Author: azeeadmin

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China.

Maimai, China’s biggest rival to LinkedIn, has revealed today that it received a $200 million D Series investment back in April in what the company claims to be the largest investment in the professional networking market. That’s surprising but correct: LinkedIn went public in 2011 and was bought by Microsoft for $26 million in 2016, but it raised just over $150 million from investors as a private company.

Global venture capital DST led the round for Maimai which include participation from existing investors of IDG, Morningside Venture Capital, and DCM.

The new capital takes Maimai to $300 million raised from investors, according to Crunchbase. Caixin reports that the valuation of the company is more than $1 billion which would see the firm enter the global unicorn club.

Beyond the fundraising, the firm said it plans to invest RMB 1 billion (around $150 million) over the next three years in a career planning program that it launched in partnership with over 1,000 companies. Those partners include global top-500 firm Cisco and Chinese companies such as Fashion Group and Focus Media.

This investment could be the last time Maimai taps the private market for cash. That’s because the company is gearing up for a U.S. IPO and overseas expansion in the second half of 2019, according to the company founder and CEO Lin Fan.

Launched in the fall of 2013, Maimai aims particularly at business people as a platform to connect professional workers and offer employment opportunities. The service now claims over 50 million users. As a Chinese counterpart of LinkedIn, Maimai has competed head-on with Chinese arm of the U.S. professional networking giant since its establishment and gradually gained an upper hand with features tailored to local tastes.

It can be hard to gauge the population of social networks, but Chinese market research firm iResearch ranked Maimai ahead of LinkedIn for the first time in the rankings of China’s most popular social networking apps in April last year. The firm further gained ground this year as its user penetration rate reaching 83.8 percent in June, far higher than LinkedIn China’s 11.8 percent, according to data from research institute Analysys.

As a China-born company, Maimai gained momentum over the past two years with localized features, such as anonymous chat, mobile-first design, real-name registration, and partnerships with Chinese corporations. But like all Chinese tech services, it is subject to the state’s tight online regulation. The government watchdog has ordered Maimai to remove the anonymous posting section on its platform last month. The same issue applies to LinkedIn, which has been criticized for allowing its Chinese censorship to spill over and impact global users.

With assistance from Jon Russell

Fintech startup Revolut is launching a new premium card. As the name suggests, subscribing to Revolut Metal gives you a metal card as well as additional perks compared to Revolut Premium.

In addition to the new card and existing premium benefits, you can claim cash back on all spending in the currency of your choice. It can be EUR, USD, BTC or ETH, as Revolut supports fiat currencies and a handful of cryptocurrencies.

Don’t expect to break the bank, as you’ll only receive 0.1 percent in Europe. In other words, when you spend €1,000, you’ll receive €1. But if you often travel outside of Europe, it could be a good deal, as you’ll receive 1 percent in cash back outside of Europe.

Every time you use your Revolut card, the company gets a fraction of the card processing fee from MasterCard or Visa. Card processing fees are much lower in Europe, that’s why Revolut can’t give you back more money in Europe.

Revolut Metal customers also get a higher ATM limit and can withdraw up to €600/£600 without any fee. Premium users can only withdraw up to €400/£400 for free as a comparison. Finally, you can access a concierge service to book hotels, flights or restaurants if you’re a Metal subscriber.

Revolut Metal costs €13.99 per month or €135 per year (£12.99 per month or £120 per year). The basic premium subscription costs €7.99 per month or €82 per year (£6.99 per month or £70 per year). You’ll need to pay many, many things with your Metal card to cover the price difference.

So it’s clear that Revolut is targeting people who want to look cool with a metal card. It has a brushed metal look, a tiny Revolut logo in the top right corner and your name in the bottom left corner. It works with contactless card readers.

Revolut is following N26’s path and becomes the second challenger bank that offers a metal card. But the two companies have a different approach. Revolut’s card is slightly cheaper, and N26 focuses on partner offerings from WeWork, Hotels.com or Drivy.

