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AI Eye: Real uses for AI in crypto, Google’s GPT-4 rival, AI edge for bad employees

How Maker, The Sandbox and Near are using AI in crypto, plus terrible workers benefit most from AI and Google’s GPT-4 rival nears release.

AI and crypto isnt just a buzz phrase

AI Eye has been out and about at Korean Blockchain Week and Token2049 in Singapore over the past fortnight, trying to find out how crypto project leaders plan to use AI. 

Probably the most well-known is Maker founder Rune Christensen, who essentially plans to relaunch his decade-old project as a bunch of sub-DAOs employing AI governance. 

“People misunderstand what we mean with AI governance, right? We’re not talking about AI running a DAO,” he says, adding the AI wont be enforcing any rules. The AI cannot do that because it’s unreliable.” Instead the project is working on using AI for coordination and communication as an Atlas to the entire project, as theyre calling it.

“Having that sort of central repository of data just makes it actually realistic to have hundreds of thousands of people from different backgrounds and different levels of understanding  meaningfully collaborate and interact because they’ve got this shared language.”

Near founder Illia Polosukhin may be better known in AI circles as his project began life as an AI startup before pivoting to blockchain. Polosukhin was one of the authors of the seminal 2017 Transformer paper (“Attention Is All You Need”) that laid the groundwork for the explosion of generative AI like ChatGPT over the past year.

Polosukhin has too many ideas about legitimate AI use cases in crypto to detail here, but one hes very keen on is using blockchain to prove the provenance of content so that users can distinguish between genuine content and AI-generated bullshit. Such a system would encompass provenance and reputation using cryptography. 

Illia Polosukhin
Near founder Illia Polosukhin in conversation with AI Eye in Seoul. (Andrew Fenton)

“So cryptography becomes like an instrument to ensure consistency and traceability. And then you need reputation around this cryptography, which is on-chain accounts and record keeping to actually ensure that [X] posted this and [X] is working for Cointelegraph right now.”

Sebastien Borget from The Sandbox says the platform has been using AI for content moderation over the past year. “In-game conversation in any language is actually being filtered, so there is no more toxicity,” he explains. The project is also examining its use for music and avatar generation, as well as for more general user-generated content for world-building. 

Meanwhile, Framework Ventures founder Vance Spencer outlined four main use cases for AI, with the most interesting by far training up AI models and then selling them as tokens on-chain. As luck would have it, Frameworks has invested in a game called AI Arena, in which players train AI models to compete in the game.

Keep an eye out for in-depth Magazine features outlining their thoughts in more detail.

AI is for communists?

Speaking of AI and crypto, are they pulling in opposite directions? Dynamo Daos Patrick Scott dug up PayPal founder Peter Thiels thoughts on AI and crypto in his forward to the re-release of the 1997 non-fiction book The Sovereign Individual, which predicted cryptocurrency, among other things. In it, Thiel argues AI is a technology of control, while crypto is one of liberation.

“AI could theoretically make it possible to centrally control an entire economy. It is no coincidence that AI is the favorite technology of the Communist Party of China. Strong cryptography, at the other pole, holds out the prospect of a decentralized and individualized world. If AI is communist, crypto is libertarian.”

Roblox lets users build with AI

Roblox has unveiled a new feature called Assistant, which will let users build virtual assets and write code using generative AI. In the demo, users write something like “make a game set in ancient ruins” and “add some trees,” and the AI does the rest. It’s still being developed and will be released at the end of this year or early next year. The plan is for Assistant to one day generate sophisticated gameplay or make 3D models from scratch.

Roblox
Roblox Assistant (Roblox)

Terrible workers benefit most from AI

The worst workers at your place of employment are likely to benefit the most from using AI tools, according to a new study by Boston Consulting Group. The output of below-average workers improved by 43% when using AI, while the output of above-average workers improved by just 17%.

Interestingly, workers who used AI for things beyond its current abilities performed 20% worse because the AI would present them with plausible but wrong responses.

Google Gemini gears up for release

Googles GPT-4 competitor is nearing release, with The Information reporting that a small group of companies has been given early access to Gemini. For those who came in late, Google was seen leading the AI race right up until OpenAI dumped ChatGPT on the market in November last year (arguably before it was ready) and leaped ahead. 

Google hopes Gemini can best GPT-4 by offering not just text generation capabilities but also image generation, enabling the creation of contextual images (rumors suggest its being trained on YouTube content, among other data). There are plans in future for features like using it to control software with your voice or to analyze charts. Highlighting how important Gemini is, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is said to be playing an instrumental role in the evaluation and training of the models. 

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AI expert Brian Roemmele says hes been testing a version of Gemini and finds it “equivalent to ChatGPT-4 but with newly up to the second knowledge base. This saves it from some hallucinations.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Wired this week he has no regrets about not launching its chatbot early to beat ChatGPT because the tech “needed to mature a bit more before we put it in our products.”

“It’s not fully clear to me that it might have worked out as well,” Pichai said. “The fact is, we could do more after people had seen how it works. It really won’t matter in the next five to 10 years.”

AI meets 15-minute cities

Researchers at Tsinghua University in China have built an AI system that plans out cities in line with current thinking about walkable 15-minute cities that have lots of green space (please direct conspiracy theories about the topic to X). 

The researchers found the AI was better at tedious computation and repetitive tasks and was able to complete in seconds what human planners required 50 to 100 minutes to work through. Overall, they determined it was able to improve on human designs by 50% when assessed on access to services, green spaces and traffic levels.

The headline figure is a bit misleading, though, as the finished plans only increased access to basic services by 12% and to parks by 5%. In a blind judging process, 100 urban planners preferred some of the AI designs by a clear margin but expressed no preference for other designs. The researchers envisage their AI working as an assistant doing the boring stuff while humans focus on more challenging and creative aspects.   

Stephen Fry is cloned

Blackadder and QI star and much-loved British comedy institution Stephen Fry says he has become a victim of AI voice cloning. 

On September 14, Fry played a clip from a historical documentary he apparently narrated at the CogX Festival in London last week but revealed the voice wasnt him at all. I said not one word of that it was a machine, he said. They used my reading of the seven volumes of the Harry Potter books, and from that dataset an AI of my voice was created, and it made that new narration.

Training AI to rip off the work of actors and repurpose them elsewhere without payment is one of the key issues in the current actors and writers strike in Hollywood. Fry said the incident was just the tip of the iceberg, and AI will advance at a faster rate than any technology we have ever seen. One thing we can all agree on: its a fucking weird time to be alive.

QI
Former QI host Stephen Fry (BBC)

How not to cheat using ChatGPT

The sort of academics drawn to cheating using ChatGPT appear to be the sort of people who make dumb mistakes giving that fact away. A paper published in the journal Physica Scripta was retracted after computer scientist Guillaume Cabanac noticed the regenerate response in the text, indicating it had been copied directly from ChatGPT.

Cabanac has helped uncover hundreds of AI-generated academic manuscripts since 2015, including a paper in the August edition of Resources Policy, which contained the tell-tale line: Please note that as an AI language model, I am unable to

Physica Scripta
Physica Scripta gets called out over obviously AI-generated content.

All Killer No Filler AI News

Meta is also working on a new model to compete with GPT-4 that it aims to launch in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal. It is intended to be many times more powerful than its existing Llama 2.

Microsoft has open-sourced a novel protein-generating AI called EvoDiff. It works like Stable Diffusion and Dall-E2, but instead of generating images, it designs proteins that can be used for specific medical purposes. This is expected to lead to new classes of drugs and therapies.

