Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Good morning and welcome to the 6th edition of Crypto Thursdays!
If you ever took any sort of world history growing up, you’ve probably heard the name Johannes Gutenberg.
Just in case you forgot, I’ll give a quick refresher: Johannes invented the first printing press around 1450, and changed the world as we know it.
He was able to distribute more Bibles, more books, more news, and more information than ever thought possible.
But not everyone was a fan.
There were actually many skeptics and people who hated this beloved invention.
Some critics claimed that the printing press would put monks out of business. What would they do if they don’t need to manually copy books day in and day out now?
Others said that having this ability would spread too much information and that society would hit an information overload.
Ok, that one might be a fair complaint. But wow, can you believe what that guy would say if he could see the world today?
And of course, many people complained that the fumes and whatnot would have negative impacts on the environment.
It just goes to show that when a new technology emerges, there will always be haters, skeptics, and critics.
Many people also thought the internet was a fad. Just another tulip mania.
And here we are again. Some new technology that takes many different names: “blockchain”, “nfts”, “crypto”, “web3.”
But what does any of this new blockchain stuff have to do with a printing press?
Well, let’s jump in and find out!
Literary NFTs and Blockchain Publishing
This was a great article by New York Times best-seller, Joe Nassise.
Joe knows the publishing world inside and out, and he has now entered this new NFT/web3 space.
And he has discovered the beauty of NFT Books.
Joe lays out a fantastic description of what blockchain, NFTs, and NFT Books are, so I will leave that for you to read yourself.
But the really cool part is seeing actual professional authors getting involved in this space.
He has tried, tested, and reached out to several of the current NFT Book platforms out there. Many have pros and cons.
I reached out to Joe, personally, to get some further insight as I prepare to launch Spatium Stories. He gave me some fantastic feedback on the current platforms and some of those pros and cons. I know he is planning another article to go more in-depth on those, so I’ll leave that to him too.
One really big point he touches on is the fact that with current digital e-books, like on Kindle, you don’t actually own that book. You own a license to read the book. And if Amazon decided to remove a book or shut down your account, you have no way to recover those books!
The same is not true with printed editions.
So why should that be true in the digital world?
And that is just one problem NFT Books will solve. I have an article coming out very soon on our Spatium Stories blog, so make sure you check that out!
Another big value with NFT Books is this brand new revenue stream for authors via special edition drops.
Because of the inherent technology behind NFTs, authors will be able to drop unique cover designs, first edition books, etc all in the digital world.
Something that until now only existed in the physical world.
Coinbase Mispricing Allows Users in Georgia to Cash Out for 100 Times Rate
This article has absolutely nothing to do with books, but I thought it was super fascinating.
So, as I said earlier, this crypto stuff is still a brand new technology. Coinbase is only like 10 years old right now.
Well, apparently, there was some kind of glitch in their system and a bunch of Georgians (the country, not the state) became wealthy overnight.
The glitch was when someone in Georgia went to cash out their crypto and transfer their national currency, lari, into their bank accounts.
Apparently, Coinbase accidentally put their exchange rate at like $290 instead of $2.90. They claim it was an error in some third-party system they use.
The bottom line is if you had deposited $100 of lari into your Coinbase account, all of a sudden, you were able to withdraw it back into your bank account at $10,000!
That’s crazy! That would have been quite a fun surprise!
Reminds me of Monopoly:
Coinbase also claimed that all in all, a lot of bank accounts froze said assets to figure out what on earth just happened. And they also said the number of users that were able to take advantage of this was pretty negligible when compared to the size of Coinbase.
What I interpret from that is they are just owning the bank error in your favor idea and letting those who can keep it, keep it.