Smart-Creator

My Own Wallet
Not that long ago, I had my iris scanned in Dubai for the Worldcoin project. Since then, I have been steadily accumulating Worldcoins. So far, I have over $50 worth of WLD. It's not quite the Universal Basic Income dream that Worldcoin is aiming for, but hey, it's a start.

The cool part? The amount feels meaningful. It is definitely more than what most airdrops give out. The not-so-cool part? The app and the entire distribution process. It is currently quite finicky and arbitrary, blocking users based on where they are located or what they do. I have had my share of struggles trying to claim my 'grants' in Dubai. The app keeps saying it is currently busy, but a VPN shows it is just a geoblock. 
This is disappointing, considering that the whole point of the iris scan was to ensure that all users were real and that there would be no shenanigans. If users are going to get blocked or restricted, then why not just skip the hassle and do it the old fashioned way? For example, by asking users to send their passports or selfies. Unfortunately, this proves that it takes much more than just eyeball scans to ensure fair distribution.
Lately, things have become even more restricted, and now, VPNs also seem to be getting the cold shoulder from the Worldcoin team:

To add insult to injury, the app audaciously labels all denied 'grants' as 'missed'. Users are being blamed when, in reality, claims are being blocked by the app itself. 

It's a far cry from the original vision of one identity, one world passport, one Worldcoin account. The Reddit crowd's pretty frustrated about the grant claiming hassles, whether it's bugs or restrictions or something else.
Tokenomics and Caution
Let’s look at the numbers. Worldcoin’s initial supply capis 10 billion WLD. At launch, only 143 million WLDs were circulating, with 100 million loaned to market makers outside the U.S. Most of the 10 billion tokens will be unlocked over the next 15 years, starting on July 24, 2024. That is going to cause some serious inflation, which I’m assuming will be offset with higher grants.
For those caring only about airdrops, this might not be a big deal. However, investors should tread carefully. 
As for the market makers, they received 100 million WLD on a 3-month loan, post-launch. They could then either return the tokens or buy them for $2 each. This setup pegs WLD’s price around $2, but with the loan period over, it’s all a bit uncertain now.
The Big Picture
Worldcoin represents an intriguing project. It has Sam Altman of OpenAI fame backing it, and it is dabbling in some major issues such as wealth distribution and universal basic income. The iris scanning part is not without controversies. Edward Snowden, for example, points out that even if the iris data is hashed and anonymous, the unique hash could be linked to individuals if, say, a government or a corporation develops its own scanners.

Despite privacy concerns, people worldwide, especially in less developed regions, are scanning their eyes like there is no tomorrow. So here is my take: If there is a scanning orb in your city (or somewhere nearby) and you are not too fussed about privacy, go for it. Set up your World ID account and enjoy the benefits. But as an investment? I would say DYOR and probably give this one a pass. Inflation and rigid tokenomics just don't make it appealing enough.

$WLD

I attended the Ultra Abu Dhabi music festival using Fellaz NFT tickets. Here is my review and main takeaways.
Event tickets in the form of NFTs are the most direct implementation of a utility token. While many collections promise all sorts of rewards or benefits, these perks are often vague or uncertain, creating a whole spectrum of different levels of utility. On one hand, you have utility-free art like EtherRocks, and on the other, you have for example Fellaz NFT tickets. Sure, you can treat these tickets as art or souvenirs, but it’s clear that their value is almost entirely based on their utility — that is, on the guaranteed ability to access a particular event or venue at a particular time.
Ultra Abu Dhabi is a two-day EDM (electronic dance music) festival, part of the Ultra Worldwide festivals that take place all around the world. Recently, they’ve partnered with Fellaz and seem to be experimenting with the Web3 ticketing ecosystem. Not all Ultra festivals are going to have NFT tickets available, but it is assumed that the upcoming Ultra Singapore and Ultra Korea events will. Being in the UAE, I decided to give it a go and see how everything works in practice. The fact that I’m a big fan of large music events didn’t hurt.
The idea is that you purchase an NFT ticket, show it at the gate and exchange it for a wristband along with some Fellaz-related perks. In practice, this can be a bit complicated, even for someone used to crypto. 

Tickets were sold on Binance, but Fellaz also partnered with Xclusive, where you could mint the ticket yourself. All tickets minted were considered VIP, and there was no option to mint General Admission or GA+ tickets. To put things into perspective, early bird GA tickets purchased online using a debit card cost $130, while pre-door tickets cost $150. Despite the higher price point, opting for a Fellaz NFT ticket came with several perks, including access to dedicated waiting lines, VIP sections and bathrooms, merch and drink coupons, and even a chance to win a meet and greet with the artists, so the price-to-value ratio was quite good. 
The sale on Binance ended on the 3rd of March, but the mint on Xclusive continued for another 24 hours. On Binance, the floor would sometimes dip below the official price of $260. I’m guessing some people bought these tickets not realizing it’s not a collection but a utility token. Some perhaps could not attend. After a bit of waiting and scouting, I managed to nab a ticket for $188! Definitely pleased with that.

