Weekly news and stories covering everything from the Fashion System, Investment, and AI to WEB3 and Crypto that truly matter in Metaverse Fashion.
HOW RETAILERS CAN CAPITALISE FROM THE TAYLOR SWIFT ECONOMY | [FASHION SYSTEM]
Fashion United
💡 Despite disappointing June retail figures, the UK's commerce sector is anticipating a significant boost from an unexpected source: American pop sensation Taylor Swift. As the multi-platinum artist prepares for her final London tour dates, economists and retail analysts are forecasting a substantial economic windfall, with potential ramifications for the broader UK market.
📽 The "Swift Effect", as it has been dubbed in financial circles, is expected to generate nearly 1 billion pounds in consumer spending across the UK, with London alone projected to see a 300 million pound surge. This phenomenon underscores the growing influence of celebrity culture on consumer behaviour and its capacity to stimulate economic activity in specific sectors.
❌ As Swift's return to London approaches, the UK retail sector stands at a crossroads. While broader economic indicators may be tepid, the "Swift Effect" represents a unique opportunity for agile businesses to boost sales and expand their market presence.
📊 The "Swift Effect" serves as a potent reminder of the evolving nature of consumer behaviour and the increasingly complex factors influencing market dynamics in the 21st century. As Swift takes the stage in London, all eyes will be on the cash registers as much as the stage.
LUXURY GIANTS LOEWE, D&G, DIESEL RALLY BEHIND NEW DIGITAL FASHION INITIATIVE | [METAPHYSICS]
Jing Daily
🌵 Despite both luxury stalwarts and indie creatives embracing digital fashion, the industry’s mainstream breakthrough is proving a long slog. A new cross-platform initiative, spearheaded by some of virtual fashion’s leading disruptors, is intended to change that.
💥 The Digital Fashion Designers’ Council, set to officially launch Tuesday next week, is the latest project striving to bring Web3 closer to the masses. Established by Cashlab founder David Cash, its board boasts a lengthy roster of digital fashion proponents, including: ShowStudio founder and star photographer Nick Knight; Red Dao founding member Megan Kaspar; 3D artist Antoni Tudisco; Vogue Singapore publisher Bettina Von Schlippe; DressX founders Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova; 9dcc founder Gmoney; Draup founder Dani Loftus; and co-founder of the Institute of Digital Fashion, Leanne Elliot-Young.
🎥 The first port of call is The Digital Fashion Film Festival in September. In partnership with Nick Knight’s ShowStudio, the event will showcase fashion films featuring the likes of Charli XCX and Naomi Campbell, as well as brands including Balenciaga, Loewe, and Bottega Veneta.
👠 Then there’s the upcoming Fashion Week calendar, which will see members of the Council flock to luxury ground zero Paris to team up with digital fashion startup FabriX and the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. The nonprofit will also host several pop-ups across global fashion hubs, like New York and London.
📈 But whether the Digital Fashion Designers’ Council can achieve its goal is another story. While backing from some of fashion’s most prominent names is undoubtedly beneficial, the success of the Council ultimately depends on its ability to fulfill its promises of making phygital fashion a more seamless, interoperable, and enjoyable experience for consumers.
LUXURY PILGRIMAGES BRING TOURISTS TO JAPAN TO SCOOP UP HIGH-END GOODS. BRANDS LIKE LVMH WOULD RATHER THEY NOT | [FASHION SYSTEM]
Fortune
💰 For some Chinese shoppers, the 16,700 yuan, or $2,300, price tag of a Louis Vuitton Speedy Bandouliere 20 handbag is too much. It’s one reason why more and more are traveling to Japan—where the price for the same bag can be more than $400 lower.
📉 Over 3 million visitors flocked to Japan in May, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization, and 1.3 million Chinese mainlanders visited in the first quarter of this year—a year-over-year increase of more than 800%. The influx coincides with the yen slipping to a 34-year low in April. Despite Japan’s efforts to hike interest rates, its currency still languishes behind the U.S. dollar, effectively discounting many goods for those willing to make the trip. A TAG Heuer watch in New York selling for $6,450 in New York can be found for closer to $5,000 in Tokyo—including the 10% duty-free discount for American travelers.
