Sports NFTs: How To Get in the Game

If you’re an avid sports fan, cryptocurrency is rarely out of reach. Look around you: After deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars were signed, the Staples Center was renamed the Crypto.com Arena and Miami’s premier sports venue is now called the FTX Arena.

You can now see a small FTX logo on all Major League Baseball umpire uniforms. Sports stars, including Serena Williams, LeBron James and Tom Brady, are often plugging blockchain technology.

However, there’s one piece of technology that’s becoming increasingly central to sports’ crypto play: non-fungible tokens (NFT). They’re everywhere – Deloitte predicts the sports market will generate more than $2 billion in NFT sales this year. Here’s the lineup when it comes to NFTs and sports.

Trading card and collectible NFTs

NBA Top Shot

NBA Top Shot is one of the largest crypto trading card games. The National Basketball Association developed it with Dapper Labs, the creators of the ERC-721 standard and the viral CryptoKitties game. While CryptoKitties runs on the Ethereum blockchain, NBA Top Shot runs on Dapper Labs’ proprietary blockchain, Flow.

The concept is simple: It’s a database game that revolves around the ownership of “moments” – tiny video clips of famous NBA plays. You can buy packs of them, virtual renditions of the trading card packs of yore, plus trade your moments on Top Shot’s secondary market.

Top Shot is the fifth-largest NFT project of all time, having generated $886 million in sales, according to CryptoSlam. However, the game’s popularity has long since peaked, as most of the sales took place in February and March 2021.

NFL All Day

Dapper Labs has also inked a deal with the National Football League. The NFL’s NFT game is called NFL All Day and it plays similarly to NBA Top Shot.

Like NBA Top Shot, the game concerns the trading of “iconic highlight collectibles,” and you can build up your collection or sell your NFTs on an in-game marketplace. The project is in closed beta right now, meaning you can’t play it without an invitation from the NFL. The game is set to be open to the public by the end of the football season. To kick-start its launch, attendees atSuper Bowl LVI, which takes place on Feb. 13 at SoFi Arena in Los Angeles, will all be offered NFTs from NFL All Day.

UFC

Alongside the LaLiga soccer league, the NFL and the NBA, Dapper Labs has continued its expansion through a partnership with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. UFC NFTs launched on Jan. 23 on UFC Strike, replete with audio clips of the screams and cracked bones of its brawlers.

Again, the economy revolves around “packs” of virtual NFT clips, which you can sell on a proprietary marketplace. The first set of packs, which each cost $50, propeled 100,000 NFTs into the economy.

Sorare

Sorare accomplished for soccer what NBA Top Shot achieved for basketball. It’s a trading card game that also functions as a fantasy European football league. Like NBA Top Shot, Sorare’s trump card is its licensing; Sorare claims to be officially licensed with 215 clubs, including titans Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain.

According to CryptoSlam, Sorare is the 16th most popular game, with $202 million in all-time sales.

NFT memorabilia and tickets

Athlete NFTs

Trading NFTs through licensed trading card games isn’t the only way to get your hands on sports-based NFTs. Some athletes have gone directly to market, selling NFTs on platforms such as Nifty Gateway and OpenSea.

German professional footballer Mesut Özil sold avatars on Nifty Gateway and recently retired Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady sold his own NFT collection on Autograph – an NFT marketplace Brady co-founded. Brady’s collection, which went live in December, grossed $1.3 million in under 10 minutes. Tony Hawk, Simone Biles and Wayne Gretzky are among the star athletes who have NFTs on Autograph.

Sports tickets

NFTs aren’t just for collecting, they’re also useful as digital sports tickets where the premise of a unique digital asset is especially important. NFTs could cut out scalpers selling fakes – or, conversely, tap into crypto’s 24/7 economy to spark a market that’s more efficient at pricing tickets according to demand.

And NFT tickets could one day become collectible items, much like how tickets to historic sports games can hold their value or rise over time. AlphaWallet, for instance, tokenized 20,000 FIFA tickets.

Attendees of Super Bowl LVI are not only getting to see the big game in person, but each one will receive a unique NFT based on their ticket, although it remains to be seen if they will function as more than keepsakes or evolve beyond souvenir status.

The NFL is going all-in on NFTs.

They partnered with Dapper Labs last year to launch an NFT marketplace similar to NBA Top Shot.

And all 100,000 fans that attend the Super Bowl in Los Angeles next month will receive a customized NFT with their ticket.

That seems significant.

— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) January 17, 2022

What’s next?

E-sports

Athletes may no longer be required to exert physical effort to generate huge NFT sales.

Although Steam has banned the technology, e-sport gaming teams like the New York Subliners are lining up to launch NFTs. In tandem with Moonwalk, e-sports company Andbox will also enter the NFT market on the Flow blockchain.

Un pont Ethereum-Solana s’effondre – WormHole se fait siphonner des centaines de milliers d’ETH

Le malheur peut être un pont vers le bonheur – L’annonce qui vient de tomber ce mercredi soir signifierait plutôt totalement le contraire. L’un des bridges (pont en traduction littérale) entre la blockchain Solana et la blockchain Ethereum aurait été piraté.

