With hours to go one would find that SWIFT is too slow to effect the transfer and getting on a plane with enough cash to make a deposit of sufficient size to interest the Pictets and Baers of the world would raise questions that, though answerable may be awkward.
On the other hand, here's the FT's Jemima Kelly with some alternatives.
From FT Alphaville:
This Valentine’s, consider the crypto-flower
All this time, we’ve been saying blockchain is a solution looking for a problem. But now, as it turns out, we might have been wrong . . .
On Tuesday we appeared on one of these trendy Zoom-panels that everyone seems to be doing these days, to take part in a discussion about blockchain and its implications for financial markets. It was hosted by His Excellency Alexander Fasel, the Swiss ambassador to the Court of St James’s (AKA the UK).
As you can imagine, we were giving our usual spiel about how blockchain has yet to prove itself as a “solution” for anything outside of the world of cryptocurrencies; how you never seem to hear about how the literally thousands of blockchain projects that have been splashed across newspaper pages over the past six years or so are doing; how blockchain has a garbage-in, garbage-out problem . . . you get the drift.
But then, out of nowhere, we were told about a new solution! Flowers! Not real ones, obvs, but you know, pixels! On a blockchain! CRYPTO-FLOWERS! Solving the problem of, erm, what to send someone with pollen allergies and an aversion to chocolate or basically anything tangible on Valentine’s Day!Have a watch here if you’re interested in hearing about it first-hand, from about 45.50:
*****
Or if you’re not, here’s what this guy, who is the head of the “world’s first digital assets bank”, Sygnum, told us:
What if I told you that there is right now a very strongly growing so-called “NFT market”, where you have girls — 15-year-old girls — today getting a digital flower, of which there is only one? It’s also on the blockchain but it’s one, created for them. And when their boyfriends send them the flower, they have the same emotions as if your partner, your partner gives you roses. ...
....MUCH MORE, including commenters who praised Jemima for not mentioning a certain species of flower.
But, because I am not as reserved as she when it comes to stating the bleeding obvious, here's a former Andreessen Horowitz partner pitching a mine-your-own-crypto project that he somehow got A16Z to invest $116 million into:
April 16, 2015Climateer Line of the Day: Uh Oh Andreessen Edition
From a very interesting piece at FT Alphaville:
—Andreessen Horowitz partner Balaji Srinivasan
