1. Owners of crypto-assets began to turn to psychologists more often

Psychologists and specialists from rehabilitation centers have reported a new type of addiction. Along with alcoholism, drug addiction, workaholism and gambling addiction, Russians have become more addicted to NFT and cryptocurrency trading operations. Some crypto investors needed the help of psychotherapists and clinical psychologists amid the market crash. Many patients were already addicted, and cryptocurrency became a new kind of substitution for reality for them.

Rehabilitation centers of Dr. Isaev's Clinic have noted an increase in the number of patients addicted to cryptocurrency operations.

“Just as healthy people without addictions can afford to drink on holidays, a self-regulating person is able to both engage in cryptocurrencies and trade cryptocurrencies and NFTs if he has a stopping component. But addicts can't afford it. They will compulsively enter the cryptoworld and metauniverses, triggering the mechanism of excitement, euphoria from winnings, despair from losses, and so on,” explained Tatyana Meteleva, head of the Double Diagnosis rehabilitation center.

According to the head of the rehabilitation center "Independence" Victoria Pashkovskaya, this dependence manifests itself, like any other. Spheres of life are deteriorating: relationships are collapsing, work is suffering, health is declining. According to the specialist, the average age of new patients is 30+. They become aware of their addiction when they go into debt and bankruptcy. At the same time, addicted cryptocurrencies do not see the need for long-term treatment.
“Many of these patients have an uncontrollable desire to buy cryptocurrencies and NFTs, playing on the difference in the amount in order to make some profit. It's like a lottery or sweepstakes. A person does not proceed from healthy calculation and professional knowledge. An impulsive desire to perform actions that give a feeling of euphoria and excitement prevails, ”explained Leonardo Guevara, a psychiatrist, narcologist, psychotherapist at the Marshak drug treatment clinic.

The trap of dependence on cryptocurrencies, as well as on securities, is at risk of falling into young people who decide to get rich quick by watching movies or hearing stories of successful investors. Losing money, they become obsessed with the desire to recoup; begin to spend their savings or go into debt, as in the case of gambling and sweepstakes.
Personal finance management expert Natalya Zhukova noted that after casinos and sweepstakes were banned in Russia, people chose cryptocurrencies as a kind of replacement. In cryptocurrency, you can really earn a lot of money. But in no case should you invest the last or borrowed money. You need to understand and come to terms with the fact that the money invested can be lost.

Bill Gates did not appreciate the intelligence of cryptocurrency buyers. According to the founder of Microsoft, cryptocurrencies and NFTs are popular because the greater fool theory works without error. This scheme is quite simple and therefore effective. A fool buys an item at a high price, in this case a currency or a token, and then tries to sell it to another fool for an even higher price, Gates explained.

2.Christie's Launches Web3 Venture Fund

London auction house Christie's said on the creation of a venture division - Christie's Ventures. The fund will focus on promising startups in the field of Web3, in particular digital art projects.

The company has already identified a number of promising projects. No details yet, but Christie's says it's ready to invest "several million dollars" in these startups.

In particular, we are talking about the LayerZero Labs project. This is a protocol that allows you to combine various dApps from several blockchains, which greatly simplifies working with them.

The company is interested in projects in the following areas: verification of authenticity and ownership of NFTs, a reliable protocol for protecting tokens, and the development of trading platforms.

3. In Russia, for the first time, NFT diplomas were issued at the university

The master's program "Blockchain" of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology became the first Russian state educational program that issued NFT tokens for master's degrees.

The diploma in NFT format is presented as a graphic video object, in which information about the student and the year of graduation is embedded. The NFT itself has electronic signatures of the members of the certification committee, which is an additional measure to confirm authenticity. Together with the NFT, the graduate is given the right to own the object, while the author of the issue is the master's program in the Blockchain program of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

“Issuing diploma NFT tokens on the blockchain was a logical step for us. Our magistracy focuses on the relevance of knowledge and formats, and the NFT format has already successfully established itself in the market not only as a collectible, but also as a form of ownership of a digital asset. In this regard, the digital diploma perfectly demonstrates the main properties of the blockchain: transparency, immutability, security and traceability. A diploma in this format cannot be faked or modified,” commented Vladimir Gorgadze, head of the magistracy.

The problem of forging diplomas and confirming the level of knowledge gained is currently acute all over the world, so the solutions that are used in the blockchain are increasingly being introduced into the educational sphere.

The issuance of diplomas in the NFT format makes it possible to make information about the degree of education received more transparent, so that interested parties can verify the authenticity of the received document. A digital diploma in NFT format cannot be faked. In addition, one of the advantages is the ability to instantly access this document from anywhere in the world, for example, in order to show a potential employer your qualifications.

“Many now perceive NFT as a hype, but this format has excellent prospects for entering everyday life. For example, you can sell tickets to events in the form of NFTs or use them as proof of ownership of real estate. In fact, we are talking about a safe and convenient way to confirm any ownership rights,” says Alexander Belenov, co-founder of the MIPT Blockchain Master’s program and head of the ChainLab blockchain technology laboratory at the Idea Research Center, the base organization of the master’s program.

4. Decentraland decided to give owners of rare digital clothes more rights to manage the site

All important decisions on the platform are made by DAO, the strength of which is measured by internal VP tokens (voting power).
Each owner of the land or the internal cryptocurrency MANA has the opportunity to vote. Issues such as adding important objects to maps or including individuals in the council that decides on the approval of this or that digital clothing are put up for a vote. In theory, any member of the community with enough VP has the right to put any of his ideas to a vote.