Revolut sent an email yesterday saying that Metal is currently limited to existing Premium subscribers. The company only has 10,000 cards for now, so it could take a bit of time before you get your card.

Facebook has removed hundreds of accounts and pages for what it calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” generally networks of ostensibly independent outlets that were in fact controlled centrally by Russia and Iran. Some of these accounts were identified as much as a year ago.

In a post by the company’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, the company described three major operations that it had monitored and eventually rolled up with the help of security firm FireEye. The latter provided its own initial analysis, with more to come.

Notably, few or none of these were focused on manipulating the 2018 midterm elections here in the states, but rather had a variety of topics and apparent goals. The common theme is certainly attempting to sway political opinion — just not in Ohio.

For instance a page may purport to be an organization trying to raise awareness about violence perpetrated by immigrants, but is in fact operated by a larger shadowy group attempting to steer public opinion on the topic. The networks seem to originate in Iran, and were promoting narratives including “anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as well as support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Iran,” as FireEye describes them.

The first network Facebook describes, “Liberty Front Press,” comprised 74 pages, 70 accounts, and 3 groups on Facebook, and 76 accounts on Instagram. Some 155,000 people followed at least one piece of the Facebook network and they had 48,000 Instagram followers. They were generally promoting political views in the Middle East and only recently expanded to the States; they spent $6,000 on ads beginning in January 2015 up until this month.

A related network to this one also engaged in cyberattacks and hacking attempts. Its 12 pages and 66 accounts, plus 9 on Instagram, were posing as news organizations.

A third network had accounts going back to 2011; it was sharing content in the Middle East as well, about local, U.S., and U.K. political issues. With 168 pages and 140 Facebook accounts and 31 Instagram accounts, this was a big one. As you’ll recall, the big takedown of Russia’s IRA accounts only amounted to 135. (The full operation was of course much larger than that.)

This network had 813,000 accounts following it on Facebook and 10,000 on Instagram, and had also spent about $6,000 on ads between 2012 and April of this year. Notably that means that Facebook was taking ad dollars from a network it was investigating for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” I’ve asked Facebook to explain this — perhaps it was done so as not to tip off the network that it was under investigation.

Interestingly this network also hosted 25 events, meaning it was not just a bunch of people in dark rooms posting under multiple pseudonyms and fake accounts. People attended real-life events for these pages, suggesting the accounts supported real communities despite being sockpuppets for some other organization.

Twitter, almost immediately after Facebook’s post, announced that it had banned 284 of accounts for “coordinated manipulation” originating in Iran.

The Iranian networks were not alleged to be necessarily the product of state-backed operations, but of course the implication is there and not at all unreasonable. But Facebook also announced that it was removing pages and accounts “linked to sources the U.S. government has previously identified as Russian military intelligence services.”

The number and nature of these accounts is not gone into in detail, except to say that their activity was focused more on Syrian and Ukrainian political issues. “To date, we have not found activity by the accounts targeting the U.S.,” the post reads. But at least the origin is relatively clear: Russian state actors.

This should be a warning that it isn’t just the U.S. that is the target of coordinated disinformation campaigns online — wherever one country has something to gain by promoting a certain viewpoint or narrative, you will find propaganda and other efforts underway via whatever platforms are available.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) issued a brief I-told-you-so following the news.

“I’ve been saying for months that there’s no way the problem of social media manipulation is limited to a single troll farm in St. Petersburg, and that fact is now beyond a doubt,” he said in a statement. “We also learned today that the Iranians are now following the Kremlin’s playbook from 2016. While I’m encouraged to see Facebook taking steps to rid their platforms of these bad actors, there’s clearly more work to be done.”

He said he plans to bring this up at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s grilling of Facebook, Twitter, and Google leadership on September 5th.