👠 Despite a global luxury slowdown, companies like LVMH have seen massive growth in their Japanese markets. Japan was the fastest-growing country for the luxury conglomerate’s 75 brands, which include Louis Vuitton and Dior. LVMH sales in Japan grew 31% across the first nine months of 2023. Stores from brands Celine, Dior, Cartier, and Hermès have cropped up in massive Tokyo shopping developments just this year.
👑 But despite the rapid growth of the Japanese market, luxury brands have mixed feelings about the prospect of shoppers on the hunt for good deals. LVMH CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony warned that Japan’s appealing shopping climate has disincentivized Asian customers from buying luxury goods in their home countries, as many of them instead wait for their impending trip to Japan to spend big. It means more traffic—but crunched profits.
🏪 Meanwhile, Japanese retailers continue to welcome tourists, particularly Chinese visitors, with open arms, Tokyo-based brand strategist England Summers told Women’s Wear Daily. Retailers are hiring more workers who speak Chinese and using Chinese social media to build connections with their budding audience. And because of Japan’s strict border control policies, its luxury goods are near-guaranteed to be authentic.
DSA VS. DMA: HOW EUROPE'S TWIN DIGITAL REGULATIONS ARE HITTING BIG TECH | [METAPHYSICS]
TechCrunch
⚖ It’s no accident that the European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act have such similar-sounding names: They were conceived together and, at the end of 2020, proposed in unison as a twin package of digital policy reforms. EU lawmakers had overwhelmingly approved them by mid-2022, and both regimes were fully up and running by early 2024. While each law aims to achieve distinct things, via its own set of differently applied rules, they are best understood as a joint response to Big Tech’s market power.
🦄 Broadly speaking, the DSA is concerned about rising risks for consumer welfare in an era of growing uptake of digital services. That could be from online distribution of illegal goods (fakes, dangerous stuff) on marketplaces or illegal content (CSAM, terrorism, etc.) on social media. But there are thornier issues, for example, with online disinformation: There may be civic risks (such as election interference), but how such content is handled (whether it’s taken down; made less visible; labeled, etc.) could have implications for fundamental rights like freedom of expression.
👾 Their goal with the DSA is absolutely a balancing act, though: The bloc is aiming to drive up content moderation standards in a quasi-hands-off way: by regulating the processes and procedures involved in content-related decisions, rather than defining what can and can’t be put online. The aim is to harmonize and raise standards around governance decision-making processes, including by ensuring comms channels exist with relevant external experts in order to make platforms more responsible in moderating content.
🔥 There’s a growing list of platform giants subject to the DSA’s strictest level of oversight, including major marketplaces like Amazon, Shein and Temu; dominant mobile app stores operated by Apple and Google; social networks giants, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and X (Twitter); and, more recently, a handful of adult content sites that have also been designated as very large online platforms (VLOPs) after crossing the DSA usage threshold of 45 million or more monthly active users in the EU.
🌙 So while the DSA aims to leverage the power of transparency to drive accountability on major platforms — such as by making it obligatory for VLOPs to publish an ad archive and provide data access to independent researchers so they can study the societal impacts of their algorithmic content-sorting — the DMA tries to have a more upfront effect by laying down rules on how gatekeepers can operate strategic services that are prone to becoming choke points under a winner-takes-all playbook.
TENCENT JOINS $300 MILLION FINANCING FOR CHINA'S AI UNICORN | [SINGULARITY]
Bloomberg
💵 Tencent Holdings Ltd. has contributed to a $300-plus million round Chinese generative AI startup Moonshot just closed, emulating its arch-rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in fostering several hopefuls in the highly contested sector.
📈 The fundraising propelled Moonshot’s valuation to $3.3 billion and attracted other investors including Gaorong Capital and existing backer Alibaba, people familiar with the matter said, asking to not be identified discussing private information. The Information earlier reported that Moonshot was seeking investments at a pre-money valuation of $3 billion and had held talks with Tencent.
