Borderless

$69M Art, Investing in Grayscale and the Future of Money

A collection of 5,000 .jpg files just sold at Christie’s for $69.3 million. Why? Because it’s art, it’s digital and it’s on a blockchain.Hosts Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson dive into the non-fungible token (NFT) phenomenon .

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A collection of 5,000 .jpg files just sold at Christie’s for $69.3 million. Why? Because it’s art, it’s digital and it’s on a blockchain. Hosts Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson dive into the non-fungible token (NFT) phenomenon and its wildest, eye-popping twist yet on “Borderless” this week, discussing what makes NFTs so valuable and whether they’re here to stay – potentially turning the art world on its head. Even hackers are paying attention.

The conversation then turns to Israel, where local media reported the Altschuler Shacham pension fund invested $100 million in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust at $21,000. (Grayscale is owned by CoinDesk parent company DCG). It’s the latest example of traditionally conservative money flowing into the historically volatile crypto. Danny and Anna discuss the trend.

Finally, “Borderless” heads to New Zealand where a startup’s started minting one of the world’s earliest fully compliant stablecoin. With currency digitization sweeping across borders, the hosts consider how the future of money might be shaped by corporations and governments, too.

Articles in the podcast:

/markets/2021/03/11/beeple-nft-sold-for-record-setting-693m-at-christies-auction/

/business/2021/03/10/israeli-pension-giant-put-100m-into-grayscale-bitcoin-trust-report/

/business/2021/03/10/compliant-stablecoin-launches-in-new-zealand/

HOSTS

Dan Ilett

Dan Ilett writes on tech, money and energy. He advises business on digital strategy and technology messaging for large deals. He is founder of Erbut - an advisory company - and Greenbang - a smart technology research company.

Anna Baydakova

Anna writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on Eastern Europe and Russia. She is especially excited about stories on privacy, cybercrime, sanctions policies and censorship resistance of decentralized technologies.
She graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University and the Higher School of Economics in Russia and got her Master's degree at Columbia Journalism School in New York City.
She joined CoinDesk after years of writing for various Russian media, including the leading political outlet Novaya Gazeta.
Anna owns BTC and an NFT of sentimental value.

Anna Baydakova
Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Danny Nelson
Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury has been a professional writer since 1989, and has worked freelance since 1994. He covers technology for publications such as the Guardian.

$69M Art, Investing in Grayscale and the Future of Money