the conference was again put on hold in 2021.In-person conferences reappeared toward the end of 2021, including Blockworks Digital Asset Summit 2021, Mainnet 2021 and SALT, which were held in September, and CoinGeek Conference in early October, while NFT.NYC 2021 is scheduled for November.Alex Mashinsky, a New Yorker who serves as CEO of crypto borrowing and lending platform Celsius Network — which is headquartered just across the river in New Jersey — tells Magazine that New York really is a crypto city: “You have money, you have people, you have tech, and you have a lot of customers who consume this technology. It’s a very cosmopolitan city, so you have people from every country and walk of life.” He adds, “We see a lot of wealth here. If rich people want to put 1% to 5% of their wealth into crypto, it’s going to happen here.”  We are going to the moon pic.twitter.com/66MvxpWW4w— Alex Mashinsky ©️ (@Mashinsky) October 19, 2021  New York City has also been part of the burgeoning nonfungible token art scene. In March 2021, the artist collective Superchief opened what it alleged to be the first-ever brick-and-mortar NFT art gallery, and the Postmasters gallery in lower Manhattan has an NFT-focused division called PostmastersBLOCKCHAIN. Meanwhile, Beeple’s $69-million sale of “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” in March took place via the NYC branch of auction house Christie’s.However, some warn that NYC has been undergoing a “brain drain” that has seen top talent going elsewhere, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.“During the pandemic, other cities and states have been aggressively courting the crypto community with business, tax and regulatory incentives, and…

About two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal ran an expose on the number of judges who held or traded the stock of companies over which they presided in legal proceedings. The article identifies 131 federal judges nationwide who did this during the period of 2010 to 2018. Of those 131 members of the judiciary, 61 judges purportedly traded the public company stock of litigants during the case. Imagine that! It’s quite incredible, actually.Powers On… is a monthly opinion column from Marc Powers, who spent much of his 40-year legal career working with complex securities-related cases in the United States after a stint with the SEC. He is now an adjunct professor at Florida International University College of Law, where he teaches a course on “Blockchain, Crypto and Regulatory Considerations.” It seems there would be ethical reasons for judges to not allow themselves to fall into that situation. When I litigated cases, parties were required to disclose the public companies affiliated with the party so that the judges could assess if they had any possible conflict in handling a particular case assigned to them. These conflicts could be that the judge knows the parties in the action personally, or the witnesses. The parties’ written disclosure is also supposed to trigger an obligation for the judge to see if they, or a family member, own stock in the public corporation involved in the lawsuit.    There is also a 1974 law that prohibits a judge from presiding over a case when their family members own shares of stock of a public company litigant. It was passed shortly after the Watergate crisis and President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office. This is an outright ban; it is not discretionary by the jurist. It cannot be waived by the parties. The judge is supposed to disqualify, or recuse, themself from the litigation. So, why does this happen, and should we tolerate it from our judicial branch of government? The Federal ReserveNow, let’s turn to the Federal Reserve, which is part of the executive branch of our government, and its 12 reserve bank presidents. The Boston and Dallas Federal Reserve Bank presidents — Eric Rosengren and Robert Kaplan, respectively — both resigned in the last month, perhaps from allegations coming to light that they traded stocks over the last year while helping direct macroeconomic policy for our country. To me, this was, for sure, ill-advised conduct by these former presidents. They know on a continuous, confidential basis how the Fed might use certain monetary tools that tend to favor certain industries and, as a corollary, the stock prices of companies in those industries. In another publication by The Wall Street Journal just last week, it was reported that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell imposed sweeping personal-investing restrictions on the Fed presidents and the seven governors on the central bank’s board. These include prohibiting the purchase or sale of individual stocks, a one-year holding period, and a 45-day pre-approval process for buying or selling mutual funds. No wonder the crypto crowd is losing faith in our institutions and seeking autonomously driven technology like blockchain to cleanse us and give everyone a level playing field.The STOCK Act of 2012Now, while it may seem to many that there was nothing prohibiting judiciary or Federal Reserve