This presents a possible challenge. Assuming Web3 implementation becomes more popular and common, it will also make scalping much easier. It’s theoretically possible to buy out the entire pool of tickets and then resell them at inflated prices. Limiting the number of mints per wallet might not work as it’s fairly easy to create multiple wallets as well. The only real solution would be whitelisting and prioritizing users who have a history of participating in events they bought tickets for. 
This is where things get a bit complicated. To use the NFT for admission, you must download the Favorlet wallet. The only issue is Binance doesn’t allow for withdrawals to Favorlet, so to get my NFT there, I had to first withdraw it to Metamask and then transfer it yet again to Favorlet using Metamask mobile. You also have to remember to use the BNB chain and you have to manually add your NFT in Metamask by entering the contract address and token ID. For a regular person who doesn’t know much about Web3, this literally is a showstopper.
 
Attending Ultra Abu Dhabi
 
After jumping through the hoops, I finally had Favorlet installed on my mobile along with the corresponding NFT ticket. It was time to party!

To obtain my wristband, I had to go visit the Fellaz booth, which was actually a tent. There I had to validate my NFT via a timed QR code and collect my wristband plus goodies. It was all pretty straightforward and quick. The moment the NFT is validated, certain properties change (or at least should change). This is done to prevent multiple people from attempting to enter using the same NFT.
Ultra Abu Dhabi had only two stages. It wasn’t a massive event, but for someone longing for a good electronic thumper, this was good enough. I’m not going to review the festival itself, but it had two stages, the line-up was decent and the crowd was enthusiastic. 
While waiting in line, I did see a bunch of other people using NFTs to claim their wristbands. However, when I got to the festival grounds, it was obvious we represented a tiny fraction of participants. Even at the Fellaz VIP section, which was meant to be open exclusively to NFT holders, I didn’t meet anyone interested in crypto. One person said he won a VIP upgrade, others simply bought it. Fellaz had their own tent at the festival next to the food trucks, so that’s where a lot of those non-crypto folks came from, but on the whole, the VIP viewing section was still embarrassingly empty.

Perhaps this is because NFT buyers are just like any other party-goer and prefer to be close to the stage and in the middle of the action. That makes sense, but if one was hoping to network or talk about crypto, they would be disappointed. 
Perks also turned out to be a bit hit-and-miss. Rewards that were supposed to be handed out on-chain were instead given out in the form of scratch cards. Not a very transparent or verifiable way to dole out rewards, to be honest. I was told that supposed meet-and-greets with artists also didn’t materialize. A $20 merchandise coupon turned out to be worth 20 AED instead, which is just over $5. Considering the cheapest shirts were retailing for $32, this “perk” felt a bit insulting. All those things made the VIP pass feel less special and less valuable than it could have been.

Conclusions
After the event was over, all ticket holders were airdropped a special souvenir NFT to mark the occasion. I have to admit, it looks quite cool.

Unfortunately, I cannot send this NFT to Binance as this particular souvenir token hasn’t been whitelisted. I guess it’s just meant to sit in Favorlet’s wallet forever. I am, however, not planning on keeping Farvolet on my phone, so I transferred it to my Metamask instead. Also, to my surprise, I was able to sell my used ticket for $46. This lowered the overall cost to around $142, which is pretty amazing. 
As somewhat of a crypto supporter, I found purchasing, transferring and validating the ticket much more fun than just buying it online at Ticketmaster. I understand this will not be the same for most. In fact, it will be the opposite. There’s still a lot of friction and too many obstacles for mass adoption. It also seems the interest is not there. Despite competitive pricing, most casual partygoers cannot be bothered with what still looks like a very exotic and convoluted way to purchase a ticket. 
The foundation has been set, but it remains to be seen how the partnership between Fellaz and Ultra will evolve. I expect that the number of NFT ticket buyers will continue to grow with each successive festival, but only time will tell.
#blockchain #nfttickets #nft #abudhabi #favorlet #fellaz #xclusive #ultra $flz

So you want to make a covered call option but don’t know how? That's understandable. Options might look intimidating but fortunately this article is here to help.
INTRODUCTION
Options are contracts regarding future price values. If the contract’s stipulated price is higher than current price we refer to those as “call” options, if it’s lower we call those “put” options. Similarly to how “longs” and “shorts” work on spot market.
So far, so good. But what’s this got to do with passive income? Seems like just another method for investing and trading. You make a prediction and hope it will come to fruition. Well yes, but not quite. Options operate under persistent bias, they’re not meant to be efficient . Investors make outlandish wagers sometimes without even believing these predictions will ever come to pass. What they hope for instead is to trade these options when their value changes — long before their expiry date.
As a result the options market can be pretty skewed and present good passive income opportunities for those who are actually willing to wait until aforementioned expiry date. The idea is that we pick such an outlandish wager and without attempting to trade it, patiently wait until it expires. To further reduce risk we should make sure to only buy options for the amount that we actually have, a so called “covered” call (as opposed to a “naked” call).
Lets look at one example.

