🌌 XCOPY sells $23M worth of NFTs, WoW Galaxy mints over the weekend
BAYC raised $450 million, Cool Cats signed with CAA, Metaverse Fashion Week 🛍
Dear NFTimer,
Welcome. Good to have you here. In his TIME interview, Vitalik showed some feelings toward Bored Apes. Those who are passionate about the technology, and got into crypto through the ideas of decentralization and what blockchain can do will understand where Vitalik is coming from. It might seem weird if you are new or got into crypto through NFT trading and are not interested in the underlying technology. Vitalik said, “Ultimately, the goal of crypto is not to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it’s to do things that accomplish meaningful effects in the real world.” My background is in technology ethics, and I got into crypto because of the problems I saw in BigTech, such as fake news, data privacy, echo chambers, algorithmic bias, social media’s psychological effects due to algorithm’s success definitions. So, I’m with Vitalik on this one. While NFTs are all fun, and NFT technology itself will be revolutionary, the premise of decentralization is much bigger. With millions of dollars being traded for jpegs every day, it’s pretty fair when Vitalik asks BAYC to fund public goods. I’d urge you all to dive into decentralization a bit more <3
If you’re in LA for NFT LA, let me know.
Dive in👇🏼
🎨 NFTs
Superlocal launched “Mayorship” where any place in the world can be minted as a 1 of 1 NFT. Users get crypto when they check in. Owners will earn crypto royalties when other people check in from there on the app. Reminds me of Foursquare.
Rarible launched a custom marketplace for MetaAngels.
Arguably the best project after Bored Ape Yacht Club, World of Women (Guy Oseary representes both) launched their World of Women Galaxy collection. They are more like Mutants rather than Cool Pets, so they are an addition to the primary collection. The art looks amazing, and they will have similar standing to the OG collection. For example, through their partnership with Sandbox, WoWGs will get a 3D avatar as well!
Gamestop marketplace launched its beta version with Loopring integration.
NFTs are coming to Instagram, as unveiled by Zuck during SXSW.
NFTs are taking over Art Dubai.
Ukraine launched the NFT Museum of War on Ethereum and Polygon, with each NFT going for 0.15 ETH and funds going to the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
Cool Cats signed with CAA for licensing and merchandising opportunities.
XCOPY sold $23M worth of open “Max Pain” open-edition NFTs in 10 minutes on Nifty Gateway.
From time to time, there comes a news story with a subsection. We covered Science x NFTs before, and this time it’s 🍕Food NFTs!🍕 CHFTY Pizzas is an NFT project from chefs Tom Colicchio and Spike Mendelsohn where they are aiming to build a Web3 community around culinary creators and their fans. Motivation came after the pandemic put restaurants into hardship, and the chefs noticed the dependency restaurants had to web2 companies like Postmates and Uber Eats.
🔮 Metaverse News
Bored Ape Yacht Club raised $450 million to build their NFT metaverse.
Will Smith, The Weekend, Marc Anthony are among the names investing in Everyrealm’s Series A round, making the funding total to $62.5 million.
💃🏼 Fashion
Metaverse Fashion Week took place on Decentraland between March 24th and 27th with over 60 participating brands.
Space Runners raised $10M to continue building their digital fashion brand.
👾 NFT Games
The creator of PUBG announced that they would make Solana NFT games.
$AXS, Axie Infinity’s native token, is on the rise again after the decentralization announcement.
🎶 Music
Diplo is releasing his single “Don’t Forget my Love” on Royal, which enables fans to collect tokens, have ownership of the song, and get a share in future royalties.
Singer Kiesza performed with the MilkyWay Pirates band on Ellen Degeneres Show. Oh btw, MilkyWay Pirates is an NFT collection.
The talent agency WME signed Bored Ape Yacht Club DJ duo ESCAPΞPLAN.
⚽️ Sports
FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 is being officially sponsored by Crypto.com.
Naomi Osaka joined FTX as its latest global brand ambassador.
🔥 What else is hot?
Meta filed trademarks for crypto tokens, wallets, and exchanges.
Department Of Justice unveiled charges amid an investigation into Frosties NFT rug pull.
Google Searches for Ethereum Merge hit an all-time high!
Normally a crypto critic, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, said that crypto innovation “can be a healthy thing.”
ExxonMobil has reportedly is trying out a program that will use excess natural gas to power cryptocurrency mining. Nice pivot.
Katie Haun left Andreessen Horowitz to launch her own $1.5 Billion Web3 fund, Haun Ventures.
Robinhood is launching a “Cash Card,” replacing its debit card, which will offer rewards, including crypto bonuses.
ApeCoin dominated the conversation last week. Airdropped to Bored Ape and Mutant Ape owners, $APE was expected to come for a while. It’s an ERC-20 governance and utility token used to empower a decentralized community building. Yuga Labs gave one big news after another, and $APE is expected to be the empowering coin for its upcoming metaverse, Otherside.
Science x web3 Landscape:
📖 Reading List
“The Future of Reputation Score Will Be Community Specific. What Trade-Offs Will Communities Face To Quantify Reputation Better?” by Eliot Couvat
“So, You Want to Start a DAO” by WIRED
🤪 Cool fun beans
Madonna joined BAYC.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he’s working on figuring out how to allow businesses to make tax payments in cryptocurrency.
Everybody loves fun Twitter exchanges. The one between two GOATs started when people were making fun of Vitalik’s TIME cover, saying he looks like dystopian Tom Brady / Tom Brady with reverse Captain America serum, etc. Vitalik said he has no idea who Tom Brady is, but Brady went ahead and said he was a huge fan of Vitalik’s. 🐐🐐
What’s up Vitalik! You may not know me but just wanted to say I’m a big fan of yours. thank you for everything you’ve built in the world of crypto, otherwise @Autograph wouldn’t have been possible. Hope I get to meet you some day you’re the 🐐I didn't even know who Tom Brady is, had to ask people around me. My best guess was that he was the actor from Mission Impossible. https://t.co/MLWVcbtPHc
vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin
🧵 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.