Ep 33. Culture eats Finance

They say history does not repeat itself but it rhymes. Today, Hurricane Ida hit the Louisiana coast on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I have gone through a couple hurricanes, they can be awfully devastating. Ida seems particularly nasty. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone impacted. <br/><br/>For this week&#8217;s episode, I&#8217;m taking a deeper look at 3 stories and not the usual 5. I think you will enjoy it. Let me know what you think. <br/><br/>NEWS<br/><br/>1. Culture eats finance?<br/><br/>Visa dropped $150,000 on an NFT this week. See the pic below. They are the first corporation to do so. But why does this matter? <br/><br/>CryptoPunk #7610&#160;(2017). Courtesy of Visa, via Twitter. <br/><br/>The internet brought new services, products and careers like email, Twitter, and social media influencers. The crypto age is doing the same. In 2001, I could not have imagined sleeping in a strangers bed but 20 years later we are happy Airbnb guests. Keep an open mind, its early days for crypto. <br/><br/>NFTs have been on a tear lately! There were over $2.5B sales of NFTs in the first half of the year. Over 1 million pieces of crypto art have been sold for over $800M.<br/><br/>Now back to Visa. Visa believes that NFTs could play a role in the future of commerce. They did not just some cash, Visa also wrote a <a href="https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/regional/na/us/Solutions/documents/visa-nft-whitepaper.pdf">17-page white paper </a>about their thesis. They believe that every brand and company will create and/or acquire NFTs. I love that they are exploring and positioning themselves to help their clients. I need to dig into NFTs too. But here&#8217;s what I know:<br/><br/>NFTs connect to culture. They cut across visual arts, music, sports, gaming and more. NFTs allow fans to own a piece of sports history ex <a href="https://nbatopshot.com/">NBA Top Shot</a>. NFTs enable collectors to have an immutable record of ownership. NFTs are good for creators - they could earn royalties on successive