🐧 Pudgy Penguin Craze, AMC to Accept Bitcoin
NFT x AI = iNFT, New Async Art Tool & Rarible Protocol, TIME Magazine collab with Cool Cats😻
Dear NFTimer,
Welcome to the world of iNFTs, where NFT meets AI. Alethea AI got their sleeves up for this job, and I’m not sure what I feel about this! Is this the future? Check out the conversation here for yourself.
Meme coins like Doge and Shiba might be picking up again after their crash in May. Dogecoin was up 27% over the last week, but that is still off from its all-time high price of $0.73. Ether is over $3,224, while Bitcoin is over $46,300.
Let’s dive in to this week’s hot news about all things NFT.
🎨 NFTs
August 9th was the 4th anniversary of MoonCats.😻
Async Art announces the new Canvas tool that enables creators to upload work that changes every hour over 24 hours.
The Vogu collectibles project announced an official partnership with the Metakey project. Metakey will help actualize The Vogu Collective’s future integrations with virtual communities like Decentraland and Sandbox.
Rarible introduced a set of tools to simplify the go-to-market process for NFT projects and ideas. They built the infrastructure for the creator economy, but it’s up to $RARI token holders and Rarible DAO members to move it forward.
One of the hottest projects right now is Pudgy Penguins, topping $11 million in daily volume. The floor price is at 2.3 ETH on the secondary market, making the cheapest one at least $7,000. The most expensive Penguin is plain with a green background, but it’s the only one facing left, making the price tag 1,000ETH. 🐧
Bored Ape Yacht Club got its first NFT sale of over $1 million.
Series of 100 NFT images of rocks, EtherRock, is blowing up. It came out of the classic Pet Rock toy craze from the 70s.
The developers of the self-acclaimed “first female avatar project of all time,” Fame Lady Squad collectibles project admitted that they lied, and in fact, are not women themselves. “Sorry for the lie,” Max Rand tweeted.
NASCAR is partnering with Zed Run to release NASCAR branded digital horses.🏇🏼
Russian State Hermitage Museum and Binance NFT Marketplace collaborate to bring acclaimed artists like Claude Monet, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Vincent Van Gogh into the NFT space. Is this necessary, or adds anything to the value of the original art? Should they be allowed to do that for an artist who has been dead for 100+ years? Is it even in line with the ideas of digital art? Perhaps if there was anything additional with the NFT like an AR version, but I’m not so convinced. Let me know what you think in the comments! 🎨
Shopify will allow people to sell NFTs on their platform.
The NFT collection Cool Cats is doing a limited edition drop with TIME magazine. TIME had its own NFTs earlier this year and it looks like they still are in the game. If you want to win one of the original 8, submit your meme entry here!
Matthew Reamer, who took photographs of Vitalik Buterin for a magazine profile in 2015, is now selling the portraits as NFTs. The pictures are taken four months after Ethereum’s launch and Ethereum’s price has gone up 300,000% since then. Check out this thread for the story.
🔮 Metaverse News
Grand Theft Auto is now in the Metaverse!! MetaCity is the world’s first NFT-powered GTA roleplay server. 🏎🚓
Cryptovoxels got a new island called MIAMI. The auction resumes this Wednesday!
🎶 Music
Dogecoin Festival, Dogepalooza, is coming to a city near you! It will celebrate all things doge and take place in “multiple cities and countries around the globe” while kicking off on October 9 in Sugar Land, Texas. The festival will include live music with Dionne Warwick headlining. “It’s an all-around global celebration and movement of: Do Only Good Everyday.”
💃🏼 Fashion
For the designer’s 200th birthday, Louis Vuitton released a mobile game called “Louis: The Game.” The game takes you on a tour of the fashion house’s journey through the brand’s history. Some NFTs were created by Beeple.
👾 NFT Games
Aavegotchi Haunt 2 will be between August 26th and 29th. 👻
⚽️ Sports
Sports betting site DraftKings goes live with an NFT marketplace in partnership with Tom Brady’s Autograph. You can buy NFTs of Tom Brady, Tiger Woods, and more athletes through both DraftKings and Autograph’s websites.
Players from the English soccer team Watford F.C will wear Dogecoin shirts in the new Premier League season since their sponsor is Stake.com, a crypto sports betting site.
Lionel Messi’s transfer from FC Barcelona to PSG included cryptocurrency fan tokens as part of the player's “welcome package.” 💰 PSG’s fan token ($PSG) was launched in January 2020, and fans can use it to interact with the club.
Football or soccer (if you’re an American) player Ronaldinho is releasing NFTs with INFLUXO. The first drop includes 7 vivid paintings of his career, and the unlockable contents include a private dinner with him in Dubai, a roundtrip ticket, and a 5-star hotel stay. The second drop is a series of 6 collector cards.
Fan Token for the Turkish football team Fenerbahce spiked by 433% on launch, raising $51 million. Token holders can vote on minor club decisions.
🎥 Movies
The CEO and President of AMC, Adam Aron, said the theater company plans to accept Bitcoin for movie tickets by the end of this year. 🎞
🖼 Exhibitions
The first physical NFT gallery in Chicago, imnotArt is having an immersive art exhibition called “The New Digital: Born in Chicago” from August 14th to 22nd featuring digital artworks from Chicago-based artists.
🔥 What else is hot?
Ehm.. Real_Alethea transformed the Pandora Avastar into an intelligent NFT (iNFT) with AI. This SO is crazy, I had to talk about it again. And probably again, and again.
President Alberto Fernandez tells that Argentina is open to adopting Bitcoin. During an interview, he said, “I don't want to go too far out on a limb [...] but there is no reason to say ‘no.’”
The infrastructure bill that has passed the Senate broadens current tax reporting requirements for cryptocurrencies. The language is so vague that it’s not too clear who this law would include. It will have to go through the House and is expected to face some challenges there. Democrat Representative from California Anna G. Eshoo wrote a letter to Speaker Pelosi to amend the cryptocurrency broker language. #DontKillCrypto
The free tool to view and create charts on Ethereum, Dune Analytics, raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Union Square Ventures.
Shark Tank co-shot and investor Mr. Wonderful has been advocating for Bitcoin since the start of this year, and calls Ether ‘ultra-sound money’ after EIP-1559.
📖 Reading List
If you want to get your hands on an NFT but can’t afford to do so (reasonable), here is how you can use Fractionalize.art for fractional ownership.
How EIP-1559 Changes the Economics of Ethereum by the Defiant.
NFTs back on NYTimes baby! Great article “I Joined a Penguin NFT Club Because Apparently That’s What We Do Now” by Kevin Roose, who sold his NYTimes column as an NFT a couple months ago.
🤪 Cool fun beans
Artist Dmitri Cherniak sold his Eternal Pump for over $650K, and two Ringers sold for over $1M.
Logan Paul tweets that he dropped $1 million on NFTs last week.
Chromie Squiggle #4008 was purchased for 250.0000 $ETH ($785,335.0 USD)
Can you make a protocol to enable yield for waiting bids? 👀
1700 Avastars are claimed by Veefriends holders in 20 minutes.
Zunk 16515 was bought for 15 ETH.
Chromie Squiggle is bought for almost $2.5 million.
This week stay on the lookout for a special edition of NFTimes.👀👀👀
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!
If you like this newsletter, please share it with your friends or whoever you think might like this. Meanwhile, follow timely news on Twitter. See you next week.
Aleyna
Epic rundown