One of the benefits of being a member of a limited liability company or a stockholder of a private company was that the public and the government didn’t know about it. Unless you are an organizer of an LLC or a director or officer of a corporation where your name is on a public filing with the state the company’s organization, you are anonymous. That’s going to change with the recent new regulation from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury Department agency that enforces the Corporate Transparency Act which is part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020. When the regulation g ..read more

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are quickly becoming the new way to monetize almost anything. Since the NFT is “virtual” not real what you see is not what you get. What you get is a digital representation of the physical thing, so it’s like buying a picture of a car, but not getting the car. There is a somewhat surprising backlash growing over the move by some fan-based companies over their attempt to sell NFTs to their customers. Recently, the rabid Stan Lee fans have revolted over the tweet that his first Indian hero, Chakra The Invincible, would be selling an NFT (digital art) collection. Per CB ..read more

I have a bridge to sell ya. But if you’re not interested in a bridge in Brooklyn, how about a Non-Fungible Token of Melania Trump’s eyes? It comes with a one sentence audio inspirational message from the seller. You can buy this watercolor digital thing on her website for one SOL, a cryptocurrency that runs on the Solana blockchain valued by her website today at $182.35. A “portion of the proceeds from the sale of the artwork will be donated to support children in the foster care community.” That portion is not disclosed. Or, you can gaze into her “cobalt-blue” orbs below for free. (Credit: Ma ..read more

Is it really a “new way of financing” independent films? Or is it just another gimmick to find funding in the ever harder world of movie making? Non-Fungible Tokens are now being touted as the way indie producers can raise funding for projects. THR reported about “financing the movie through a combination of NFTs and a first-of-its-kind public offering to sell shares in the film.” It’s unclear what makes the IPO a one-of-a-kind when filmmakers have been crowdfunding films for years. And NFTs are the opposite of what most producers want: an NFT has a single owner/viewer, and most filmmakers se ..read more

A software “glitch” resulted in traders not being able to withdraw their Dogecoins from Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange. That started a pissing contest between Elon Musk and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao on Twitter. Musk tweeted that something “sounded shady” and Zhao responded noting software problems with Teslas. Dogecoins were created in 2013 as a meme joke but rocketed to a 6,000% increase to about $0.64 in May 2021 and now trades at $0.21. However, the problem prevented withdrawals for more than 2 weeks. If that happened to a bank in the U.S., there would have been panics and long li ..read more

Negotiation is a study in power and economics. Power in negotiation (IMHO) is the ability to walk away from any potential transaction, no matter how far along you are in the process. The power element is the desire. It’s not the need. In a commercial setting, especially in the movie business, no one “needs” to get a picture made. Needs are what Maslow describes. The person who has the most desire for the deal to happen is the one with the least amount of power. That’s why many people cut bad deals. The other aspect is, of course, simple supply and demand. There are millions of film scripts fl ..read more

In 1908, there were 253 automobile manufacturers in the world. Today, about 20. There are more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies in existence as of November 2021. If you don’t see a comparison, don’t worry, the new Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission does. Mr. Gensler, a former professor of blockchain technology at MIT, has likened the cryptocurrency wave to “wildcat” banking in the years before the Federal government created the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Back then, banks made their own paper money. His view is that it just won’t work. He has likened stablecoins (digi ..read more

Religious news is not usually posted here, but this may affect a number of readers. Followers of the Muslim faith are prohibited from owning or trading cryptocurrency. Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population. This week that country’s National Ulema (Religious) Council ruled that cryptocurrencies are “haram” or banned because of their uncertainty, elements of wagering and harm which goes against the central tenets of the faith. The NUC is the final arbiter of Shariah law in Indonesia. While it is not a government decree, it may affect the observant population in that country. In fa ..read more

There appears to be a coming turf war of regulators where the cryptocurrency community may become collateral damage. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week hit Tether with a $41 million fine for “making untrue or misleading statements and omissions of material fact in connection with the U.S. dollar tether token (USDT) stablecoin.” While we all thought that the Securities and Exchange Commission went after issuers providing misleading staements, the CFTC has weighed in under the Commodity Exchange Act. The charge is serious. The agency contended that “since its launch in 2014, Tet ..read more

The difference between personal views and business: On the one hand: “I personally think that #bitcoin is worthless…No matter what anyone thinks about it, government is going to regulate it. They are going to regulate it for (anti-money laundering) purposes, for (Bank Secrecy Act) purposes, for tax…” according to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. On the other hand, per Reuters: “This summer, JPMorgan gave wealth management clients access to cryptocurrency funds, meaning the bank’s financial advisers can accept buy and sell orders from clients for five cryptocurrency products.” https://www.reuters.com ..read more