🫠 FTX story becomes a drama filled soap opera
Royalties, NFT London recap, Layoffs 👋
Gm Gm my lovely readers,
NFTimes is dropping a day late because I’ve been sick ever since London. Being in LA for the last 2 years made me forget what cold even felt like…
Our world is home to 8 billion people today, for the first time. It took millions of years for humanity to reach one billion. The second billion took about 125 years, the third about 40. The last few have taken a decade or so each.
Also, so much happened. FTX Meltdown, More Elon drama, acquisitions and what not. Jeff Bezos pledged to give away most of his $124 billion fortune in a surprising turn. I wasn’t even sure where to start, but let’s go.
Come chat about this week’s news today at 1pm PST/4pm EST.
Headlines 📰
FTX meltdown. 🫠
The crypto exchange FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after its competitor Binance uncovered an $8 billion cash shortage. What started as a news report on Alameda Research became the biggest, mind boggling story in crypto (and that’s a high bar). The face of regulation and trustworthiness CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), turns out, was scamming people the whole time. There were no 1 of 1 backing of user funds - let alone that - they didn’t even hold user funds. Soon, reports announced a $600 million FTX hack — which many suspect was an inside job after the rumors of a backdoor SBF put into FTX’s smart contract. The already crazy financial story became even more so with the news that reported FTX was run by 10 people who all lived together and were involved in polyamorous relationships.
Other exchanges and projects are and expected to give information on the contagion in the wake of the FTX collapse. Crypto.com was one name that paused withdrawals. Values for BTC and ETH dropped by a considerable margin. This TikTok series dive into the conspiracy behind FTX…
Royalties Update. 🔙
We had a long discussion about royalties last week - with Rarible announcing supporting royalties during our Twitter Spaces. After OpenSea dumped royalties, artists rebelled. After a week of backlash, they announced it would continue enforcing creator royalties on existing collections. Nifty Gateway introduced the Creator Royalty Standard system and the Creator Royalty Coalition. SuperRare reassured its commitment to artist and collector royalties. Manifold is giving artists the ability to track their royalty histories across different collectors and platforms.
News for the new Generation: The Future Party 🫡
As a newsletter author, I read a lot of newsletters. Like, a lot. I probably get about 100 emails a day, and I make sure to go through all of them so I’m as informed as I could ever be. I care deeply about the truth, and also covering the space in a wholesome way. Recently, my favorite has been the Future Party newsletter. They are a community-based media platform whose stories are comprehensive, easy to understand, and always interesting. Space exploration? TikTok trends? NFT and metaverse updates? Yes to all. It’s journalism for the next century, focusing on tech, culture, and the upcoming generation. Subscribe here.
Patagonia Vest Layoffs. 👋
The great tech layoff is here. Scott called it months and months ago, but here you go. Meta laid off 13% of its workforce while Amazon is planning on laying off 10,000 employees. The tech giants who grew in incredible paces over the pandemic are coming back to their pre-pandemic employee numbers, as well as stock prices. How is this related to Web3? Trust me, the lines between web2 and web3 are blurrier than what you might think, and a recession in tech jobs affect us all.
Solana runs on Google. 🔍
During their annual gathering at Breakpoint 2022 in Lisbon, Solana made many announcements, including Solana Store in Miami, and location based GeoNFTs. In addition to Solana Phone, they will also be launching Solana (d)App Store. The big news was Google Cloud building a block-producing Solana validator to participate in and validate the network.
Nike’s got Swoosh. 👟
After CryptoKicks, Nike is kicking off .Swoosh, a destination for virtual apparel and other NFT-based products, with the first drop due in January. dotSwoosh will turn into a community-driven store to sell virtual shoes and clothing items which will also act as tokens unlocking physical experiences and IRL items. Nike is taking a page out of Reddit’s playbook in making the platform very user-friendly and without pushing blockchain and crypto language into an everyday user. So it’s basically a hub for Nike lovers and Web3 enthusiasts to come together, trade and create virtual sneakers. The creators from the community will be able to share in the sales revenue as the platform is being built on Polygon (preferred network of brands as it has lower transactions costs & still built on ethereum)
NFT London Highlights. 🔦
I was meaning to do a whole NFT London highlight issue, but I’ve been under the weather since coming back to LA. I’m yet to go over all my new connections, but I got a couple shoutouts to do. It was great to meet crypto folks from Europe and Asia who came together in London, who don’t always make the trip to US. Thanks to my panelist frens. Women Force NFT, Eyes of Fashion and Legends are great new upcoming NFT projects I met the founders of. I went to mfers dinner, World of Women and Veefriends meetups at Arcade Apes (shout out to the founders Vishaal & Samit) Also, check out these jewelry!
Delphos is a new web3 music company using AI. New2Web3 is an organization aimed at education. SMILLE is working on bringing smell to the metaverse. Carrie Able’s VR artworks are beyond amazing. Caught up with Novo. If we met and I forgot to give a mention here, send me a dm 💖
Speed Round 🕺
Drift became the first artist to sell out an NFT drop on Instagram with the 50-edition release of Learning to Handle Change.
Yuga Labs rolled out news.yuga.com, the updated home for all things BAYC, MAYC, CryptoPunks, and Meebits.
Yuga Labs has acquired NFT startup WENEW, creator of the 10KTF project. Co-founder of WENEW, Beeple will join as an advisor.
Doodles announce “DoodlePutt” a live experience happening at Art Basel in Miami from Dec 2nd-3rd. Life update: I got a dood!
Adidas featured a BAYC in their new World Cup ad.
CEO of Chain Deepak Thapliyal is considering auctioning or fractionalizing his considerable NFT collection.
Tweet Check. 🐦
Reading List 📖
New Podcast Ep. Out 🎙️
Spoke about technology ethics, designing for people, representation, and specifically about women in STEM jobs in this episode. Dive in! If you’d like to check out other pods, here’s a link to a list.
Eyes Forward 👀
Excited to announce that NFTimes is partnering with Web3 Summits, happening on November 30th and December 1st in Miami. Are you interested in sponsoring or speaking at the event? Check it out here.
For my lovely readers, I also have something special. I’m giving away one ticket to the Web3 Summits conference. What do you have to do?
Reply under this newsletter ✅
-Aleyna
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.
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