Un butin de plus de 326 millions de dollars

Il ne fait pas bon d’être un vers aujourd’hui. Après l’abandon du MetaWorms suite aux levées de boucliers des anti-NFT, Wormhole (trou de vers), l’un des bridges les plus utilisés pour échanger entre les deux blockchains viendrait de subir un hack retentissant de plus de 120 000 ETH.

Dans un tweet émis hier soir, le compte officiel du projet à annoncé que le bridge était actuellement en maintenance. L’équipe enquêterait sur un potentiel exploit qui aurait rendu le portail indisponible.

L’opération semble exacte car Samczsun, connu pour ses compétence en sécurité et ses qualités d’analyse à trouvé un échange entre Whormhole et le possible hackeur. Un message envoyé sur l’adresse du pirate lui verrait offrir 10 millions de dollars s’il acceptait de rendre les fonds au plus vite.

>> Jouez la sécurité, inscrivez-vous sur la référence des exchanges crypto FTX (lien affilié) <<

Des conséquences bien plus graves qu’un simple « trou » dans la trésorerie

En effet cette faille a des conséquences potentiellement sérieuses sur les deux écosystèmes. Les fonds qui ont étés retirés du coté d’Ethereum servaient de garanties, bloqué dans un smart contract, pour permettre d’utiliser leur équivalent « wrappé » sur la blockchain Solana.

Rekt enfonce le clou violement

Hors, comme le collatéral coté Ethereum a disparu, les ETH bridgés sur Solana n’ont littéralement plus aucune valeur. Ce qui impliquerait que les ETH volés creusent le trou coté blockchain Ethereum, mais qu’en plus de ça les ETH coté Solana deviennent inutilisables, créant un préjudice total de plus de 650 millions de dollars !

Prophétique, Vitalik Buterin, co-fondateur d’Ethereum avait annoncé très récemment être très sceptique par rapport aux applications inter-chaines. Notamment à cause d’importants problèmes de sécurités potentiels. On dirait bien que le génie de la blockchain avait raison… Le Journal du Coin reviendra rapidement sur le déroulé des événements pour vous donner plus de détails sur ce hack d’ores et déjà historique, et ses conséquences.

L’article Un pont Ethereum-Solana s’effondre – WormHole se fait siphonner des centaines de milliers d’ETH est apparu en premier sur Journal du Coin.

La crypto n’aura jamais cours légal en Inde

Le responsable a également averti les citoyens que la crypto privée n’est pas autorisée par le gouvernement

Le secrétaire indien aux Finances, TV Somanathan, a déclaré que les principales crypto-monnaies, dont Bitcoin et Ethereum, n’ont aucune chance d’être reconnues comme ayant cours légal dans le pays.

Le commentaire intervient un jour après que le gouvernement Modi a annoncé que l’Inde n’imposerait pas l’interdiction générale largement discutée des crypto-monnaies. Le pays imposera à la place tous les bénéfices via les transactions cryptographiques à 30%, a déclaré le ministre des Finances Nirmala Sitaraman lors de la session budgétaire du parlement.

Dans une déclaration à Asian News International, Somanathan a expliqué que si la roupie numérique soutenue par la Banque de réserve de l’Inde sera reconnue par le gouvernement, les jetons cryptographiques et les NFT resteront des actifs dont la valeur sera déterminée entre deux personnes.

« Le reste [des actifs autres que la roupie numérique] n’a pas cours légal, ne le deviendra jamais. Bitcoin, Ethereum ou NFT n’auront jamais cours légal. Vous pouvez acheter de l’or, du diamant, de la crypto, mais cela n’aura pas la valeur autorisée par le gouvernement », a déclaré Somanathan.

Il a en outre averti que la décision du gouvernement de ne pas interdire les actifs numériques ne doit pas être considérée comme soutenant l’idée que la crypto sera largement utilisée en Inde.

«Les personnes qui investissent dans la cryptographie privée doivent comprendre qu’elle n’a pas l’autorisation du gouvernement. Il n’y a aucune garantie que votre investissement réussisse ou non, on peut subir des pertes et le gouvernement n’en est pas responsable.

Cependant, malgré l’hésitation à l’égard de la cryptographie, l’Inde continue de faire de grands progrès vers la numérisation.

Hier, le pays a confirmé ses plans pour une monnaie numérique de la banque centrale, la roupie numérique, qui sera conçue pour donner un « grand coup de pouce » à l’économie numérique de l’Inde. En outre, Sitaraman a annoncé que la roupie numérique indienne serait lancée d’ici 2023.

Le gouvernement a également organisé l’année dernière un événement de formation pour les fonctionnaires sur les crypto-monnaies et leur impact sur l’économie.

L’article La crypto n’aura jamais cours légal en Inde est apparu en premier sur Coin24.

Kyoko lève 3 millions de dollars auprès d’Animoca Brands

Kyoko fournit des prêts P2P aux plates-formes NFT, aux guildes DAO-to-DAO et GameFi.