🈚 The deal is the latest among a flurry of investments into Chinese AI enterprises, as local big-tech firms and venture capital powerhouses alike have sunk billions of dollars to bankroll a costly battle to fill a ChatGPT-shaped hole in the world’s biggest internet arena.
🤖 Founded in March 2023 in Shanghai, Moonshot is one of the six fast-growing Chinese AI startups that are competing to eventually become the equivalent of OpenAI in the world’s second-largest economy. Both Alibaba and Tencent have invested in the majority of the group, dubbed the “Six Little Dragons,” which include Baichuan and MiniMax.
📢 China’s large language model startups are selling their services to developers at rock-bottom prices to grab market share. They are partly subsidized by cheap cloud infrastructure provided by the likes of Alibaba and Tencent, although the price war is also exacerbated by the tech behemoths competing directly with the startups.
BIG TECH'S AI PROMISES BECOME A 'SHOW ME' STORY FOR INVESTORS | [SINGULARITY]
Bloomberg
📉 After a jam-packed week of earnings reports from megacap technology companies one thing is clear: as profits slow, investors aren’t impressed by artificial-intelligence promises anymore. They want to see results.
↘ Results from Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. this week signaled that the biggest companies in the world are still heavily investing in artificial intelligence. However, shares of Microsoft and Amazon slid after their reports because of fears that those AI investments aren’t paying off for them — at least not yet — echoing the slip in Alphabet Inc.’s stock a week earlier.
🗣 “Investors are entering a ‘show me’ phase, seeking concrete evidence of AI’s impact on revenue and productivity,” said Adam Sarhan, founder and chief executive officer at 50 Park Investments. “This is causing some skepticism and volatility.”
💵 Investors had already been shifting from large, trusted stocks into smaller, riskier parts of the market to lessen exposure to Big Tech. The earnings results, combined with the Federal Reserve signaling that a September rate cut may be on the table and a weaker-than-expected jobs report sent the Nasdaq 100 Index spiraling.
ANTOINE ARNAULT ON LUXURY LEADERSHIP, LVMH'S OLYMPIC PARTNERSHIP | [FASHION SYSTEM]
Jing Daily
💍 As Paris hosts the Olympics for the first time in a century, the city is abuzz with excitement. Among the most significant brand partnerships formed for this monumental event is that between LVMH, the world-renowned French luxury conglomerate, and the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
💵 LVMH Group, which has Louis Vuitton, Dior, Celine, Bulgari and Fendi in its stable, is known for asserting its cultural relevance via collaborations, brand ambassadors and artistic tie-ups. Antoine Arnault, son of LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, is Head of Image and Environment of the group, and the architect behind this unique collaboration. Here he shares insights into why this partnership is significant for LVMH and its broader implications.
🗣 “This is not a luxury partnership, but a creative partnership, and this difference is fundamental to me,” says Antoine Arnault, who adds that LVMH’s involvement with the Olympics transcends a typical luxury brand collaboration. For the French businessman and former CEO of Dior and Berluti, this tie-up is unique in LVMH’s history.
🦄 While the group and its brands might eventually benefit from this partnership in terms of image and sales, “Financial benefits were never our motivation for this partnership with the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” says Arnault. Instead, the luxury group aims to showcase French expertise and contribute to its global influence - a goal that aligns with LVMH’s ongoing aim to play a pivotal role as ambassador for France, its culture, and its art de vivre.
WEB3 ECOSYSTEM THRIVES AS AI DAPPS CAPTURE 28% MARKET SHARE | [SINGULARITY]
Cointelegraph
📈 In contrast to the current market gloom in crypto and economics, the Web3 ecosystem is showing resilience and continued growth, and the decentralized application (DApp) sector is experiencing a significant shift as artificial intelligence-based DApps take the lead in the Web3 ecosystem.
🌐 Decentralized gaming applications leverage blockchain technology to offer a unique gaming experience. Unlike traditional games, where game assets are owned and controlled by game developers, gaming DApps provide players with actual ownership of their in-game assets.
👛 Meanwhile, daily unique active wallets in the DApp sector have surged to a record-breaking 15.9 million, a 78% increase from June, showing the growing interest and adoption of DApps across various sectors.