officials from owning or trading stock before this new investment policy by Powell, I disagree. Enter The STOCK Act of 2012, passed by Congress in April of that year during the administration of Barack Obama. “STOCK” stands for “stop trading on congressional knowledge.” Catchy, right? Congress loves its acronyms.The STOCK Act applies to members of Congress, executive branch employees — including the president and vice president — and judicial officers and employees. The stated purpose of the act is: “To prohibit Members of Congress and employees of Congress [and the executive and judicial branch] from using nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit [or profit], and for other purposes.”It was in part enacted because “political intelligence” companies started popping up, advising hedge funds on the likelihood of governmental action. Sometimes, these companies learned information from government officials, information not otherwise readily available in the public domain, and passed it on to hedge fund managers who traded stocks based on that information. There is also a requirement to report stock transactions.Before the law’s passage, it became a problem for regulators and prosecutors that the securities law on insider trading was somewhat gray as to whether the source of the information — the government officials — did anything wrong by passing it on to the intelligence company. This law makes clear that it is wrong and, in fact, a felony to do so. A section of the act explicitly addresses these government officials, stating that “Each Member of Congress or employee of Congress owes a duty arising from a relationship of trust and confidence.” It also states that the covered government workers are “not exempt from the insider trading prohibitions arising under the securities laws.”     So, with the disclosure of the trading activities by certain jurists and Fed presidents, the question that now arises is whether they were in possession of nonpublic information and used it to trade stocks. For argument, I think a judge is clearly in possession of nonpublic information before they rule in favor of one party in a litigation, before the decision is rendered in writing or orally in court. For a Fed president, it gets even more problematic. Don’t they always possess nonpublic information, meaning any stock trades to avoid losses or to gain profits from upcoming Fed policies can be arguably in violation of this law?To date, I am unaware of even one criminal prosecution under the STOCK Act. The closest thing to using the act was the 2018 indictment of former Congressperson Chris Collins. But the insider trading charge related to his purported learning of information while sitting on a public company’s board, not from his congressional duties. It will be interesting to see if the Securities and Exchange Commission or…

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.Top Stories This WeekBitcoin officially hits new all-time high above $65KBitcoin (BTC) surged to new all-time highs this week, breaking the former ceiling of $64,900 from April as the asset went into price discovery mode before topping out around $67,000.The bullish momentum coincided with the successful launch of ProShares’ Bitcoin futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF). Many onlookers are expecting the price to increase in the coming weeks and months, with the more optimistically inclined even suggesting that up to $300,000 is possible in the near future. With Bitcoin’s market capitalization dominance at its highest since mid-May, many popular traders have stressed that now is the time to put a focus on digital gold and put the altcoin market on the back burner for the moment. ProShares Bitcoin-linked ETF launches on NYSEProShares achieved a major milestone for the crypto sector this week after the firm debuted its Bitcoin futures-based ETF (BITO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Tuesday. ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF saw around $1 billion in volume on its opening day, with Bloomberg analysts stating that it was arguably the largest first-day volume for an ETF in terms of “natural” or “grassroots interest.” After two days on the NYSE, Proshares’ ETF became the fastest fund ever to reach $1 billion in assets under management. Following Proshares’ ETF, many onlookers are waiting to see how the next in line performs. At the time of writing on Friday, Valkyrie just launched its Bitcoin futures ETF on the NYSE. Coinbase announces multiyear partnership with NBA and WNBATop crypto exchange Coinbase has penned a deal with the NBA, WNBA, NBA G League, NBA 2K League and USA Basketball as part of a multiyear sponsorship deal. As part of the deal, Coinbase will work to educate basketball fans on crypto.According to the NBA, Coinbase will create “unique content, innovations, activations and experiences” to help basketball fans to learn about the crypto space. The firm’s branding will also appear during the televised games.The move could be a real “slam dunk” for the industry in terms of mainstream adoption, with