New Tech trouble. What does it matter to wine?
The last news about crypto currencies. And a glass of wine
Well, you know it. A guy ‘lost’ some B$ in his crypto exchange, and the problem it isn’t if he stolen these money or is only stupid. I’m not an economist and I know only what I read around, like most of you.
The problem is that many people lost their money, investment funds lost their money, maybe families lost their money. It isn’t possible to know who and how much people bought FTX crypto, and how much companies invested in the Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange. If you don’t know anything about this, you can read here; Wikipedia is ever a good point to start for.
SBF, as he is named, founded his company in 2019 at Bahamas, and there’s an hedge fund named Alameda headquartered in Hong Kong. Together Binance, the greatest crypto exchange, managed some 70% of all crypto exchange market. It’s a strange world, I know, but aren’t Monopoly money. Are real ones.
The lost, I call it in this way because I’ve not money to pay lawyers, is only another one since 2008, Lehman Brothers, do you remember? The FTX crash is the same than LB one, but in crypto currency.
And what is happening to Twitter, but also Facebook, should push in your mind a question: what about everytime these platforms, or Google, or Booking.com, or Amazon, Uber, change their algorythm? You don’t own it, so you cannot manage it, cannot control it. You’re at the unknown rules of these Big Tech.
I’m a technology lover, I’ve been working in technology since 1984 and I saw so many evolution, from fax and Packet Network to cloud and Internet of Things. But just for that I say you that you need a deep knowledge of digital technology, or speaking about technology with people you trust, before to try a digital strategy.
Who invested their money in crypto exchanges, or other esoterics things, thought that it was a good business: they were conviced that it was with graphics, power point presentations, vision of future. Wonderful, don’t? But they lost their money, sad story.
Now, let’s me clear: if you don’t understand what that thing is, don’t buy it. I see a dangerous road, I’m speaking about NFT and Metaverse. Last November’s week I was in Florence at the BTO2022, Be Tourism Online, an event dedicated about Tourism and Oenotourism. Many speech was about metaverse, metatourism, metamarketing and others meta.
I talked about direct to consumer and what wine market can learn from Apple and Nike business model; i refused to talk of Metaverse. D2C is the way to continue to manage your business, your customers data, and design your business strategy, and don’t make manage it from GAFAM&Co. Let you use newsletter to remain in touch with your customers. Low-level technology? Don’t. An easy way to use technology and a understandable one.
What I saw wasn’t Metaverse but only some avatars moving themself inside a 360 drone-made image. I couldn’t pick the grape, nor to look inside a cellar and the label of a wine bottle, I couldn’t dive into the hotel pool or walking around an Italian square. I saw games made better, and this means that there is no develop but only recycle old code. If someone wants you think that this is Metaverse, don’t believe in it.
If you’re a winegrower, a great or a little one, you shouldn’t merrily run to NFT and Metaverse. First of all, think if is a good business for you, wonder yourself, and seller, if this technology is mature enough to create a good return of sold wines, guests in your cellar or restaurant or wine shop, or even only branding.
And, if you’re really fall in love with these cyberpunk technologies, (the word Metaverse invented by Neal Stephenson in his Snow Crash 1992 novel) you have to know that being Early Adopters is a very nice thing, but the risk is that your time and money don’t come back in a long time.
If for you is a problem to understand how to connect a wi-fi printer, in my opinion you haven’t to throw yourself in this too advanced technology.
Thanks for your reading