💹 AI DApps are revolutionizing the Web3 industry by offering innovative solutions that leverage AI to enhance user experiences and provide new functionalities. These applications range from AI-driven financial tools to sophisticated prediction markets and autonomous agents interacting within the blockchain ecosystem.
⛓ The social sector has experienced notable growth and has become more prominent in recent months. It now accounts for 20% of the DApp industry and has 3.1 million unique active wallets daily. Social DApps are playing an increasingly important role in the Web3 ecosystem by providing decentralized social networking platforms that focus on user privacy and data ownership.
💥 The increase in daily active wallets suggests a rising engagement with decentralized applications. This trend may be influenced by greater awareness of blockchain technology’s potential advantages, including improved security, transparency and the capacity to function without intermediaries.
CRYPTO MARKET RALLIES ARE LEAVING WEB3 AND METAVERSE TOKENS BEHIND | [METAPHYSICS]
Bloomberg
💥 Even with recent market gyrations, the chill of crypto winter is becoming a distant memory for traders of digital tokens. The launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January and ringing endorsements from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have helped them bounce back from the rout sparked by the collapse of FTX.
💸 The interconnected system of digital worlds claimed to be ushering in a new frontier in human creativity, dubbed web3. Built around a foundation of blockchain technology and digital tokens, one promise of web3 was that people would be able to monetize their creativity free of interference from big tech. In reality, key measures of the value of web3 — like the prices of NFTs and other tokens associated with certain much-hyped platforms — are mostly on the decline.
🗣 “We believed in the promise of web3, but I started looking around and realizing that nobody was making money in this space, and I still would challenge anybody to show me a web3 company that’s making any money,” said Andrew Kiguel, chief executive of a metaverse company once known as Tokens.com. “The promise of this failed.”
📉 Tokens.com took a big bet on web3 in 2021, when it spent $2.5 million on a plot of real estate in Decentraland, a then-popular metaverse that let visitors use a web browser to access a virtual space. Once there, visitors could engage in activities like playing poker or attending a fashion show. Kiguel compared purchasing metaverse land at the time to buying real estate in a growing city, and Tokens.com planned to develop and rent out some of its portfolio to tenants.
NFTS GET THE LAST WORD AT ASHMOLEAN'S MONEY TALKS EXHIBITION | [METAPHYSICS]
Decrypt
🖼 Cryptocurrency and NFTs get the last word in a new art exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean—Britain's first public museum, founded in the 1670s.
📢 The museum’s ‘Money Talks: Art, Society and Power’ exhibition is about “using art as a lens for the social history of money, but also how art and money come together in different ways,” its curator Dr. Shailendra Bhandare explained.
👾 NFTs, said Bhandare, are a “very important step in what is being talked about as a financialization of art,” pointing to the novel feature of secondary market royalties and adding that he’s keen to understand how “this new medium is being embraced by artists.”
💭 It all culminates in the exhibition’s “Futuristic” section, exploring “all those aspects where the boundaries between art and money become very fluid, Bhandare said—like generative AI NFT artwork "artifacts," by Ana Maria Caballero and Alex Estorick, which reinterprets the Ashmolean's own Oxford Crown coin to "challenge the traditional formulae by which culture is encoded."
THE WORST BEGINNING OF THE WEEK FOR THE OLD FASHION SYSTEM AND LEGACY BRANDS | [COMMONWEALTH]
📉Monday, August 5th, turned out to be perhaps the worst day for the old fashion system since the times of COVID and its related restrictions. The world is entering a period of heightened crisis in the old financial system, and the fashion industry, in its current form, is proving to be one of the most sensitive to this crisis. According to the results of the second quarter, conglomerates showed very poor financial performance. Brands are experiencing extremely active reshuffles, resignations, and appointments. There is a search for cost optimization and the identification of new revenue streams. This is all exacerbated by the fact that August is the holiday season, which will hinder the fashion industry’s ability to regroup and properly prepare for the new fashion season.
💥The METAVERSE FASHION COUNCIL is canceling any vacations for the executive team members and increasing investments in new areas such as media, event organization, developing solutions for creating a unified platform for the new fashion economy, and investing in individual startups, brands, and design solutions.
