🥊 BeReal knocks down Instagram
Welcome to Smart Marketing on Blockchain - a newsletter about marketing & blockchain!
This week is unique, and it’s not only because our newsletter gets launched on Substack. Last Tuesday, a great investor and American magnate, Warren Buffet turned 92 years old. Happy birthday & may all your wishes (and investments) come true!
In this week's newsletter, we have packed in some mega content:
What’s new in marketing?
Reddit is airdropping a new NFT collection
Crypto.com Arena will undergo a multimillion-dollar renovation
New crypto oversight bill in California
A $10 million-worth mistake by Crypto.com
Read to the end if you want to discover this week’s fun fact and contest winner. Hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed preparing it for you 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
What’s new in marketing?
Instagram is going to add a BeReal-like feature to the platform soon. Prototypes were spotted by @alex193a on Twitter. BeReal - a social media app that asks users to post unfiltered photos of themselves once or twice a day, has been hot and sexy lately. In July, they recorded 2 million more downloads than Meta’s Instagram in the USA - probably this is why Zuckerberg is after them.
Twitter is integrating podcasts into the newly redesigned Spaces Tab. According to their data, 45% of US-based Twitter users also listen to podcasts monthly. The company is about to tap on audio media harder and “help people easily find and listen to the topics they want to hear more about.”
Calm has dominated the meditation and mindfulness business by leveraging these 3 marketing tactics: content marketing, Youtube SEO, and celebrity influence. They started in 2011 as Do Nothing For 2 Minutes, and then in 2017, they overtook Headspace - the most prominent competitor at the time. It’s worth knowing their success story!
Netflix hired two Snapchat execs (+recognized digital veterans) to ensure success of its upcoming low-cost, ad-supported package that will be launched on 1st November. The most shocking for all of us is the announced CPM rate of $65, lack of 3rd party measurement, and a very humble goal of 500k users (in the ad-supported tier) until the end of 2022.
It’s not the first time Reddit has entered the NFT playground. Last June, users were invited to buy CryptoSnoo NFT cards (built on the Ethereum blockchain) and use them as avatars on the platform.
This time Reddit airdrops Polygon-based “collectible avatars” in two runs. In the first run, Reddit rewards its most active users (with a considerable amount of karma points) with free NFTs. That’s basically something you could expect from an airdrop.
In the second run, Reddit makes all four series - Aww Friends, Drip Squad, Meme Team, and The Singularity - available for everyone through its own NFT marketplace and OpenSea.
💜 This one is for the community 🤝
Airdrop of @Reddit's "Collectible Avatars" #onPolygon is live👇
https://t.co/s4KUH76Uq6
— Gaming #onPolygon (@PolygonGaming)
Aug 25, 2022
Although Reddit also avoids using the divisive “NFT” terminology, it is clear and evident that it has invested heavily in blockchain throughout recent years. The social network platform has its own blockchain wallet called Vault, used to store Community Points earned from participation in various subreddits, which then can be exchanged for Reddit Coins.
Why touch on this? Because the stadium’s title sponsor Crypto.com pays the venue owner (AEG) $35 million a year for naming rights.
The stadium, known previously as Staples Center, was built in 1999 and will undergo a multimillion-dollar renovation lasting at least the next three summers. Among other ideas, Crypto.com plans to eliminate the street between the arena and L.A. Live to create a tree-lined public plaza with music and big-tent attractions. The idea is to turn the “find-a-seat-and-watch” arena into an immersive, interactive, and “fan experience” platform.
The renovation of the arena known for not only being home to NBA’s Lakers and Clippers but also hosting 19 Grammy Awards ceremonies, three NBA All-Star Games, two NHL All-Star Games, and countless other high-profile events is said to be a “nine-digit investment.”
If passed, the legislation called “Digital Financial Assets Law” (DFAL) would introduce additional oversight and tighter crypto regulations in California. The bill would go into effect beginning of 2025 and require crypto-related companies to get licensed by the state’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. Companies without permits would be fined $100,000 daily until they acquire one.
The lobbying group “The Blockchain Association” criticized the idea and called the proposed restrictions “shortsighted and unhelpful.”
2/ State Assembly Bill A.B. 2269 creates shortsighted and unhelpful restrictions that would impede crypto innovators' ability to operate and push many out of the state.
This proposal is inconsistent with the Governor's vision for crypto policy in California.
— Blockchain Association (@BlockchainAssn)
Aug 29, 2022
Upon Senate’s and Assembly’s approvals this week, the bill was passed to Governor Gavin Newsom, who will have signed or rejected it by 30th September.
Some crypto companies get dragged down by the bears, others suffer from hacks and attacks, while Crypto.com apparently has driven itself into significant financial loss.
Back in May 2021, the company accidentally transferred a whopping $10.5 million to a woman who sought a mere $100 refund. While the Australian-based crypto platform struggled to realize the mistake, Ms. Manivel - based in Melbourne, bought herself a luxury five-bedroom house in Craigieburn with a cinema and gym inside.
The lucky lady was smart enough to have moved the money to another joint account and transferred the house registration to her sister, a Malaysian woman called Thilagavathy Gangadory.
The Supreme Court judge Dudley Elliott ordered Ms. Gangadory the following:
pay Crypto.com $1.35million,
pay Crypto.com an interest of $27,369 and costs,
sell the Craigieburn house.
OTHER RELEVANT NEWS
Logium.org - launched virtual mode to practice trading with zero risk for free. Also, CryptoNewsZ has done a detailed review of Logium. If you’re interested in DeFi we encourage you to read it. It is also worth mentioning that Logium is one of SMT customers.
USA officials force NVIDIA and AMD to stop selling its top computing chips to China due to the tensions bubbling over the fate of Taiwan. China may struggle to carry out advanced computing used for crypto or AI-related tasks without American chips.
Twitter has launched Circle, a feature that allows users to reach only a select circle of people with their Twitter content. If you're reading this, don't forget to add us to your Circle!
Twitter also introduced a new “Edit Tweet” feature allowing you to edit a Tweet 30 minutes after posting.
The ENS (Ethereum Name Service) service went from 1 million to 2 million names in less than 90 days due to the upcoming Ethereum merge. This feels crazy if you realize that it took 5 years to acquire the first million domain names!
Vitalik Buterin plans to launch a book titled “Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains” in fall 2022.
Is the NFT bubble bursting? OpenSea’s volume plummets 90% from January 2022’s peak, which may mark the end of the “get-rich-in-months” era.
DALL-E, an AI model built by Musk-funded OpenAI, can work for video too, @karenxcheng proves. Great tool for e-commerce to visualize products in a more realistic way.
Crypto.com backs out of a five-year sponsorship deal worth $495 million with the UEFA Champions League.
The story of GameStop’s phenomena will be covered by Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, and Paul Dano in a movie titled “Dumb Money.” The project will start filming this month.
Even 40% of GameFi users are bots, according to a study conducted by Jigger co-founder Levan Kvirkvelia. For instance, Tiny World built on BNB Chain is found to have 70% of bots out of 35,000 MAUs.
FUN FACTS & MEME SECTION
💡 Exactly this day 10 years ago (2nd September 2012), Bitcoin was $9.97 🤓 Congrats to everyone holding ₿ since then!
🥇 This week’s Meme Of The Week award goeeeess tooooo:
That’s it for this week. Make sure to follow us on Twitter @SMTToken.
Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell assets or to make financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.