A sale that’s just out of this world
Over the weekend, we noticed a stir around CryptoPunk 2890 suddenly appearing in the market, for 805 ETH.
CryptoPunks are highly prized for being the first NFT, and there are only 1 of 9 Aliens. With the new amount of interest in them, a $1 million valuation can make sense for one of the rarest Punks out there.
It drew even more attention when DeFi millionaire farmer 0x_b1 entered a bid. But it was ultimately sold to Flamingo DAO, an NFT collective, for 605 ETH ($761K).
What got our interest, though, was when the finance folks took notice.
Our take: yes, it is a little ridiculous to think that someone would spend such a huge amount of money for a token. And it’s not even a token that you can sell easily!
But, it is a great symbol of status. It’s 2020, we’re all on social media—we’re all playing status games. We see NFTs as the next status game.
Status aside, though, we’re here for NFTs because they’re enabling so much cool shit. There are people making money by playing a game, there are artists earning their independence and buying their own house! These are people left behind in our current system, but they’re at the forefront of this new revolution.
So yeah, conversations about big sales like this are always going to be a little controversial. But fingers crossed that this attention gets people to fall down the NFT rabbit hole.
Other news
🏀 NBA Top Shot is on fire! Their marketplace is seeing insane volume, like $6.3M traded in 24 hours, and we also got legendary collector Pranksy interviewed by Fox News this week. A quick glance around seems to show that it’s picking up steam among regular sports fans and collectors, so guess Top Shot’s resonating with non-crypto folks!
✍️ Mirror (a decentralized Medium?) shared a concept for this novel crowdfunding mechanism for a piece of writing. The idea is that people can fund a writer’s efforts, and in return, they get fractional ownership of an NFT that represents the future essay. This post by Tom Critchlow digs deeper into it (with really good mockups), and we’re HYPED.
Reading list
The list has a lot of long reads this week 🔥 Settle in!
If you got time to read only one thing, then please, make it this one: “The Value Chain of the Open Metaverse.” Written by Packy McCormick of Not Boring, it’s a view of NFTs and crypto from a Silicon Valley lens. It’s always validating to see people who aren’t in crypto look at NFTs and just get it.
Don’t know about you, but “The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #CrytoArt” has been everywhere on our Twitter. It’s long, but it’s a jarring illustration of how environmentally harmful crypto art is, in terms of CO2 emissions.
(Our very simplified take: the tech is working to get better. But no point in art if there’s no world to live in, so we’re going to work on cutting meat intake and upping donations to local tree planting efforts!)Piers Kicks, of Delphi Digital research, dropped a huge piece on crypto and how it meets the metaverse. As in, it’s at 13,000 words, so if you’re short on time, here’s the tweet thread version.
Coinfund founder Jake Brukhman wrote a deep-dive into the NFT liquidity problem. Good walkthrough of the issue, and also good roundup of the projects that are working on making it easier to buy and sell NFTs!
Creative corner: Yosnier
Yosnier’s work is so distinctly unique, how do you not fall in love with it???
The first time we saw it, “tarot cards” immediately came to mind. There’s a lot of that dramatic iconography you find in tarot, and the border also helps in making you think of cards.
But Yosnier goes beyond that influence by combining fun pastel gradients, people of color, and a monoline drawing style that has us obsessed. Seriously had to stop ourselves from just pasting his entire website in here.
Find Yosnier’s portfolio here, and his SuperRare here.
This week, try: going through the reading list
Yes, we really think the reading list this week was phenomenal. It gave us so many things to think about! And if you’ve never dug into the concept of the “Metaverse” before, then there’s no better time than now to start.
Some of them are pretty long, though, which is why we’re saying you should intentionally set time aside to read and reflect on them.
🍵 See you again next Wednesday! We’re over on Twitter if you’d like to chat.