A new app called HiHello is taking aim at business cards. While plenty of apps in the past have tried to kill the business card, they never achieved critical mass. Mainly, this is because most required that both parties — the business card holder and recipient — have their app installed. HiHello is different. Instead of forcing everyone to download its app, it simply generates a QR code that can be scanned by anyone with a modern smartphone.

HiHello specifically takes advantage of the fact that today’s smartphones now have QR code readers built in — users no longer need to download a separate QR code scanner app to exchange information over this format.

On iPhone, you can use the native iOS Camera app to scan QR codes. And on Android, Google Lens (a part of Google Assistant) offers similar functionality. (Although this should really be in its camera, too, ahem.)

What this means is that when a HiHello user wants to share their contact information with another person, all they need to do is have the recipient scan the QR code the HiHello app generates. The recipient doesn’t have to download or install anything, and is able to quickly save the contact information right into their phone’s address book.

HiHello also allows you to create different types of cards with different information on them.

For example, you could have one card for your business, one for your side hustle and one for personal connections. This way, you can keep some of your information private, as needed.

You could create a card without your cell number for those contacts you didn’t want to be able to reach you by phone; or you could create a card with your virtual number (e.g. a Skype line or Burner) for dating prospects. You could create a card with your home address, cell and personal email for your family and friends. Or you could make one with your office address, work email, fax and office line for business contacts. And so on.

The idea for the app comes from K9 Ventures founder Manu Kumar, who along with co-founder and Caltech and Columbia alum Hari Ravi, and a small team of fewer than half a dozen, has been working on the app following the release of iOS 11, which introduced the QR code reader functionality in the native camera app.

Kumar, in particular, has been trying to solve the problem of business cards for years. In 2009, he co-founded CardMunch to turn business cards into digital contacts. The company was sold to LinkedIn a few years later, but LinkedIn abandoned it and shut it down.

“LinkedIn…failed to recognize the potential for what this could do for them, and in a typical big company fashion proceeded to ruin and eventually kill the product,” Kumar wrote in a blog post about HiHello’s launch. “Yes, I’m still peeved,” he added. (So are we.)

Kumar also noted that another problem with business cards is that people have to carry around different ones to represent their different roles or jobs.

“The information you choose to share with someone is often dependent on the context in which you are meeting that person,” he said.

To address this issue, HiHello allows users to create multiple cards with different information on them, which can be shared via the QR code scan in person, or sent out via text message or email — without exposing the email or phone number tied to your phone.

HiHello has also made it easy to find the right card quickly through its iOS and Android widgets that let you choose which card you want to share with just a tap.

The app is straightforward to set up and use. You’re first walked through a form where you enter your basic contact information to get started, and can then proceed to customize the different card types like “work” and “personal,” for example. You also can just choose to share your phone or email. (See above photo).

When someone scans the QR code, it launches a website hosted on hihello.com where there’s a link to save the information directly to their phone’s contacts. This link can be sent in other ways right from the QR code screen as well, thanks to buttons at the bottom for “Message” and “Mail.”

The new app is the first step in a bigger vision the company has for contact and relationship management, Kumar notes.

Palo Alto-based HiHello, a team of five, is backed by Kumar’s K9 Ventures. The app is a free download on iOS and Android.

TechCrunch Disrupt SF (September 5-7), we said from the start, was going to be the most ambitious ever, and when it comes to programming, there’s no question the Disrupt SF agenda eclipses anything we’ve done in the past. There are two BIG stages, plus two speaker Q&A stages, workshops and a Startup Showcase stage, where the top exhibiting startups will tell their stories. We published the agenda back in early July, but we’ve also added dozens of sessions since then for a total of 77 on the Disrupt stages. You can always check out the complete and up-to-date agenda. Here is a sampling of what you might have missed since we originally posted the agenda.