Defense contractor Palantir, along with Cohere, IBM, Nvidia, Salesforce, Scale AI and Stability, have signed up to the White Houses somewhat vague plans for responsible AI development. The administration is also developing an executive order on AI and plans to introduce bipartisan legislation.

Sixty U.S. senators attended a private briefing recently about the risks of AI from 20 Silicon Valley CEOs and wonks, including Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Elon Musk told reporters afterward that the meeting “may go down in history as very important to the future of civilization.”

ChatGPT traffic has fallen for three months in a row, by roughly 10% in both June and July and a further 3.2% drop in August. The amount of time users spend on the site fell from 8.7 minutes on average in March to seven minutes last month. 

Finnish prisoners are being paid $1.67 to help train AI models for a startup called Metroc. The AI is learning how to determine when construction projects are hiring. 

The U.S. is way out in front of the AI race, with 4,643 startups and $249 billion of investment since 2013, which is 1.9 times more startups than China and Europe combined.

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Video of the week

Writer and storyteller Jon Finger tried out the HeyGen video app, which is able to not only translate his words but also clone his voice AND sync up his lip movements to the translated text.

Web3 Gamer: PUBG devs’ Web3 project, Animoca’s $20M raise, Shardbound review

The company behind PUBG announces a new Web3 platform, monetization in Web3 and more.

PUBG meets Cosmos

Krafton, the company behind PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds (PUBG), is venturing into Web3 with Settlus, a Cosmos-based blockchain project specifically designed for the creator economy. Settlus aims to provide content creators with a payment platform that streamlines transparent settlement processes.

The South Korean gaming giants project was announced at the Korea Blockchain Weeks Circle Hacker House event, co-presented by Circle and AngelHack. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire highlighted PUBGs large user base of 30 million monthly active users.

Cosmos software development kit will serve as the framework, and network gas fees will be payable using stablecoins.

A metaverse project by the name of Migaloo is also in the works. The project will center around user-generated content, allowing creators to automatically create nonfungible tokens of their digital content and earn royalties from platform sales.

Krafton previously announced a collaboration with Solana Labs in March 2022 to support the design and marketing of blockchain-based games and services, but no Web3 products have been released since. Settlus testnet is scheduled to launch in early 2024.

Whos after players wallets: Web3 games or big publishers?

Web3 games may be marketed toward the allure of monetary gain, as most of the demographic is made of investors and financiers who wish to get something in return. Traditional gaming is doing the same. The only difference is that, in Web2 gaming, its the company and its shareholders getting all the revenue instead of the ecosystem. Free-to-play multiplayer online game League of Legends generated $1.75 billion in revenue for Riot Games in 2020 mostly from cosmetic skin sales.

For a free-to-play game, earning money through cosmetics can be understandable. But what about games that charge players the full premium?

Soccer franchise FIFAs Ultimate Team mode, which allows users to buy card packs that contain footballers they can use on their team, brought its publisher, Electronic Arts (EA), $1.62 billion in content revenue in 2021. As one Web3 gaming put it:

Gamers recall the backlash Star Wars Battlefront II received when EA Studios locked the most prominent characters of the franchise, including Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, behind loot boxes.

A comment from Electronic Arts community team regarding the complaints about the situation received more than 680,000 downvotes on Reddit, setting a Guinness World Record for the most downvoted comment of all time.

Most downvoted Reddit comment of all time. (Reddit)

Web3 gaming is nowhere near traditional gaming in terms of the user base. For example, Axie Infinity, one of the most popular Web3 games, reached a daily average of 11,072 users, while Roblox averaged 23,864,489 daily users during April 2023.

There were 2,155 Roblox players for each Axie Infinity player in April 2023. (CoinGecko)

Web3 game developers search for a solution in alternative business models, like play-to-earn, to draw in the masses and bridge the gap with traditional gaming, promising users monetary gains in exchange for their time.

Traditional gaming and Web3 gaming are not that different. But Web3 gaming receives more hate than it deserves on monetization, primarily due to preconceptions around the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Traditional games can get away with money-grab decisions because there are a lot of great games balancing the sheets. For Web3 games, the solution to breaking the general prejudice lies in creating better games, not turning the space into a cash counter.

Is $20 million enough to develop an ID system for Web3 gaming?

Animoca Brands raised $20 million in a funding round to accelerate the development of its Mocaverse project. The company was valued at $5 billion last year and has numerous investments in its portfolio, such as NFT marketplace OpenSea and Web3 games such as The Sandbox and Axie Infinity.

The funding round was led by CMCC Global and featured familiar names, including Sky Mavis founder Aleksander Larsen and Guild Games founder Gabby Dizon. Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu, who also participated in the round, commented on their goal:

The ongoing evolution of the internet involves a shift from hierarchical power structures to autonomous ones, and the DAO-based approach of Mocaverse ensures that its community will be focused on driving innovation and collaboration across the broader Animoca Brands ecosystem.

Mocaverse is preparing to launch its non-transferrable NFT collection called Moca ID as part of the funding round. The collection will enable owners to create their on-chain identities and participate in the Mocaverse.

Holders of Moca ID will have exclusive access to experiences within the project and earn loyalty points with their engagement. These loyalty points will be utilized in a permissionless and interoperable loyalty system that will be progressively decentralized. Will $20 million be enough to develop this ambitious system? With backing from a brand as solid as Animoca, the skys the limit.

Hot take: Shardbound

I was a hardcore League of Legends player back in the day. My only issue with the game back then was the mouse clicks. LoL was only available for PC during the early 2010s, and as a rookie copywriter at my agency, I was not able to play it silently during the office hours.

This is why the announcement of Vainglory, an iOS game sharing the same DNA with established titles like LoL and DOTA, was a big deal for me. I got an iPhone 6, then an iPad, just to be able to play that game silently like an office anarchist. 

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I played Vainglory for years and sold my iPad only after they finally pulled the plug on the game by shutting down its servers. So, imagine my surprise when I heard the guys behind Vainglory were making a Web3 game.

With experience from Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Studios, League of Legends maker Riot Games and award-winning Vainglory in their pockets, Bazooka Tango co-founders Bo Daly and Stephan Sherman took on the Shardbound project and were kind enough to walk me through the game and answer my questions. 

In a nutshell, Shardbound is a turn-based tactical collectible card game that puts players against each other on a tile-based isometric map. After being given the chance to play the alpha version, I can fairly say Shardbound is a promising game not just in the Web3 sense that brings a new approach to an age-old genre. The general look of the game feels similar to auto chess battlers, such as Dota Underlords and Teamfight Tactics, with an art style resembling Blizzard games like Heroes of the Storm. 

The free-to-play game bears all the usual tactical card game elements weve seen in the likes of Hearthstone, such as heroes who have skills and cards with mana, health, attack damage numbers and different abilities. Except all this happens on a 3D hex map that introduces fresh movement mechanics. Players get to move and position their minions and heroes as they like to get the maximum strategic advantage.

Blue mana crystals, which randomly spawn on the map, award players with extra mana when attacked. Players can win the match by either collecting 10 victory points or by zeroing out their rival heros health. Victory points are earned by hitting randomly spawned orange crystals, which grant the hero or minion that hits them an orange shard. If the hero or entity is killed by the end of the next round, the shard goes to the opponent. If they stay alive, the shard disappears and the holder gains a victory point.

Shardbound is a PvP tactical card game played on a tile-based isometric map.

Shardbound has six different factions, each offering a unique hero and a different playstyle. For example, Landshapers, represented by the color green, offer a more control-oriented gameplay, while purple color-coded Bloodbinders take a more vampire-like approach and allow the player to damage their own hero to strengthen their minions.

