Sander Lutz

"Musée d’Orsay in a Starry Night," a digital souvenir by KERU created for the Musée d’Orsay (cropped). ©️ Musée d’Orsay and KERU

Musée d’Orsay Embraces NFTs in Push to Reach New Audiences

It was 2021, and the Musée d’Orsay had a problem. The Parisian museum, which boasts the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, was struggling to attract visitors amid the seesaw uncertainty of Covid lockdowns. Some museum staff felt assured that the French people’s commitment to cultural enlightenment would prevail, and museum attendance would soon return to pre-pandemic levels. But the doors were open—and huge crowds hadn’t turned up. “French peop...

Will SEC's 'Stoner Cats' Action Have a Chilling Effect on NFT Media Projects?

Earlier this month, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced its second-ever enforcement action against the creators of an NFT project—this time, against the team behind “Stoner Cats,” an NFT-backed web series from Mila Kunis’ production company that featured the vocal talents of Hollywood A-listers including Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Chris Rock, and Jane Fonda. While the SEC’s first case regarding NFTs—against a media company that promised “massive” returns on its memb...

Alan Rickman in the 2008 film "Bottle Shock." Courtesy: Unclaimed Freight Productions

'Bottle Shock' Film Director Plots Animated Musical Remake—Funded by NFTs

Randall Miller has directed 12 movies. The most famous of those is probably “Bottle Shock,” the 2008 indie starring Alan Rickman and Chris Pine that gained cult popularity in the wine world for its dramatization of the "Judgment of Paris"—the famed 1976 occasion on which California wines defeated their French counterparts in a blind taste test. The most infamous is certainly “Midnight Rider,” an unfinished biopic Miller directed about the singer Gregg Allman. In 2014, on the first day of filming...

Bernard Arnault. Image: École Polytechnique - J.Barande/Flickr

Arnault Family LVMH Succession Saga: Will Pro-Crypto Sons Prevail?

Bernard Arnault, CEO of luxury super-conglomerate LVMH and the second-richest man on Earth, has a choice to make. According to a profile published Thursday by The New York Times, the 74-year-old corporate titan—who controls 75 top luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Dom Pérignon, TAG Heuer, and Tiffany & Co.—is currently evaluating which of his five children he might select to inherit his business empire. The decision is a consequential one, which will likely shape the trajectory of th...

Ralph Lauren, Burberry Alum Launches Digital Fashion Platform SYKY

On Friday, as London Fashion Week kicks into gear, luxury fashion startup SYKY will launch its digital platform, the company confirmed to Decrypt's SCENE. The startup (pronounced “psy-che”) was founded last year by Alice Delahunt, who worked previously as Ralph Lauren’s Chief Digital Officer and prior to that as Burberry’s Global Director of Digital and Social. In January, SYKY announced it had completed a $10.5 million Series A fundraise, led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s investment fi...

What Happens to Mila Kunis' Stoner Cats NFTs After SEC Settlement?

Today, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that “Stoner Cats,” the animated, NFT-backed web series created by Mila Kunis’s production studio, violated federal securities laws when it sold NFT passes to view the video content. But what happens now? The company behind the show, which leveraged the voice talents of numerous A-list stars including Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Chris Rock, and Jane Fonda, has agreed to pay a $1 million fine without admitting or denying the S...

LACMA's Latest NFT Experiment Brings Fresh Eyes to Paul Klee's Art

Since launching this spring, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s "Remembrance of Things Future" program has invited numerous digital artists to select iconic works from the museum’s permanent collection and riff on them with the aid of experimental technologies. Today marks the debut of the series’ fifth entry: "Distance," a meditation by the French digital artist William Mapan on Paul Klee’s 1914 watercolor, "In the Kairouan Style, Transposed in a Moderate Way." The collection will consist o...

Hologram Runway Wows Crowds at Amsterdam Fashion Week

Beside the Keizersgracht canal in the heart of Amsterdam, inside the 18th-century cultural house Felix Meritis, more than 1,000 total attendees recently packed in to watch a fashion show starring no one. Attendees of the event, which closed Amsterdam Fashion Week last weekend over four performances, filed into a room featuring a large catwalk bifurcated by a translucent screen. As the show commenced, lights darkened and six projectors (three on each side of the stage) fired away, simulating the...

Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge in the "Harry Potter" film franchise. Image: Warner Bros.

'Harry Potter' Actors Protest London Dream Home Plans of Ripple Exec

Ripple, the crypto payments service, may have scored a key victory earlier this summer against the SEC. But now, one of the company’s top directors is facing a far more daunting enemy, all on her own: a unified coalition of three highly disgruntled Hogwarts professors. Sendi Young, Ripple’s managing director for the UK and Europe, recently embarked on a seemingly simple mission to tear down and remodel her 1960s one-story home in the Victorian-lined London neighborhood of West Hampstead, accord...

Drake and The Weeknd AI Song Went Viral—Could It Win a Grammy?

A pseudonymous TikTok user sparked global controversy in April by releasing an AI-generated, fictional collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd that quickly went viral. Now they’re back with a new song—and hoping to take the robot-crafted tracks all the way to the Grammys. The song’s creator, Ghostwriter, recently submitted the hit, fabricated Drake/Weeknd single—”Heart on My Sleeve”—for Grammy Awards consideration in two categories: Best Rap Song and Song of the Year. The song had been yanke...

