Zag To The Zig #16 :: GRR-coins, immersive storytelling and much more
💸🚀💸 So! I’m a millionaire! At least in GRR-tokens. Because this week, I got approved by the people of Roll to create my own social money. By next week I’ll think up some rewards for subscribers of Zag To The Zig. In the meantime, read up on your crypto wallet-skills and/or check why the people behind Roll are contributing to an open money system. Experimentation time!
In the ethics corridor
Advertising makes us unhappy. These happiness researchers found a correlation between money spent on advertising in a country and the happiness levels of its population. Their thinking: more advertising -> more aspirations -> more feelings of inadequacy.
In the Tech Basement
I’ve mentioned a few times that tech companies are now all battling for our ears. Read: audio consumption/data/… And guess what - the AirPods are Apple’s fastest growing segment of the business. Some big numbers! They make as much money as Twitter, Snapchat and Spotify combined.
Edge computing (think IoT) + Decentralised networks (think Blockchain) + AI = Web3. And this is why investors are interested and why it is more than crypto-hype.
One to bookmark and check for inspiration. More than 50 projects that use data, tech and various art forms for immersive storytelling. It’s always good to follow what creatives come up with.
In the Economy room
I was perplexed by the weird economy of remittance gift cards. One use case that stood out was that Nigerian people in the US are willing to sell gift cards from Amazon, Netflix,… at a 30% discount in order to send money to their relatives. This is how it works:
Nigerian abroad buys Amazon gift card for say $100
He/she sends a picture of the card to a family member in Nigeria.
The family uses the data to sell the gift card on a platform like Paxful for as little as 70$, in Bitcoin.
The family members sells the bitcoin (on Paxful) for local currency.
Convulated? Yes. More expensive than WesternUnion? You bet. However, this can be completed in as little as 30 minutes.
I wonder if they ever considered this scenario in an innovation workshop at WesternUnion.
Spencer Dinwiddie is an NBA basketball player pushing the boundaries of salary and reward structures. He’s effectively tokenising his future contract and sell them as SD8 coins to raise the funds right here, right now. Still, at $150,000 a pop, it’s hardly the democratic solution to connect fans and players. Yet?
The Decentralised Finance space has been one of the most active sub-sections of blockchain the last few months. Journalist Camille Russo is putting her money where her mouth is and put (small bits of) money in a range of projects to compare return, but also usability, communication about risk etc. Can only be useful. Do read the comments to hear tweet to get an idea of interesting projects in that space.
🧪Thinking of an experiment: 1) Putting a small and equal amount of $$ in different DeFi projects enabling passive income 2) Record the process 3) Track and publish returns on a periodic (ej weekly) basis 4) Higher returns by yearend wins :) Which 5-10 projects would you do?NIA=Not Investment Advice ;-)
🏁 End note: 1 thing I’ll be doing this week
I’m doing some focus groups to dive into the user needs for a new education product in the Safety Industry. I love being a generalist. 👷👀