On the Disrupt stages:

• Alex Stamos, former head of security at Facebook and Yahoo, on security in an insecure world
• Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), Megan Quinn (Spark Capital) and Sarah Tavel (Benchmark) on the state of venture
• Dario Gill (IBM) and Chad Rigetti (Rigetti Computing) on quantum computing
• Laurie Yoler (Zoox), Reilly Brennan (Trucks VC) and Chris Urmson (Aurora) on all things autonomous
• Jason Robbins (DraftKings) on the changing worlds of online fantasy and gambling
• Hans Tung (GGV) and Ti Wang (Liulishuo) on the Chinese startup road to U.S. markets
• Rachel Haurwitz (Caribou Biosciences) and Trevor Martin (Mammoth Biosciences) on CRIPSR
• Rich Mahoney (Seismic) on wearable (and fashionable) robotics
• Rob Coneybeer (Shasta Ventures), Tess Hatch (Bessemer) and Matt Ocko (Data Collective) on investing in space
• Robin Berzin (Parsley Health) and Aaron Patzer (Vital Software) on the future of health
• Colin Angle (iRobot) on the next generation of home robotics
• Brian Brackeen (Kairos), Patrick Ball and Kristian Lum (HRDAG) on data and human rights

In the 30 audience-driven Q&A sessions with speakers, including..

• Building on DLT: Mance Harmon (Hedera) and Brian Behlendorf (Hyperledger)
• From Funding to Fintech: Nikolay Storonsky (Revolut)
• Inside the Blockchain: Joe Lubin, Amanda Gutterman and Sam Cassatt (ConsenSys)
• Building Brands: Emily Heyward (Red Antler), Philip Krim (Casper) and Tina Sharkey (Brandless)
• Gaming’s Culture: Jason Citron (Discord) and Delane Parnell (PlayVS)
• Healthtech on the Horizon: Robin Berzin (Parsley Health) and Aaron Patzer (Vital Software)

In the workshops:

• All Raise‘s Women Founders Roundtable and AMA
• Verizon 5G: The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Sponsored by Verizon)
• Bringing NASA Technology Down to Earth (Sponsored by NASA)
• Hacking Human Performance (Sponsored by Red Bull)
• Running a Node on a Distributed Ledger: Live Demo (Sponsored by Constellations Labs)

This is just a fraction of what you’ll be able to experience at Disrupt SF. There’s still time for you to grab your pass and save up top $500 — get yours here today.

TechCrunch Disrupt SF (September 5-7), we said from the start, was going to be the most ambitious ever, and when it comes to programming, there’s no question the Disrupt SF agenda eclipses anything we’ve done in the past. There are two BIG stages, plus two speaker Q&A stages, workshops and a Startup Showcase stage, where the top exhibiting startups will tell their stories. We published the agenda back in early July, but we’ve also added dozens of sessions since then for a total of 77 on the Disrupt stages. You can always check out the complete and up-to-date agenda. Here is a sampling of what you might have missed since we originally posted the agenda.

On the Disrupt stages:

• Alex Stamos, former head of security at Facebook and Yahoo, on security in an insecure world
• Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), Megan Quinn (Spark Capital) and Sarah Tavel (Benchmark) on the state of venture
• Dario Gill (IBM) and Chad Rigetti (Rigetti Computing) on quantum computing
• Laurie Yoler (Zoox), Reilly Brennan (Trucks VC) and Chris Urmson (Aurora) on all things autonomous
• Jason Robbins (DraftKings) on the changing worlds of online fantasy and gambling
• Hans Tung (GGV) and Ti Wang (Liulishuo) on the Chinese startup road to U.S. markets
• Rachel Haurwitz (Caribou Biosciences) and Trevor Martin (Mammoth Biosciences) on CRIPSR
• Rich Mahoney (Seismic) on wearable (and fashionable) robotics
• Rob Coneybeer (Shasta Ventures), Tess Hatch (Bessemer) and Matt Ocko (Data Collective) on investing in space
• Robin Berzin (Parsley Health) and Aaron Patzer (Vital Software) on the future of health
• Colin Angle (iRobot) on the next generation of home robotics
• Brian Brackeen (Kairos), Patrick Ball and Kristian Lum (HRDAG) on data and human rights

In the 30 audience-driven Q&A sessions with speakers, including..

