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Michael Bacina, Luke Misthos and Jordan Markezic of
the Piper Alderman Blockchain Group bring you the latest legal,
regulatory and project updates in Blockchain and Digital
Law.
Non Fungible Tuna? NYC restaurant plans exclusive NFT
membership
Flyfish Club (FFC), a New York based restaurant has announced it
aims to become the first NFT-backed members-only private dining
club. The seafood restaurant requires prospective diners to
purchase a membership, represented by an NFT, to dine.
Those wanting to mix bass and blockchain can choose from two
tokens. The Flyfish token, offered at 2.5 Eth, gives holders access
to events and pop-ups (both in person and virtual), an outdoor
lounge, the cocktail lounge as well as the main dining room.
The Flyfish Omakase token, sold at 4.25 Eth, entitles holders to
the same benefits as well as access to dine in an exclusive
14-person Omakase room. 2,650 Flyfish tokens and 385 Flyfish
Omakase tokens were made available in three separate releases and
sold for a total of USD$14M.
The first release was a private invite-only pre-sale, while the
second and third releases were for the general public. Flyfish
explain their experiment as follows:
As an NFT, the membership becomes an asset to the token holder,
which can later be sold, transferred or leased to others on the
secondary market. By utilizing NFT’s, FFC is able to create a
loyal, member-community that we can provide special experiences
for. NFT’s create new modernistic financial models, which will
allow FFC to deliver an exceptional and sustainable product for
years to come.
Those with one of the tokens will have to verify ownership
before being able to make a reservation at FFC. While a token is
needed to make a reservation, patrons can pay with USD once in the
restaurant, which is set to open Q1/Q2 2023.
Although the tokens are sold out on the FFC website, tokens can
be leased or sold on the secondary market. Token holding entitles
patrons unlimited use of the FFC facilities and allows for one
non-token holder to participate so long as they are accompanied by
a token-holder.
The membership opportunities for NFT holders to interact as part
of an exclusive club are only just starting and more experiments of
this kind are sure to be on the menu.
Australian Senate Crypto Report – Recommendation
7: The tax cut for miners which didn’t make it…
The recent Senate Select Committee Report into Australia as a
Technology and Financial Centre’s Final Report considered the
tax arrangements for businesses that undertake ‘mining’ of
digital assets and related activities within Australia.
The recommendation arose from submissions regarding the energy
consumption associated with some digital asset protocols – in
particular, as the report highlighted, the energy intensity of
Bitcoin mining.
Commentators and submitters raised concerns that the energy
intensiveness required for mining and related activities could
potentially undermine and compromise Australia’s net zero
commitments. Accordingly, the Committee made the following
recommendation:
The committee recommends that the Australian Government amend
relevant legislation so that businesses undertaking digital asset
‘mining’ and related activities in Australia receive a
company tax discount of 10 per cent if they source their own
renewable energy for these activities.
Despite the recommendation not specifying how a business may
qualify for this tax cut, digital asset mining businesses have
already shown that they can become energy efficient. SolarCoin
offers a novel approach to cryptocurrency, creating 1 SolarCoin for
every Megawatt hour that is generated from solar technology.
Businesses such as Powerledger have also proven themselves to
lead the campaign to make mining and related activities more
eco-friendly, offering a peer-to-peer energy trading platform.
Powerledger offers a decentralised and distributed network that
helps energy producers track and trade energy in real-time,
increasing the resilience and reliability of energy grids.
Sadly, this recommendation was not taken up by the Treasurer and
so is unlikely to ever made it to law, so miners will need to keep
making their own way in Australia and finding ways to use renewable
energy without a little help from Uncle Skippy.
Google to Gather Blockchain Gurus
Google veteran engineering Vice President Shivakumar
Venkataraman has been appointed to head up a Google specialist team
which will be exploring blockchain opportunities for Google.
Bloomberg claims to have seen an email in which the new team will
be charged with investigating:
blockchain and other next-gen distributed computing and data
storage technologies
Google recently hired a new head of payments, Arnold Goldberg, a
move which was announced as part of Google shifting to become more
involved in financial services and cryptocurrency, after Google Pay
has lagged behind Apple Pay. Google has made clear it has no
intentions to become a bank, but rather wants to be providing the
connectivity between businesses involved in payments and
banking.
With their incredible cloud computing reach, Google is well
placed to bring private chain smart-contracts-as-a-service and
blockchain-as-a-service and potentially node operations for public
blockchains, as well as a mainstreaming of crypto and blockchain
simply by virtue of being involved in the space.
2022 definitely seems to be the year for crypto and blockchain
to go mainstream, if Google’s moves are anything to go by.
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