This Week in Crypto Q&A with Elena Obukhova | Featuring Crypto Taxes, Solana, Stolen NFT & More

Q.In terms of businesses, NFTs, and influencer marketing do you think it opens up a whole new realm of possibility in terms of royalty split for creators with smart contracts?

A. Yes, royalties are a really useful tool for business creators, and leveraging NFT technology allows multiple parties to include their royalties in a smart contract. So, anytime a secondary sale transaction or any other transaction occurs in the future, they will continue to profit from this collaboration.

So, yes, NFT technology provides these opportunities, and while we all talk about it in the crypto field, the majority of people outside of crypto have no idea. So it is highly advantageous in our business connections, artwork, music, industry, and many other uses. Personally, I'd like to hear royalties discussed outside of the crypto realm, for those who don't understand why there's such a buzz around NFT technology and what it is.

Q. From a stolen Bored Ape NFT what steps can be taken to retrieve or how do you see this working in the future?

A.So this is a hard question with numerous aspects. How eager are we to comply with regulations? Do we want additional regulations and processes in place to protect us, or do we want to learn how to defend ourselves and avoid scams like this? I personally believe in the second approach explaining, teaching people, and self-learning.

So, how can we take control of our assets? When you have custody of your NFT, it is very difficult for someone else to take it, but we all use laptops and smartphones, so we are continuously exposed to potential breaches and cyber security threats. We are vulnerable, but we must learn to defend ourselves.

So, if someone believes that regulations need to be improved, we'll have systems in place to protect individuals and say that blockchain transactions are valid evidence of ownership, but they aren't for the time being. They are recorded on the ledger, but most courts will not accept them as evidence to get your asset back. So I expect Seth Green to fail right away, and there may not be enough proof or comprehension from the current system.

Q. What are your thoughts regarding eBay jumping into the NFT space and their projected pricing plan?

A.It's definitely a positive thing first and foremost, it demonstrates the demand for the technology itself. Of course, when we hear huge corporations jumping on the new technological bandwagon, is it simply a marketing tactic pursuing a cooler market? A good example is eBay right now. One of the most common uses of NFTs for companies like eBay is marketing, which is followed by technology exploration. When it comes to businesses that use NFT technology, I believe our sector is becoming smarter.

I previously used my company Flashback as an example. One that uses it for loyalty programs, memberships, and tickets, so we can check the legitimacy of every single ticket and keep organizers and potential guests from being defrauded. As a result, we safeguard both consumers and merchants while providing greater royalty prospects. As a result, it allows users to add royalties and if another secondary transaction occurs, they can still benefit from the collaboration, and it helps them to establish communities.

I met Krissy Mashinsky at the security token summit last week, and she is working on the USA Strong initiative. She saw the changes required in the supply chain business, and she began employing blockchain technology and NFTs to validate merchants and their products. So now you can check to see if the product is manufactured in the United States and view the entire history of the product, and I think this quality control function is a great use case for NFTs.

Q. Do you see Solana as a cryptocurrency people should watch out for? Can you talk about the proof-of-history mechanism?

A.First of all I do not like Solana and do not wish to be linked with it. I dislike Solana for one major reason - centralization Solana is extremely centralized. One example is when Solana went offline for 24 hours in September 2021, despite the fact that a decentralized blockchain cannot go entirely offline for 24 hours. That's when the bulk of people who were so enthusiastic about Solana turned and wanted nothing to do with it. I hope they will make an attempt to restart and nurture their ecosystem in a different way.

At the same time you can't take away from their very fast transaction speed and low commission, which is vital for builders and not seen throughout the blockchain, for example, Ethereum is currently practically impossible to develop any sustainable project in the real-world application.

Q. Turkey is crafting legislation that would establish greater control over the crypto market, potentially imposing a tax on some crypto transactions, what are your thoughts on taxes and what impact it will have on crypto users?

A.I find it ridiculous when governments ask you to use, a minimum deposit to use your national currency now. Turkey had massive inflation and had one of the largest adoption rates of cryptocurrency globally. If you look at the data you will see a correlation between economies where a national currency is experiencing major shocks where people are going through hyperinflation or at least increased inflation, or people are willing to use alternative assets and currencies. Cryptocurrencies are here to save these individuals because it's easier to purchase, transact, and easier to jump on board and get separated from the banking sector.

So whenever there are challenges and barriers for individuals and businesses to transact they are forced to find a better way. Now the Turkish government sees the high volume of funds in crypto while the national currency needs support hence the imposed minimum reserves. It’s clear governments across the world need to find a sustainable way to build economies that are beneficial to both businesses and people.

Q. How should someone new to the space go about researching different aspects of cryptocurrency?

A.First of all I always recommend doing your own research first or listening to different YouTube channels and influencers, who are covering interesting facts and tech details about certain projects. People are obviously biased so whatever the content remember it’s one person's opinion and you must delve deeper to either agree or disagree.