Shardbound features six different factions.

Cards can be upgraded by combining copies up to five levels. The fifth level is called the tournament grade, with the end goal being to have a deck of 30 tournament cards. 

Shardbound has two sides: one in Web2 and one in Web3. It is possible to reach tournament grade on the Web2 side, but it is much harder, as cards are dropped from mystery boxes, which means the player is mostly dependent on their luck. The Web3 side allows tradeable and purchasable cards, making the upgrade process much easier. 

Competitive players will eventually have to get into the Web3 side of Shardbound to keep their competitive edge.

Even in the alpha stage, Sharbound bears immense potential and is a candidate to be an all-time classic with its innovative features. The game gives Web3 gaming an actual product that focuses on gameplay instead of monetization. If they dont stray from their current path and gain some mainstream adoption, it is safe to say that Shardbound is set for success. 

More from Web3 gaming space:

Polkastarter Gaming rebranded to GAM3S.GG after securing $2 million in seed funding.

Crypto entertainment experience Tokyo Beast was announced at Korea Blockchain Week.

Planetarium unveiled Verse8 and Immortal Rising 2.

Zynga released the mint details for its Web3 IP, Sugartown.

Blockchain-based MMO Heroes of Mavia introduced the mass ownership model.

The Captain Tsubasa avatar collection is coming to The Sandbox.

Creator of the Deadfellaz NFT collection, DFZ Labs, is creating a trading card game codenamed RIP TCG.

Bitcoin ETF optimist and Worldcoin skeptic Gracy Chen: Hall of Flame

Gracy Chen is managing director of crypto exchange Bitget and judge of Web3 reality show Killer Whales.

Gracy Chen, managing director of global cryptocurrency exchange Bitget, advised her followers and friends not to scan their eyeballs in exchange for a few Worldcoin tokens.

Theres a huge privacy concern, she tells Magazine, adding that she isnt optimistic about its price prospects given the anticipated influx of WLD tokens in the near future.

There will be much more released in the upcoming year or two, she explains.

Chen admits that her gig with Bitget is pretty cool, but it also means her American pals constantly bug her for favors.

Since we stopped onboarding U.S. customers, Ive had lots of friends who hold a U.S. passport ask if they can get a little back way to open an account.

I refuse a lot of requests like that. It is a red line that we just dont cross, Chen says. 

Before she started steering strategy at Bitget, Chen worked as an anchor and producer at Phoenix TVs tech and finance channel, a major player in Chinas media scene. 

However, a billion-dollar idea came knocking and quickly led Chen away from journalism.

In 2015, she co-founded a tax startup designed for freelancers, and it skyrocketed to unicorn status in just three years.

Its a financial tech company. So, what they do is they provide services for freelancers. They serve the freelancers and provide taxation and salary automation services, she says.

However, one of her proudest achievements was having football legend Lionel Messi join the Bitget team as a partner.

Chen says Messi faced stiff competition from many candidates, but Bitget ultimately selected him due to his paternal qualities and similarities with the exchange. 

He had a good reputation as a father, husband and team leader, and also we kind of see some similarity between Bitget and Messi, she states.

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Chen says that Bitget started in a bear market, and similarly, Messi suffered from growth hormone deficiency when he was young and first starting out in the sport.

Hes not tall. He is at a disadvantage, so he had a very hard starting point as well.

What led to Twitter fame?

Chen explains that she discovered her love for Twitter, now X, only after snagging her high-ranking crypto position.

My Twitter following began in crypto. I guess I wasnt really active on Twitter when I was a journalist because I was mainly covering the Asian market and reporting in Mandarin, says.

Chen has a very friendly-natured approach to X, explaining breaking events in broken-down, easy-to-understand threads for her followers.

However, she observes that her Twitter following surges during the same periods Bitgets business activity spikes.

My followers grew during a certain period of time, from the end of last year to earlier this year. Thats a period of time when I see a singularity point where you see exponential growth, and thats also when we had growth in our company.

So, I would contribute my success or any sort of achievement or following number mainly to Bitgets growth, she adds.

What type of Twitter content can you expect?

Chens Twitter account offers serious variety. Youll get a glimpse into her jet-setting escapades, and who knows, you might even stumble upon some wild travel inspiration. 

But when the crypto world goes haywire whether its lawsuits, exchanges going down or everything in between Chen serves up honest breakdowns in bite-sized portions.

What type of content do you like?

Chen has mixed feelings about Twitter, thinking it can sometimes become a raucous battleground.

Twitter is basically a very noisy place. Everyone is changing their opinions and trying to be attention grabbers, Chen declares.

She reveals that she enjoys seeing updates from Altcoin Daily and Coin Bureau, but she advises hardcore Crypto Twitter addicts to tear their eyes away from the screen every now and then.

I would highly recommend anyone who is a heavy user of crypto information on Twitter to spend at least one hour or two away from social media and do fundamental research and talk to a group of trustworthy friends.

Predictions

Chen firmly believes that Bitcoin exchange-traded funds are on the path to approval, though 2023 might not be the year it happens.

Not this year we only have three months left this year. Maybe early 2024, she predicts.

She hints that it could be a very good driving force for the next bull market. 

When it comes to Coinbase and Binances showdown against the SEC, Chen suggests Coinbase might be in safe waters but Binance could be in for a rollercoaster.

I personally think that Coinbase is a pretty well-regulated, U.S.-driven crypto exchange, so the lawsuits might be settled by some fines. As for the SEC vs. Binance, it is much trickier.

However, she is confident that Binances legal warriors will put up a good fight:

I think they have a very, very big and strong legal team to battle this fight.

6 Questions for Kei Oda: From Goldman Sachs to cryptocurrency

Kei Oda spent 16 years trading bonds for Goldman Sachs — a life that eventually bored him. That was when he turned to cryptocurrency.

Kei Oda is the head of Japan and the Asia-Pacific region for Quantstamp, a Web3 security firm that audits smart contracts and develops blockchain security solutions.

Kei spent 16 years trading bonds at Goldman Sachs before stumbling into cryptocurrencies out of boredom. He tells Magazine he was induced by the ability to trade Bitcoin and other assets around the clock.

He has since fallen down the rabbit hole, even finding a job in the industry.

1. How did you get involved in crypto?

So, I was actually a bond trader for 16 years before joining crypto. 

You know, we used to talk about Bitcoin when I was still trading bonds. I didnt really understand it or believe in it, to be honest, but when I left my job in 2016 and tried to get into the startup space, what dawned on me once I left was that, having been a trader, you do have a long-term focus, but you also are very, very short-term in terms of how you trade, what you do day to day, minute to minute, and what ended up happening was, I would get bored very easily.

Essentially, my attention span became like a goldfish, and that was what working in finance kind of did to me. And so, I started trading Bitcoin.

Initially, it was simply to pass the time. And then, once I started researching Bitcoin, obviously, I thought the value proposition was extremely compelling.

And as part of that journey, I of course fell down the rabbit hole and started looking at crypto in general and specific assets like Ethereum, and it just sounded like a crazy, crazy proposition. You know, if it succeeds, obviously were talking about something that could be game-changing.

Kei Oda speaking

2. What do you think of the current Japanese crypto ecosystem?

I think that Japan has a pretty vibrant ecosystem, especially right now. Its taken a while, but if you look at the trajectory of what Japan has gone through as a whole (the Mt.Gox and CoinCheck hacks, etc.), it has become very progressive.

In one sense, you know, allowing Bitcoin to be kind of used as currency, not obviously as an official currency or government currency, but it is an accepted payment method, and its actually legal to use it.