Tiffany & Co. at the 2023 U.S. Open. Image: Tiffany & Co.

Tennis Meets Tech as Tiffany, Amex, Wilson Descend Upon US Open

With the U.S. Open in full swing, hundreds of thousands of spectators are currently descending on New York City to witness one of the marquee competitions in professional tennis. Attendees of the Open, one of the four major “Grand Slam'' tennis tournaments held around the world annually, will also encounter an array of immersive, high-tech offerings from familiar brands designed to enhance the fan experience. Companies like Tiffany & Co, American Express, social media giant Snap, and sports equ...

Vivek Ramaswamy Is Changing Presidential Campaign Discourse on Crypto

As Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy rides a wave of exposure following his breakout performance in last week’s kickoff GOP primary debate, the public is getting a closer look at the tech entrepreneur’s vision for America—including the role of cryptocurrency. While many of Ramaswamy’s proposed policies rhyme with those of his primary challengers, they also tend to lean further into the realm of the extreme and provocative. The 38 year-old businessman has called to abolish the FBI,...

Virtue Poker Relaunches With Focus on Connecting NFT Communities

Ryan Gittleson has been trying to get crypto and poker to work together for a long time. It hasn’t proven so easy—but his vision for Virtue Poker is finally coming to fruition. Founded in 2016, his company was incubated by Ethereum software giant ConsenSys with an eye to decentralize online poker. The company completed a $12.5 million token sale two years later, and further raised $5 million in funding in 2021. (Disclosure: Decrypt was also incubated by ConsenSys, which remains one of our 22 str...

SEC Chair Gary Gensler (left) and a Bored Ape. Image: Decrypt

Did the SEC Just Declare War on NFTs?

On Monday, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced its first-ever enforcement action over the sale of NFTs, fining a Los Angeles-based media company $6 million for selling illegally unregistered securities. But does the action signal an impending crackdown against a broader array of NFT projects? The facts of the case weren’t exactly ambiguous: The fined company, Impact Theory, told potential NFT buyers that “if you’re paying 1.5 [ETH], you’re going to get some massi...

Earl Sweatshirt Drops Surprise Album via Gala Music

For years the rumor swirled, stoked occasionally by the artists it concerned: there existed a secret, never-before-heard album from the rappers Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist, and it hid in plain sight. As of midnight, the album isn’t only confirmed to exist; it is now available to stream and own via Gala Music. Prior to tonight’s surprise announcement, Earl—the one-time precocious teenage collaborator of Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean—last officially spoke of the album in 2021, when he...

Patrick Mahomes Can't Quit Crypto

Patrick Mahomes likes doubling down. In February, the 27-year-old Kansas City Chiefs quarterback famously pushed through an ankle injury and a sizable halftime deficit to clinch his second Super Bowl victory in six seasons. Despite his immense potential value as a free agent, Mahomes has pledged himself to the Chiefs for the next decade; his current $503 million contract is the biggest in NFL history. And with crypto, too, the two-time Super Bowl MVP appears to embrace commitment: Whereas other...

Friend.tech Founders Say Viral Crypto App Is Surprising Them Too: 'We Want to Catch Our Breath'

Friend.tech, the new decentralized social media platform from the makers of Stealcam, has already, in its mere two weeks of existence, seen an extraordinary run. Now its developers tell Decrypt that they’re planning various fixes and features—after they catch their breath. The app, which is built on Coinbase’s Base scaling network for Ethereum and lets users buy and sell “keys” (originally, “shares”) in their favorite Twitter accounts, has generated a whopping $2.88 million in protocol fees. In...

"Calcutta Self Portrait with Peter Orlovsky, October 20, 1962." Photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles.

Can Robots Be Beatniks? An AI-Powered Allen Ginsberg Finds Out

In the summer of 1961, so the story goes, the poet Allen Ginsberg visited the writer William S. Burroughs in Tangier. The two were close friends and fellow Beatniks, but Burroughs hadn’t yet read “Kaddish,” Gisnberg’s recent poem about the death of his mother. So Burroughs asked for a copy and a pair of scissors. He planned to cut up the pages and words into fragments, and reassemble them in a randomized order. “Then,” Burroughs supposedly said, “we’ll really get the meaning out of it.” “Allen...

Mark Cuban, Yuga Labs Lead Backlash Over OpenSea's NFT Royalties Change

Mark Cuban and Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs were among the major players speaking out Friday against NFT trading platform OpenSea, over the company’s Thursday announcement that it intends to sunset enforcement of creator royalties. “Not collecting and paying royalties on NFT sales is a HUGE mistake by OpenSea,” Cuban, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, wrote on Twitter Friday. “It diminished trust in the platform and hurts the industry.” Cuban’s words generally carry some weight in th...

OpenSea Will Make Creator Royalties Optional for NFT Trades

In its latest pivot on the subject, marketplace OpenSea announced Thursday that it will soon stop enforcing creator royalty fees on secondary sales of NFTs—a development that will impact artists and teams who receive passive income when their work trades hands following the initial sale. Beginning August 31, artists who list new projects on OpenSea will not be able to require buyers to pay a creator fee—a charge, typically ranging from 2.5% to 10%, that’s tacked on to secondary sales of NFTs and...

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Stories by Sander Lutz