🐦✅ Elon buys Twitter!
Bored Ape metaverse "Otherside" is coming this week! 👾
Dear NFTimer,
Goodbye to my Twitter shares! The board of Twitter has accepted Elon Musk's $44 billion bid to buy the social media company. Twitter stockholders will get $54.20 per share, and the company will go private. Enter the edit button, enter free speech, enter open-source code. Some people are pissed, some are happy, but everyone is curious how this will turn out. Dogecoin price surged after the announcement. I feel like none of us thought Twitter would go forward with the deal.
In a press release today, Musk said, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. Twitter has tremendous potential—I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
I got an announcement at the end of the newsletter.
Dive in👇🏼
🎨 NFTs
The only drop anybody cared about this week was Moonbirds. The first PFP project by Proof Collective and Kevin Rose, Moonbirds, got hyped and delivered. The collection saw more trading volume in 48 hours than many huge projects like World of Women. It’s one of those projects that marks a change. Owners get access to Proof Collective and will get to “nest” (aka stake) their NFTs.
The Akutars NFT launch hit a huge issue when bugs in the smart contract locked up $34 million worth of ETH.
British luxury department store Harvey Nichols launched an NFT gallery and retail space named “HN NFT Vault” in its Hong Kong store, becoming the first luxury department store to exhibit and retail NFTs.
Image Comics posted a special edition cover of “The Secret History of the War on Weed,” featuring a Bored Ape owned by Director of Sales and Publishing Planning Jeff Boison.
BAYC-inspired burger popup by LA-restaurateur Andy Nguyen, “Bored and Hungry,” announced that the restaurant will be serving permanently! I guess business is good.
Deadfellaz signed an exclusive representation deal with United Talent Agency (UTA), including brand partnerships, merchandising, gaming, and live events.
Coinbase NFT marketplace dropped its beta on Wednesday. The initial sentiment is pretty positive, and the UI looks great!
BAYC Instagram got hacked, resulting in $2.8M worth of NFTs stolen.
Gem platform enables users to batch-buy NFTs from multiple platforms to save on fees. OpenSea acquired Gem and working on integrating its functionality.
🔮 Metaverse News
Yuga Labs’ metaverse project Otherside is coming on 4/30. Rumors have been floating so much, which is driving the rise in ApeCoin prices.
👾 NFT Games
The VC firm that focuses its investments on the metaverse, Animoca Brands, recently acquired three game studios and said they are “not done acquiring.”
The President of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Ybarra, quickly shut down the tweet, “Blizzard is polling interest in NFTs and ‘play to earn’ games,” by tweeting that the studio won’t be doing NFTs anytime soon.
🎶 Music
Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda has joined Warner Recorded Music (WRM) to shape the company’s “artist-centric approach” to Web3 initiatives.
💃🏼 Fashion
Nike x RTFKT made a move and revealed CryptoKicks, the first digital sneakers by the company. The look of the virtual shoes can be changed via collectible “Skin Vials.” Owners had to figure out puzzles to open their MNLTH vaults, containing a pair of CryptoKicks, a single Skin Vial, and a second MNLTH vault. There was some confusion during the opening of vaults, which caused the floor price to fluctuate immensely, enabling some people to buy and sell for considerable ETH profits in couple hours.
🎥 Movies
Documentary following the Antarctica Triathlon attempt “Project Iceman” will be funded through NFT sales. The producers turned down a $1.25 million offer from a streaming service because of creative limitations by the service.
The production company behind “House of Gucci” and “Blade Runner 2049,” Scott Free Productions, will be adapting The Defiant founder Camila Russo’s book “The Infinite Machine” and tell the story of Ethereum.
🔥 What else is hot?
The startup working on NFT ticketing, Afterparty, raised $4 million from numerous investors to further develop its NFT ticketing platform from Paris Hilton, Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff and more.
$ZRX, the token underpinning the 0x protocol increased in value after announcing its partnership with Coinbase NFT.
One of the largest decentralized investment funds, BitDAO, has unanimously voted to invest $6.5 million into NFT investment collective PleasrDAO.
It’s especially funny when people or government agencies who are supposed to be serious make jokes. Vienna’s Tourist Board sent a Freud avatar to the metaverse, where Freud tells people to take a break from the virtual world. There’s a Trip to Vienna prize for a random person who interacts with him.
📖 Reading List
“ApeCoin & Death of Staking” by Cobie
“This Week in Music NFTs” by Cooper Turley
🧵 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.