Last week, Snafu by crypto exchange Coinbase has really set the cat among the crypto pigeons in
India. Welcome to The Daily Forkast, April 13th, 2022. I'm Megha Chaddah of Forkast covering all
things blockchain. Coinbase had claimed it was supported by the government backed
National Payments Corporation of India or NPCI. However, the NPCI swiftly responded,
saying it wasn't aware of any crypto exchange using its ubiquitous unified payments interface.
And now multiple crypto exchanges have disabled transactions using the platform. We'll take a look
at that story, plus a whole lot more coming up. Let's get you up to speed from Asia to the world.
Join thousands of NFT traders who already start their day on CryptoSlam.
Let's kick off with an update on a case that shocked the crypto space.
Former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith has been sentenced to 63 months in U.S. jail for violating
international sanctions against North Korea. He's also facing a US$100,000 fine. Griffith
spoke at a cryptocurrency conference in Pyongyang in April 2019, which violated the US International
Emergency Economic Powers Act. Violators could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison,
but prosecutors reduced Griffith's sentence after he pleaded guilty last September. A
report citing the United Nations said North Korea has allegedly been funding its nuclear
and ballistic missile programs, with proceeds from cyber attacks on crypto exchanges. While
blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis said that hackers from the East Asian country stole
almost US$400 million worth of crypto in 2021. You can find that story and more at Forkast.News.
Over in India, many investors rely on using the unified payments interface
or UPI for transactions, but numerous crypto exchanges have now disabled that option.
Forkast's Pradipta Mukherjee takes a look at how a claim from Coinbase
set the ball rolling and what it means for the crypto industry in India.
For the launch of its services in India last week, Coinbase Chief Product Officer
Surojit Chatterjee livestreamed a demonstration showing how Indians could use the UPI platform to
quickly buy cryptocurrencies. But the governing body overseeing the UPI responded by saying it
wasn't aware of any cryptocurrency exchange using the platform. Two people familiar with
the industry told Forkast that exchanges set up affiliated local firms to apply for a payments
processor's license to onboard the UPI platform. But it is highly unlikely that the NPCI was
unaware of the end use due to India's strenuous know-your-customer rules. Another source told
Forkast that the NPCI was caught between a rock and a hard place as a result of Coinbase's claim
because support explicit or otherwise for cryptocurrency put the government backed developer
of the instant payment system in conflict with the Reserve Bank of India. That is because the Reserve
Bank of India, or RBI, has repeatedly warned against crypto trading and has even called for
an outright ban on the asset class in the country. A person who asked not to be named but is familiar
with the NPCI's thinking, told Forkast that the NPCI realized it needed to make a clarification,
as it did not want people to be misled. Following the NPCI statement, Coinswitch Kuber reportedly
disabled rupee deposit services on its app through UPI yesterday, while e-wallet provider Mobikwik
stopped allowing use of its services to WarziX and CoinDCX. Neither coins which could bear normal be
quick had responded to a request for comment by the time of this recording. But one person
familiar with the matter told Forkast that crypto exchanges and payment gateways have disabled
the service as they do not want to get into a compliance tussle with the NPCI. One expert told
Forkast that things are becoming very difficult in India for both industry players and investors.
The options and the opportunities of continuing in the cryptocurrency space are coming down sharply.
There is now a very heavy dose of taxation on every transaction
and of course the opportunities or the options for exit or for play in this segment
has really come down. And in any market, the range of opportunities and options to exit
are as important for the health of the market as the range of opportunities to enter the market.
And that's left many Indian crypto traders and investors looking for options away from what they
see as an increasingly hostile environment. For Forkast, I am Pradipta Mukherjee, Kolkata, India.
Rapper Snoop Dogg and Clay Nation are making their partnership official,
bringing NFT collectibles to Cardano. It's not Snoop Dogg's first time getting his paws
wet in the NFT space. It likely won't be his last. This as dozens of other
celebrities are also testing the NFT waters. Yohann Calpu, VP, Chief Marketing Officer of
CryptoSlam a cross-chain NFT data tracker and aggregator joins in on the NFT insider
to tell us about the drops he's watching out for. Great to see you again, Yohann.