I think another kind of sector that seems to be quite exciting, at least for Japanese financial firms, is security tokens. I think thats something that people are looking at. Security tokens globally I dont really hear that much about, [but] there are quite a few companies looking at them here in Japan.

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It almost feels like the Japanese crypto blockchain ecosystem has broken off a little bit from the rest of the world, or at least the cycles seem to be a little bit displaced in the sense that were starting to see very good interest and decent activity from big companies in Japan. Whereas I think that that probably happened a little bit earlier in other markets and has now kind of subsided.

3. What has held the Japanese crypto scene back?

I think at the bottom of it all is taxation. Taxation is still not very friendly here in Japan.

What the old regulation used to be is that if your Japanese startup issued a token here in Japan and you sold half of it to Japanese investors or the Japanese community, then you would have to pay tax on the revenue that you realized by selling tokens. But you would also have to pay tax on the 50% that you hadnt sold.

Related: An overview of the cryptocurrency regulations in Japan

Its even worse for personal taxes. In Japan, profits on crypto trading are taxed as extra-ordinary income, which can be as much as 55%. Its not super friendly.

Now, if you compare that to Singapore, the basic tax rate is much, much lower at around 20% or something. Hong Kong, I think, is something similar. Dubai obviously has zero income tax. So, youre talking about a pretty big difference financially for startup founders and entrepreneurs.

4. Do you think more companies will start setting up in Japan instead of opting for other Asian hubs?

The Japanese government is trying to be very progressive and forward-thinking about Web3.

Theyre trying to be very active in getting talent to stay in Japan and also to come to Japan.

For example, the government is planning digital nomad visas. And I think that is going to be great for people who earn in other currencies and come to Japan, just because the yen has become so much more attractive (weakening against the United States dollar).

Japan is also attractive because there is a big market here, and there is a big market size that startups can capture here.

5. Have you made any moves to foster a crypto community here?

The Japanese crypto scene is quite active. However, what I find is that, when you go to a Japanese meet-up, there is a long presentation that you have to sit through. And at the end, they give you five to 10 minutes to try and network.

But you know excuse my language its kind of a shitshow.

So, what I did was help to create an event [Tokyo Blockchain Night] where theres no presentation no ones trying to sell anything.

Its simply like-minded people being able to have a drink and talk about crypto and look for investors, engineers, etc., or just make friends.

I think its something that helps people and goes along with the whole kind of ethos we have at Quantstamp, which is that we help people and pay it forward, and hopefully, something comes back to us.

Kei Oda

6. How did contagion from collapses like FTX impact the Japanese market?

The way FTX essentially blew up is kind of interesting in that FTX had a Japanese subsidiary; they bought a Japanese exchange called Liquid.

And because the regulations around asset custody in Japan were much stricter, FTX Japan wasnt able to commingle funds or anything like that. So, actually, the Japanese entity was fully liquid and solvent. To the point where, if you were a Japanese customer of FTX, you essentially either have or will get all of your money back.

Whereas if youre a client of FTX International, I dont know what the update is there, but its not looking that promising.

I think the Japanese regulations that came in after the CoinCheck hack were probably much more strict than other jurisdictions; however, as a result of that, were now seeing an uptick in Japanese activity, to the point where the MUFG, the worlds biggest banking conglomerate in Japan, is going to launch stablecoins.

Big Questions: What’s with all the crypto deaths? 

Stuffed down toilets, dismembered in suitcases — crypto has been the common denominator for several gruesome murders and mysterious deaths this year.

Last month, Bulgarian plumbers were called to clear a blocked drain at an apartment block in the capital of Sofia.

The blockage turned out to be the decomposing remains of 41-year-old United States crypto mogul Christian Peev suspected to have been battered to death with a dumbbell by a friend out of jealousy.

Weeks earlier, a group of children stumbled across the body of missing cryptocurrency millionaire Fernando Prez Algaba in a river in the Buenos Aries province. Police say he was shot three times before being stuffed into a suitcase, pointing the finger at organized crime.

Its only the two most recent cases in a 10-month-long stretch of crypto-related deaths including a helicopter crash in France, a fatal stabbing in the U.S., and a suspected suicide in South Korea, to name a few.

So, whats connecting all of these grizzly deaths around the world?

Organized crime to blame

Ken Gamble, the co-founder and executive chairman of financial crime intelligence firm IFW Global, tells Magazine that many of these kinds of deaths are likely linked to the rise of organized crime and money laundering using crypto. 

Crypto-related crime has become bigger than ever before. And money laundering using cryptocurrency is now the number one way for every organized crime group on the planet.

In May, Gambles organization took down a billion-dollar call center scam syndicate in Malaysia. His firm has investigated a number of criminal organizations across Asia and Europe over the years. 

Whats happening is that these organized crime groups, particularly the Chinese, have suddenly come into masses of money. They have had more money now than theyve ever had traditionally, said Gamble.

Theyre making so much money that its become extremely dangerous now […] they have to now reach out to more groups and more people to try and move the money broadening their money laundering capabilities, he added. 

Gamble argues this has inevitably led to crypto holders getting mixed up with the wrong crowds.

Retribution for deals gone south

Matt Hussey, former editorial director of Near Protocol and a founder of crypto media firm Decrypt, has also been trying to make sense of the murders.

In a May 19 blog on LinkedIn, Hussey argued that some of the killings are the result of disgruntled investors simply taking matters into their own hands and blamed the fuzzy area crypto continues to operate.

Because crypto straddles the legal and illegal worlds, it is regarded by many as a place where law enforcement does not tread. As a result, retribution and revenge are, for some, the only recourse they have, he said. 

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In April, a 48-year-old woman was abducted and murdered in the affluent Gangnam District in Seoul, with her assailants suspected of trying to get revenge over a failed crypto investment scheme.

In March, a self-proclaimed Candian crypto king was kidnapped and beaten over three days after he reportedly scammed investors out of millions of dollars. At least one of his alleged captors was one of the dozens of investors who lost money to the alleged scam. Fortunately, the man survived. 

There are people being targeted because they hold crypto or theyve been involved in some shady deals […] There are robberies, there are people that are getting murdered because they hold crypto, added Gamble. 

Crypto holders are easy targets

Some of the deaths could simply be because rich crypto millionaires are seen as easy targets amid a time when the cost of living continues to drive upward. 

Crypto is easy to move and easy to steal. Try walking into a bank and taking some money. Yeah, good luck with that. But beat the crap out of someone and drill holes in them? Youve got a chance of getting away with it, wrote Hussey.

Gamble said there is no doubt that organizations out there are targeting and issuing hits on people who hold a lot of crypto. 

Organized crime figures are going after crypto because its not money in the bank; it’s crypto that you can take off someone like cash.

You can steal their credentials and pack their laptop, and if youve got their passphrase, youve actually got their money.

Or, it has nothing to do with crypto

Of course, there is also a good chance that most of the deaths have nothing to do with crypto or nefarious people at all. 

Out of the 10 reported deaths since November 2022, only the Gangnam womans murder in Seoul was seen as the direct result of her connection to crypto. None of the reports have mentioned any cryptocurrency being stolen by their suspected assailants either. 

Not to mention, three of the deaths arent even being treated as potential homicide.

At the same time, one could also argue that the rise in reported deaths is simply a result of more mainstream coverage of crypto.  

The number of crypto deaths reported by mainstream media went from less than one a year to at least 10 since November 2022, when the crypto industry witnessed the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. 

