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Powers On… Broker disintermediation and unregulated crypto exchanges cause major concerns
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 the course “Blockchain, Crypto and Regulatory Considerations.” More and more, governments are fearing that they will lose control over aspects of their respective legitimate financial systems, including capital raising and trading, to the hundreds of unlicensed, unregulated centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges worldwide. There is a clear rising chorus of alarm in statements by government regulators in the United States, England, China, Southeast Asia and elsewhere, which are focu...
Infrastructure bill set for a vote by Sept. 27 with no changes to crypto tax provisions
The controversial $1 trillion infrastructure bill will see a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives without any amendments to the crypto tax provisions by Sept. 27. The vote was agreed to after the House narrowly approved the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget blueprint in a vote of 220 to 212. Despite some initial pushback from moderate Democrats, the dissident voters were swayed after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi committed to pass the bill before Sept. 27. Pelosi stated: “I am committing to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill by September 27. I do so with a commitment to rally House Democratic support for its passage.” In late July, last-minute cryptocurrency provisions were added to the infrastructure bill in a bid to raise a further $28 billion through expanded tax obligations for th...
OnlyFans boss explains how ‘aggressive’ banks forced it to drop adult content
Tim Stokely, the founder and CEO of OnlyFans has explained how banks had forced it to drop adult content from the subscription-based content platform. OnlyFans is a popular platform connecting online sex workers to subscribers, but the firm recently changed its policy to prohibit “sexually explicit conduct,” starting Oct. 1 — which has caused backlash from both creators and content connoisseurs alike. Speaking about the change of policy with the Financial Times on Aug. 24, Stokely noted that “we had no choice — the short answer is banks,” as he listed three banking giants who refused to provide services to OnlyFans: Bank of New York Mellon, Metro Bank and JPMorgan Chase. Stokely asserts that the banks pulled services from OnlyFans over the “reputational risk” of being associated with a pla...
Warner Music Nabs Kristin Burke From Universal to Run Canadian Label
Burke, who is currently executive vp and general manager at Universal Music Canada, where she has worked for more than 20 years, will report to Simon Robson, president, international, recorded music at Warner Music Group. She will succeed Steve Kane, who has served as president since 2004, and was inducted into the Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Hall of Fame in 2015. (Kane did not respond to a request for comment.) “Kristen has a great reputation across the industry, combining great strategic insight with an instinctive empathy for artists,” Robson said in a statement. Kane, in his own statement, said he knows the company’s “future is in safe hands,” adding that he plans to focus more energy on social justice issues and music. (Kane notoriously has shopped for vinyl every weekend si...
As ACM Awards Move on to Fourth Broadcast Partner, How Do Other Music Awards Shows Compare?
The move will likely be closely watched by the entire industry. The Academy of Country Music announced last week that it is moving its ACM Awards to Amazon Prime Video next year. The show aired on one of the three legacy broadcast networks continuously for 50 years. The move will likely be closely watched by the entire industry. If the show holds its audience, and if top artists continue to support it, other awards shows may seriously consider streaming partners. If the show falters, other shows may be reticent about following suit. Amazon Prime Video will be the ACM Awards’ fourth broadcast partner, which is more than any other major music awards show. Let’s see how the other shows compare: You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a datin...
The crypto effect: Trading altcoins at the edge of addiction
Whether working in visual innovation or merely acting as a reporter, I’ve made a career out of diving headfirst into ideas that I know nothing about. The fresher, more complex the puzzle to be solved, the more I dig into it, going from unknown to known. And if I’m lucky, I’m gifted a day-long adrenaline rush and some unusual dreams in return for my services. When I was starting out, I worked as a breaking news journalist — a job that had me writing up to six news stories a day. On top of that, the pressure to catch every word in a presidential press briefing, for example, can be mind-bendingly intense and require such inconceivable attention. The only comparison I could draw would be day trading cryptocurrencies. And like crypto, my work would often visit me late into the night. Once in be...