• Building on DLT: Mance Harmon (Hedera) and Brian Behlendorf (Hyperledger)
• From Funding to Fintech: Nikolay Storonsky (Revolut)
• Inside the Blockchain: Joe Lubin, Amanda Gutterman and Sam Cassatt (ConsenSys)
• Building Brands: Emily Heyward (Red Antler), Philip Krim (Casper) and Tina Sharkey (Brandless)
• Gaming’s Culture: Jason Citron (Discord) and Delane Parnell (PlayVS)
• Healthtech on the Horizon: Robin Berzin (Parsley Health) and Aaron Patzer (Vital Software)

In the workshops:

• All Raise‘s Women Founders Roundtable and AMA
• Verizon 5G: The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Sponsored by Verizon)
• Bringing NASA Technology Down to Earth (Sponsored by NASA)
• Hacking Human Performance (Sponsored by Red Bull)
• Running a Node on a Distributed Ledger: Live Demo (Sponsored by Constellations Labs)

This is just a fraction of what you’ll be able to experience at Disrupt SF. There’s still time for you to grab your pass and save up top $500 — get yours here today.

A study of circumstances and demographics attendant on attacks against refugees and immigrants in Germany has shown that Facebook use appears to be deeply linked with the frequency of violent acts. Far from being mere trolling or isolated expressions of controversial political opinions, spikes in anti-refugee posts were predictive of violent crimes against those groups.

The study was conducted by Karsten Müller and Carlo Schwarz of the University of Warwick. Their theory was that if country-wide waves of “right wing anti-refugee sentiment” result in subsequent waves of actual crime; these waves would travel the way any others do, via TV, word of mouth, radio, and of course social media.

Now, if the anti-refugee rhetoric spreads via social media, then we can expect more crimes to occur in areas where there is more social media use, right? And specifically, areas where there is more activity among anti-refugee groups would see the most.

To test this theory, Müller and Schwarz used activity on a pair of major Facebook pages in Germany to measure social media use in general and specific to right-wing groups. For right-wing activity they looked at page of the “Alternative for Germany” party, the most popular anti-immigration political faction in the country and one that does not attempt to control the conduct on its threads. As a measure of overall Facebook use, they used Nutella’s popular public German page.

With hundreds of thousands of posts and comments broken down by area, the researchers were able to identify overall patterns of social media use, and then isolate anti-refugee sentiment within that. Their findings are unambiguous:

Using these measures, we find that anti-refugee hate crimes increase disproportionally in areas with higher Facebook usage during periods of high anti-refugee sentiment online. This effect is especially pronounced for violent incidents against refugees, such as arson and assault. Taken at face value, this suggests a role for social media in the transmission of Germany-wide anti-refugee sentiment.

A quick estimate on their part suggests that the social media activity may have increased attacks by 13 percent or so — not a number to be quoted as definitive, but rather an indicator that we are not quibbling over half a percent here and there but meaningful numbers.

But the researchers are also careful both to carefully define the scope of those findings:

We do not claim that social media itself causes crimes against refugees out of thin air. In fact, hate crimes are likely to have many fundamental drivers; local differences in xenophobic ideology or a higher salience of immigrants are only two obvious examples. Rather, our argument is that social media can act as a propagating mechanism for the flare-up of hateful sentiments. Taken together, the evidence we present suggests that quasi-random shifts in the local population’s exposure to such sentiments on social media can magnify their effect on refugee attacks.

…and to account for the many confounding variables that may invisibly affect the data, of which below.

Correlation vs causation

No doubt many readers will be skeptical of any study like this one; after all, these are very complex issues with many moving parts, and correlations may appear between things regardless of whether those things directly cause or effect one another. Fortunately the researchers foresaw this objection and were circumspect in their delineation of the link between social media use and attacks.

There are a handful of prominent possible alternative explanations, which the paper deals with in various ways.