Data compiled by public relations firm Vuelio shows that the total number of crypto stories pushed by traditional media outlets surged after the collapse of Sam Bankman-Frieds crypto exchange, sometimes even beating out the number of stories written by crypto media outlets. 

It stands to reason that news desks have become more aware of cryptocurrencies over the past year. Someone dying or being murdered somewhere in the world isnt likely to make a headline, but someone dying due to their connection to a purportedly shady world of crypto? You bet itll make a headline. 

Tencent’s AI leviathan, $83M scam busted, China’s influencer ban: Asia Express

Tencent builds the largest AI LLM model ever, South Korean authorities bust $83M crypto scam.

Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industrys most important developments.

$500B firm partners with Polygon 

South Korea’s Mirae Asset Security Token Working Group, with over $500 billion in assets under management (AUM), is collaborating with Ethereum layer-two scaling solution Polygon (MATIC) for security tokenization initiatives. 

According to a Sept. 7 press release, Mirae Asset Securities has signed a memorandum of understanding with Polygon Labs for “helping domestic and international tokenized securities networks.”

“Mirae’s foray into tokenization will undoubtedly help accelerate the mass adoption of web3 among other financial institutions,” commented Polygon Labs’ executive chairman Sandeep Nailwal.

Meanwhile, Ahn In-sung, head of the digital division at Mirae Asset Securities, wrote: “Through technical collaboration with Polygon Labs, Mirae Asset Securities aims to establish global leadership in the field of tokenized securities.”

Previously, Polygon Labs partnered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and key financial institutions in its Project Garden asset tokenization initiative. Last November, Project Guardian executed foreign exchange and sovereign bond transactions via Polygon.

Tencent launches the largest LLM model ever 

Tencent’s new Hunyuan Large Language Model (LLM) has over 2 trillion parameters. Previously, the largest LLMs have contained upwards of 175 billion training data parameters.

During the Chinese IT conglomerate’s Global Digital Ecology Conference on Sept. 7, Tencent unveiled its Hunyuan AI competitor to ChatGPT which is now available through Tencent Cloud. Users are able to directly connect their software APIs to Hunyuan, or use it as a basis for a variety of applications in mechatronics, customer service and enterprise operations.

Tencent’s 2023 Global Digital Ecology Conference (STCN)

Tencent claims that Hunyuan is capable of processing “tens of trillions” of data per day and can reduce risk analysis procedures in automobile manufacturing from four hours to less than 30 minutes. The company has invested a combined $31.4 billion into cloud and AI research and development within the past five years. The firm wrote: 

In response to the problem that large models are prone to babbling nonsense, Tencent has optimized the pre-training algorithm and strategy, reducing the illusion of the mixed-element large model by 30% to 50% compared with mainstream open source large models.

Coinbase introduces stricter KYC measures for Singaporean customers

Singaporean clients of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase must now provide know-your-customer information (KYC) when sending crypto to addresses other than Coinbase. 

In accordance with MAS regulations, Coinbase’s Singaporean customers will need to provide info on recipients’ wallet type, counterparty exchange name, full name and country of residence when sending crypto off the exchange. In addition, users who receive external crypto on Coinbase will need to provide similar KYC information on the sender in order to access their deposits.

The new KYC checks will not affect transfers between Coinbase accounts. MAS’ anti-money laundering requirements for digital asset transactions took effect in January 2020 and were last revised in March 2022. It’s not immediately clear as to why the exchange only implemented the regulations just now. 

Coinbase’s new KYC features for Singaporean users {Coinbase)

Shangdong Province’s Metaverse KPIs

Government officials in China’s Shangdong Province have set key performance indicators (KPIs) for local bureaucrats to expand the province’s metaverse industry to 15 billion Yuan ($2.05 billion) by 2025, or for a cyclically adjusted growth rate of 15% per annum. In addition, the KPIs include the incubation of 100 metaverse ecosystem projects, 3,000 metaverse-related patents, and at least 30 metaverse experiences at public service centers. The Shangdong People’s Government wrote: 

“[It is necessary to] build a Shandong cultural dedicated network, Shandong cultural big data center and cultural database to form a cultural tourism metaverse big data system. Focus on cultural tourism resources such as A-level tourist attractions, cultural centers, libraries, and museums, and develop a number of immersive tourism service products such as VR [Virtual Reality] cloud tours.”

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80 Chinese crypto influencer accounts banned

Sina Weibo, one of China’s largest social media platforms with over 580 million monthly active users, has banned 80 Chinese crypto influencer accounts with a combined follower count of over 8 million. 

According to a Sept. 5 announcement, the accounts were banned due to “promotion of crypto trading activities” in accordance with eight legislations that together form China’s “Crypto Ban,” which has been in force since August 2021. One user commented:

“Even more [crypto] groups have been removed. A large part of those who were with me six years ago have now removed as well. Those who have not been removed have also been greatly restricted. Please go and promote them on Twitter. Weibo is no longer a good environment.

Though the Crypto Ban has been in effect for some time, China has only taken a harsh stance on enforcement starting this year. It has resulted in the removal of criminal enterprises, legitimate projects, and caused collateral damages to foreign investors alike.  

$83M crypto scam group busted in South Korea

South Korean police have busted a 110 billion Won ($83 million) crypto scam. 

Authorities say that on Sept. 5, 22 individuals were arrested on charges of deception and fraud. The unnamed group, accused of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme, allegedly solicited $83 million from 6,610 individuals based on promises of investment returns in the crypto markets as high as 300%.

An investigation subsequently revealed that business entities created by the group advocating token listings and entry into digital asset exchanges were falsified. Local news reported that assets linked to the unnamed group have been seized in criminal proceedings. A police official wrote: 

“We will strictly respond to various financial crimes that infringe upon the people’s livelihood by exploiting the desperate psychology of ordinary people who want to improve economic conditions and the virtual asset investment craze.”

OKX in final stages of licensing in Hong Kong 

According to local news reports on Sept. 3, cryptocurrency exchange OKX is in the advanced stages of receiving its virtual asset provider license from Hong Kong regulators. Zhikai Lai, the firm’s CCO, said that he expects OKX to receive the regulatory license by June 2024 and hopes to attract anywhere between 100,000 to 200,000 retail Hong Kong crypto investors within the first year. The executive noted:

“Banks have held a conservative attitude towards the virtual currency industry for many years. It was not until the government promoted Hong Kong as a global virtual asset center last year, and the Securities and Future Commission and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority gave a clear message that banks were required to prepare resources to focus on the industry. After that, their attitude became positive.”

OKX’s Chief Commercial Officer Zhikai (Lennix) Lai (Zhihu)

NFT Collector: Creative AI art, Tomorrowland sells tomorrow’s future 

AI art is gaining acceptance while Squiggles inch closer to the finish line.

Greg Oakford, co-founder of NFT Fest Australia, is your guide to the world of NFTs from a collector and fans perspective.

Seventeen years ago, Pindar Van Arman built a robot that, like him, painted with a brush on canvas.

He has built several robots since, with each iteration possessing a more sophisticated artificial intelligence that tried to paint “more like I painted.

The term OG can be thrown around often undeservedly, but Van Arman is truly that when it comes to AI art.

He created his first crypto art project in 2015 titled bitPaintr and minted his first Ethereum nonfungible token (NFT) in 2018 titled AI Imagined Portrait Painted by a Robot on SuperRare. 

It was really hard in 2015 because I had the challenge of trying to explain the tech in an emotional way. It triggered a visceral reaction where people would say, Well, wait, these are robots that can’t be emotional, says Van Arman. 

I’d got hate mail back then when people would say it’s hard enough for artists to make a living. Now, we have to compete with robots. There were a lot of barriers back then. 