Here we have a call option with strike price of 7500. Now I am quite bullish on ETH, but 7.5k by the end of March seems pretty bold to say the least.
Here is another example, this time from Deribit. We can see the strike price for Bitcoin was 400k which means, Bitcoin would have to reach 400000 for us not to make money on this option.

Return on this particular option is miniscule (around 1% annualized), so we should maybe looks for something that’s financially more attractive but still very unlikely to happen. If you have some familiarity with options, you will know this isn’t an all-or-nothing bet. If by any chance Ether or Bitcoin reach their strike price on 31st of Dec, you do not lose your investment, you simply agree to sell your Bitcoin for 400k. This makes calls a bit easier to wrap your head around than puts. Selling some of your bitcoin after a hypothetical 400k run wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway, so if you’re planning to eventually realize your gains, then call options can be a win — win situation. This is also why covered calls are safer than naked options. You always have full understanding of what the contract is and how much you’re investing.
Another use case which is not related to 'passive' income but can still be an overall win is where, for one reason or another you need liquidity and have to sell Bitcoin at whatever price it currently sits at. Well in this case, since you already made up your mind and are selling anyway, you might instead take a call option at a current price, and grab a nice premium on top.

Let’s look at example above. Here Bitcoin was trading at 24000. Call option with strike price of 24k at that time sold for 0.1955 bitcoin — not bad. That’s almost 20% extra. The downside is, that in order to withdraw all of the money you have to wait until the option expires (in this case until the end of the year). What’s available to you is the amount you sold your options for which in the above example would be around $4725. Depending on one’s personal circumstances, expectations regarding price action and other factors this can be a good solution but it’s not a win-win scenario. Those who need flexibility, or strongly believe in a future uptrend, might be better off simply selling 0.2 bitcoin on the spot market and keeping the remaining amount in their wallets.
TUTORIAL [Step by Step]
Ok so let’s make a call option!
Unfortunately Binance only offers simplified version of options which uses USDT instead of an underlying asset, and (more importantly) only allows users to buy options. You can of course sell back options that you bought earlier, but you cannot short-sell options to others, the way market-makers do. This makes Binance not suitable for for this strategy and we're going to use Deribit instead.

Ok, so you have your Deribit account ready and funded with whatever amount we’re comfortable with.
Next we have to select an expiry date. In general it’s best to select dates that are far away since these are less efficient and offer a sort of “premium for patience”. We’re looking for a wide range of less than realistic scenarios.

Currently we can see expiry dates extend all the way to 27th of September 2024. In periods of prolonged greed we see call options getting extended and in times of prolonged fear it’s put options that become unbalanced. Option generally work best in times of high volatility and conversely, offer less value in times of sideways price action.

For newcomers, I would recommend going with calls and not puts. However unlikely both 100k and 5k by the end of the year might seem, call options offer a peace of mind even as the price goes up, whereas put option on the other hand can be more like a double whammy.
Let’s try this option.

120k by the end of the year. We double-click on the option (anywhere is fine) to bring up the trading menu

Here’s the tricky part. We have to click “Sell”. That’s because we are selling options using bitcoin as liquidity. We can see there’s 2.7 contracts available @ 0.0025. We put in quantity “1” which means a covered call for one full bitcoin, and press the Sell button.

A confirmation pops up. It’s good idea to review everything before confirming. Mistakes can be costly.
That’s all. Notice -1.0 on the right, which indicates you know have exposure to a full bitcoin call option. All there is to do now is to wait for it to expire so that you can collect your crypto + premium!

RISKS
As with every strategy that offers income, there are risks involved.
First and foremost Deribit is a custodial centralized platform. Not your keys, not your crypto. It is however the biggest platform of this kind. For example this years quaterly expiry event on 29th of Sept 2023 caused around 113,000 Bitcoin contracts to expire together with 1.1 million ETH contracts for a total value of almost $5 billion. If you’re looking for an alternative, Singapore-owned Bit.com offers Options and Futures as well.
Secondly there’s behavioural risk factors. While Deribit doesn’t encourage risk taking (something a lot of trading platforms and exchanges unfortunately do) it also doesn’t have any mechanism that would prevent it. Instead of earning passive income investors can instead decide to pursue quick profit and buy risky options worth hundreds of bitcoin with a risk of losing all funds as soon as the price goes in the wrong direction. That’s because Deribit makes it possible to make naked option calls instead of covered ones as well as leverage your funds. Coupled with ultrashort timeframes in case of weekly or daily options this can very easily lead to bad decisions and loss of the entire stack.
That would be all. Happy earning!