😳 NFT sales hit $2.5B this year, Two Rabbis are tokenizing Torah
Damien Hirst offers a dilemma, Decentraland Art Week, an Ethereum documentary is coming🔥
Dear NFTimer,
We’re in the third week of July, and we have the first half of 2021’s stats. NFT sales reached $2.5 billion! Last year this time, the sales were only at $13.7 million. Currencies might be having a slow time, but not NFTs. Everybody wants a piece of that sweet non-fungible token.
Craziest news story? Two Rabbis, Mordechai Lightstone and Jonathan Caras are tokenizing Torah, calling it “NFTorah” and “the Original Blockchain.” They will be selling Torah to raise money to distribute physical Torah scrolls to Jewish communities. You can buy an NFT representing a part of the text on OpenSea.
As crazy as that is, we also have a second placer. After athletes, artists, tech personalities and auction houses, the president of Israel is getting an NFT. The newly sworn president was given a tokenized version of the oath that his father, Chaim Herzog, took when he became president in 1983. They’re using NFTs to show some official business guys.
Let’s dive into this week’s news.
🎨 NFTs
American Express launched 14 limited edition NFTs with musician SZA that only cardholders can buy for $100. They can be resold on marketplaces.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s gold Top Scorer award will be accompanied by a blockchain-based digital collectible. UEFA EURO 2020 is getting into NFTs.
Marketplace Nifty’s launched an NFT line based on the new “Space Jam: A New Legacy” movie. Nifty’s claims to be the first-ever NFT-focused social media platform and got $10 million in seed funding.
Art Blocks Series 4 kicks off on July 23rd.
SushiSwap is working on adding an NFT platform called Shoyu that will be guided by a “Japanese sensibility and aesthetic.”
Swiss bank Sygnum is issuing NFT shares in Picasso painting for $6K each. The painting is “Fillette au béret” and is worth $3.68 million.
💎 Digital Collectibles
Damien Hirst launched “The Currency,” 10,000 NFTS each for $2000. The project is designed as an experiment as the artist forces buyers to either choose the physical object or the NFT two months after the artworks are issued. If you choose the NFT, the physical artwork will be burnt, and if you choose the physical object, NFT will be deleted from the blockchain.
SuperRare is introducing a new initiative, Collector Royalties. Collect art and earn rewards!
💃🏼 Fashion
Dolce & Gabanna is partnering with digital marketplace UNXD to launch “Genesis,” an NFT Wearables collection. The first reveal is ‘Dress from a Dream.’ You can sign up now here to have early access when it drops. This isn’t the first fashion house getting into NFTs. Louis Vuitton launched a League of Legends inspired collection with Riot Games, and Gucci sold a video inspired by their Fall/Winter 2020 collection for $25,000.
👾 NFT Games
Axie Infinity has been booming. In the last couple of weeks, its token price and transaction volume increased 500%. The price of its governance token AXS hit an ATH (all-time high) of $29.29. Now, it has plans to get into esport and host monster-battling competitions. Will gaming take blockchain into the mainstream?
Blockchain-Based Fantasy Soccer Platform Sorare is expected to announce that it will be raising $532 million in funding.
🎥 Movies
VUELE is a new NFT platform for feature films, launched in June.
“Zero Contact” will be the first NFT feature film made. The movie follows a tech titan, played by Antony Hopkins, and five people who want to destroy Hopkins’ character’s latest invention. It will release on VUELE.
A feature documentary about Ethereum will be coming to your screens. The project is crowdfunded on Mirror, and @pplpleasr1 created the NFT art for the movie that the top contributors will get as a reward. The documentary got almost $2 million in just three days.
🖼 Exhibitions
Decentraland Art Week was last week: check out MOCA Sculpture Garden, Ascendence - MakersPlace Group Show, and SuperRare’s exhibition.
🔥 What else is hot?
The production company behind Bitcoin Origins, NFT Genius closed a $4 million seed funding round led by Mark Cuban, music exec Guy Oseary and actor Ashton Kutcher.
Dogecoin inventor Jackson Palmer shared some opinions bashing the industry, calling the crypto world a “cult-like ‘get rich quick’ funnel designed to extract new money from the financially desperate and naive.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, is opening up a new business division focused on blockchain. He said in a tweet that it will have the “sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services.”
📖 What I’m reading this week
🤪 Cool fun beans
Cool Cats NFT is looking for a cityscape / environmental illustrator.
“NFTs: What You Need to Know” is a week-long free crash course to NFTs.
Nansen AI analyzes Ethereum wallets and their activity, so you can check your revenues and spendings.
Meebit 17522 was bought on Opensea for a striking price of 1000 ETH, which is about $1.9 million.
Tell me what you’re working on in the discussion thread! I’ll make sure to check it out, and maybe you’ll get a feature in the next NFTimes edition!
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