Pindars robot painting (Cloud Painter)

Validity of AI art

For the cynics that question the validity of AI art, Van Arman agrees with them to a degree but makes a distinction between AI being labeled as an artist versus being creative. 

byteGANs collection by Pindar Van Arman. (SuperRare)

The thing I agree with them on is that AI can’t make art. But AI is a tool that can be used to make art by an artist. When you put it in those terms, no one can really disagree with you. They may not like it, but its hard for them to disagree, Van Arman says. 

Here’s where it gets controversial though, heres the middle ground that I claim which I know is true because I see it and I program it; AI cannot be an artist. AI can be creative. Creative in a very similar way that humans are creative.

Van Arman is no stranger to having peoples eyes glaze over when explaining his work.

All the questioning and doubt over the years told me I was on to the right thing because when you have artists in the art world saying that your stuff is too weird, you sort of know you’re on to something. I mean, artists are the most avant-garde, forward thinking group of people there are, says Van Arman. 

For artists and art curators not to get something that you know is true and for them to say something’s impossible, you just know the time hasn’t come yet and just keep on pursuing that.

The Fates by Pindar Van Arman. (SuperRare)

Freedom to transact

Van Arman has frequently spoke in favor of royalties, supporting the current writer’s strike in the United States.

I’m always in the middle of the royalty debate because I 100% support them and I support them because they exist in the writing world, they exist absolutely in the recording world. Hollywood’s on strike right now because the writers stopped getting royalties on streaming services. This has significantly impacted their lives and now they’re being taken advantage of again. The whole Hollywood strike is about royalties on streaming services like Netflix and others, Van Arman says.

Van Arman notes the difficult of keeping track of royalties, claiming that the Ethereum network has provided a better means to guarantee the “Freedom to Transact.

It’s a new philosophy that the asset has to be 100% sovereign. If you own something, you have total control over it, you should not be forced to pay royalties. I went hard early on against people that were saying royalties are like tips, Van Arman says.

I agree with freedom to transact and that means that artists have the right to say, there are royalties on my artwork and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it. No one’s forcing you to buy it and it makes perfect sense to me. But for some reason I have a hard time explaining that to people. They say no, no, no, the asset is worthless unless it has no encumbrance. They might think it’s worthless, but it might be worth something to someone else.

Notable sales

AI Imagined Portrait Painted by a Robot by Pindar Van Arman sold for 80 Ether (ETH) ($342,100). (SuperRare)
The Cryptographer 10,101 by Pindar Van Arman sold for 21.8 ETH ($93,800). (SuperRare)
Bonni3 by Pindar Van Arman sold for 20 ETH ($68,900). (SuperRare)

Rapid-fire Q&A

When someone looks at your art, are there any particular emotions you hope that they’re experiencing?

The goal for me of making AI art and the emotion I’m after is for people to not know it was AI art. To feel something and observe something and not know that the image was painted by a robot. And then only afterwards they realized it was painted by a robot, then that becomes part of the narrative. They can do a double take, they learn the story through that. 

Who are the influences on your art career to date?

I don’t want to answer here. I don’t want to answer because I’m friends with some of them now and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they were my influencers haha. 

If they found out, they’d become intolerable which is absolutely true. This is what I love about this space, I am hanging out with my big influencers and it’s really fun. Love it. 

Who is a notable collector of yours that makes you smile knowing they own one of your pieces?

There’s one collector I have and thats unusual and I really enjoy how unusual this collector is because this collector is silent and has possibly the largest AI art collection in the crypto space but has no social media presence. Zero. 

This collector is ironically named Blur, not the platform. Why Blur really brings a smile to my face is they are so conscientious about their collecting that they don’t want to influence other people, they don’t want to ape into something and then have other people ape into it because they aped into it. I think that’s really noble, the collecting is coming from the heart and they never advertise their bags yet collect like mad. 

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Whats your favorite NFT in your wallet thats not your own NFT?

The one that gives me the most joy is my CryptoPunk. I own punk 7627. That’s actually a really obvious choice when I think of my collection.

What does Pindar listen to when creating art: 

A lot of EDM music. Also Pink Floyd once in a while.

Pindar Van Arman in action. (Cloud Painter)

Whats hot elsewhere in NFT art markets

Winds of Yawanawa, a co-creation between the Brazilian Indigenous Yawanawa and Refik Anadol collection, is on fire. The floor ripped through a 10 ETH floor earlier in the week and has more than doubled in the last two weeks. 

Other big sales include:

The Monument Game 1 of 1 by Sam Spratt sold for 420.69 ETH ($700,000). (Nifty Gateway)
Ringers #195 by Dmitri Cherniak sold for 35 ETH ($57,184). (OpenSea)
Ethereal by Nude Yoga Girl sold for 33 ETH ($54,259). (X)

Only two fresh Squiggle mints remain

The iconic Chromie Squiggles collection has nearly finished minting. On August 30, founder Erick Snowfro Calderon tweeted that 66 fresh Squiggles would be out into the world, leaving only two Squiggles remaining for the 10,000 collection. 

Snowfro distributed the 66 to a selection of family, artists, collectors, institutions and friends while announcing Squiggle #9998 will be a special commemorative mint with further details soon and #9999 headed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Selection of the new 66 fresh Squiggles minted (Proof)

Day 0 Squiggles occurred on November 28, 2020 with approximately 9,000 of the total collection being minted in the first two months after the initial mint. Snowfro decided to keep the remaining mints up his sleeve and has been releasing those at various stages over the last few years as the popularity of his artwork continues to skyrocket.

Tomorrowland surpasses $2 million in NFT sales

World-renowned EDM festival Tomorrowland generated over $2 million in NFT sales on Solana. 

Tomorrowland superfans were able to secure pre-sale tickets, access secret gigs, become eligible for giveaways, and be treated to exclusive tours of the festival ground. 

Tomorrowland 2023 (Tomorrowland).

Tweet of the week:

The tweet of the week goes to Justin Trimble commenting on Refik Anadols work being spectacularly displayed on the new Vegas Sphere. The Sphere was first covered in this article of NFT Collector.

Crypto lawyer Irina Heaver on death threats, lawsuit predictions: Hall of Flame

Irina Heaver moved to crypto after she could no longer “sit in the boardroom listening to that corporate bullshit.“

I live in Switzerland. I have guns at home. Anybody who shows up at my home with violent intentions risks being literally shot at, Heaver warns altcoiners who send her death threats online.

Speaking to Magazine, Heaver explains that she blames memecoin founders for fueling the fiery users on Crypto Twitter.

I mean, theres so much responsibility on these community leaders and altcoin leaders. Theyre egging on their followers to send threats and intimidate people, Heaver declares.

As a prominent crypto lawyer in Dubai and Switzerland, Heaver has 41,200 followers more than your average lawyer. Though not as famous as your Buterins and Heilperns, its still fairly impressive considering she has a care-free attitude toward it:

If somehow they cancel me, I will continue posting on LinkedIn because I have a huge following on LinkedIn.

Heaver is a self-proclaimed Bitcoin maxi who speaks at crypto conferences all over the world. She says that most of the threats she gets online are because she warns people to steer clear of dodgy altcoins. 

When a token founder gets sued or faces legal action, she unpacks the legal jargon and spills the tea to her followers.

Most recently, she was a target of the Hex community after founder Richard Heart was hit with a lawsuit.

I had people sending death threats against my children, saying they know which kindergarten they go to, she says.

Heaver states she works with law enforcement to bust scammy memecoins projects.

Before jumping into crypto in 2016, Heaver worked as a lawyer in the oil and gas industry for 13 years.

