🪴 Azuki Madness
Pudgy Penguins sold, Visa launches accelerator, Nike wants to DESTROY NFTs 💥
Dear NFTimer,
NFT LA was last week. Some pretty dope events happened. Psychedelics Anonymous threw a party, so did Azuki. My favorite was mfers meetup! Also had a great time at the Female Quotient’s “Into the Metaverse” event. Over the weekend party moved to Miami with NFT Miami. This weekend there is NFT San Diego. Can’t keep up😅
Dive in👇🏼
🎨 NFTs
A single Azuki NFT sold for 420.69 ETH. ($1.42 million) During their Garden party at NFT LA, Wiz Khalifa said “Check your wallets” and all holders got dropped … something. Azuki floor price going through the roof.
Samsung and Nifty Gateway have partnered to create an NFT platform for the users will be able to view, buy, trade, and display NFTs via the smart TV interface.
DC Comics and Palm NFT Studio partnered to release 200,000 Batman-themed NFTs, which will come with benefits such as access to events, merchandise, and metaverse elements.
OpenSea confirmed that they will add Solana NFTs in April.
MAC Cosmetics is partnering with ConsenSys to release 5275 NFTs with Keith Haring artworks to support HIV/AIDS-impacted youth on Polygon. I really love it when brands launch NFTs either free or with all funds going to charity (ehm Pepsi.. ehm Stella Artois) and really don’t like it when brands suck millions out of the ecosystem (ehm Adidas).
WWE made a deal with Candy Digital to launch NFT trading cards of wrestlers.
World of Women’s new Galaxy NFT collection generated $79 million in primary and secondary trading during the first 24 hours.
A BAYC NFT sold for 115 DAI ($115). Mistake? or tax evasion 🤔
Pudgy Penguins has been sold for 750 ETH (~$2.5 million) to Netz Capital’s Luca Netz. Guess who got one and panik sold it thinking this wasn’t gonna happen 2 weeks ago 🥲
Fewocious dropped ‘paint’ for $1000 each as entry point to FewoWorld.
🔮 Metaverse News
Snoop Dogg’s new music video was filmed entirely in the metaverse.
👾 NFT Games
Ronin Network suffered which probably was the biggest crypto hack with $622M stolen. After the hack, devs delayed the upcoming upgrade. Check your bridges y’all.
FTX bought Good Luck Games, the developer behind the free-to-play game Storybook Brawl. There is a backlash from gamers towards web3 and NFTs, which I really don’t understand. NFTs will give more power to gamers. However, Storybook Brawl players are asking to be delisted from Stream. 🤷🏼♀️
Crypto game Cross the Ages raised a $12 million during its seed round from Ubisoft, Animoca Brands, and Polygon.
Twitch co-founder raised $35M for gaming NFT marketplace.
⚽️ Sports
Lionel Messi signed three-year deal to promote the social/fan token' company Socios, reportedly for $20 million.
🔥 What else is hot?
The EU Parliament voted to impose new regulatory measures to prohibit anonymous cryptocurrency transactions. All crypto exchanges will be required to collect personally identifiable information. Playing to lose the web3 game too, huh?
OpenSea is enabling purchases with credit card and Apple Pay.
LayerZero Labs raised $135M from Andreessen, FTX, and Sequoia to build an “omnichain interoperability protocol that unites” decentralized applications from across blockchains.
Robinhood Crypto COO Christine Brown left the company to start her own crypto venture.
Co-founder of Ripple Chris Larsen was talking about a campaign called “Change the Code not the Climate” and offering to change the code of Bitcoin. Of course, BTC maxis reactions were, well, extreme(ly negative).
Longtime banker turned crypto executive Caitlin Long said, “Goldman, in the early years of crypto, was the bank that was the most open to it. Culturally, there's something about Goldman that allows and fosters innovation, whereas I did not feel that at my previous banks … [yet] JP Morgan ended up flipping and becoming even more open to it than Goldman was.”
Nike asked a court for an order to ‘destroy’ NFTs which uses its brand without permission, which raises legal questions. Not sure if this is needed. The whole point of blockchain is what the original is right there on the blockchain. If it comes from Nike or RTFKT, yeah it’s real. If it comes from a random deployer, it’s fake.
Visa is launching a year-long NFT immersion program to bring together a global cohort of creators including artists, musicians, fashion designers, and filmmakers to build their businesses with NFTs.
📖 Reading List
“What the media is missing about decentralized autonomous organizations” by Cointelegraph
“WEB3: 2Be Or Not 2Be” by Forbes
“Despite tooling limitations, DAO optimists see new use cases for a democratic, token-based future” by Techcrunch
🤪 Cool fun beans
My new fav hoodie, shoutout to @stitchnft for giving these out for free during mfer meetup in LA!
🧵 Threads
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Disclaimer: Investing in NFTs comes with inherent risk including technical risk, human error, platform failure and more. This newsletter is strictly educational and nothing we offer is financial advice. We are not professionals or licensed advisors. Views my own and not any other company I’m affiliated with.