Questions for Leila Ismailova: Digital fashion and life after Artisant Leila Ismailova began her professional career at the age of 15 as a broadcasting star in Belarus, the Russian-neighboring Eastern European country that plays home to 9.3 million citizens. She continued in the role for 10 years, she says, before reaching what she felt was a “professional ceiling” and beginning a journey that led to Web3.
“I remember my audacity as a child, just sneaking into the buildings with newspapers and magazines — it was called the House of Press,” Ismailova recalls in an interview with Cointelegraph. “I would handwrite my stories and sneak into the building — because I didn’t have a pass — by making up stories that I was someone’s granddaughter, or by just going in when someone else entered. And I would find the doors that said ‘editor’ or ‘editor-in-chief,’ and I would just walk in and give them my articles. People smiled, and I’m sure they felt I was naive, but I felt they also had some respect for me doing this work.”
Her renegade news career led to television in a matter of years. She joined the country’s First National Channel at the age of 15, where she started on a show that covered news and culture for younger viewers.
“My first audition went horribly,” Ismailova says. “I turned purple. I was thinking really fast, but they still wanted me to come for the second round.”
“Micropayments have never been feasible, despite 20 years of attempts, because it is not cost-effective to run small payments (think null and below, down to pennies or fractions of a penny) through the existing credit/debit and banking systems. The fee structure of those systems makes that nonviable.”
This platform opens up an innovative solution for crypto micropayments and e-commerce The largest cryptocurrency by market cap has been used as a store of value instead. Nevertheless, what Bitcoin did was show the way and open up an opportunity for the boom of blockchain projects that the space is currently seeing. Many of these seek to improve Bitcoin’s limitations by adopting more elastic consensus mechanisms like proof-of-stake, new features such as smart contracts and innovative solutions to address volatility, such as stablecoins.
Today, digital currencies are ready to take e-commerce by storm and fulfill Bitcoin’s original intent to act as a means of exchange. Layer-2 solutions like the Lightning Network make Bitcoin suitable for payments, including micropayments.
Crypto payment gateway Coingate reported that payments in crypto had surged 60% in 2022 compared to the previous year, with payments processed through the Lightning Network nearly doubling.
Disney reportedly scraps its metaverse division
The metaverse division was initially created to work on new ways of engaging Disney’s audience.Entertainment giant Disney has reportedly ditched its metaverse division as part of a broader restructuring plan to cut its operating expenses by $5.5 billion and lay off 7,000 staff over two months.
The news was reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in a March 28 post, citing “people familiar with the matter.“
All of the metaverse division’s 50 or so members will be left without a new employment contract, except for Michael White, who led the broader consumer products unit, the WSJ reported.