First is the possibility that attacks are just more likely in areas where there is heavier social media use. This was my first thought: where are conflicts likely to occur? In places with dense and diverse populations, which seem likely to also have more internet and social media use.

This is dispatched in several ways. In the first place, the study looks at changes in violence levels within an area, not across the whole of Germany. In other words, the pattern of anti-immigrant posts preceding anti-immigrant violence is seen whether it takes place in a smaller town with low levels of social media engagement, or in larger cities where Facebook use is much more frequent.

Next, the Nutella control group provides a measure of social media activity independent of political issues — so patterns of use for a broad swath of users associated with seasons, weekly rhythms, holidays and so on can be identified down to the level of the county. When a population deviates from that pattern, you can be reasonably sure that something about that population is driving that deviation.

Something they couldn’t exactly control but is nonetheless useful is seeing how various internet and Facebook outages affect the patterns. It turns out that internet disruptions completely eliminate the increases in violence normally seen during a country-wide wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. Furthermore, they write, “the effect of refugee posts on hate crimes essentially vanishes in weeks of major Facebook outages.”

Spikes in activity expressing negative feelings towards other frequently targeted groups, for instance Jews, were not associated with increases in refugee-related violence, so it isn’t just that people lash out when they are feeling especially hateful.

Lastly, the researchers showed that other coverage of refugee-related issues, like that by major news outlets, drives local engagement in the form of protests, but does not seem to predict violent acts.

As the researchers say, Facebook isn’t just plain causing violence to happen. The places where it happens are often historically right-wing places that have had higher incidence of violence and hate crimes in the past. But it seems inescapable that Facebook is nevertheless an important way that refugee-related hatred and vitriol in particular is spread, as evidenced by the lack of increases in violence when the social network is unavailable.

The connection seems clear: hateful content spreads via Facebook and where it is engaged with the most, there you find the most violence. On its face this doesn’t seem like something Facebook can moderate away — it’s a natural consequence of how the fundamental social media ecosystem pioneered by Facebook works. Having it repeatedly and systematically connected with increases in violence isn’t a good look.

In recent months, the CryptoKitties fad that had users buying and selling tens of thousands of dollars of blockchain-based collectable cats has settled down considerably. That is not to say that CryptoKitties hasn’t spawned numerous copycats (see CryptoPuppies, CryptoCountries and many more). Unfortunately, the immense popularity of CryptoKitties is unlikely to be repeated, at least not by clones hoping to cash in on the novelty of blockchain-based crypto collectables.

The legacy of CryptoKitties is still in development, but most can agree that the project raised awareness (and attracted development talent) to new uses for blockchain tokens. In particular, CryptoKitties introduced many to the concept of non-fungible tokens, or “NFTs,” which might impact more than the world of cryptocurrencies.

NFTs are unique blockchain tokens that can be transferred to other people, similar to cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin and Ethereum), but they ordinarily cannot be replaced by another token of equal value — this is because each NFT has its own unique token identifier (and often, associated reference metadata).

Today, most NFTs are used in blockchain-based collectible games; however, use cases of NFTs are only just beginning to be explored. This article briefly discusses the origin of NFTs, explores several flavors of NFTs in the blockchain ecosystem and highlights some potential legal hurdles facing NFT developers.

Collectible origins

The physical collectible trade emerged in the 1860s with the first baseball trading cards. Since that time, physical collectibles have dominated the collectible market. Ownership of physical collectibles is straightforward: When a collector buys a physical collectible, the collector has complete ownership and can sell or trade the collectible at will. Collectors are only prevented from infringing on a collectible’s underlying intellectual property rights. Thus, collectors can buy, sell or trade, but not copy, physical collectibles.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, in-game collectibles, or virtual assets, emerged. Virtual assets are those goods only found in virtual worlds. Like physical collectibles, there is a robust market for virtual assets. Unlike physical collectibles, however, gamers who find virtual assets in the virtual world do not own them: Large game developers and publishers often license virtual assets to gamers through contractual terms. Thus, the exchange of virtual assets is cabined to authorized in-game trading or illegal trading via auction sites like G2G.