Weekly news and stories covering everything from the Fashion System, Investment, and AI to WEB3 and Crypto that truly matter in Metaverse Fashion.
HOW RETAILERS CAN CAPITALISE FROM THE TAYLOR SWIFT ECONOMY | [FASHION SYSTEM]
Fashion United
💡 Despite disappointing June retail figures, the UK's commerce sector is anticipating a significant boost from an unexpected source: American pop sensation Taylor Swift. As the multi-platinum artist prepares for her final London tour dates, economists and retail analysts are forecasting a substantial economic windfall, with potential ramifications for the broader UK market.
📽 The "Swift Effect", as it has been dubbed in financial circles, is expected to generate nearly 1 billion pounds in consumer spending across the UK, with London alone projected to see a 300 million pound surge. This phenomenon underscores the growing influence of celebrity culture on consumer behaviour and its capacity to stimulate economic activity in specific sectors.
❌ As Swift's return to London approaches, the UK retail sector stands at a crossroads. While broader economic indicators may be tepid, the "Swift Effect" represents a unique opportunity for agile businesses to boost sales and expand their market presence.
📊 The "Swift Effect" serves as a potent reminder of the evolving nature of consumer behaviour and the increasingly complex factors influencing market dynamics in the 21st century. As Swift takes the stage in London, all eyes will be on the cash registers as much as the stage.
LUXURY GIANTS LOEWE, D&G, DIESEL RALLY BEHIND NEW DIGITAL FASHION INITIATIVE | [METAPHYSICS]
Jing Daily
🌵 Despite both luxury stalwarts and indie creatives embracing digital fashion, the industry’s mainstream breakthrough is proving a long slog. A new cross-platform initiative, spearheaded by some of virtual fashion’s leading disruptors, is intended to change that.
💥 The Digital Fashion Designers’ Council, set to officially launch Tuesday next week, is the latest project striving to bring Web3 closer to the masses. Established by Cashlab founder David Cash, its board boasts a lengthy roster of digital fashion proponents, including: ShowStudio founder and star photographer Nick Knight; Red Dao founding member Megan Kaspar; 3D artist Antoni Tudisco; Vogue Singapore publisher Bettina Von Schlippe; DressX founders Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova; 9dcc founder Gmoney; Draup founder Dani Loftus; and co-founder of the Institute of Digital Fashion, Leanne Elliot-Young.
🎥 The first port of call is The Digital Fashion Film Festival in September. In partnership with Nick Knight’s ShowStudio, the event will showcase fashion films featuring the likes of Charli XCX and Naomi Campbell, as well as brands including Balenciaga, Loewe, and Bottega Veneta.
👠 Then there’s the upcoming Fashion Week calendar, which will see members of the Council flock to luxury ground zero Paris to team up with digital fashion startup FabriX and the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. The nonprofit will also host several pop-ups across global fashion hubs, like New York and London.
📈 But whether the Digital Fashion Designers’ Council can achieve its goal is another story. While backing from some of fashion’s most prominent names is undoubtedly beneficial, the success of the Council ultimately depends on its ability to fulfill its promises of making phygital fashion a more seamless, interoperable, and enjoyable experience for consumers.
LUXURY PILGRIMAGES BRING TOURISTS TO JAPAN TO SCOOP UP HIGH-END GOODS. BRANDS LIKE LVMH WOULD RATHER THEY NOT | [FASHION SYSTEM]
Fortune
💰 For some Chinese shoppers, the 16,700 yuan, or $2,300, price tag of a Louis Vuitton Speedy Bandouliere 20 handbag is too much. It’s one reason why more and more are traveling to Japan—where the price for the same bag can be more than $400 lower.
📉 Over 3 million visitors flocked to Japan in May, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization, and 1.3 million Chinese mainlanders visited in the first quarter of this year—a year-over-year increase of more than 800%. The influx coincides with the yen slipping to a 34-year low in April. Despite Japan’s efforts to hike interest rates, its currency still languishes behind the U.S. dollar, effectively discounting many goods for those willing to make the trip. A TAG Heuer watch in New York selling for $6,450 in New York can be found for closer to $5,000 in Tokyo—including the 10% duty-free discount for American travelers.
