As torrential rains drenched the streets of Dubai during Blockchain Week File2049 In this event, the city was inundated not only with water but also with an avalanche of announcements, partnerships, and promises from the crypto community. In this week's edition of the #hearsay column, we take you behind the scenes of Blockchain Week in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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Despite the total chaos imposed by rain earlier in the week in Dubai, the world's attention turned to the desert city for a glimpse of the future of finance. There, among the botox-treated influencers, the business development girls and Hasbullah sightings (he was there promoting his newly launched web3 and memecoin launchpad hasbiland.io), his trusted columnist found himself drowned, devastated and almost washed away by the rain.
Arriving in Dubai earlier in the week, I immediately immersed myself in familiar territory: art. At the Blockchain Life conference on April 15, I came across the 10101.art stand, a new platform selling nft tokens/shares of original works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Dali, Picasso and Banksy. At its launch party at Monada Gallery in Dubai Financial Center (DIFC), a limited number of pre-sale tokens were offered. The business model, not entirely different from masterpieces.io, only with an added layer of cryptocurrency nfts, aims to democratize access to art by offering shares in prime artworks as an investment vehicle for people who cannot afford to own 100% of the actual object. Can't afford to spend a couple million on a Picasso? Just buy a $100 serving!
And then it happened. The great biblical flood of Dubai 2024 was completely drowned on the second day of the championship Blockchain life conference, as well as almost everything else in the Gulf petrostate. In the space of just 12 hours, Dubai, accustomed to arid conditions, endured a deluge equivalent to a year's worth of rain, leaving homes and businesses across the emirates grappling with the absence of basic services such as running water and electricity. Your humble columnist, stuck in the center, was forced to walk 17 kilometers, or 10.5 miles, back to my hotel, most of which I did barefoot because my water-soaked shoes were cutting into my feet.
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The rains did not stop File2049 but it caused serious delays for people arriving from out of town. Taking some much-needed heat off the flooded streets of Dubai, Pavel Durovthe enigmatic and elusive founder of the Telegram messenger, made a splash on Token2049 with several announcements aimed at strengthening and doubling Telegram's crypto functionality. Durov revealed plans for ordinary Telegram users to immerse themselves in the TON ecosystem, initiating TON payments for advertising to Telegram channel administrators and allowing TON tipping to content creators. Not stopping there, Durov floated the idea of trading stickers on TON as nfts, with artists taking 95% of the profits. Since the avalanche of announcements did not stop there, Durov invited Paolo Ardoino, restraints CEO, to the stage, where the two announced that they would integrate USDT into the TON blockchain. My two cents: since USDT has its own problems with auditing and transparency, a native TON stablecoin may have further shaken up the industry.
The behind-the-scenes deals didn't end there, with headquarters in Singapore. QCP and More companies announced that they were diving in the waters of Abu Dhabi. Together, the two will form a “strategic partnership” aimed at expanding digital asset innovation in Abu Dhabi and the MENA region. Details are scarce (as is the case with most “strategic partnerships” in the MENA region), but what we do know is that QCP plans to open an office in the Emirate, while Further Ventures will use its stockbroker license and custody your products to facilitate sales.
open It also made waves this week with the announcement of SEC-approved offerings Abra Prime and Abra Private. The integrated digital asset solution will be tailored for institutional and private clients, along with SEC approval for its subsidiary, Abra Capital Management LP, to operate as a registered investment advisor. Abra now aims to connect on- and off-chain ecosystems for private clients and institutions, a dip into the vibrant (and sometimes murky) waters of profitable yield and lending against cryptocurrencies, which hopefully won't implode like many other high yields. -Promises we have seen over the years (Voyager shouts).
Other ideas this week included Drift announcing a DAO and airdrop of a new governance token, with its genesis airdrop intended to reward Solana DEX traders. As the rains eased in Dubai, Drift users were caught in a hail of newly minted governance tokens, marking a new era for the platform with 10% of the tokens, amounting to 100 million, making which brought down 180,000 of Drift's users based on their activity on the platform.
He Data Ownership Protocol (DOP) It also made waves this week with a recently announced partnership with bitcoin.com. Sailing into a potential new wave of growth, DOP's new plans hope to integrate its 48 million native wallets and one million monthly active users, along with bitcoin.com's four million monthly news readers, signaling a new growth potential among bitcoin maxis, many of them. of which remain committed libertarians interested in privacy and sound money, censorship-resistant protocols, which I, for one, am eager to see and support.
Finally, let me tell you about the party of the century. Or so I thought. Will Heckman of The Street.com and Media Round Table approached, promising yacht dinners and plentiful after-parties during Blockchain Life and Token 2049. It sounded like the perfect mix of networking and fun, with promises of rubbing shoulders with industry elites. But as the week of April 15-20 passed, my inbox remained as empty as a desert island. No invitations, no yacht, just the echo of being eliminated from the party of my dreams. I guess my RSVP was lost at sea or washed away during the great biblical flood. And along with it, any hope of rubbing shoulders with the cryptocurrency bigwigs. Unfortunately, maybe next year.