With the emergence of the ERC-721 token standard, new digital collectibles (like CryptoKitties) or tokenized goods, have changed collectible ownership discussions. Specifically, NFTs are revolutionizing digital asset ownership. NFTs allow for the complete ownership of tokenized goods: Collectors own their tokenized goods in perpetuity and can buy, sell and trade their tokenized goods at will. Thus, tokenized goods are a unique hybrid between physical collectibles and virtual assets, in that they offer complete ownership of digital wares. Even though in practice NFT owners have property rights in their tokenized goods, it is unclear if an owner’s property rights are recognized under U.S. property law.

Evolution: ERC-721 and exotic tokens

ERC-721

The first and most prevalent NFT is the ERC-721 standard, primarily due to the success of CryptoKitties. Developers are experimenting with ERC-721 for everything from digital collectibles to securitized investment products. The development of ERC-721 token-based collectible games and the subsequent explosion of speculative interest by investors has put a spotlight on several important legal issues, including issues related to ownership, privacy and money transmission.

In games like CryptoKitties, ownership of the token is clear-cut because each CryptoKitty is a newly developed piece of intellectual property. However, if larger game developers and publishers adopt NFTs, we could quickly revert to the well-worn path of virtual goods, where the token holder is deemed a licensee instead of an owner and is therefore unable to transfer or sell the virtual good to others off platform.

ERC-721 token-based games often play with the “tokenMetadata” function to create various permutations and combinations of characteristics (e.g. breeding in CryptoKitties). Depending on the application, this reference data may be stored in a centralized database or cache folder outside the control of the token owner, which may result in disputes over ownership, particularly when the intellectual property rights for the reference data and the token belong to separate owners.

NFTs can include functionality that may subject NFT businesses to FinCen registration because the same wallet that accepts NFTs can also accept ERC-20 fungible tokens. NFT businesses need to pay special attention to how they structure their tokens and the functionality of wallets that hold them.

Additionally, a tokenized asset exchange may qualify as an investment contract and thus a security. For example, suppose an application developer developed a tokenized asset, like a unique digital weapon, before the application or game in which the tokenized asset could be used has been developed. The application developer then decides to sell the tokenized asset for money to raise profits for the development of the application itself. This transaction may be deemed an investment contract and therefore an unregistered security.

ERC-721 collectable tokens currently dominate the NFT landscape, but we expect this trend to shift as new and more robust use cases come to the forefront. The development of other exotic token standards may also eat into ERC-721 market share; however, a diverse offering of NFT standards should help bolster the NFT ecosystem.

Exotic tokens

More exotic token standards, such as ERC-420 and ERC-998, offer insights into the potential of NFTs and quasi-NFTs. Tokens compliant with these exotic token standards will have unique functions that make them well suited for a variety of use cases. For example, in games, ERC-998-compliant tokens could represent characters that carry consumable rations (ERC-20 tokens) and non-fungible weapons (ERC-721 tokens) or, in commerce, classes of these tokens could be used for tiered membership programs or in the creation of markets in securities products.

While perhaps not the most politically correct use of NFTs, “Rare Pepes,” or rare digital art based on Pepe the Frog, allows users to create, trade and sell their artwork for “Pepecash.” Rare Pepes utilize ERC-420-compliant tokens (the “dank standard”), which demonstrates how NFTs can be used to establish limited editions of digital artwork. This type of quasi-NFT could also be used to offer multiple series of limited-subscriber investment products.

Exotic tokens are just emerging, and we expect to see additional standards and use cases come to market frequently over the coming years.

Conclusion

From the humble origins of the baseball card, NFTs, which offer many of the same features of physical collectibles and virtual assets, are the next evolutionary leap of this industry. NFTs also have many potential use cases outside the world of digital collectibles in everything from artwork to securitized investment vehicles. Although they are still in their very early days, we expect NFT’s to have a bright future.