👠 Despite a global luxury slowdown, companies like LVMH have seen massive growth in their Japanese markets. Japan was the fastest-growing country for the luxury conglomerate’s 75 brands, which include Louis Vuitton and Dior. LVMH sales in Japan grew 31% across the first nine months of 2023. Stores from brands Celine, Dior, Cartier, and Hermès have cropped up in massive Tokyo shopping developments just this year.
👑 But despite the rapid growth of the Japanese market, luxury brands have mixed feelings about the prospect of shoppers on the hunt for good deals. LVMH CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony warned that Japan’s appealing shopping climate has disincentivized Asian customers from buying luxury goods in their home countries, as many of them instead wait for their impending trip to Japan to spend big. It means more traffic—but crunched profits.
🏪 Meanwhile, Japanese retailers continue to welcome tourists, particularly Chinese visitors, with open arms, Tokyo-based brand strategist England Summers told Women’s Wear Daily. Retailers are hiring more workers who speak Chinese and using Chinese social media to build connections with their budding audience. And because of Japan’s strict border control policies, its luxury goods are near-guaranteed to be authentic.
DSA VS. DMA: HOW EUROPE'S TWIN DIGITAL REGULATIONS ARE HITTING BIG TECH | [METAPHYSICS]
TechCrunch
⚖ It’s no accident that the European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act have such similar-sounding names: They were conceived together and, at the end of 2020, proposed in unison as a twin package of digital policy reforms. EU lawmakers had overwhelmingly approved them by mid-2022, and both regimes were fully up and running by early 2024. While each law aims to achieve distinct things, via its own set of differently applied rules, they are best understood as a joint response to Big Tech’s market power.
🦄 Broadly speaking, the DSA is concerned about rising risks for consumer welfare in an era of growing uptake of digital services. That could be from online distribution of illegal goods (fakes, dangerous stuff) on marketplaces or illegal content (CSAM, terrorism, etc.) on social media. But there are thornier issues, for example, with online disinformation: There may be civic risks (such as election interference), but how such content is handled (whether it’s taken down; made less visible; labeled, etc.) could have implications for fundamental rights like freedom of expression.
👾 Their goal with the DSA is absolutely a balancing act, though: The bloc is aiming to drive up content moderation standards in a quasi-hands-off way: by regulating the processes and procedures involved in content-related decisions, rather than defining what can and can’t be put online. The aim is to harmonize and raise standards around governance decision-making processes, including by ensuring comms channels exist with relevant external experts in order to make platforms more responsible in moderating content.
🔥 There’s a growing list of platform giants subject to the DSA’s strictest level of oversight, including major marketplaces like Amazon, Shein and Temu; dominant mobile app stores operated by Apple and Google; social networks giants, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and X (Twitter); and, more recently, a handful of adult content sites that have also been designated as very large online platforms (VLOPs) after crossing the DSA usage threshold of 45 million or more monthly active users in the EU.
🌙 So while the DSA aims to leverage the power of transparency to drive accountability on major platforms — such as by making it obligatory for VLOPs to publish an ad archive and provide data access to independent researchers so they can study the societal impacts of their algorithmic content-sorting — the DMA tries to have a more upfront effect by laying down rules on how gatekeepers can operate strategic services that are prone to becoming choke points under a winner-takes-all playbook.
TENCENT JOINS $300 MILLION FINANCING FOR CHINA'S AI UNICORN | [SINGULARITY]
Bloomberg
💵 Tencent Holdings Ltd. has contributed to a $300-plus million round Chinese generative AI startup Moonshot just closed, emulating its arch-rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in fostering several hopefuls in the highly contested sector.
📈 The fundraising propelled Moonshot’s valuation to $3.3 billion and attracted other investors including Gaorong Capital and existing backer Alibaba, people familiar with the matter said, asking to not be identified discussing private information. The Information earlier reported that Moonshot was seeking investments at a pre-money valuation of $3 billion and had held talks with Tencent.