I'm coming from a financial background, so I can analyze different crypto prices, work with tech analysis, and build up different trends to use indicators. But for a more straightforward strategy beginners can look at the projects, their community, websites, or white paper, gathering as much data as they can to compare different opinions and form their own one based on the data you have in front of you.

This is the beauty of cryptocurrency it's transparent.

Crypto News | Luna and Terra UST Crash, Scams, Music NFTs, and more

Elena Obukhova host of Supermoon Station welcomes us back to another week in crypto. Having recently spoken on a tokenized assets panel at the security token summit in New York Elena shared the successes of the event and positivity in seeing a lot of high-ranking government officials in attendance. Representatives from the DC regulations department sparked a lively discussion about the need for change, while Elena highlighted the challenges of tokenized assets and regulatory frameworks.

Many people at the summit, had a desire for more rules in the crypto spaces, despite Elenas' belief that none are required. We need to teach people how to spot frauds and how to avoid hiding behind corporations. The blockchain industry has influenced many improvements in global institutions, yet education remains stuck in the past. When even huge bankers like JP Morgan criticize the US regulatory system, you know there's a problem.

With thousands of applicants, Supermoon Camp developed its' own exclusive Mansion event sponsored by Computecoin Network, bringing together significant players in the blockchain and web3 industries. Elena, enthusiastic about the possible expansion of the crypto field in Austin, as Texas welcomes the advancements since New York is not the easiest area to start a crypto business due to hefty regulations.

Earlier this month the crash of Luna and Tera wiped out $40 billion, and advocate Mike Novogratz was finally silenced, so we asked Elena her thoughts on it, one being we’re hitting a correctional state in the market which will wipe out the people just hear for quick returns and you have to be prepared to learn from your losses.

This week, inflation in Canada reached a 31-year high, matching recent price increases in the United States and the United Kingdom. The Federal Reserve recently raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.5 percent, and it is likely to do so again in June and July. The last time rate hikes came so quickly and frequently was during the dot-com disaster, raising the issue of whether we are in the early stages of a similar situation now.

There are some market similarities to the dot-com era, with a lot of enthusiasm around the web3 space and a fast surge in projects that can be readily built. Governments are failing to learn from the 2000 disaster, instead creating complex regulatory frameworks that prevent many start-ups from participating in the Ipo. Instead of attempting to stop trading in a volatile market, governments should focus on education, inclusion, and crowdsourcing, as they did in 2000.

Interesting, with inflation always on the rise, why is the advice always to save money, why not teach people how to invest?

“Federal prosecutors arrested a 50-year-old long island man and accused him of defrauding hundreds of investors by offering large gains of 5% per week from a fictional trading platform”

Crypto and financial scams are not a new development in the industry however they are becoming more elaborate as seen in the above headline from the New Yorker. Human beings are blind to risks or scams when all they hear is profitable returns like five percent per week. This brings us back to the fact that in the crypto space you have to do your own research and self-education to avoid falling for such scams.

In recent interviews, Micheal Sailor has said that Bitcoin is similar to energy and that people should start thinking about it in that way. The Supermoon crew had a concept about how people who had millions of dollars in Fiat or dollars can accomplish a lot more with it going further. People who have a lot of Bitcoin may have more energy or do more things in the actual or digital world.

Both Instagram and Spotify began testing NFTs on their platforms this week, indicating that larger platforms are entering the NFT market and taking it more seriously. Instagram dubbed theirs a digital collectible, allowing creators to connect third-party wallets and share NFTs on Polygon and Ethereum chains to their feed, stories, and messages. While large corporations like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook face a lot of criticism, seeing them integrate new blockchain technology on their platforms can only be good for growing the community and developing trust with non-adopters.

NFTs have taken over the art, gaming, ticketing, and music industries, with 2.3 million buyers in 2021. According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of NFTs sold daily has dropped by 92% from 225,000 in September to 19,000 presently. As previously stated, the crypto space is in the correction stage, filtering out scams and ventures with no utility or longevity, which could be the cause of the drop.

Another exciting week in the music industry as music platforms, began offering splits, where partners can have it defined in the smart contract, varying royalty percentages, and it removes any complications when making or cementing that contract. As a result of these cooperations, individuals will simply earn their income. Elena feels that these NFT use cases could help NFTs reach a far larger audience by raising awareness of the benefits that blockchain technology can provide.

How Bitcoin will disrupt the world with Davinci Jeremie the man who told us all to buy Bitcoin at $1

Supermoon Station met with Davinci Jeremie, a crypto influencer who told everyone to buy Bitcoin in 2013 when it was only $1 for an exclusive interview. After the 2008 financial crisis, Davinci started educating himself about money and financial structures discovering that our monetary system is a fraud against the whole world. Noting the inevitable collapse of this fraud, he ventured into broad conversations on his YouTube channel around gold and silver to begin.