Are you trying to stay off social media, but just can’t seem to stop yourself from posting?

When random thoughts pop into your head, do you find yourself launching Twitter and typing before you remember you’re trying to quit?

Well, now there’s a better way.

Hello, Brizzly.

Brizzly is a revolutionary new app designed just for social media quitters. 

With Brizzly, you can satisfy your over-sharing urges with its all-natural social media substitute.

It’s just like the real thing!

There’s a website! A cute logo with a cartoon bear! A text input box!

All you have to do is type what you’re thinking and hit SEND.

It’s that easy!

No more late-night cravings!

No more dopamine withdrawals!

No more oops-I-shouldn’t-have-tweeted-that-before-boarding-an-airplane regrets!

With Brizzly, you can enjoy all the benefits of social media without any of the downsides.

No begging for favs and retweets. No notifications blowing up your phone.

No stalkers! No bots! No spam! No Russian hackers!

No fighting! No bigotry! No harassment!

No abuse reports that do nothing!

No low-IQ basement dwellers arguing about the validity of historical facts!

And best of all, no Alex Jones!

Can you believe it? It really works! Post for yourself and see how easy it is to feel like you shared!

And all this without any of the repercussions that come from supporting platforms that turn a blind eye to the mess they’ve created with their ridiculous and naive policies!

I’ve been using Brizzly for a whole hour now, and I can tell you it works!

You can scratch that itch to share something no one cares about — what you had for lunch, your dumb political opinions, what you’re doing RIGHT NOW — and get back to your life. In seconds!

Brizzly works on any device — it’s just a website!

It’s live now and entirely free!

What are you waiting for?

* Footnote, for the thoroughly confused:

This is a joke, but Brizzly was a startup back in the day that served as a third-party Twitter client. The app launched in 2009 from the team at Thing Labs, founded by Jason Shellen, most recently, head of Platform at Slack. Shellen has been involved with social apps for years. He co-founded and sold Hike Labs to Pinterest; worked with Blogger before its acquisition by Google; and is still well-known as the founding PM at Google Reader. He began Thing Labs after leaving Google, where Brizzly was created. AOL bought Thing Labs, and he ended up working there on the rebranding of AIM.

Shellen today tweeted he bought back Brizzly, which he turned it into this silly website for now.

The posts really do go nowhere — it’s not a trick. The code is just a form reset. 

Shellen tells us he may end up using the Brizzly domain for something else in the future — he has a few ideas — but is nowhere close to launching anything at present. 

Morgan Stanley is no longer providing equity coverage on Tesla’s stock, the second firm to drop its stock rating on the electric automaker since CEO Elon Musk announced plans via Twitter to take the company private.

Tesla declined to comment. Morgan Stanley could not be reached for comment to explain why it dropped Tesla. However, some speculate that the brokerage firm could be playing some role in Tesla’s plan to become a private company.

Morgan Stanley’s website no longer shows a stock rating or target price on Tesla. Tesla stock was previously rated at “equal weight.” The move, which was reported by Bloomberg, caused Tesla shares to rise Tuesday. Shares closed at $321.90, about 3.6 percent higher than its opening price.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, a longtime bull of Tesla, had a $291 price target on the company. In his last research note on August 7, Jonas explained Morgan Stanley placed an equal weight rating on the company because it supports a near fair value and “not a more attractive investment on a risk-adjusted basis than the average stock under our NA coverage.”

Last week, Goldman Sachs Group dropped its Tesla rating and price target, although it gave an explanation for the move. The company is stepping in to advise Musk and the Tesla board on taking the company private.

Musk’s tweet August 13 provided more details, including that the company is working with Silver Lake and Goldman Sachs as advisors. The company has hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Munger, Tolles & Olson as legal advisors.

Musk first floated the idea of taking Tesla private at $420 a share on August 7 via a tweet that prompted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate.