There are so many posts about AI that it is hard to find the relevant pieces, but they are certainly there. The Washington Post published this excellent article about the challenges in producing Critterz, the first film with 100% AI-generated characters now online. Filmmaker Chad Nelson says it took only a week to create his entire visual world, including all the characters and mystical forests, with Dall-E. When I read that OpenAI, the creator of Dall-E, had co-paid for the film, I did wonder about the honesty of Nelson's praise. It still feels a bit like falling into the trap of a clever content marketer from OpenAI.
Keanu Reeves previously expressed concerns about how movie studios will use AI to replace talent because, "corporations don't give a fuck about paying artists. Reeves has a point. Dall-E took this photo within seconds with the prompt: 'A distraught Keanu Reeves walking along an Amsterdam canal with his hair blowing in the wind, under a cloudy sky.' There is much to be said about this one-eyed Keanu and that green mailbox behind him, but no doubt a new profession will emerge, a hybrid of programmer and visual designer, using AI to its fullest potential to create virtual worlds indistinguishable from the real thing.
Meet the founders of Unveil
One company that focuses precisely on making the distinction between real and fake, or original and fake, is Amsterdam-based Unveil. Photographer Alexander Sporre started this NFT platform with his partners out of dissatisfaction with the way photography is handled in the NFT world. For collectors of NFTs, it is impractical to search among all the junk on OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces for valuable and unique finds. And if you think you have found something nice at all, you don't know if the work is original and how many of them have been made.
Using blockchain technology, Unveil solves this problem of authenticity and edition management for collectors, gallery owners and artists. The artist can choose to offer only a digital work (a DAB, Digital Artwork on the Blockchain) or a physical work of art (PAB, Physical Artwork on the Blockchain), or both. The MoMa in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris have now acquired NFTs, and the combination of physical and digital collecting is expected to take off.
I think Unveil is an example of a third generation marketplace, after the uncurated blind offering (think Marketplace) and the curated auction model (like Catawiki). Legendary investment firm Andreessen Horowitz (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Coinbase etc etc) recently wrote about it in the annual Marketplace 100 Report: 'from your kitchen to your closet, modern marketplaces do the filtering for you.'
Unveil launches publicly at the end of May, featuring exclusive NFT drops by a number of renowned photographers such as Thomas Albdorf, Bastiaan Woudt and Paul Cupido, each of whom have created their own interpretation of classic themes from Dutch art history: Still Life, Landscape and Portrait.
There is now an opportunity for a limited group of investors to invest in Unveil even before its public launch at the end of May. On May 9, the founders are organizing an investor event in Amsterdam to which the readers of this newsletter are invited. You can register here or make a phone appointment with the founders if you are unable to attend the event.
I am also investing in Unveil myself in this round, and my maxim is that you should think of an investment in a startup as money lost now that may come back one day - but hopefully more than you put in. Note that this is not investment advice and you are investing outside AFM supervision, there is no licensing and prospectus requirement. Alexander Sporre of Unveil is a highly respected former colleague of mine and I am a firm believer in the NFT market, so I am far from neutral.
Binance is more important than thought
The news that Binance in the U.S. is being investigated by the CFTC was a footnote in the Dutch media, which are increasingly dominated by visually appealing incidents such as a lighter on an Ajax head or tractors on a highway. That clicks better and is easier to write about than analyses on CFTC, AML, KYC and other boring coolos. I wrote at length last year about why Binance is rightly under fire. Bottom line: Binance is not doing enough to combat money laundering. But Binance, and its former rogue competitor FTX, are important for two reasons.
First of all, the traditional financial world now realizes that digital assets are not disappearing, no matter how much effort is made to keep them far from investors. Pioneers such as Binance, which introduced innovations at an unparalleled pace, are forerunners that hold up a mirror to the traditional big banks and demonstrate how continuous and rapid innovation is indeed possible in the financial world. That attracts a large group of mostly young, active investors worldwide that banks can only dream of. Those banks should look at what Binance does well in terms of products and services and link that clout to their own, stricter regulations.
Second, crypto investors should now realize that those three-letter abbreviations AML and KYC are important to them as well. It is simple: if the source of money, crypto or otherwise, cannot be proven, and if it is not clear who owns these assets, then there will soon be no payment link to traditional finance. Last week, some of Binance' s Australian operations were banned by the government. The Dutch players are much neater, but if the international crypto exchanges where active investors like to trade continue to operate so shady, soon any transfers to or from Binance and its competitors will be denied by banks. It will thus become impossible to buy a house with crypto profits, for example. This will then only be possible in dubious regions, but not everyone wants to live in Montenegro or Dubai.
Paris, Texas?
Although I firmly believe in digital assets and blockchain, until independent data is available that proves the energy source of mining, I will not invest in Bitcoin because of the associated CO2 emissions. Because I work with Bluenote in blockchain but exclusively in the area of sustainability, in terms of event attendance, I often hop on two paths.
The Sustainable Innovation Forum is taking place in Paris in early May. Just when the transition to a sustainable society is under pressure from the faltering global economy, this is an interesting event where, unfortunately, few digital assets will be discussed. Not even in the area of carbon trading. A week earlier in Austin, Texas, Consensus is organized by the leading crypto medium Coindesk. There, of course, there is plenty of focus on digital assets, but little on sustainability. It remains tricky.
Fine links
- a special person: too few Dutch people follow Meltem Demirors, one of the most intelligent and original thinkers in the crypto world. She has spoken before the U.S. Congress about crypto, is the authoritative voice of reason about digital assets on CNBC and crazy about leather pants and strange memecoins. The daughter of Turkish parents, Demirors was born in ... Terneuzen, before moving to America at a young age. Become her 257,000th follower on Twitter and you won't regret it.
- still a handy news source: Hacker News looks like a 1955 Albanian telex, but just checking the headlines always turns up something special. For example, I saw this this week via Hacker News: optimist with lots of spare time turns a Dyson hair dryer into an aircraft engine and cyclist smuggles six thousand SD cards into China *in.*
- one of my favorite newsletters is that of legendary investor Fred Wilson. In it I read this week that his vc USV has invested in Noya, a startup developing technology the world needs: CO2 removal from the air, American-style called Direct Air Capture Technology. Sounds better anyway.
Geek Sentiment
Finally, a look at the major share prices in tech, where I compare Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft to the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Index, and Bitcoin and Ethereum as the most important gauges in the crypto world. Ethereum (ETH) is the winner of the week with over 10% rise.
It was not Bitcoin's week, although BTC topped $30,000 for the first time since last June. It always stings Bitcoin maximalists when an altcoin, particularly the leading development platform Ethereum, shows better returns as it did this week. But Bitcoin fanatics were especially outraged because the New York Times published a comprehensive study showing that 34 Bitcoin mining companies in the U.S. consume even more energy than 3 million households. Bitcoin fans correctly noted that the article misses the mark by blaming inefficient and vastly outdated energy subsidies on Bitcoin. But Bitcoin's absurd energy consumption is irrefutable. "They are adding hundreds of megawatts of new demand when we are already facing the need to rapidly cut fossil energy," said Jesse Jenkins, a Princeton professor who studies power grid emissions. "If you care about climate change," he added, "that's a problem." There's no pin in that.
I hope to get another newsletter up next week, but we found a sick puppy on the street the day before yesterday that we have taken in to care for and that is proving to be more time consuming than I thought. We are still looking for a name for the puppy, tips and suggestions are welcome! Also about the newsletter of course.
Have a great Sunday.
Sincerely,
Michiel Frackers
Recent interview at BNR with Ben van der Burg and Herbert Blankesteijn