🈚 The deal is the latest among a flurry of investments into Chinese AI enterprises, as local big-tech firms and venture capital powerhouses alike have sunk billions of dollars to bankroll a costly battle to fill a ChatGPT-shaped hole in the world’s biggest internet arena.
🤖 Founded in March 2023 in Shanghai, Moonshot is one of the six fast-growing Chinese AI startups that are competing to eventually become the equivalent of OpenAI in the world’s second-largest economy. Both Alibaba and Tencent have invested in the majority of the group, dubbed the “Six Little Dragons,” which include Baichuan and MiniMax.
📢 China’s large language model startups are selling their services to developers at rock-bottom prices to grab market share. They are partly subsidized by cheap cloud infrastructure provided by the likes of Alibaba and Tencent, although the price war is also exacerbated by the tech behemoths competing directly with the startups.
BIG TECH'S AI PROMISES BECOME A 'SHOW ME' STORY FOR INVESTORS | [SINGULARITY]
Bloomberg
📉 After a jam-packed week of earnings reports from megacap technology companies one thing is clear: as profits slow, investors aren’t impressed by artificial-intelligence promises anymore. They want to see results.
↘ Results from Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. this week signaled that the biggest companies in the world are still heavily investing in artificial intelligence. However, shares of Microsoft and Amazon slid after their reports because of fears that those AI investments aren’t paying off for them — at least not yet — echoing the slip in Alphabet Inc.’s stock a week earlier.
🗣 “Investors are entering a ‘show me’ phase, seeking concrete evidence of AI’s impact on revenue and productivity,” said Adam Sarhan, founder and chief executive officer at 50 Park Investments. “This is causing some skepticism and volatility.”
💵 Investors had already been shifting from large, trusted stocks into smaller, riskier parts of the market to lessen exposure to Big Tech. The earnings results, combined with the Federal Reserve signaling that a September rate cut may be on the table and a weaker-than-expected jobs report sent the Nasdaq 100 Index spiraling.
ANTOINE ARNAULT ON LUXURY LEADERSHIP, LVMH'S OLYMPIC PARTNERSHIP | [FASHION SYSTEM]
Jing Daily
💍 As Paris hosts the Olympics for the first time in a century, the city is abuzz with excitement. Among the most significant brand partnerships formed for this monumental event is that between LVMH, the world-renowned French luxury conglomerate, and the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
💵 LVMH Group, which has Louis Vuitton, Dior, Celine, Bulgari and Fendi in its stable, is known for asserting its cultural relevance via collaborations, brand ambassadors and artistic tie-ups. Antoine Arnault, son of LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, is Head of Image and Environment of the group, and the architect behind this unique collaboration. Here he shares insights into why this partnership is significant for LVMH and its broader implications.
🗣 “This is not a luxury partnership, but a creative partnership, and this difference is fundamental to me,” says Antoine Arnault, who adds that LVMH’s involvement with the Olympics transcends a typical luxury brand collaboration. For the French businessman and former CEO of Dior and Berluti, this tie-up is unique in LVMH’s history.
🦄 While the group and its brands might eventually benefit from this partnership in terms of image and sales, “Financial benefits were never our motivation for this partnership with the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” says Arnault. Instead, the luxury group aims to showcase French expertise and contribute to its global influence - a goal that aligns with LVMH’s ongoing aim to play a pivotal role as ambassador for France, its culture, and its art de vivre.
WEB3 ECOSYSTEM THRIVES AS AI DAPPS CAPTURE 28% MARKET SHARE | [SINGULARITY]
Cointelegraph
📈 In contrast to the current market gloom in crypto and economics, the Web3 ecosystem is showing resilience and continued growth, and the decentralized application (DApp) sector is experiencing a significant shift as artificial intelligence-based DApps take the lead in the Web3 ecosystem.
🌐 Decentralized gaming applications leverage blockchain technology to offer a unique gaming experience. Unlike traditional games, where game assets are owned and controlled by game developers, gaming DApps provide players with actual ownership of their in-game assets.
👛 Meanwhile, daily unique active wallets in the DApp sector have surged to a record-breaking 15.9 million, a 78% increase from June, showing the growing interest and adoption of DApps across various sectors.