2 weeks ago there raised the question of endowing the owners of digital clothes from 6 "rare" collections with additional VP.

At the moment, more than 70 thousand units of wearables are available on OpenSea (this is how the digital clothing elements are called in the project).
The rights will be given to the owners of 6 lines of wearables:
Community Contest (2020, 9676 units, minimum price 0.02 ETH);
DCL Launch (28774, 2020, from 0.01);
Exclusive Masks (192, 2020, from 2.42 ETH);
Halloween 2019 (5235, 2019, 0.05 ETH);
MCH Collection (3999, 2020, 0.06 ETH);
Christmas 2019 (737, 2019, 0.09 ETH).

As a result, 67.27% of all digital clothing owners will have more decision-making rights. All VPs will be divided among users based on the types of rarity of specific items:
For each Mythic (1 instance) - 1000 VP, Legendary (100) owners will receive 100 VP, Epic (1000) owners will receive 10 points each, Rare (5000) - 5 VP, Uncommon (1000) - 1 VP.
Already 90% voted for the adoption of this decision, only 10% against.

We can safely say that digital clothes in Decentraland will have more sense of use, and the community will become even more involved in decision making. This is certainly a wise move on the part of the community.

Decentraland is now essentially the main platform that comes closest to the definition of the term “metaverse”. I hope that all sites of the future will adopt this practice and become truly decentralized.

5.Football club Barcelona will present NFT at Sotheby's

Together with BCN Visuals, the club's team created a 40-second video dedicated to the legendary goal of Johan Cruyff in 1973. The musical accompaniment to it was recorded by an orchestra of 30 people.

The live auction will take place on July 29 at Sotheby's New York. Online auctions are already underway on the auction house website, the last bid is $32000.

6.1 billion people will use cryptocurrencies by 2030.

Such a forecast published at the Boston Consulting Group. According to various estimates, now this figure is 300 million.

The report also added that only 0,3% of global investments are now in cryptocurrencies. The share of shares at the moment is 25%.

Compare with the spread of the Internet: in 1999 it was also used by 300 million, and the first billion connected after 6 years (2005).
Experts measured the blockchain for the same jump 8 years. At this rate, half of the world's population will start using crypto only by 2040-2042.

Obviously, only some “black swan” will be able to speed up the process, it remains to be hoped that it will not be as destructive as Covid-19 or the war in Ukraine.

7. Creator economy: why the whole world will soon be involved in it, how does it differ from creative economy and why does it need blockchain?

The Creator Economy is a new idealistic concept that values ​​creativity, authenticity and passion above all else. In it, the new Michelangelo and Da Vinci become successful thanks to talent, and do not fight for life, thinking about how to close basic needs. Sound cool?

While creativity has been around for as long as humanity, we started discussing it in an economic context not too long ago. And now the blockchain has appeared and everything has started!

How did we get there?
Brief descriptions of recent changes in the world economy of recent centuries:

From agricultural to industrial.
In the middle of the 18th century, we got the Industrial Revolution, which led to the leap from agriculture to manufacturing. It was then that the industrial economy began, and it continued until World War 2. The main task of the industrial economy was to produce more goods that would be available to a wider category of people.

In contrast to the current glut of goods, then they were much less accessible and diverse (in the USA it was the same as in the USSR a hundred years before the creation of the union, after February 24 in Russia, obviously, a rollback went back).
To achieve its goals, industrialization brought about significant economic changes, shifting power from farmers to producers. The latter became the center of the new economic reality.

Industrialization also popularized a culture of hard work, competition, and the development of new ideas, primarily related to factory automation processes. That's what creative minds focused on in those days.

This does not mean that there was no place for music, writing or painting then. But they were definitely not at the top of society's economic agenda. The creative sphere was not considered as a separate economic subset deserving special attention.

From industrial to consumer.
After World War 2, manufacturers began to produce more goods than people wanted to buy. Things are no longer scarce. The economy faced a new challenge: to make the customer want to buy what the market constantly offered. Therefore, the industrial-economic paradigm began to be replaced by a consumer one.

Customers (or consumers) have become the central actor of the new economic reality, replacing producers. Other important players that entered the scene included PR people, marketers, and the media. The primary goal of the first two was to keep consumers buying. The media has largely stimulated the demand for goods, set trends and formed a positive attitude towards the world of consumption.

The media also gave rise to such phenomena as pop culture, which was based on the production and distribution of creativity aimed at a mass audience. Pop culture was promoted by design, printing, publishing, multimedia, audiovisual art, cinema, etc.

Unlike the industrial economy, the consumerist paradigm has brought a huge variety of creative jobs and activities. However, creativity, in general, was limited by a basic requirement: it had to sell well to the masses. Creatives served corporations. Creating a personal brand and growing an audience was much more difficult than it is now.

As Paul Saffo rightly pointed out, you could only be recognized if you were a journalist or worked in television. Creators who wanted the world to know about them have always depended on the taste of producers, publishing agencies and other intermediaries. More often than not, luck was the most reliable promotion strategy.

News for the heading unincluded borrowed from the channel of our friends BCC BLOCKCHAIN ​​CULTURE