Crypto News and What That Means For Vintage

Welcome to the first article written by Vintage DAO for Defunkd! The goal of these articles will be to give an update on what major things happened in crypto recently, as well as how those events are of specific importance to the vintage community. Even if you don’t know about crypto yet, you owe yourself the opportunity to at least learn about it and make your own decisions about its usefulness. Cryptography technology has the ability to change the world, and we are beginning to see major global adoption in recent months.

How is this all relevant to vintage?

As a buyer or seller in the vintage game, you may be wondering if it’s really worth it to get involved in crypto. If there was an easy way to buy/pay for an item that is safe/secure and provides instant payments, would that be interesting to you? If you’ve ever had your money frozen by PayPal for weeks while they ‘verify’ a transaction, you know the frustrations that brings. With blockchain technology, there is verifiable proof of a transaction, so nobody can scam anyone and say they sent the money but it never appeared in the other person’s account. You can’t fake a screenshot with crypto because the blockchain will always tell the truth, and it is accessible to anyone.

With the executive order signed by Joe Biden this past week, the US has made a major statement to the world that they at least currently support the use of blockchain technology, and are working to figure out how they believe it can best be implemented at scale to society. This should give a positive signal to anyone who has had pause about crypto because of whatever they heard in the past, a lot has changed in the last few years for the crypto community. You have to understand, in crypto, it is open 24/7, so innovation is constantly being fueled. Compare this to the stock market that is only open for around 32 hours per week, and it’s no wonder that a week in crypto feels like a month in the stock market!

Think about all of the “what-ifs” from the .com era in the late 90s/early 2000s. What if I had bought that stock, what if I had paid more attention to that one presentation or friend. As with anything that involves money, please do your own research and nothing said in this article is financial advice. This is an exciting time for the world as many people are comparing this to the next generation of the internet, and you all owe it to yourselves to at least learn enough to feel comfortable deciding if crypto is something that interests you.

Vintage DAO Launches the Vintage Punk NFT Series

Vintage Punks are the first representation of the vintage community in the metaverse. The Vintage Punk NFTs are 64×64 pixel artworks made to honor some of the most historic and important shirts in the vintage community. There are 15 unique shirt designs, 5 skin tones, and 4 background color options, giving the entire run 300 total combinations. Only 1/1 of each combination exists. These digital artworks can be used for everything from a way to represent yourself in the metaverse to being the identity of a brand in real life. Vintage Punk NFTs and the Vintage DAO were created by Alex Comfortes (@MyThriftDeal), a crypto enthusiast and vintage clothing collector/reseller, as a way to give people in vintage a presence in web3. Defunkd has even purchased its own Vintage Punk NFT!

DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. DAOs are the new way of organizing and mobilizing like-minded individuals. Utilizing blockchain technology, ownership becomes fully transparent and puts 100% into the hands of the people. Vintage DAO is the intersection of the past, present, and future. It is taking the traditionally offline vintage communities and uniting collectors across the globe digitally by giving the vintage community a decentralized way to organize and participate in communal goals. It was created to give a safe space for people in vintage to work together to achieve similar objectives, as well as to teach people within the DAO how to onboard themselves into web3. Most people in vintage are one-person operations, so being able to tap into a link-minded community of people is extremely valuable. Every Tuesday, Vintage DAO launches a new Podcast episode focused on crypto education, and will soon have guests from Vintage, Crypto, and Arts. Every other Friday on the Vintage DAO Instagram account, they host an IG live where vendors can sell their clothes for crypto (cash payments are ok too).

All of the communication happens in the Discord, to join the Discord please visit: discord.gg/CupNWrAEFr.

The Discord is welcome to all people, but to unlock certain channels in the DAO you must purchase the Vintage Punk NFT. In addition to the current digital events, later in the year Vintage DAO will be hosting an in-person event for clothing, music, and culture.

To become a member of Vintage DAO, you must purchase (mint) a Vintage Punk NFT. Members of the Vintage DAO also receive exclusive discounts with select brands, and discounted pricing for any in-person Vintage DAO sponsored event. To learn more about Vintage DAO, head to vintagedao.com. To mint your own Vintage Punk NFT, please go to vintagepunks.com, the mint price is only 0.10 eth! Over 12% have already been minted at the time of writing this article. If you are unfamiliar with how to purchase an NFT or need to purchase crypto, please head to the Vintage DAO YouTube channel and there are videos explaining every step of the process. If you want to follow Vintage DAO on Instagram, you can do so @VintageDAO.

eBay CEO Jamie Iannone Says They May Accept Crypto Soon

eBay wants to appeal more towards Gen-Z and Millenials, starting with possibly accepting crypto. A potential partnership with Coinbase to utilize Coinbase Wallet integration is definitely on the cards, as eBay presented a ‘digital wallet’ slide during its investor conference on 3/10. They recently added Apple Pay and Google Pay to the platform, which is a positive sign in the right direction for the potential of eBay accepting crypto. A majority of buyers and sellers in vintage utilize eBay on a day-to-day basis, and they must now educate themselves on crypto so they are prepared to actually spend/accept it themselves before eBay makes the announcement that eBay is accepting it.