data from Statista showing that an average of 1.6 million people watched NBA regular-season games across major networks during the 2019–2020 season. Mariah Carey buys Bitcoin, hopes to empower fans through educationMariah Carey, the pop icon behind the divisive Christmas song “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” has partnered with the Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange Gemini to promote Bitcoin adoption and support girls of color in their pursuit of STEM degrees — a broad education category that refers to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In a video to her 10.2 million Instagram followers, Carey said she’s a Bitcoin investor and offered her fans a referral code to redeem a whopping $20 in free BTC. Her promo deal is linked to charitable causes, as users who sign up through the referral link and trade digital assets on Gemini will be contributing directly to Black Girls Code, a nonprofit organization that provides technology education for African-American girls. Brazilian toddler makes over 6,500% profit on her first Bitcoin holdingA four-year-old hodler from Brazil has earned more than 6,500% in profit on her first Bitcoin. The girl’s father, João Canhada, gifted 1 BTC to his newborn in 2017 when the asset was priced at around $915. Canhada is the founder of Brazilian crypto exchange Foxbit, and stated that he bought his daughter Bitcoin not just as a gift, but as a “way of investing” in the emerging crypto sector. It appears that he was at the right place at the right time, as the price of Bitcoin went on to surge to $20,000 at the tail end of 2017.While there have been many bumps along the road, Bitcoin was worth around $61,000 at the end of the week, suggesting her profit now sits at roughly 6,560%.  Winners and Losers  At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $60,658, Ether (ETH) at $3,963 and XRP at $1.09. The total market cap is at $2.51 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are OKB at 71.25%, Nexo (NEXO) at 33.80% and Huobi Token (HT) at 33.70%.The top three altcoin losers of the week are Flow (FLOW) AT -21.20%, Celsius (CEL) at 14.00% and Perpetual Protocol (PERP) at -13.14%. For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.   Most Memorable Quotations “If left unchecked, these digital assets and payments systems could harm the efficacy of our sanctions.”U.S. Department of the Treasury “We’ve got a lot of smart guys working at Icahn & Company, and we just don’t understand Bitcoin. I’m not saying it’s bad or good, I’m just saying we don’t understand it. We’re not going to invest in something we don’t get. […] The jury is really out on whether Bitcoin has intrinsic value or acts as a store of value. If inflation gets rampant, I guess it does have value. There are so many variables, it is a very difficult thing to invest in.”Carl Icahn, founder of Icahn Enterprises  “There’s a lot of history here. We think it’ll track quite well and, most importantly, we think that a combination of a regulated futures market and a 40-act ETF will really open up the opportunity to conveniently get Bitcoin exposure to a lot of folks who may have been waiting on the sidelines.”Simeon Hyman, head of investment strategy at ProShares “To protect consumers and reduce costs, we encourage the streamlining of state-level regulatory frameworks for stablecoins and the issuance of special-purpose charters by federal banking regulators for stablecoin companies seeking to operate nationally.”The Chamber of Digital Commerce “DAOs do not clearly fall within any of Australia’s existing company structures. […] This regulatory uncertainty is preventing the establishment of projects of significant scale in Australia.”The Senate Committee on Australia as a Technology and…

It’s been said that “Blockchain technology is not as decentralized as we think” and that critical decisions are made, not democratically, but by a small group of “agents of influence” often including founders, software developers, miners and other parties with a monetary interest in the matter. This notion is open to debate, of course, but accepting that this is the case today, would it necessarily hold in the future too? Especially when Bitcoin or Ethereum, or any other blockchain network, has billions of users and, for the sake of argument, plays a critical role in the world economy?Say Bitcoin’s network becomes the platform upon which most global payments are made. At that point (if not before) would the network be deemed a “public good” that is subject to some sort of government or a super government oversight? That is, key decisions would now be made not just by developers and node operators, but also by an international consortium of economists, scientists, engineers and public administrators. Perhaps even headed by a political appointee? In the event of a global cataclysm, could this governing consortium even change some of Bitcoin’s foundational principles, like its issuance limit of 21 billion BTC?A utility working for the common good?This notion of a public good or utility that operates in the public interest goes back to English common law “when key economic players such as ferry operators had to fulfill certain obligations to the public,” writes Dave Yost. In the 1890s, the United States began codifying common-carrier and public-utility law after predations by railroad barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, who once shut down a bridge he owned to rival railroads trying to enter New York City, causing market havoc. While “public goods” have a technical definition, they are usually recognized as commodities or services available to all members of society — local, national or global — like highways or public education, or clean air. They are often regulated by governments.    “In some ways, blockchain networks like Bitcoin already meet the economic definition of a public good,” Garrick Hileman, head of research at Blockchain.com, tells Magazine. After all, anyone can use the Bitcoin network, even users or builders of rival networks. As for governance, blockchains also possess “a very effective means of settling governance disputes,” adds Hileman. “Participants that aren’t happy with a change — or the lack of change — can simply fork a blockchain to implement their idea. The marketplace then serves as an arbiter over competing blockchain design choices.”That sounds fine in principle, but in the real world things don’t always work out so neatly, others counter. “You may have heard that in cryptosystems, you don’t have to trust humans and their fallible corrupt natures — you just have to trust math. […] this statement is just inaccurate,” said Angela Walch, a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law, while testifying before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in July: Walch added:“Crypto economic systems remain subject to human flaws and corruption, whether in how the software is coded, whether the game theory designed to operate the system is robust, or whether miners collude to exploit their power to order transactions in the blockchain record to their benefit.”The Economist, too, recently questioned the governance bona fides of decentralized finance projects built upon blockchain networks: “Despite the claims of decentralization, some programmers and app owners hold disproportionate sway over the DeFi system,” adding for good measure that “governance and accountability in DeFi-land are rudimentary.” “For a long time, crypto people tried to avoid this [governance] question by simply saying that ‘the community’ or ‘the market’ should decide,” Vili Lehdonvirta, professor of economic sociology and digital social research at University of Oxford, tells Magazine. “There’s this romantic idea of a hive mind that everyone can feel part of. But, in practice, this answer is so vague that it tends to allow powerful people and companies to pull the strings in the background.”  Decentralised finance is one of three tech trends disrupting finance—and it has the potential to rewire how the industry works. In our cover this week, we go down the “DeFi” rabbit hole https://t.co/j7G04qDCJ3 pic.twitter.com/UO2mp6ejVG— The Economist (@TheEconomist) September 16, 2021  Projecting “billions of users”In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Dan Held imagined Bitcoin ten years hence following a period of “hyperbitcoinization,” starting with retail users then institutional investors, “and finally, governments getting involved,” at which point Bitcoin has been adopted by billions of users and is the world’s reserve currency. Is it too much to envision that some government(s) might, at this point, want to have a say in how the network — this global “public good” — is run? “For now, Bitcoin and Ethereum probably remain a ‘public bad’ insofar as their environmental cost is gargantuan compared to their day-to-day usefulness,” Lehdonvirta says, adding: “But, if someone got proof-of-stake to work and the network got widely adopted in an infrastructural role, then it’s not inconceivable that governments could get interested in how and to whose benefit it was being governed, in the same way as governments are interested in the governance of other essential infrastructures such as water and energy.” Are devs getting a bad rap?Maybe this is all just so much alarmism. The networks are working fine, and will continue to operate well when scaled up, and software developers are just convenient scapegoats for critics who never liked crypto much to begin with.“It is a misnomer that developers ‘run’ or control any relatively decentralized network,” Joe Carlasare, partner and co-chair of the cryptocurrency, blockchain and fintech practice group at SmithAmundsen LLC, tells Magazine. “It is true that many chains have a centralized structure where individual actors and entities have outsized influence.” Carlasare further adds: “In highly decentralized chains such as Bitcoin, the distributed network of thousands of nodes determines whether to accept any suggested revisions to the core protocol.”Moreover, the network is designed so that as Bitcoin gains in adoption, those node operators become more — not less — responsible, Carlasare suggests. “As adoption increases to billions of users, individuals…

