Before we get started, it’s our anniversary this week on the 30th November. It’ll be 1 year since we started getting everyone together to talk about all things web3/NFTs/DeFi and more. Look out for some special posts from us on this later this week as we are so proud of the community we’ve become. We’ll put out some videos from some of our Chapter Leads that day so watch this space. We could not be a community without all of you either so thank you for following us and joining in on the journey.
Back to the recap and on on Monday we got to go on the Cracking Crypto show on Ausbiz with Nick and Mark chatting with Asher Westropp-Evans on the FTX fallout, core tenets of blockchain and how real-world adoption is going. There's a credibility issue going on so we need more of the utility use cases continuing to be built out. Check out the full video here: https://www.ausbiz.com.au/media/blockchain-is-more-than-just-the-ftx-collapse?videoId=25587
Then it was off to Melbourne on Tuesday for our Aus DeFi Meetup at Upside DAO. They pulled out all stops to accommodate the amazing audience and we had great discussions about real-world use cases, legal aspects of web3 and more. Thanks to James Myint, Natasha Blycha, Shane Verner, Francois Schonken and Peter Moulton for getting up on stage with hosts Nick Bishop and myself. Some shots from it include
Then it was off to NFT Fest on Wednesday and on Day 1 we saw real-world use cases discussed as well as legal implications of using NFTs ("saying I'm an innovator is not a good enough defence") as well as seeing the need for more quality, no matter the type of project you are working on. A great mix of folks in the crowd ranging from corporates to developers, community and more. On day 2, I got to share my thoughts on building community and leading with real-world use cases on a panel with James Rowdy from NFT Melb, Alison Mackie from Tech NZ and moderated by Amy-Rose of Blockchain Australia. There was so much to learn and we recorded some key highlights and takeaways here. Here’s some shots from the panel discussion
(as well as this recap https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7001152695487119360/)
There’s more shots from NFT Fest at the end of this newsletter.
News
Aleks Vickovich with this interesting piece out of the AFR highlighting the positive takeaways from the FTX sage. Here’s his note I put together on LinkedIn (with interesting commentary from the original post by Aleks) https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7000406612934893568/ and the AFR article in question is here https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/crypto-sceptics-are-reading-the-wrong-lesson-from-ftx-20221121-p5bzxk
Chainalaysis tracked stolen FTX funds and clarified that they were not sent to the Securities Exchange of the Bahamas
There was this NY Mag piece on SBF and his upbringing, going to a prestigious school and being destined for greatness which has not quite worked out as expected
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/sbf-parents-stanford-genius-bubble.html
We saw ASIC issue proceedings against Block Earner arguing these products should have been licensed https://www.investordaily.com.au/regulation/52457-asic-sues-fintech-for-offering-crypto-asset-based-products
In addition to local regulators looking at companies there's also individuals who might not be reporting tax properly https://www.news.com.au/finance/money/tax/potential-15-billion-in-missing-tax-from-cryptocurrency-profits/news-story/e6348b56fb5dee17ffca667e66bd0efd?amp
More pressure on local market players with local exchange Swyftx highlighting the need for a bridging round
Later this week (Nov 30th 4pm), the RBA has this online talk to go through the CBDC - check out the details here
Speaking of CBDCs there was the New York Federal Reserve announcing a trial as well and its similar to the 12 week trial the RBA is doing here in January
https://www.bitsofblocks.io/post/ny-fed-launches-cbdc-pilot
It’s not all positive though when it comes to CBDCs with this counter from Sorelle Finance and arguing against their usage CBDCs (but it is mostly from the retail CBDC perspective).
In any case, the jury’s still out on all of this given the amount of control it would give governments around the world. Wholesale CBDCs on the other hand could be useful though, especially used for proof of reserves in a business context when coupled with a bank-issued stablecoin. Wearing my NotCentralised hat, that’s what we proposed here: https://medium.com/notcentralised/rba-cbdc-submissions-d3f8563ad6c4
We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here but thought it'd be good to share this piece from The Defiant anyway as it's still applicable to being thankful for the positives in this space
Bankless crew here with their take on 2021 feeling like just as giant Ponzi scheme as the same ICO games came out to play
Finally a long read on building useful products in web3 https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/11/web3-the-metaverse-and-the-lack-of-useful-innovation/
NFT Fest Shots
Alyse Sue had this great post on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7001697600148033536/
And more on Twitter from Winko
David Adams from Smart Company
DeFi Mavrek
MODA DAO
The one and only Voltura
Kevin from Metakeys
Steffski
NFT APAC
Queen of Hearts
And many more out there