South by Southwest, considered one of Austin’s greatest festivals with reveals from tech trade leaders, movies and musical acts, kicked off its first weekend — and the theme for a lot of gave the impression to be nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.
From Friday to Sunday, corporations from Doodles to luxurious automobile producer Porsche provided NFT-themed reveals to the hundreds of attendees showing in particular person in Texas. Many panels and workshops included discussions on create and retailer personalized NFTs throughout the occasion, with companies like Blockchain Artistic Labs providing an interactive expertise throughout the road from NFT galleries and different meetups.
Three Cointelegraph staff members had been current for most of the occasions on-site, together with designing personalised CryptoPunks at Ripple’s home on Rainey Road after having fun with a crypto-themed cocktail. Fluf World, one of many largest reveals on the competition, featured immersible experiences with digital characters and drew in lots of individuals with its rabbit avatars and panels on Web3 and the metaverse.
Fluf World at SXSW pic.twitter.com/fqsgUeeVxy
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Ben McKenzie, the actor identified for his roles on TV reveals together with Gotham and The OC whohas additionally spoken out towards public figures endorsing crypto, hosted a panel at SXSW with The New Republic employees author Jacob Silverman and Edward Ongweso of Vice Media. Whereas McKenzie stated the widespread use of crypto-related merchandise on the competition gave the impression to be a advertising instrument, Ongweso added that he noticed a constant theme to corporations selling NFTs:
“I simply anticipated extra attention-grabbing gimmicks, demonstrations, makes an attempt to point out the actual use of worth, one thing fascinating and attention-grabbing about it. As a substitute, plenty of it’s actually centered on a really slender expertise that may perhaps woo you, however not a lot in occupied with how this will really do something apart from generate profits for you, perhaps should you’re fortunate.”
Austin Mayor Steve Adler additionally spoke alongside Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on how the 2 cities are dealing with the modifications in tradition by drawing in tech companies and a various array of individuals. Although Adler introduced on Friday initiatives to check how Austin may undertake crypto-friendly insurance policies and promote the advantages of blockchain expertise, crypto wasn’t the principle subject of dialog exterior of mentioning town’s current partnership with CityCoins.
Crypto Metropolis: Information to Austin
Based in 1987, Austin’s SXSW competition drew in additional than 400,000 folks in 2019 earlier than scaling again because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the capital of the most important state within the contiguous United States, Austin has develop into a hub of main tech corporations — incomes it the nickname “Silicon Hills” — together with Tesla’s headquarters in addition to the regional places of work for Fb and Google.
