A New York Times investigative reporter wades into the murky, pixelated waters of the multibillion-dollar NFT market—the virtual casino that sprang up overnight in 2020 and came crashing down, with all its celebrity hucksters, just two years later. A vibrant and witty exploration of the increasingly blurry line between art and money, artist and con artist, value and worthlessness. “A perfect book to understand and to laugh at the craziness of the art world today." —Jerry Saltz, author of How to Be an Artist In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie’s on the sale of Mike Winkelmann’s Everydays series—a compilation of five thousand digital artworks—it made a thunderous announcement: Non-fungible tokens had arrived. The ludicrous world of CryptoKitties and Bored Apes had just produced a piece of art worth $69.3 million (at least according to the highest bidder). On that day, the traditional art market—the largest unregulated market in the world—put its stamp of approval on a very new and carnivalesque digital reality. But what did it mean for these two worlds to collide? Was it all just a money laundering scheme? And come on, what was that piece of digital flotsam really worth anyway? In Token Supremacy, Zachary Small works through these and other fascinating questions, tracing the crypto economy back to its origins in the 2008 financial crisis and the lineage of NFTs back to the first photographic negatives. Small describes jaw-dropping tales of heists, publicity stunts, and rug pulls, before zeroing in on the role of "security tokens" in the FTX scandal. Detours through art history provide insight into the mythmaking tactics that drive stratospheric auction sales and help the wealthy launder their finances (and reputations) through art. And we cast an eye toward a future where NFTs have paved the way for a dangerous, new shadow banking system. A wild and spellbinding tour through a world that strains belief.

Over the last twenty years, processes of pluralization, differentiation and trans-nationalization in the European Union have arguably challenged the centrality of law to European integration. Yet these developments also present opportunities to investigate new understandings of law triggered by European integration. The contributors to this book revisit one of the first academic projects to conceptualise and study European legal integration - the early 'Integration through Law' School. On this basis, they consider continuities and discontinuities in the underlying social and political landscape which the law is to integrate (the 'object' of integration), the forms and capacities of the law itself (the 'agent' of integration), and the way these two dimensions reflect on each other. Displaying different normative concerns and varied theoretical starting points, all contributors maintain that 'integration through law' remains of enduring significance to the European integration process. The volume provides a valuable reference for scholars in the field of European integration studies and European legal and political theory.

This Special Edition Of India Briefing Marks The Fiftieth Anniversary Of Indian Independence And The Tenth Anniversary Of The Series. Like Its Predecessors, The 1997-1998 Volume Provides Analysis Of And Context For Political, Economic, Social, And Cultural Developments In India, And Considers What Past Trends May Indicate For The Future. But This India Briefing Is Unique In Scope: Whereas Past Editions Cover A One-To Two-Year Period, India Briefing: A Transformative Fifty Years Takes A Commemorative Look At India S Course Over The Past Fifty Years, With A Special Chapter On The Uses Of History. This Book Will Be A Valuable Resource For Scholars, Area Specialists, Undergraduate And Graduate Students, Policymakers, Business Leaders, Journalists, Serious Travellers, And Other Interested Readers.

Intended for public administration professionals, scholars, and students interested in citizen participation. This work brings together analyses of innovative practices, from hands-on community learning and focus groups to high-tech information systems and decision support technologies.

Facilitating high data transfers over long distances at a reasonable cost, Carrier Ethernet is solidifying its fundamental position as the core of next-generation networks. Since it first dazzled the IT world 40 years ago with its ability to move data over local networks, Ethernet has dramatically evolved in both form and function. And now, Carrier

Bringing together some of the most innovative and important research on civil rights law and legality, this book draws on narratives of individuals to provide a rich understanding of what happens when law interacts with other competing systems. The collection moves beyond the traditional polarizing debates and presents a constitutive approach to rights that is not reducible to a simple 'for or against' rights formula.