I was general counsel of the largest shipping group in the world, and I just couldnt do it anymore. I couldnt sit in the boardroom listening to that corporate bullshit.

Heaver explains that her colleagues couldnt believe she ditched her well-paying lawyer gig to work in the crypto industry. She recalls them telling her it was just filled with money launderers and drug dealers.

What led to Heavers Twitter fame?

Heaver brought her old Twitter account back to life around a year ago, even though she has had it for almost a decade.

In July last year, I started posting for the first time, although my Twitter account is very old. I joined in 2014.

I made a conscious decision to post once a day, Heaver says, despite not expecting to rack up any followers.

She explains that while she takes her crypto work with governments in the Middle East and Eastern Europe very seriously, Twitter is just a bit of fun for her.

She figures thats probably why online threats aimed at her make the senders so furious  she just couldnt give a damn.

What type of content do you do?

Heaver believes the crypto community gets way more pumped up for fun and easygoing content than all the heavy-duty stuff.

Every time I post something very meaningful and very intelligent about the laws and very meaningful analysis, I get two likes. I get a lot more posting fun content and just making jokes and actually being myself.

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Heaver says her content is pretty chill, and she likes to give insights into her interesting life, whether shooting a rifle or hiking in Switzerland.

But every so often, she will let you know about the latest person or government she has orange-pilled.

What type of content do you like?

Heaver reveals that her Twitter feed is a blend of Bitcoin-only accounts and various political commentators.

She explains that she finds political commentary more interesting than tracking crypto prices. She asserts that in the grand scheme of things, broader political decisions hold greater significance than coins pumping 1,000x.

I follow a lot of political commentary. That actually interests me more than which coin is doing what, because it doesnt matter which coin does what on the biggest scale of things. What matters is the political direction.

She particularly enjoys content from Swan Bitcoins Cory Klippsten, Bitcoin Archive and the Elon Musk (Parody) account. 

Heavers predictions for major exchanges

As for the ongoing lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase brought forth by the SEC, Heaver anticipates both will settle without acknowledging any sort of wrongdoing on their part, and the SEC will leave them alone.

Heaver reveals this stems from her inside knowledge of how the SEC operates, gained during her time in the oil and gas industry.

She recalls a specific Swiss company she worked with, engaged in business in the Middle East, that drew the attention of U.S. regulators.

Heaver explains that the SEC and DOJ decided that they have jurisdiction over this company and basically chased them for seven years.

The outcome was a $250 million settlement and the company denying any fault. Heaver emphasizes that it was a pretty sweet payday for regulators:

Thats how they get their budgets. Thats how they get the money to pay the salaries and God knows what on the Christmas bonuses.

Thailand’s national airdrop, Delio users screwed, Vietnam top crypto country: Asia Express

Thailand to give every citizen 10,000 baht in crypto, Delio users unlikely to recover all funds, Vietnam is world’s No.1 country for crypto.

Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industrys most important developments.

Thailand’s crypto UBI

Thailand has a national airdrop in the works under which every citizen 16 years and older receives 10,000 baht ($285).

According to local news reports on Aug. 30, Thailand’s ruling Pheu Thai party will consult the Bank of Thailand in developing a “utility type 1” token necessary for the airdrop. The solution will be a Know Your Customer blockchain-based infrastructure that sources say will take at least six months to roll out. A 100 baht fee will also be charged per user for the KYC process. In addition, the solution will require the approval of the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission.

Real estate developer and crypto investor Srettha Thavisin was elected as Thailands prime minister on Aug. 22. During campaigning, Thavisin promised to give each person 10,000 baht in basic income stimulus via digital currency” if elected into power. In 2021, Thavisins firm, Sansiri, purchased a 15% stake in Thai asset tokenization provider X Spring for 1.6 billion baht ($45.7 million).

The Thailand Development and Research Institute said funding for the Thavisin Airdrop will come from tax collection in the 2024 fiscal year. The total budget estimate for the project is 560 billion baht ($16 billion).

The airdrop will not be equivalent to fiat baht funds, however. Users reportedly can only spend the digitized tokens within four kilometers of their residence. The tokens will only be valid for a period of six months and cannot be converted into cash or used to settle debts. Thavisins government is expected to assume office by the end of September.

Thailand’s incoming prime minister, Srettha Thavisin (Twitter)

Delio users assets slashed in half

More bad news is coming for users of troubled South Korean Bitcoin lender Delio. 

According to local news reports on Aug. 30, the South Korean crypto lending giant, which holds over $1.2 billion in Bitcoin and Ether, is expecting a recovery rate of just 50% to 70% on its assets. On June 14, Delio suspended deposits and withdrawals after disclosing significant counterparty exposure to fellow South Korean Bitcoin lender Haru Invest.

On June 13, Haru Invest also suspended deposits and withdrawals after allegations of fraudulent activities arose surrounding its operator, B&S Holdings. Haru Invest is currently in bankruptcy proceedings. Likewise, Delio is currently under investigation by the countrys regulatory authorities for allegations of fraud, embezzlement and breach of trust. The platform previously announced that it would resume withdrawals, although no updates on such a timeline have since been given.

Photo allegedly showing empty Haru Invest corporate offices after the announcement. (Telegram)
Photo allegedly showing empty Haru Invest corporate offices after the shutdown announcement. (Telegram)

Vietnams booming crypto market

Vietnam is currently ranked first in the world in crypto adoption, with up to 19% of its population between the ages of 18 and 64 using digital assets.

Thats according to an Aug. 30 report authored by Vietnamese venture capital firms Kyros Ventures and Coin 68, together with Animoca Brands. Currently, the Southeast Asian country is the home to around 200 blockchain projects and is expected to generate $109.4 million in revenue from crypto exchanges this year. The countrys crypto users are forecast to grow to 12.37 million by 2027.

Among the highlights, 76% of Vietnamese crypto users say that they invest in digital assets based on advice from friends, a number 2.5 times higher than individuals surveyed in the U.S. Nearly 70% of respondents said the crypto bear market would last less than one year or has already ended. Almost half of respondents say that centralized exchanges offer just as much utility as decentralized ones, but 90% of crypto owners use decentralized exchanges.

Vietnamese investor perspectives on the ongoing crypto winter (Kyros Ventures)

Binance Japan to list 100 coins

On Aug. 30, Tsuyoshi Chino, CEO of Binance Japan, held an online business briefing discussing the exchanges domestic expansion strategy. During the session, Chino said that Binance Japan would seek to list 100 coins and tokens as soon as possible.”

Local news reports note that Binance Japan currently provides spot trading of cryptocurrencies alongside staking “Simple Earn” programs. The use of margin trading is currently not available unless the exchange obtains a regulatory license. The presentation also revealed that its parent exchange, Binance, has surpassed 150 million in user count, with an average daily trading volume of $65 billion. Earlier this year, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase ceased operations in Japan, citing difficult market conditions.

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Shenzhens 15 million yuan for airdrops

In a government-sponsored conference promoting the digital Chinese yuan central bank digital currency, officials from the City of Shenzhen pledged 15 million digital yuan ($2.1 million) for municipal airdrops over the next three years. Binqquan Wei, vice governor of Agricultural Bank of China Shenzhen, said that the digital yuan has proven during trials to be a highly efficient method for consumer transaction receipts via its immutable distributed ledger technology:

“The platform currently has more than 200 merchants, involving 11 key industries such as education and training, catering, pet services, elderly care and sports.”