💹 AI DApps are revolutionizing the Web3 industry by offering innovative solutions that leverage AI to enhance user experiences and provide new functionalities. These applications range from AI-driven financial tools to sophisticated prediction markets and autonomous agents interacting within the blockchain ecosystem.
⛓ The social sector has experienced notable growth and has become more prominent in recent months. It now accounts for 20% of the DApp industry and has 3.1 million unique active wallets daily. Social DApps are playing an increasingly important role in the Web3 ecosystem by providing decentralized social networking platforms that focus on user privacy and data ownership.
💥 The increase in daily active wallets suggests a rising engagement with decentralized applications. This trend may be influenced by greater awareness of blockchain technology’s potential advantages, including improved security, transparency and the capacity to function without intermediaries.
CRYPTO MARKET RALLIES ARE LEAVING WEB3 AND METAVERSE TOKENS BEHIND | [METAPHYSICS]
Bloomberg
💥 Even with recent market gyrations, the chill of crypto winter is becoming a distant memory for traders of digital tokens. The launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January and ringing endorsements from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have helped them bounce back from the rout sparked by the collapse of FTX.
💸 The interconnected system of digital worlds claimed to be ushering in a new frontier in human creativity, dubbed web3. Built around a foundation of blockchain technology and digital tokens, one promise of web3 was that people would be able to monetize their creativity free of interference from big tech. In reality, key measures of the value of web3 — like the prices of NFTs and other tokens associated with certain much-hyped platforms — are mostly on the decline.
🗣 “We believed in the promise of web3, but I started looking around and realizing that nobody was making money in this space, and I still would challenge anybody to show me a web3 company that’s making any money,” said Andrew Kiguel, chief executive of a metaverse company once known as Tokens.com. “The promise of this failed.”
📉 Tokens.com took a big bet on web3 in 2021, when it spent $2.5 million on a plot of real estate in Decentraland, a then-popular metaverse that let visitors use a web browser to access a virtual space. Once there, visitors could engage in activities like playing poker or attending a fashion show. Kiguel compared purchasing metaverse land at the time to buying real estate in a growing city, and Tokens.com planned to develop and rent out some of its portfolio to tenants.
NFTS GET THE LAST WORD AT ASHMOLEAN'S MONEY TALKS EXHIBITION | [METAPHYSICS]
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🖼 Cryptocurrency and NFTs get the last word in a new art exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean—Britain's first public museum, founded in the 1670s.
📢 The museum’s ‘Money Talks: Art, Society and Power’ exhibition is about “using art as a lens for the social history of money, but also how art and money come together in different ways,” its curator Dr. Shailendra Bhandare explained.
👾 NFTs, said Bhandare, are a “very important step in what is being talked about as a financialization of art,” pointing to the novel feature of secondary market royalties and adding that he’s keen to understand how “this new medium is being embraced by artists.”
💭 It all culminates in the exhibition’s “Futuristic” section, exploring “all those aspects where the boundaries between art and money become very fluid, Bhandare said—like generative AI NFT artwork "artifacts," by Ana Maria Caballero and Alex Estorick, which reinterprets the Ashmolean's own Oxford Crown coin to "challenge the traditional formulae by which culture is encoded."
THE WORST BEGINNING OF THE WEEK FOR THE OLD FASHION SYSTEM AND LEGACY BRANDS | [COMMONWEALTH]
📉Monday, August 5th, turned out to be perhaps the worst day for the old fashion system since the times of COVID and its related restrictions. The world is entering a period of heightened crisis in the old financial system, and the fashion industry, in its current form, is proving to be one of the most sensitive to this crisis. According to the results of the second quarter, conglomerates showed very poor financial performance. Brands are experiencing extremely active reshuffles, resignations, and appointments. There is a search for cost optimization and the identification of new revenue streams. This is all exacerbated by the fact that August is the holiday season, which will hinder the fashion industry’s ability to regroup and properly prepare for the new fashion season.
💥The METAVERSE FASHION COUNCIL is canceling any vacations for the executive team members and increasing investments in new areas such as media, event organization, developing solutions for creating a unified platform for the new fashion economy, and investing in individual startups, brands, and design solutions.
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