Fetch.ai launches NFT platform for AI-generated art
Blockchain artificial intelligence lab Fetch.ai has launched a new NFT marketplace for AI-generated art, giving users the ability to create digital collectibles in a collaborative setting through machine learning technology. The new platform, dubbed Colearn Paint, allows groups of creators to automatically generate and collectively own NFTs designed by a machine learning algorithm. The platform is geared towards “abstract compositions,” according to Humayun Sheikh, CEO of Fetch.ai, who cited “collective learning” as a major trend for the future. Collective learning is a concept within artificial intelligence that describes the application of deep learning algorithms to data and privacy. Users of Colearn Paint will be taken through a three-step process for creating randomly generated ...
Number of Cardano millionaires rises by 173% after ADA price hits new highs
Cardano (ADA) addresses with a balance greater than $1 million have surged 173% during the latest ADA price rally. Specifically, the ADA/USD exchange rate gained almost 200% after bottoming out at $1.007 on July 20. The pair reached its record high of $3.02 in the previous session, a move that was followed by a 6.42% price correction to $2.73 at the time of writing. Meanwhile, the same period saw the total number of Cardano wallets that hold at least $1 million worth of ADA tokens surge from 3,625 to 9,830, per information provided by data analytics platforms CoinMetrics and Messari. ADA addresses with balance greater than $1 million. Source: Messari, CryptoQuant Additionally, against ADA’s 1,455% year-to-date (YTD) gains, the total number of Cardano millionaires surged fro...
Here’s why Bitcoin bulls might trample $50K ahead of Friday’s $2B BTC options expiry
$2 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) options will expire on Friday, Aug. 27. Some analysts argue that a strong call (buy) option buying activity on Aug. 22 was likely the catalyst for the recent $50,000 price test. Digital asset trading firm QCP Capital mentioned in its market update that an entity has been “consistently pushing (option) prices higher in the last few weeks.” The activity, which took place during the morning trading session in Asia, aggressively bought bullish options in chunks of 100 BTC contracts each. The report also mentions the exhaustion of regulatory concerns in the near term, as crypto-related decisions from the Senate Banking Committee and regulators are unlikely to bear fruits in 2021. Bears might be analyzing different data However, the most recent ̶...
Spotify Expands Its Podcast Subscriptions to All U.S. Creators
Though the focus is on building exclusive content within Spotify, which has 165 million paid users and 365 million monthly users, Anchor will also provide creators with private RSS feeds that are compatible with other podcast distribution platforms. “Our model is built to maximize creator revenue and offer the widest possible reach so creators can grow their audiences and develop deep connections with listeners,” the company said. Spotify’s top competitor in the podcasting space, Apple, went global with its own podcast subscription options in June. Like Spotify/Anchor, Apple subscriptions provide support for ad-free listening for exclusive content, however, there are more fees involved. In line with other App Store purchases, Apple will keep 30% of sub fees for the first year a...
SiriusXM Wins Appeal in Turtles Lawsuit Over Pre-1972 Royalties
“We are gratified that this important issue has been finally and correctly resolved,” Sirius’ attorney, Daniel Petrocelli of O’Melveny & Myers, said over email. Billboard has reached out to Flo & Eddie’s attorney for comment. The ruling is the latest to come from a series of royalties disputes between the parties, stemming from a complex web of state and federal laws governing radio providers and recent changes to those laws. When an AM/FM radio station plays a song over the air, it does not have to pay public performance royalties to the owner of the original sound recording. On the other hand, digital and satellite radio providers including Sirius must pay public performance royalties whenever they broadcast post-1972 recordings — but unti...
Scientists say the world urgently needs to cut methane emissions. The politics aren’t as simple.
But wrestling methane is presenting a new round of political and practical complications for the Biden administration: Agriculture, including livestock and land-based systems, accounts for 40 percent of global methane emissions — spurring concern among Republicans and farm-state Democrats about regulatory efforts to tackle the problem. Senate Democrats plan to include a so-called “methane polluter fee” in their $3.5 trillion budget resolution that would hit energy producers that vent or burn off excess methane and compressors used to pressurize and transport natural gas. Several also introduced legislation this month requiring refiners and oil and gas producers operating in the United States to pay into a fund based on a share of their global carbon and methane emissions. “The methan...
