🖼 Art Basel Recap & OpenAI
More from Elon, and (you guessed it) more from SBF 💵
Gm lovely readers,
Let’s start this beautiful morning with some positive vibes. 2022 is finally approaching its end, and I am determined to leave bad vibes in this year. I’m manifesting a new all time high for Ethereum, good fortunes for the good players in crypto, and good luck for builders of the bear.
First half of the newsletter is some of the top news of the week, and the second part is a recap of Art Basel Miami. You know the rest by now.
Come chat about this week’s news today at 1pm PST/4pm EST.
Headlines 📰
OpenAI’s Chat Tool is just revolutionary.
Everybody is talking about it, but in the small chance that you haven’t seen it, you NEED to try the new Chat tool from OpenAI. The new GPTChat artificial intelligence can answer almost anything in a conversational manner. This large language model (LLM) AI is designed to read and write in English. From solving coding problems, creating DALL-E prompts, finding recipes by only typing what you have in the fridge, writing essays about algorithmic bias, to writing a 3-verse rap in the style of 2 Chains about the PayPal mafia, and finding factual information, it’s really fun.
What’s SBF’s deal(book)?
The question going around was.. do you believe him? Ehm, NO. SBF was given the stage with the likes of Andy Jassy, Mark Zuckerberg, Janet Yellen and Volodymyr Zelensky at this year’s New York Times Dealbook day. The crowd laughed when SBF said, “I’ve had a bad month.” It’s about to be a bad couple of years… Some highlights:
He said he “didn’t knowingly commingle” FTX customer funds with those of Alameda Research. I didn’t ‘knowingly commingle’ isn’t the same as no commingling.
He denied he had knowingly committed fraud. “I did not ever try to commit fraud on anyone,” and “it’s a massive failure of oversight on my side” he kept repeating. You can watch the full interview here.
He also went on Mario’s Twitter Spaces as part of his apology tour. The judge appointed thanked SBF for doing his publicity tour… weird times. SBF donating $40m to not go to jail for stealing $10b is one of the highest ROI trades of all time… (jk)
He is talking with REKT tomorrow.
Latest in the Elon Land.
On Friday night, Matt Taibbi posted a thread showing former Twitter employees debating the decision to restrict sharing of the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. Musk was hyping the release of the “Twitter Files,” saying they will expose how Twitter has been engaged in “free speech suppression.”
Elon also banned Ye after he tweeted a swastika, and said he wanted to punch Ye himself.
And most notably, over the past week Musk has been taking shots at Apple. He first was annoyed that Apple stopped advertising on Twitter, then also moved the convo to Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from its store. Apple’s 30% tax is one that causes difficulty to Elon’s plans of subscription revenue. After this quick saga Tim Cook and Musk met at Apple and seem to have their issues resolved.
ART BASEL RECAP.
This week was really something! I was curating an exhibition with Robot Heart Foundation and Elemental, featuring some of my favorite artists like DeeKay, NessGraphics, and Cath Simard. NFTimes was also a media partner of Web3Summits.
Let’s see what else was going on:
The Gateway by nft now was definitely worth a visit. Their curation of artworks was top notch, and RTKFT, Instagram, MetaMask was among the names who had their own stores.
Boys Club held their event Immersion at Kimpton Surfcomber. World of Women had their Gala at the same spot on Thursday. Sofi Tukker did an amazing set, drinks were on point, and many names within the community stopped by.
Vayner3 hosted V day at Scope, with booths and activations from their clients like Johnnie Walker and St. Jude Hospital. There was talks during the day and Kaytranada was playing at night.
Met the folks at Refraction at their two-day exhibition & music event.
Doodles had the best activation with DoodlePutt, a beautiful, themed mini golf course, cute signature drinks, and of course connecting with the community. We missed Pharrell only by half an hour. 😂
I could somehow find the time to visit Untitled, Art Miami, Scope, and Art Basel. Contemporary art is gaining more momentum and digital is slowly creeping in the traditional art market. Saw this perfect Tom Sachs Rocket Factory at Basel!
Oh also got to grab a pic with Gary.
Overall: Definitely worth the visit. If you like visiting art galleries and fairs, you should definitely do it next year. All of them were pretty great, but if I had to suggest a lineup Basel > Untitled > Scope > Art Miami. Because the art scene in LA is not very lively, it was super nice to be immersed in art having my art fill for the next couple months.
If you hold a collection that is having a significant event, it’s fun to connect IRL with fellow holders and get value for your NFT. Doodles and World of Women were those for me, but I know people also had a good time at BAYC and Deadfellaz, for example. Usually tix claiming for these run out quickly so might need to plan ahead.
Usually I network with new people during such weeks, but Basel was more about seeing friends I haven’t seen in a minute (which is also great) and having fun (I think this is because it’s Miami and party vibes are literally in the air)
You couldn’t jump around that easily due to traffic and events being both on Wynwood / downtown and Miami Beach area. It was logical to do maybe 3-4 stops max per day. Planning was important for this one.
Speed Round 🕺
NFT marketplace Magic Eden is integrating with layer-2 blockchain Polygon to grow blockchain gaming.
Bankless acquired Earnifi.
Rug Radio is doing a pfp collection with Cory Van Lew.
Vinnie Hagar is releasing a digital collectibles drop through Instagram.
Doodles saw a Devil Rainbow Puke Doodle sell for 50 ETH, the highest Doodle sale in five months.
You can now trade NFTs on Uniswap.
Meta got fined $276 million in Europe for data-scraping leak.
TIME president Keith A. Grossman is leaving TIME to be the president of enterprise at MoonPay.
Tweet Check. 🐦
Reading List 📖/ Fun Watch
“Let Crypto Burn” — Financial Times
“Leg Booty? Panoramic? Seggs? How TikTok Is Changing Language” — NYTimes
“Conspiracy Moms: Trapped in the N.F.T.-verse” — NewYorker
“Yam Karkai’s Illustrations Made Her an N.F.T. Sensation. Now What?” — NewYorker
Thank you 🙏
Thank you to Unstoppable Women of Web3 and Sandy Carter for selecting me as one of the Top 115 Inspirational Women and 25 Girls of Web3 and the Metaverse. Congratulations to all my fellow women who are killing it in this new uncharted territory.
-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.
Thanks for reading NFTimes! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
SBF: “I’ve had a bad month.” 😆 well said