In 2011, Davinci believed Bitcoin to also be a scam, “how does a digital asset exist without knowing that somebody else has taken a copy and sent it to somebody else?”, upon realizing Satoshi Nakamoto solved that problem, Davinci pondered the thought “every once in a while, something comes along that makes poor people rich because they bought it really cheap a long time ago and this is one of them”.

Our properties' high prices aren't due to a surge in buyers, it's due to the fact that you could go to the bank and print money to buy a house. As a result, you can print money to purchase the house, however obviously, prices will rise beyond the means of the average person, “because of that our house prices, have been inflated to incredible amounts, and the real value once the system stops working because it will stop working is what somebody can save, work hard, and pay for in cash. That is the real value of a house”. Davinci predicted house prices to fall and be true once Bitcoin becomes the money.

Supermoon station interviewed Davinci on the speculation around Bitcoin as a deflationary currency and the potentially serious impact it could have on the economy. America was actually in a deflationary economy up until the Federal Reserve in its existence. Davinci relayed “we managed our system fine with a depreciating currency all up until 1913 because the reason why is because humans adapt”.

In agreement with many crypto advocates, Davinci stated the biggest problem Bitcoin solves is the government for example the United States healthcare and education system “In fact, I got worldwide health insurance except in the United States because it's too expensive. There is a clear pattern of government involvement in developments leading to higher prices. The worst thing they messed up is that with our current system, they can print money and go to war and there's no consequence for them to do so”. That's the main thing Bitcoin solves in the future, wiping out all governments.

Davinci sees the ideal future situation as a free market economy where there is zero income tax, “But I don't mind governments taking a tax on, for example, consumption, and that would be the ideal way to organize both the government revenue and also taxes, also freedom”.

Davinci being Canadian spoke to us about why the government is going so strict with crypto regulations there, for example, in Ontario people can’t register for Binance, “Perhaps because they see the writing on the wall like for example, in what was called funding, freezing funding from Go Fund Me and other places and banks, their bank accounts even went around with cryptocurrencies”. Davinci and the Supermoon community will continue to dismiss the noise around governments banning crypto, they may slow it down but there's no stopping it.

The foundations for how a decentralized community would work regarding giving power to ordinary individuals on political or economic decisions could be an issue. Davinci reckons “yes, that's all possible once crypto is mainstream and everybody's using it directly, then we can have strict voting absolute where we know exactly who voted, but not that an actual person did vote”. While there is still room for improvement within the Bitcoin space with friction arising among potential adopters. When we look at past failings of global monetary systems for example, in Turkey and Venezuela governments took personal assets and then converted them to the local currency, this is Davinci’s prediction for cryptocurrencies noting the importance of taking ownership of your crypto now.

As we are still in the relatively early stage of blockchain it is possible we will face more painful lessons in order to understand how to secure our personal investments and savings. Davinci finds some dangers while entering the cryptocurrency space with the possibility of a person’s NFTs and crypto being stolen through scams around NFT drops. Aspects such as that is where self-education is of importance before people get into the NFT and cryptocurrency space. With low privacy functionality on the blockchain, educating newcomers is a high priority for Supermoon Camp enabling the longevity of the growing crypto community. Developers are going to have to incorporate higher security measures in the near future “I hope to see wallets that implement some of the security features of Bitcoin and with the new upgrades to Bitcoin Protocol, Schnorr Signatures, and Taproot, that will be infinitely more difficult to hack”.

On analysis of Ethereum moving to proof of work, Davinci sees this as a waste of resources, “they don't need it because proof of work is only for systems that prevent government action to make changes, to prevent past history of the blockchain. And we've already seen that happen where there was a big problem back in the early days of Arrium. the government said, hey, you got to fix this. And they fixed it by giving out a new piece of software, since they can do that, why are they doing proof of work”. Proof of work was meant to prevent that from happening therefore not in the best interest of Ethereum.

With rising concerns in the community around environmental issues caused by proof of work, Elena disagrees, seeing added value through innovation and less impact than the financial sector. Bitcoin uses the cleanest energy out there because miners have a high incentive to lower their energy costs, “getting the energy from a volcano or digging deep in the ground and getting the heat from the earth itself or turbines, and solar, where it's cheap bitcoin's there because, the less you have to pay in energy, the more you make in Bitcoin''. Bitcoin is also advancing environmental research and development with the number of people incentivized by clean energy growing.

Worldwide governments have been issuing carbon credits, which Davinci has little faith in their ability to solve global warming through yet another taxation scheme, “This is nonsense, let the free market solve this problem they always will do a better job”. For newcomers, Davinci recommends doing your own research and learning while diving into the cryptocurrency space, for example, Bitcoin basics his educational series. To begin the crypto journey Davinci recommends the book “The Bitcoin Standard” to new and experienced crypto enthusiasts. Davinci introduced Supermoon Station to his latest venture NFTShill, a new website that supports both creators and collectors, enabling users to collect and list their NFTs for free where people can browse the NFT artwork and then be a part of that to help build your community.