Productivity . That is one of the keys to progress . And that is one of the pending subjects of the Spanish economy, as the president of CaixaBank, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri , the president of the Spanish Chamber, José Luis Bonet , has agreed to highlight ; and the Secretary of State for Digitization, Carme Artigas, during the debate on the challenges of the Spanish economy in the framework of the Cercle d’Economia Meeting , which ended this Friday in Barcelona.

In this sense, in Goirigolzarri’s opinion it is necessary to make an “extraordinary” effort so that education and trainingincorporate the new skills that the economy requires to fight unemployment, advance productivity and achieve social cohesion .

The Chairman of CaixaBank recalled that we now have the most prepared youth in the history of Spain, which is in contrast to the fact that 30% of people have not finished secondary education .

For this reason, he considers it essential to work so that the entire population incorporates digitization skills , because there is an “asynchrony” between the demand and supply of work, which, in addition, will serve to fight against inequality , since 80% of the itself has its origin in unemployment.

It has opted for making a great effort in education and training to incorporate permanent skills of the entire population to achieve the “great challenge” of social cohesion. The Chairman of CaixaBank has set as a key element in which companies must be involved ” dual training”, which requires a certain size, which is why the Spanish productive fabric with such small companies “makes it difficult.

Carme Artigas has highlighted that 86% of Spanish companies lacked digital transformation plans before the pandemic, while 20% have joined after. Artigas believes that many changes brought about by the pandemic have come “to stay” and that a much more ” resilient green and digital” production model should be advocated , “we have the opportunity to make significant changes and come out better prepared.”

In this sense, he has ensured that now 19% of Spanish GDP is digital and that, in five years, this percentage has risen to 40%, since the economy will be increasingly linked to data or sectors such as the artificial intelligence. According to Artigas, we must take advantage of the great opportunity that technology represents for growth and employment.

For his part, the president of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce has stated that Spain should have the internationalization of companies as a “priority” objective. In Bonet’s opinion, the challenges of transforming the Spanish productive fabric also involve entrepreneurship, digitization, sustainability and professional training.

He has considered that public-private collaboration is a “necessity” for administrations and institutions to accompany companies in these challenges, especially in internationalization, and has pointed out that European funds are an opportunity for this transformation.

In addition, he alluded to the Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation ( Pertes ): “They will work, but we risk the future in the structure of SMEs.” Bonet has warned that in Spain there are 6 million homes where no one works and that they need a “social shield”, which is to promote and facilitate entrepreneurship, he said.

He has also defended betting on those people over 45 years of age or young people who have become unemployed, so that they can access and be part of the transformation of the productive fabric, and has asked to be accompanied in their “recycling”.

Draghi receives the Cercle award for European Construction. The president of the Italian Council of Ministers warns that economic growth must also be sustainable.

Mario Draghi , president of the Council of Ministers of Italy and who was president of the European Central Bank between 2011 and 2019, received this Friday the first Cercle d’Economia award for European Construction. In a conference chaired by the president of the Cercle d’Economia, Javier Faus, and José Manuel González-Páramo, member of the Board of Directors of the Cercle d’Economia.

Draghi, who received the award from the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, thanked the award and highlighted the rapid reaction of the European authorities to the depth of the crisis highlighted by the pandemic “saving millions of jobs.”

The objective must be in his opinion that the economy returns to the growth levels that existed before the pandemic, “and that objective will not be reached without additional stimuli.”

The key is currently, according to Draghi, to stimulate demand and stimulate growth to the extent that it makes it possible to meet the payment of the debt generated. There are still many risks to achieve the expected recovery, according to his opinion. Health risks are an important part of the new uncertainties, but also inflation or the different speeds in the exit from the crisis between the US and Europe.

Public aid to avoid the closure of companies are fundamental elements to get out of the crisis, but also to keep public and private debt under control. “You don’t have to run too far, you have to build growth on sustainability and equity,” said Draghi.

González-Páramo has glossed Draghi’s career, from his beginnings as a brilliant student to his career as President of the ECB and as President of the Council of Ministers of Italy, to later delve into the main characteristics of his character, of which he has highlighted his eminently practical vision of life and public management. “His prowess on the political level has bordered on excellence,” González-Paramo said.

This practical vision of the economy was reflected in the way of facing the financial crisis. The so-called Draghi monetary expansion plan was able to minimize the effects. Draghi’s message of confidence that the ECB would spend whatever was necessary to preserve the value of the euro was a turning point in the Eurozone crisis,

In Faus’s opinion, Draghi marked the way for a new Europe that pampers the economy without underestimating the need to also bet on social protection, sustainability and the welfare state.

Although the term “NFT” has dominated the news cycle for a couple months now, for many of us up until this point the idea has served as little more than a source of anecdotes involving large amounts of money collected from something we once considered trivial (did you see the “Disaster Girl” meme NFT sold for $500,000?) In a way, it’s easy to see why these stories keep making the news: it’s certainly hard not to click on an article stating Grimes made $5.8 million dollars in less than 20 minutes on her digital artwork, or that Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet ever for $2.9 million. The explosive growth of these sales has been called “the latest blockchain craze” or “the NFT gold rush,” but while it is fun to laugh or even tsk our tongues at the novelty of a meme selling for half a million dollars, others are recognizing the potential NFTs have to revolutionize industries.

