🦄 OpenSea valued at $1.5B, Facebook is Transitioning into a Metaverse Company
Elon holds Bitcoin, Ether and Doge, EthCC and the B Word Conferences happened last week, CoolCats found themselves on NASCAR😻
Dear NFTimer,
Welcome to another week of news.
Ether dropped as low as $1,720.98 and Bitcoin to $29,504.96 last week💔 However, both had a jump last night, Ether going up to $2,323.56 and Bitcoin to $38,348.79 at the time of writing. 🚀 Did you buy some dips?
Last Wednesday, we learned at The B Word conference that Elon Musk himself owns Bitcoin, Ether, and Doge, and both Tesla and SpaceX own bitcoin. In the same talk, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, said the goal of Bitcoin is to help “create world peace,” even though he knows it sounds cheezy. He is also working on a decentralized social network called “Blue Sky.”
🎨 NFTs
The biggest NFT marketplace around, Opensea finished a $100M series B funding led by VC firm a16z, and got $1.5B valuation!😳 Welcome to the unicorn club Opensea. While we are here, did you know Opensea’s Polygon marketplace is gas fee-free? If you want to learn how to buy NFTs on Polygon, here’s the answer.
Remember Damien Hirst’s “Currency” NFT drop? 32,472 people applied for a total of 67,023 NFTs while only 10,000 are available.😅 NFTs were priced $2000 each, so that makes $20M for the artist. Wow. While we are here, he also owns some NFTs from popular collectibles.
Steve Jobs’ first ever job application from 1973 was sold for $222,000 in March, and it is up for auction again. In this auction, the document is split into physical and digital assets, both auctions happening at the same time. Similar to Hirst, they are questioning whether the physical or the digital asset is more valuable. You can buy or cast your vote on which one is more valuable here.
Stateful Works is introducing the EIP-1559 NFT series to commemorate the much-anticipated network update. All the proceeds go to the contributors who made the new update happen.
Fantasy sports and sports betting company DraftKings is launching its own NFT marketplace later this summer. It will be the marketplace to buy NFTs from Autograph, an NFT platform co-founded by Tom Brady. Tiger Woods, Tony Hawk, Naomi Osaka, and Derek Jeter are among the names joining its advisory board. Autograph also partnered with Lionsgate, and we are expecting to see NFTs based on Hunger Games, John Wick, Mad Men, and the Twilight Saga.
Alibaba Group’s Taobao Maker Festival, which aims to help young Chinese entrepreneurs show their products and projects, has NFTs this year. Artist Heshan Huang created hundreds of virtual buildings that people can buy, just not with cryptocurrencies. Collection is called ‘Toorich City Series.’
CoinFund, a cryptocurrency investment firm that backed Rarible and Dapper Labs, announced that it is launching a $83 million venture fund.
Members of the Art Blocks community started an information site.
Artist Tom Sachs shared a blog post about his new project, Rocket Factory, a “trans-dimensional manufacturing plant [that] uses NFTs to build new NFTs.” Check it out and let me know what you think!
12-year-old Benyamin Ahmed made over $160,000 in Ether with his NFT Project Weird Whales. It sold out in about 9 hours.
You can now see top 100 collectors on Foundation’s list.
🔮 Metaverse News
Facebook says they are transitioning into a ‘metaverse company.’ Hmm… Are we sharing the same idea of metaverse with Zuckerberg? Check out his interview with The Verge.
1) In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR. 2) In 2020, Facebook released a beta for "Facebook Horizon," a "world creation system" for Oculus. 2) In 2021, Facebook says they are transitioning into a "metaverse company." Like or hate Zuckerburg, it's easy to spot what comes next.Facebook becoming a metaverse company. Interesting. https://t.co/NxvgYcKkaU
mDAO Ⓜ️ @metaverseDAOCryptovoxels changed its chat system, which will notably improve the metaverse’s chat experience.
🎶 Music
After watching the B word conference, Busta Rhymes is sold on cryptocurrencies.
