“Hedge Fund Festivals Kill Electronic Music“ might not be the catchiest title for an EP, but it’s hard to disagree with the sentiment.
Artists Blawan and The Analogue Cops sadly never replied to my request for an interview on the financialisation of fandom back in 2018. And they probably weren’t in attendance at Saturday’s All Points East — a London day party organised by US conglomerate the Anschutz Entertainment Group and sponsored this year by crypto platform Luno.
Music fans who don’t already know may be disappointed to learn that The Anschutz Corporation (which owns AEG, which also runs Coachella) gave $75,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association five days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, according to Rolling Stone.
RAGA was in campaign mode even on its day of triumph, appealing on June 24 for donations to “combat the Democrats’ pro-abortion agenda”. The Anschutz Corporation informed Rolling Stone that proprietor Philip Anschutz “believes in a woman’s right to choose and did not support the reversal of Roe”.
Anyway, AEG appears to love crypto nearly as a lot because it does the Republican occasion, to which it has donated sporadically since 2014. In November, The Staples Center in Los Angeles which AEG owns and operates was renamed the Crypto.com Arena.
Luno’s sponsorship of All Points East suggests the crypto trade’s promoting blitzkrieg hasn’t but died a complete death. Here, Luno has kind. The Barry Silbert-backed platform was final yr pressured to amend “misleading” posters plastered round London bearing the slogan “If you’re seeing Bitcoin on the Underground, it’s time to buy”.
City AM readers are in the meantime inspired nearly day by day by Silbert’s Digital Currency Group to develop into “Bitcoin Pioneers”. “Thanks to support from Luno,” doing so will get you £500 price of the token “to share with beginners [and help] them get started”.
Luno takes its tasks to its prospects extraordinarily severely. In late July the group wrote in a blogpost that “while no one is able to predict where the market will go next, the one thing investors can do is use a trustworthy crypto platform”:
Key to that is making certain that their funds do in actual fact exist and are accounted for. That’s why each quarter at Luno, we publish our Proof of Reserves report.
Luno has partnered with Mazars, a number one worldwide audit, tax and advisory agency, to conduct the Q2 Proof of Reserves audit. This Proof of Reserves report offers you peace of thoughts that Luno has your cryptocurrency safely saved for you to make use of everytime you need.
Mazars conduct checks on the overwhelming majority of those holdings to show that the cryptocurrencies you see in your Luno Wallet truly exist.
That’ll be the identical Mazars who have been lambasted simply final month by the UK accounting regulator for the “unacceptable” high quality of their audits. “Peace of mind” certainly for any All Points East day-trippers inebriated sufficient to be tempted by Luno into crypto. Luno, AEG and Mazars didn’t reply in time for the publication of this text.