This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations.  In this 30th edition of the Shanghai Man column, we preview the Wanxiang Shanghai Blockchain Week, an offline event that normally is the biggest blockchain conference on the Chinese calendar. Next week, despite all the regulatory crackdowns, the event is still planning to go ahead, albeit with a one-month delay from its usual place in mid-September. The flagship eventHistorically, Wanxiang Blockchain Week has attracted huge crowds of industry participants including traders, investors, developers, financial institutions, and traditional companies. The three-day event is usually supplemented with a busy schedule of side events, focusing on areas like DeFi or network-specific meetups. Last year, following the COVID-19 lockdowns, the event was much more subdued, notably with a lack of overseas speakers such as Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood physically attending. These two thought-leaders both have strong ties to Shanghai and always helped to raise the profile of the event from a technical perspective.  An advertisement for the Wanxiang Blockchain Summit focuses on digital transformation this year. Source: Wanxiang Blockchain Labs Wanxiang Blockchain is a large investment outfit that supports some of the strongest projects in the space. It has invested over 100 billion RMB in over 200 projects, operating somewhat like the Consensys of the East. Its ties to China Wanxiang Group give it an elevated position in the business world, including a closer relationship to enterprises and government resources. This year’s event is set to take place on October 26 and 27, with keynote speeches planned from Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum, Sergey Nazarov of Chainlink, Yat Siu of Animoca Brands and Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana. It’s not clear whether any of these will physically attend the event, but given China’s strict quarantine restrictions and cryptocurrency policies, it is more likely that they will give the speech via video. In the past, most of the speeches have focused on the infrastructure and applications, rather than cryptocurrencies and trading-related activities. This has allowed the event to keep attracting government representatives regardless of increasingly negative policies.The Metaverse and NFT art are two topics that have managed to avoid the wrath of regulators. As such, a number of related events have been grouped into what is being called Shanghai Metaverse Week, which may be just a subtle way for “Blockchain Week” events to avoid scrutiny from the government. This Metaverse Week is being hosted by partners including Litentry, Polygon, Harmony, Flow, Tezos and Mask Network. The event is planning to have exclusive live streams in Decentraland.    Changes in the ranksSearches containing the keyword ‘Bitcoin’ on WeChat spiked to nearly 26 million on October 15, fueled by the news of an ETF approval in the US. These levels of attention hadn’t been seen since mid-summer when the regulatory crackdown drew a lot of attention to the asset. Exchange volumes tell an interesting story as OKEx has picked up steam recently, emerging as a clear second to Binance with about 11% of the total market share according to FTX’s global volume monitor. Huobi, which announced it would be restricting Chinese users from using the platform at the end of 2021, has struggled to keep pace with OKEx and has now slipped behind FTX, into the fourth position and only a few billion dollars per day ahead of ByBit. Huobi dominated the CeFi scene between 2014 and 2016, where it enjoyed extended spells as the highest volume exchange. Now a new wave of CeFi exchanges led by FTX and ByBit are starting to eat away at the dominance of the traditional CeFi leaders Huobi, Binance, and OKEx, collectively known as HBO. Catching the NFT trendA number of major corporations have been dropping their own NFTs these days, including eCommerce giant JD.com. The retailer, which has its own blockchain, is releasing a set of seven NFT models through its WeChat mini-program later this year. Last week, logistics company DHL also announced an NFT launching on the VeChain mainnet. These NFTs are emerging as a way to reward customers, but with the strict policies, it’s unlikely these NFTs will end up on open marketplaces and expose many users to the greater cryptocurrency ecosystem.   DHL used VeChain’s ToolChain to create these NFTs for their retail users. Source: DHL Losing out to the USAn announcement on the website for the National Development Reform Commission proclaimed that the US has now overtaken China as the top Bitcoin mining country in the world. The brief article boasts that this transformation has come just two months after Beijing ruled cryptocurrency mining to be illegal. It’s unclear whether or not this article is intended to be taken literally,or as a very subtle but sarcastic reminder that recent political decisions may not be in the best interest of the country.   

