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February 21 · Issue #93 · View online
A weekly summary of the latest news in our world of finance, design, and technology.
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Also:
- š° The largest financial seizure ever
- š¤ Why isnāt crypto adaptation further along?
- ā ļø Ads for money
- š§® Open source economic model
- āļø Starbucks ā a bank that sells coffee
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Last week German court ruled thatĀ embedding Google Fonts violates GDPR. Austrian and French court has already ruled that usingĀ Google Analytics breached GDPRĀ by transferring IP information across the pond. All this means that at the moment, essential parts of the internet are technically illegal if you are based in Europe. Are you adding a Youtube embed? You are transferring your IP address to the US! Are you using an external CDN? You are (probably) transferring your IP address to the US!
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What does this mean for companies in the Nordics? When a court in an EU member state makes a decision, it can be used as an argument in other countries, but it does not automatically mean that itās valid for all countries. However, I would be on the lookout for solutions where you have control over all the data and where the servers are located ā especially if you are operating within Fintech.
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Idle observation - if I embed a podcast player on the front page of my website, I will almost certainly have broken GDPR. Weāre banning Web 2.0 while building web3ā¦
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Six years ago, someone stole 119 756 Bitcoins from the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. Last weekĀ the US seized the Bitcoins, now worth about $3.6 Billion, and arrested two people: Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan.Ā The government has charged them with trying to launder some of this, a nearly impossible job considering every money move got tweeted out on multiple Twitter accounts, notifying the authorities. So much for crypto being known for money laundering.
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This means theyāve been sitting on billions of dollars of notional gains, watching the price go up, unable to spend it, and going slowly mad, which might explain why they made some staggeringly bad rap videos. ā Ben Evans
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Netflix has already bought the documentary rights three days after the news broke. The most entertaining read on the story comes from Trung Phan, who argues thatĀ Heather Morgan is the wealthiest rapper everĀ because of this heist.
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Why isnāt crypto adaptation further along, given that Bitcoin is over ten years old?
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Nonetheless, Superbowl commercials last week wereĀ peppered with ads for crypto-related companies, indicating that the adaptation is moving on (or that VCs are pouring money on the bonfire). My favorite was Coinbase cryptic ad with a QR-code bouncing around on the screen:
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Ad Meter 2022: Coinbase
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One reason I still have trouble believing crypto currency is money is that there arenāt commercials for money.
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AsĀ weāve mentioned before, you can also think of Starbucks as a bank ā and an unregulated one at that. Starbucks customers have preloaded money onto Starbucks cards as part of their rewards program, loaning the company ~$1.6 billion at about -10% interest rate.
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Why Starbucks is Actually a Bank
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Remember, if youāre enjoying this content, please do tell all your (fintech) friends to hit the subscribe button!Ā If you have some feedback you can always just hit reply!
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