Steve Aoki is dropping a new NFT project called ‘Dominion X’ with Manifold.xyz on NiftyGateway on August 2nd. It’s an animated short series following the world of the Character X. If you hold enough of his NFTs, you can get some free concert tickets.
Last month, Roc-A-Fella Records sued co-owner Damon Dash for trying to sell an NFT tied to Jay-Z’s album “Reasonable Doubt,” which got stopped by a judge. Dash is now doubling down and auctioning his 1/3 interest in Rock-A-Fella Inc. On his website Dashnftgallery.io, the blurb of the NFT reads, “Damon Dash is auctioning his ⅓ interest in Roc-A-Fella Inc. which owns Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z’s first album.” He can’t legally sell his equity via an NFT alone, but it’s a non-binding promise from Dash that he will sell. You can see the NFT on Opensea and Foundation, and put a minimum bid of $10 million. The auction ends today.
👾 NFT Games
Presenting Polygon Studios: Polygon's brand new arm for Blockchain Gaming & NFT ecosystem. They are raising $100M fund to support blockchain game and NFT developers.
Zed Run, the virtual horse racing game, raised $20 million for expansion. Players can trade and breed digital racehorses and compete with other users. Players have bought $30 million worth of digital racehorses so far. All horses are minted, but you can get yours on Opensea.
Play-to-earn game Axie Infinity generated $84.9 million in one month. It’s the most profitable protocol on the market. It’s coin AXS hit a new all-time high of $49.20. Wow.
🎥 Movies
The first NFT animated series is coming from Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, and I am living for it. “Stoner Cats” is about house cats high on marijuana. Co-director of Toy Story 2, Ash Brannon, hand-drew every frame of the first episode. 10,420 NFTS are available to mint for 0.35 ETH each.
🔥 What else is hot?
EIP-2981, the new NFT royalty standard has been introduced.
An interesting project… 👇🏼 Would you hodl, or sell? Would it be more valuable at 50 because no original holders sold it, or more at 716 because more people are participating in it?
The EthCC conference was last week, and it was very different than the Bitcoin conference in Miami. While Miami looked like a rally and a show, Ethereum’s first in-person event since the pandemic had started was more academic and deep-dive. There were sessions on “Painless Gas Cost Optimizations” and “Relayers as an Ultimate UX Solution that Connects Fragmented Ecosystems in a Multi-Chain World,” and no Lambos were on sight.
Amazon put a job listing for Digital Currency and Blockchain Product Lead, which led to the rumors that Amazon might start accepting cryptocurrency payments. That would be a huge step and a slap back to people saying cryptocurrencies failed as a payment mechanism, like Jerome Powell.
📖 What I’m reading this week
This week we are learning about the metaverse. Check out this “Awesome Metaverse” list of projects, articles, links and resources. Next, look at this presentation from 2008.
🤪 Cool fun beans
Punk 2243 sold for 875 ETH — around $2 million (now)!
Ethereum community is an infinite garden:
Fidenza #938 is sold for 100 ETH!
Jesse Love became the first Nascar driver to put an NFT on the car🤙🏼 Shout out to CoolCats.
Jack Dorsey, whose Twitter bio is #bitcoin, tweeted “#eth🇪🇹” because the eth hashtag has the Ethiopian flag emoji next to it for the Olympics. He was probably joking around, but the Ethereum community embraced the flag. Fyi, Bitcoin hashtag has its own bitcoin emoji attached.
Tell me what you’re working on in the discussion thread! I’ll make sure to check it out, and you might get a feature in the next NFTimes edition!
If you like this newsletter, please share it with your friends or whoever you think might like this. Meanwhile, follow the news on Twitter. See you next week.
Aleyna
Great rundown in this article!
My team has worked on bringing the first fully immersive 3D model to auction as an NFT. The 3D model is of a famous Silicon Valley restaurant called Buck's of Woodside where companies like Tesla, Paypal, Netscape, and Hotmail ++ got funded. Anyway, it's a different type of project and worth a look. Current bid just under 103 ETH on OpenSea. Here is the model: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=k6RtWhrenma