Chinas central government has been heavily promoting the digital yuan CBDC as a means of stimulating the countrys ailing economy amid a looming recession. In its latest figures, the CBDC has surpassed $123 billion in cumulative transactions since 2021, with test sites running in 17 provinces and 26 districts.

GTA owner joins Web3, Bitcoin casino, Sunflower Land review: Web3 Gamer

Grand Theft Auto’s parent company launches new blockchain game. Plus: Bitcoin casino, FarmVille-like Sunflower Land game reviewed, and more.

Grand Theft Auto owner enters Web3 via mobile gaming arm

Fun fact: mobile gaming giant Zynga is owned by Take-Two Interactive, the same company that also owns Rockstar Games, which is behind ultra-popular video game series like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and NBA 2K.

Now Zynga is making its Web3 debut with a new franchise.

Best known for its FarmVille series, Zynga has created an offshoot studio called Zynga Web3 (or ZW3) and announced Sugartown. Its a cross-media world that will be more like a Web3 gaming platform than a single title. The cute cartoonish animals featured in the teaser video give clues that there might be more than video games in the works.

It looks like a scene from a new Netflix series, so I wont be surprised to see a cartoon featuring the Sugartown characters.

For now, though, the only thing thats confirmed is that Sugartown will launch an NFT collection called Oras, and they will be required to participate in upcoming games within the universe. ZW3 said the franchise is working with different communities to allocate allowlists for the NFTs. 

If this platform becomes successful, perhaps it could give the green light for some of those big titles from the same company to jump into Web3?

More play needed in Play-to-Earn Istanbul Blockchain Week

Why arent Web3 games adopted as much as traditional games? That was one of the subjects talked about during a Web3 gaming panel at Istanbul Blockchain Week 2023. The panel mainly focused on Web3 gaming adoption, the problems of Web3 gaming and the developer side of things.

Curator Studios co-founder Ulu Yucas answer stood out in particular as I sincerely believe it expressed the thoughts of many traditional gamers including myself toward the big problem with Web3 gaming.

He started his speech by asking the audience how many Web3 gamers there were. There were a few hands raised. And this is a blockchain event! he commented, then asked how many traditional gamers there were. There was a significant increase in the number of hands raised. He pointed out there are 3 billion traditional gamers in the world and only 15 million Web3 gamers.

15 million was not the (number of) active users in Roblox back in 2015. So what we have right now is just a little private party. That means we did something wrong.

Heres what we did wrong, according to Yuca: The Web3 community is always talking about features like third-party trading, ownership, making money and interoperability. But these features have existed since games were around, including in-game items in World of Warcraft, rare items in Dota, auctions in Diablo and those occasions RuneScapes in-game currency was used as the local market currency when Venezuelas money was depreciating.

Diablo III Auction House
The in-game player economy was present in Diablo III, launched in 2012. (Diablo Wiki)

So, we focused on features that already exist in various forms and combined them with games that arent fun:

We talk about all these value propositions and monetization models. Play-to-Earn, Play-and-Earn, Play-and-Own, Play-and-Have-Coffee, Play-and-Get-Married. It doesn’t really matter because there is no play. There is no product.

He stressed that he has yet to see a game like Minecraft, or one that does What Angry Birds did to mobile gaming back in the day.

Despite the potential brought by Web3 elements, the real question was, Do we have a game like Roblox (in Web3)? Unfortunately, we do not.

Bitcoin casino works exactly like what youd expect

Not many people know this but Satoshi Nakamoto may have been a poker player, with the original 0.1.0 Bitcoin code in 2008 containing scraps of code for an online poker game. 

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With the introduction of Ordinals, it looks like we might be headed back in that direction. Ordinals has enabled the Bitcoin base layer to become home to numerous images, videos and even some basic games, and also laid the groundwork for DeFi on Bitcoin protocols such as Trustless Computer (TC) and the related New Bitcoin City (NBC).

Launched in early August, the gaming platform utilizes TC and transitions gameplay to NOS, a layer-2 on Bitcoin, according to core member Punk3700, who says it enhances speed and efficiency, ensuring complex interactions occur off the Bitcoin mainnet.

NOS brings an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to the Bitcoin network, allowing smart contract functionality without taking space on the main Bitcoin chain. Hence, data from games won’t crowd the valuable Bitcoin blockchain real estate.

As for the gaming platform itself, dont expect a 3D metaverse with high-fidelity graphics. The website is designed as a pixelated amusement park, with each tent representing a game offering very basic casino games like jackpot and slot.

New Bitcoin City Gameplay
New Bitcoin City has a bunch of casino-like minigames. (New Bitcoin City)

Theres also a graffiti tent where everyone can chip in to add a pixel and then get royalty if someone buys the finished canvas. 

The overall experience felt like what I had with my online poker adventures back in the early 2000s, but thats apparently not the focus of the devs. Bitcoin is expanding beyond just a currency and getting a lot of attention, explained Punk3700, adding: We want to make Bitcoin as generalized as possible usable for far more than just a currency.

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The league is said to promote the win-to-earn trend where gamers earn based on their skills (and maybe luck, considering its a casino), and developers promise more to come, with an upcoming Mega Whales expected to launch on Sept. 26.

Hot Take: Sunflower Land

Sunflower Land is an online farming game built on Polygon and played via a browser. Gamers are welcomed with some strict rules: one account per player, no bots or automation. It also makes clear that Sunflower Land is a game, not a financial product although only time will tell which one will be prioritized by players

The core gameplay sees users plant seeds, wait for them to grow, harvest the plants, buy more seeds and so on similar to old Facebook games such as FarmVille and CityVille. All in-game resources, such as seeds, cooked food and equipment, are NFTs that can be transferred and traded on OpenSea.

Seeds and plants have different in-game values corresponding with the time it takes for them to grow. For example, sunflower seeds grow in 30 seconds and can be sold for 125 coins (equal to 7,500 for 30 minutes), while pumpkin seeds grow in 30 minutes and can be sold for 25,000 coins.

Sunflower Land Gameplay
Gameplay from Sunflower Land (Sunflower Land)

Sunflower Land features a skill tree that allows the player to work faster and get more yields from each produce as they level up. As the player levels up, the waiting time gets longer (up to 36 hours for a single seed), but they also get more space to plant their seeds. The game currently offers two minigames if youd like to do something in-game while you wait. They are called Greedy Goblin, a minigame where you catch falling gold coins while avoiding the skulls as a goblin, and Chicken Fight, a two-player fighting game where you control chickens.

Sunflower Land Skill Tree
Crops section of the skill tree from Sunflower Land. (Sunflower Land)

Sunflower Land launched its new season called Witches Eve on Aug. 1, which introduced a massive multiplayer online (MMO) world for players to socialize called Pumpkin Plaza. The game also welcomed the addition of Community Islands where players are provided with tools to build their own games inside Sunflower Land with the ambition of becoming the Roblox of Web3 gaming.

The game works smoothly without any problems a rare quality for Web3 games these days. The graphics look pretty, though the background music sounded really cheap. I dont know if it’s going to become the Roblox of Web3, but Sunflower Land definitely has potential with its addictive gameplay loop. Ill surely be coming back to check my island every once in a while.

More from Web3 gaming space:

Turn-based RPG Champions Arena has launched on Gala Games.

Zillion Whales mobile RTS game Wild Forest has been announced for Ronin blockchain.

Mobile NFT game NFL Rivals has launched an in-game marketplace.

French DJ Agoria and The Sandbox are collaborating to launch an avatar collection.

Netmarbles Marblex partnered with Aptos to expand its multichain gaming universe.

Nexons MapleStory Universe tapped Chainlink as its Web3 infrastructure provider.