Great to see you as well, Megha. How are you?
Yeah. To kick it off, Clay Nation just launched its collab with Snoop Dogg, which
includes collectibles and previously unreleased music on Cardano. What do you think of that?
I think it's a great idea. These celebrities creating content online that you can own. I've
heard some of the NFTs that Snoop are creating are trends for some IP rights over to the owner,
especially for the music NFTs. So like you can own your music. Some of the stuff I've been
seeing coming from him, so that's just a really innovative use case for it and I'm excited to see
people use it in whatever music or mix or anything that they, they, they make from that tracks.
And that's not all, we've seen Snoop avatars from the American rapper. And he also released
his first metaverse music video called The House I Built in The Sandbox. Have you taken
a look at that? And is this a build up to the Metaverse concert later in the year?
I think Snoop has been a really early adopter when it comes to celebrities and just having a space in
the metaverse where you can have a big party just sounds like something he would do. And it's like
the music, the avatars, the the land, everything goes together in Snoopverse.
Meanwhile, ESPN has struck a deal with seven time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady for an
NFT collection. A sure shot winner here, would you say?
Tom Brady is a huge name and a superstar, so I don't see it not being successful, especially
with the partnership with ESPN. Good for them for doing that. It's a great collaboration and
I hope that a lot of NFL fans and football fans alike jump on board and adopt this technology,
especially since it gives use cases. I don't know what they are for this particular case,
but what I'm seeing is that these celebrities are using it or creating brands for themselves,
which were previously done by shoe companies and merchandise companies. And now they're
just creating it on their own and creating their own community and brand around the NFT.
And Heir, a platform run by Michael Jordan and his son dropped a new
25,000 NFT collection on Solana and the NFTs give the holders access to a platform that
connects athletes with their fans. So the NFT is no longer just a simple collectible,
but now it has utility. So are we going to see a lot more of this?
I don't know if there will be a lot more, but definitely there's going to be some winners
that come out of this. And this this sounds like the right way to do things. They're creating a
community on Solana. They're creating a community that is dedicated and loyal to Michael Jordan. And
he's such an icon in the industry and in the in the history of sports. And to have a community
based around him and his special achievements, the NFTs have a serial number with with the
the years that he played and they get different benefits according to the years that he played,
maybe access to a tier one level athlete or a different type of merchandise that's
really coveted. Traditionally, sports celebrities like previously were to
jump on on top of someone else's brand. Now they're creating their own brands. And the Heir,
for example, the Heir brand that Michael Jordan and his son are creating could become a sports
brand one day that that becomes competitive to some of the existing brands. So maybe that's what
they have in mind. But the game has changed. The game has totally flipped on its head and
people are cutting out the middleman. So it's just really interesting to see how these athletes are
pulling together their fans and communities and using NFTs to kind of supercharge that.
It's almost reverse engineering in a way, from companies creating brands that sports
men and women endorse to celebrities now taking charge of their own brand and creating
products. Thank you so much, as always, for sharing your insights, Yohann.
You're welcome, Megha. It was a pleasure. See you again.
And finally, China's tech giants also seemingly can't get enough of NFTs,
with Huawei's cloud computing arm the latest to join the thread. The NFTs form part of Huawei's
cloud branding campaign with the artwork based on its mascot - and they've already sold out.
Fellow tech giants Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com have already launched NFT marketplaces,
despite a lack of clear regulation on NFTs in China. Criticism in state media over hype has
prompted restrictions or bans on resales by many marketplaces. In a research report this month,
Chinese brokerage firm Guosen Securities suggested the country's NFT market could be valued
at almost US$5 billion if regulators allowed resales, but less than US$1 billion if not.
And that's The Daily Forkast. And now you don't need to search for us. The daily
focus is being delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up at Forkast.News/Newsletter.
Thanks for watching. I'm Forkast's Megha Chaddah, until next time.