Stripe Accepts Crypto

In one of the largest TradeFi announcements to date, Stripe announced they will be launching crypto payments support to give customers an easier path to onboard web3 users and interact with cryptocurrencies.

Stripe released a suite of products aiming to give their customers access to tools and APIs that make it easier for customers to buy and store crypto tokens, cash out their crypto, trade NFTs and handle compliance workflows like Know Your Customer (KYC). Their support page notes that the company’s products will enable support for users to buy more than 135+ cryptocurrencies with fiat currencies in 180 countries.

Stripe has had a long history with crypto, as they accepted bitcoin payments as early as 2014, but in 2018 they stopped support for bitcoin payments and said they didn’t see much value in the cryptocurrencies. For them to eat their words and announce full-scale acceptance more or less of crypto is a monumental step forward for web3 adoption. Now millions of merchants around the world will legitimately be able to accept crypto payment as a valid form of payment through their POS systems if they process payments with Stripe.

President Joe Biden Signs Executive Order for Crypto

This week in particular was significant for crypto, starting with the U.S. President Joe Biden signing an executive order on Wednesday (3/9) calling on the government to examine the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies. Whether you believe government regulation of crypto is good or bad, in my opinion there can’t be longevity of cryptocurrencies without government regulation, so if you want crypto to stay around, the government needs to be clear about how they will allow it to interact in society. Biden working towards giving more clarity as to how crypto can stick around is very bullish news as it relates to the normalization of crypto.

The measures focus on a few key areas:

Consumer Protection

Crypto has grown tremendously from the Wild Wild West environment it once fostered, but it by no means is perfect yet. It’s not even close, people are getting scammed frequently. But, this isn’t something exclusive to crypto. How many times have you gotten an email from a Nigerian prince telling you you’re rich? You’ve learned by now, don’t click the link. In crypto, most people are still learning to not click the link. Biden wants better regulations around trying to help protect consumers from being scammed, as well as more protection offered by the exchanges where crypto is traded.

Financial Stability

A large part of the way the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) protocols function is through the usage of stablecoins. These coins are pegged to $1.00 and are a fundamental money lego in those DeFi protocols as they allow stable borrowing activities to function. Biden has questioned the financial backing of these stablecoins and wants to make sure they can operate safely. (if he learned about crypto a bit more he would know about DAI and the functionality behind it, as it is backed by the crypto ecosystem itself as opposed to a traditional bank)

Illicit Activity

The early days of crypto were littered with illicit activities. The Silk Road was the major use case for Bitcoin for many years. However, in today’s marketplace, the positive functions of crypto far exceed the negative ones. Being able to be your own bank is a revolutionary concept, only possible through blockchain technology. Biden wants to make sure that people are not maliciously using the blockchain technology to launder money or purchase illegal goods.

U.S. Competitiveness

This one is a bit ambiguous, it seems like it was just said to be said. In my opinion, it shouldn’t have to be said that we want to be ahead of the other countries when it comes to the advancement and acceptance of a beneficial emerging technology, which is a no-brainer. But hey, if it makes Biden feel good to let people know he is thinking about it, so be it.

Climate Change

It’s no surprise that powering a global technology is energy-intensive. The amount of energy required to power the blockchain technology is the biggest complaint made about crypto, and on the surface, it’s true that it consumes copious amounts of energy. But if you think about the different things the blockchain technology can replace, and how much energy that saves by doing so, it actually isn’t as much energy as people may think vs. what is currently used today to run certain systems. Advancements in the technology such as moving from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) will significantly reduce the amount of energy being used. Biden wants to explore ways of making blockchain technology more efficient.

Digital Dollar

This is an interesting proposition, as the dollar is already ‘digital’, but right now you exchange traditional US dollars for crypto. If the US government made their own digital currency (on top of Ethereum), then you could easily swap that coin for other cryptocurrencies on the same network. This would allow for companies to easily pay payroll in crypto and also help onboard more merchants to blockchain technology as they would trust the government coin. Biden wants to explore the possibility more but hasn’t been clear which way they are leaning currently.

Bored Ape Yacht Club Creators Yuga Labs Buys CryptoPunks & Meebits

In addition to the executive order, there were also major NFT market moves being made, and YUGA Labs purchasing CryptoPunks & Meebits may just be what the market needs to see to know the bull run is still alive and well. Yuga Labs is the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), now widely considered as the number 1 NFT series. CryptoPunks used to be number one before BAYC dethroned them, so to now acquire them as well is insane. Meebits is no small fry either as it is a top 10 NFT project as well.

This is one of, if not the biggest acquisition in NFT history. In addition to owning the brand IP, Yuga Labs also acquired 423 CryptoPunks and 1711 Meebits. Just between Bored Apes and CryptoPunks market cap alone, the value of the combined worth is over $3.5B USD. This puts YUGA Labs in a dominant spot as the biggest players in the NFT market space. The exact terms of the deal were not announced.