“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 told Rolling Stone that owner Philip Anschutz “believes in a woman’s right to choose and did not support the reversal of Roe”.
Anyway, AEG seems to like crypto almost as much as it does the Republican party, 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 industry’s advertising blitzkrieg hasn’t yet died a complete death. Here, Luno has form. The Barry Silbert-backed platform was last year forced to amend “misleading” posters plastered around London bearing the slogan “If you’re seeing Bitcoin on the Underground, it’s time to buy”.
City AM readers are meanwhile encouraged almost daily by Silbert’s Digital Currency Group to become “Bitcoin Pioneers”. “Thanks to support from Luno,” doing so gets you £500 worth of the token “to share with beginners [and help] them get started”.
Luno takes its responsibilities to its customers extremely seriously. 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 this is ensuring that their funds do in fact exist and are accounted for. That’s why every quarter at Luno, we publish our Proof of Reserves report.
Luno has partnered with Mazars, a leading international audit, tax and advisory firm, to conduct the Q2 Proof of Reserves audit. This Proof of Reserves report gives you peace of mind that Luno has your cryptocurrency safely stored for you to use whenever you want.
Mazars conduct tests on the vast majority of these holdings to prove that the cryptocurrencies you see in your Luno Wallet actually exist.
That’ll be the same Mazars who were lambasted just last month by the UK accounting regulator for the “unacceptable” quality of their audits. “Peace of mind” indeed for any All Points East day-trippers inebriated enough to be tempted by Luno into crypto. Luno, AEG and Mazars did not respond in time for the publication of this article.
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