From FT Alphaville:
Buy this FTAV employee on the blockchain!
Due to deteriorating media market conditions, Alphaville is narrowing the range of its first immortalised-on-the-blockchain offering to 5-8 pence per pixel. Or $1m per Jemima Kelly.
Yeah yeah. The New York Times sold an NFT column for $560,000. Impressive. But here at FT Alphaville we like to go one step better with media reinvention and contrarian thinking....
....MORE
So many thoughts, I need an editor.
First off, to state the bleedin' obvious, this is an equity interest in an NFT of the reporter. They are not auctioning-off the actual reporter. As I've mentioned over the years the Financial Times has a statement on slavery. They're against it.*
So we have to assume this has all been cleared with legal.
Next up, this being Holy Week, we have to see what the Vatican thinks.
Hmmm... nothing on NFT's per se.
They have however, mooted the idea of a VatiCoin. [maybe not, I might have misread the encyclical]
Here's the White Paper (encyclical):
Laudato Si’ Ch. III: On Labor, Use of Power & Technology – The Need for Systemic Change
While Papa Francesco does not mention Jemima directly, his encyclical does say:
103. Technoscience, when well directed, can produce important means of improving the quality of human life, from useful domestic appliances to great transportation systems, bridges, buildings and public spaces. It can also produce art and enable men and women immersed in the material world to “leap” into the world of beauty. Who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper? Valuable works of art and music now make use of new technologies. So, in the beauty intended by the one who uses new technical instruments and in the contemplation of such beauty, a quantum leap occurs, resulting in a fulfilment which is uniquely human.
So it appears we are good there.
Finally, expectations. We do not want to set up the angst of buyer's remorse in the successful bidder, or the so-called "winner's curse"**:
...The winner's curse is a tendency for the winning bid in an auction to exceed the intrinsic value or true worth of an item. The gap in auctioned versus intrinsic value can typically be attributed to incomplete information, emotions, or a variety of other subjective factors that may influence bidders....
Some examples from the pseudonymous author, John Bull:
ADVENTURERS: We're here for your treasure!MANY MORE, Very, Very Good (plus your choice of delivery method)
DRAGONS: Congrats! Here you go.
ADVENTURERS: What... what is this?
DRAGON: DragCoin. It's my new crypto. Gonna be worth millions, bro
ADVENTURERS: Have you published the blockchain?
DRAGON: HAHAHA listen to little Bill Gates here!
Twitter | Threadreader
Did I mention they are very, very good?
ADVENTURERS: We're here for your treasure!Again, your choice for the rest:
DRAGONS: Congrats. Here.
ADVENTURERS: Um... this isn't as much as we...
DRAGONS: You also get equity.
ADVENTURERS: Equity?
DRAGONS: Equity
Twitter | ThreadreaderOne more:
ADVENTURERS: We're here for your treasure!
DRAGON: No problem. It's over there.
ADVENTURERS: But it's...
DRAGON: ...all in copper pieces, yes.
ADVENTURERS: But there's no way we can carry all that!
DRAGON: Logistics is a bitch, isn't it?
And many many more.
Notes:
*In 2017 the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences held a symposium on human slavery in the 21st century and one of the speakers, Joseph Mari from the Bank of Montreal spoke on Bitcoin's role in the trade.
**On the winner's curse see: Thaler, Richard (1988), "Anomalies: The Winner's Curse", Journal of Economic Perspectives
Finally if the editor of FT Alphaville should fail to deliver (something she once did in the oil market) the reporter [and which possibility you prudently insured against], the question of whether your insurance contract is enforceable has not yet been adjudicated in a court of competent jurisdiction, See Climateer (2018) "Pope says credit default swaps are unethical"