Platon, the British photographer famous for his close-up portraits of world leaders, is using NFT photos of the human iris to show how humans can be reduced to a unique but unrecognizable image. He even did one self-portrait of his own iris — but, if placed in an iris lineup, he could not tell his own from anyone else’s.Platon only uses one name – like Prince, he says.His first human portrait reduction took place in June 2021, when he auctioned 12 anonymous irises as NFTs, each one priced at $111 on the LGND.art marketplace. People bidding for the NFTs, each a single mint, did not know whose iris NFT they were buying.They were in for a pleasant surprise: It turns out they were bidding to purchase NFTs depicting the irises of Kobe Bryant, Harry Styles, Harvey Weinstein, James Comey, George Clooney, Donald Trump, Cara Delevingne, Bill Clinton, Caitlyn Jenner, Alicia Keys, Spike Lee, and Maria “Masha” Alyokhina. They all sold out but have remained static on the secondary market, as the holders appear to want hodl the strange art pieces.  Images from Eye Love You, Eye Hate You II (Source: LGND) Photographer to the starsIn a career littered with outstanding celebrity portraits, Platon is now consumed with human rights causes and is more concerned with and fulfilled by capturing the faces of activists. In 2008, he spent a year documenting civil rights leaders across America as part of a project commissioned by The New Yorker.But, while his mission is now virtuous, his world leader and celebrity shoots are legendary; he used the camera to tell stories, posing often provocative or eclectic questions — that is his superpower.For Platon, moving into NFTs was logical. “Photographers, artists, often innovate and seek out new technologies. We like to move into new space and experiment,” he says.He now revels in his work documenting human rights, working on projects with the U.N. He has set up his own foundation, The People’s Portfolio, which amplifies the voices of the ignored. Important people don’t scare him — he doesn’t scare easily. He quotes Martin Luther King, who said “beware the illusion of supremacy.” The funds raised from these recent NFT drops go straight to this foundation.Platon’s portrait of Muhammad Ali (Supplied)Platon treats everyone the same. He doesn’t care if they are a human rights defender, an activist, a former political prisoner, or a head of state.“They’re all people. Be nice. Be curious,” he says.“My job is to be a cultural provocateur. When I saw NFTs, I understood this was a way for me, as an artist, to gain control over my work. To feel a sense of empowerment – there is a long history of artists losing control over their creative output through history. With NFTs, I could see we were cutting out the middlemen — we artists were going straight to the collectors. I got that.“I also understood that, with NFTs, I wanted to put storytelling back into this new, exciting technology. It’s more than tech; it’s an opportunity to talk about the big issues we face in society — issues such as human rights, climate change, poverty, women’s rights, social inclusion, racial equality.“When I saw the buzz about NFTs, I wondered if I could hijack some of that excitement and draw it towards important social issues.”Platon’s first NFT was a portrait of Edward Snowden. He admits the vagaries of the world move in mysterious ways. In April, an auction of the Snowden NFT raised $5.5 million for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and then $5,000 for his own foundation.  Edward Snowden as captured by Platon (Supplied)  Back to the beginningBorn in 1968, Platon studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He began working in London, earning his stripes as a photographer. Soon, he was accumulating portraits in his arresting style, which could be both authentic and dramatic, earning himself a name at British Vogue.He did not realize it, but John F. Kennedy Jr. was scouting for a photographer to launch his new George magazine in New York. Kennedy picked out multiple of Platon’s portrait photographs in magazines and told his aides he wanted that photographer, without even knowing his name at that stage. Kennedy just knew he wanted a photographer to shoot people in a way that felt real. He had grown up inside the inner circle, but wanted to present people – politicians and celebrities – as real people. So, Platon was found and invited to New York based on his work.It was 1995. The magazine’s tagline was “Not Just Politics As Usual” and neither were the images. Platon says:“John told me we were working on a secret new project. He wanted to humanize the world’s most powerful people. He gave me access, he said I must always be respectful but he wanted me to produce real photography.”When Kennedy was tragically killed in 1999, Platon was doing a cover story for him the same day. Platon had just landed in Hollywood when the FBI met him at the airport to tell him the news.“I was by then rooted in the States but I had to continue without my mentor,” he says.    Presidential, suiteIt’s 2000. President Bill Clinton is in the White House. Platon is commissioned by Esquire Magazine to do a formal shoot. Platon figures this might be the one and only time he shoots a living president (actually, he goes on to shoot six in his illustrious 30-year career).Camera dangling from his hands like a James Dean cigarette, he asks, “Will you show me the love?”The Bill Clinton cover was so iconic that Esquire recreated it in 2008 with Halle Berry. (Source: Esquire)Instant concern within the White House team — the impeachment trial over the Monica Lewinsky affair had concluded the year earlier. A hush descends, everyone looks aghast at Platon while an aide leans over and says, none too quietly, in Clinton’s ear, “That is not advisable, Mr. President. We’ve had enough love in this administration.” Instead, Clinton brushes…