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BRAIN DRAIN TO CRYPTO? Dominant tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are hardly in danger of lacking talent for their sprawling projects (for example, see our TRENDS IN TECHNOCRACY section in this issue).
But there are continuing signs that the crypto sector is drawing more than in the past on innovators from mainline tech.
“We are unquestionably seeing some of the best and brightest of Silicon Valley, or tech, move over to crypto,” Scott Fletcher of Intersection Growth Partners, told CNBC this past week.
It represents a cross interest, as those tech companies have made significant moves to open their own lines of connection to blockchain fueled technologies.
The former general manager of Amazon’s AWS Edge Services is now chief technical officer of the crypto exchange Gemini, CNBC reported, while Uber’s ex-director of corporate development has joined OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace.
Many observers and players, including entrepreneur Ryan Wyatt, who founded YouTube Gaming in 2014, say blockchain technology is still at a very early stage, with huge potential as it matures and changes the web, and the world.
In January Wyatt became CEO of Polygon, a layer 2 blockchain that makes transactions on Ethereum, the dominant smart contract capable blockchain, faster and less costly.
Wyatt says so-called “Web3” decentralized technologies, built around distributed databases and programs, with integrated ecosystems of crypto tokens that track, quantify and allow the exchange of value of the networks, will be the basis of an evolving internet.
Alex Bouaziz of Deel, a payroll software company, said the fast-innovating blockchain sector is attractive “in the same way that Facebook and Amazon were attractive in the past.”
Traditional Tech Venturing Into the Blockchain
Tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are among those who have obviously been looking to evolve their own companies to tap into the wave.
Zuckerberg has geared his social-platform based company Facebook (now Meta) toward building metaverse technologies.
The metaverse has been envisioned as an immersive mix of digital and real world experience, where people will interact socially and in work settings.
It combines aspects of the created visual worlds of gaming, together with the functionalities of the internet, and ecosystems of participation and commerce that blockchain technologies are fast pioneering and revolutionizing.
Dorsey, meanwhile, realigned and rebranded his payments processing company Square in 2021 to “Block,” signaling a new focus on crypto capabilities. Since its inception in 2009, Square has carved out a place as a leading provider of payment processing services for small entrepreneurs.
CRYPTO PAYMENTS AT RETAILERS MAY EXPLODE IN 2022. Ebay CEO Jamie Iannone made news this past week for positive comments about crypto and NFTs.
Iannone commented to TheStreet:
“Even without announcing anything or doing anything, people started trading NFT on a platform. It reminded me of many years ago when people just started selling cars when we didn’t even have a vehicle business at that point. So we’re seeing the same type of thing [with NFTs].
“…eBay will be the place where people trade goods, whether they be physical or digital. So over time, you know, we want this to be the marketplace for sustainability.”
Though eBay currently doesn’t accommodate crypto payments directly, Iannone hinted that it could be a feature offered relatively soon.
“We opened up Google Pay and Apple Pay. We have a partnership with Afterpay in Australia, which is a platform that appeals to Gen Z, and that is a buy now pay later platform on the marketplace…”
“And so we continue to evaluate other forms of payments that we should take on the platform. We don’t currently accept cryptocurrency on the platform.”
Cryptosrus.com noted that retailers and commerce platforms including Shopping.io and Shopify offer at least some degree of crypto payment functionality.
The titans of online commerce, Walmart and Amazon, meanwhile, have made news for advertising for crypto talent to further their own apparent future moves into crypto payments.
The Trends Journal has been keeping readers informed about traditional retailers and growth signs for crypto in articles such as “WALMART FOLLOWS AMAZON IN SEARCH FOR CRYPTO TALENT,” “WALMART SIGNS UP FOR CRYPTO” and others.
LATE BREAKING: EU REJECTS BAN ON PROOF OF WORK IN BOOST FOR BITCOIN. The European Union’s ban on bitcoin has just been repealed.
The European Union’s proposed legislation. It would have imposed a blanket ban on proof-of-work coins and spelled doom for sensible bitcoin adoption in Europe.
“The paragraph is no longer in the text,” European MP Stefan Berger verified on Twitter.
“A Bitcoin ban in Europe is off the table,” according to BTC-ECHO, a German crypto website. The deletion of the contentious paragraph from the #MiCA draft has been canceled by the competent committee.
The now-scrapped paragraph in the legislation “would have meant a de facto ban on services for Proof-of-Work-based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin,” according to European press coverage. The repercussions would be widespread and retrograde.
It would have prohibited “crypto service providers” from aiding the “buying or trade of such crypto-assets” and would have prohibited “such crypto-assets” from being held in custody. The Left, Greens, and Social Democrats all lobbied for the draft, and this item in particular.