In This Newsletter
Christie’s Art+Tech Summit
Milken–Motsepe Prize at FinTech Advisory Council
Ethereum ETF Approved
FinTech at Christie’s Art+Tech Summit
In July, Nicole Valentine attended the Christie’s Art+Tech Summit, hosted in partnership with FinTech Advisory Council member Keith Grossman, president for enterprise at MoonPay.
Hosted in Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries, the Art+Tech Summit is a two-day conference that brings together artists, technologists, academics, regulators, and industry leaders to explore the role and impact of technologies in the art world. The summit focused on technology trends as they intersect with the creative and luxury space within four pillars of innovation: AI in Real Life, Art and Its Market, Thoughtful Luxury, and New Paradigms in Technology. Speakers included Steve Wozniacki, co-founder of Apple; Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Randi Zuckerberg, founder of HUG; Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures; Devang Thakkar, global head of Christie’s Ventures; and Angela Dalton, CEO and founder, Signum Growth Capital.
The FinTech program has been convening our own conversations about the intersection of art and tech, most notably at the 2023 Middle East and Africa Summit, where Valentine moderated the session “At the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Art: Exploring a New World of Possibilities,” which focused on how generative AI is reshaping art and art markets. At the same summit, Michael Piwowar moderated the session “Borderless: The State of Digital Assets, Infrastructure, and Web3,” which touched on the current state of global non-fungible token markets emerging from the crypto winter.
Milken–Motsepe Prize at FinTech
Emily Musil, senior director, MI Philanthropy, and Martine Polycarp, senior associate, MI Philanthropy, joined our July FinTech Advisory Council meeting to discuss the Milken-Motsepe Prize in FinTech. The Milken Institute, in partnership with the Motsepe Foundation, announced the launch of the Milken-Motsepe Prize in FinTech in May.
The prize will focus on FinTech innovations in emerging and frontier markets, particularly in rural areas. In these regions, small and medium-sized enterprises, including micro-enterprises, are the backbone of local economies. While these enterprises represent over 90 percent of all global businesses and contribute to nearly 40 percent of gross domestic product in such economies, access to financial tools, such as financial reporting solutions and e-lending systems, remains limited, especially in emerging and frontier markets.
This initiative is designed to leverage the potential of FinTech solutions to break down barriers to financial inclusion. It also contributes to the achievement of key Sustainable Development Goals while promoting accessibility to digital financial solutions crucial for unlocking the full potential of small businesses.
The prize offers $2 million in total awards, including a $1 million grand prize for the winning team and an additional $100,000 distributed to each of the 10 finalist teams. The deadline to register is August 6. Please send any questions to mmprize@milkeninstitute.org.
Ethereum ETFs Approved
Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) started official trading in US markets on July 23, The Block reports. The Securities and Exchange Commission approved Ethereum ETFs issued by 21Shares, Bitwise, BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Grayscale Investments, Invesco Galaxy, and VanEck.
Cointelegraph reports a more bearish attitude toward Ethereum's ETF, which starkly contrasts the attitude toward Bitcoin ETF launched earlier this year. The Bitcoin ETF drove Bitcoin prices to record highs, as investors saw a clear value proposition in Bitcoin as digital gold, which could be a useful source of beta to diversify portfolios against the broader stock market. In contrast, Ethereum’s investment case is less straightforward.
Speaking at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, said, “I don't think we're going to see a long list of crypto ETFs. If you think of bitcoin, today it represents about 55% of the market cap. ETH is at 18%. The next plausible investible asset is at, like, 3%. It’s just not close to being at that threshold or track record of maturity, liquidity, et cetera,” as reported in The Block.
Ethereum ETFs enable investors to track the value of the Ether token, which plays an integral role in the decentralized Web3 protocols and applications that run on Ethereum’s network. Unlike Bitcoin, which faces few credible competitors to its status as digital gold, Ethereum faces competition with other layer one protocols, such as Solana, Algorand, and Aptos, which are competing to be lower-cost and faster networks for Web3 developers.