One such person is Gurps Rai, founder and chief executive officer of droppTV. Billed as the world’s first shoppable streaming platform, droppTV uses proprietary artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision algorithms to recognize products in video content and tag them in real-time, building at the intersection of entertainment and retail. Today’s consumers are increasingly looking to buy with purpose, seeking an emotional connection with their purchases more than ever before that can only be achieved through authenticity and relatability on the part of the brand. The accessibility of the internet has created a savviness in the consumer that means they are quickly able to identify – and distrust – when they are being “sold to,” and Rai recognized that even a pop-up ad or a new window that opens to purchase a product is disruptive to the experiential nature of shopping within a video.

Shopatainment with droppTV

The idea of being able to purchase while simultaneously being entertained – also known as “shopatainment” – is a powerful one, and Rai’s hope has been to see droppTV’s technology used to transform industries. Making the first phase of the company’s consumer rollout music videos, Rai has sought to innovate within the music industry by allowing artists and creators a new way to tell stories through their content as well as connect with their fans. Although the technology that is available today has made it possible to create professional-quality videos without a gigantic budget, many up-and-coming artists overpay directors for videos of mediocre quality while also failing to adequately monetize the content they create. However, the problems within the music industry extend well beyond the monetization of music videos, and Gurps Rai has recognized the parallels between droppTV’s innovative technology and that of NFTs.

NFTs in a nutshell

Before we go any further, it would be best to provide as brief of an explanation as possible of the nature of NFTs. NFT stands for non-fungible token, with “non-fungible” meaning that it is unique and unable to be interchangeable with anything else. NFTs can technically be anything digital, but much of the current excitement is about using the technology to sell digital art from photographs to drawings to music as we’ll discuss in more detail.

Blockchain technology is what has allowed cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, bitcoin or dogecoin to evolve, and in the simplest of terms can be described as a process for storing data in a transparent and unalterable way. Similar to how watermarks and special paper prevent people from simply printing money, blockchain technology is what allows cryptocurrencies to exist independent of traditional banking networks. Most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain, which supports NFTs by storing extra information that makes them work differently from an Ethereum coin, but other blockchains can and have begun to implement their own versions of NFTs.

While technically every NFT has a unique token on the blockchain, it is possible to issue multiple copies that are still all classed as authentic and unique, similar to a limited edition print or a trading card in which only a certain amount was made.

NFTs and the music industry

The ability to create identical and yet unique NFTs opens the door to changing the way the music industry currently operates. Just as Rai’s droppTV platform puts the power back into the hands of the artists to monetize their creations, NFTs have the ability to revolutionize the way we access music. Rather than be dependent on large record labels and streaming services to earn revenue, musicians can choose when and how to release their content and let the markets establish their value. Additionally, blockchain’s ability to track an NFT through every sale after its creation means that even as items such as merch or concert tickets are sold and re-sold, the artist can continue to receive monetary compensation for them. Think about how a band tee’s value can increase over time as it becomes older and more rare – with NFTs, rather than it being a one-time, direct-to-consumer payment it results in multiple payouts that can result in a more expansive, long-term career for the musician.

The experiential element

NFTs provide fans with the ability to invest in artists directly, but unlike droppTV they lack the experiential element that can draw in a crowd by creating excitement and hype. According to Rai, this is one of a number of roadblocks that can prevent NFTs from reaching their potential within the music industry. The current user experience is more traditionally e-commerce, very transactional in nature and resembling a bidding marketplace such as eBay. As “shopatainment” proves to be an increasingly viable way for retailers to revitalize their business, there is no reason for such an exciting new technology to be using antiquated e-commerce methods. As Rai puts it, the NFT market is in its “Wild West” phase which means that while it is dealing with problems such as copyright issues, fees, energy use and intellectual property infringement, it is also ripe with opportunity for those who see it. While experiential shopping can be an effective strategy for any retail business, working it into the music and entertainment industry has the potential to be one of the most seamless transitions. As stated earlier, Ethereum is currently where most NFT tokens are minted, but on the ERC20 chain the gas prices of minting a token can be taxing.  Within the business model of the current NFT marketplaces sellers must be accepted to be able to sell in the  marketplace. Additionally, the marketplace transactional fees can fluctuate and are currently quite high with the marketplace taking 15% in addition to other fees.

Bringing together the best of both worlds, Rai is leveraging the energy-efficient cryptocurrency Hedera to verify and tokenize one-off iconic pieces in music videos on the droppTV platform. Through this new innovation, creators will have the unique ability to tokenize music video sets and sell digital and real life pieces. Imagine owning the actual chair Beyonce sat on in her music video or those actual sneakers DJ Khaled is wearing in his music video. droppTV’s interactive video technology will allow viewers to purchase one-off outfits directly from a music video with a single tap, while Hedera’s Hashgraph technology will be used to track and trace the provenance of the collectables and mint the NFTs. This way, the purchasers know the items they have purchased are authentic, and that everybody involved in the creation of the product is properly compensated for it, for old music videos as well as new.

By using Hedera, droppTV has created the world’s first experiential marketplace of verified collectibles. Although market capitalization of NFTs has grown by over 125% in this year alone, it is in no way close to a mature industry yet. As Rai put it, artists are selling music on droppTV already and they make way more money than any other streaming platform can offer them. Adding this NFT layer to that just means there is a solid and robust structure for artists to cut out the middleman and go direct to their fans. NFTs have created the ability for the music industry to evolve way past its current structure, and has massive utility in creating the fair creator economy that artists deserve.