Kyoko.finance, un prêteur de jetons non fongibles (NFT) GameFi et fournisseur de crédit DAO à DAO, a levé 3 millions de dollars lors de son cycle de financement privé.

La plate-forme, qui vise également à résoudre les défis auxquels est confronté l’espace GameFi, tels que l’augmentation des coûts, a déclaré que le cycle était dirigé par le capital-risque Animoca Brands basé à Hong Kong.

Les participants comprenaient Infinity Ventures Crypto, Morningstar Ventures, NGC Ventures, Momentum 6, BlockchainSpace et Kliff Capital.

Répondre à la demande de blockchain pour les prêts à crédit

Steve Hopkins, responsable des relations avec les investisseurs chez Kyoko, a déclaré que la demande de prêts à crédit basés sur la blockchain était élevée. Il a ajouté qu’il s’agissait déjà d’une industrie de plusieurs billions de dollars, notant que l’expertise et les ressources de Kyoko sont essentielles pour voir les services offerts aux institutions basées sur la blockchain.

La société espère utiliser les fonds pour étendre sa facilité de crédit alors qu’elle s’efforce d’exploiter une opportunité relativement nouvelle et « inexploitée », a ajouté Hopkins.

Commentant le cycle de financement, le co-fondateur d’Animoca Brands, Yat Siu, a déclaré que la société « est parfaitement consciente » de la valeur des fournisseurs de crédit comme Kyoko pour l’écosystème de la blockchain et le métaverse ouvert.

À l’avenir, Kyoko espère nouer davantage de partenariats avec les DAO, les plateformes de jeu et les guildes.

L’article Kyoko lève 3 millions de dollars auprès d’Animoca Brands est apparu en premier sur Coin24.

First Mover Asia: Crypto Prices Plunge Late After Weak Meta Earnings

Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:

Market moves: Bitcoin ended its two-day winning streak with heavier selling pressure during late U.S. trading hours.

Technician’s take: BTC’s pullback could continue into the Asia trading day; initial support at $35K.

Catch the latest episodes of CoinDesk TV for insightful interviews with crypto industry leaders and analysis.

Prices

Bitcoin (BTC): $37,031 -4.5%

Ether (ETH): $2,690 -3.8%

Top Gainers

Asset
Ticker
Returns
Sector
Internet Computer
ICP
+8.4%
Computing
Ethereum Classic
ETC
+2.1%
Smart Contract Platform
Algorand
ALGO
+0.2%
Smart Contract Platform

Top Losers

Asset
Ticker
Returns
Sector
Solana
SOL
−6.2%
Smart Contract Platform
Cosmos
ATOM
−6.0%
Smart Contract Platform
Stellar
XLM
−4.3%
Smart Contract Platform

Markets

S&P 500: 4,589 +0.9%

DJIA: 35,629 +0.6%

Nasdaq: 14,417 +0.5%

Gold: $1,807 +0.3%

Market moves

Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader crypto market faced heavier selling pressure in late U.S. trading hours on Wednesday, ending the oldest cryptocurrency’s two-day winning streak.

The late afternoon price drop in crypto came after Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) delivered disappointing Q4 earnings with weak guidance for the current quarter. Meta shares dropped by more than 18% in extended trading on Wednesday.

At the time of publication, the largest cryptocurrency by market value is changing hands at $37,031, down 4.5% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data. Ether, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was trading at $2,690, off 3.8% for the same period.

According to data compiled by CoinDesk, bitcoin’s trading volume across major centralized exchanges on Wednesday continued to drop.

In broader cryptocurrency markets, most alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoin) were also in the red on Wednesday. At the time of publication, some of the day’s biggest losers were tokens associated with the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, including loopring (LRC), curve (CRV) and solana (SOL), based on data from Messari.

Ether suffered more losses than bitcoin during the late trading after a “potential exploit” of more than 120,000 ether (worth more than $326 million in total) was discovered on cross-chain bridge Wormhole. The popular bridge for connecting Solana and a few other major networks is attempting to negotiate on-chain with the hacker, as CoinDesk reported.

The event is ongoing, with Wormhole tweeting its network is « down for maintenance » as the team looks into the issue.

Technician’s take

Bitcoin Slides Below $38K; Support Above $35K

Bitcoin (BTC) failed to sustain a bounce above $38,000, although short-term buyers could remain active above the $35,000 support level. Momentum was starting to fade on intraday charts, which means the pullback could continue into the Asia trading day. At the time of publication, bitcoin was trading at about $37,000.

The relative strength index (RSI) on the daily chart approached overbought territory on Tuesday, which preceded the current pullback in price. Additionally, the 100-period moving average on the four-hour chart, currently at $38,220, continues to cap brief price gains.

Bitcoin remains in an intermediate-term downtrend since November and has consolidated between $35,000 and $38,000 over the past week. Buyers will need to make a decisive move above $40,000 in order to reverse the downtrend.

Important events

8:30 a.m. HKT/SGT (12:30 a.m. UTC): Australia imports/exports (Dec.)

8:30 a.m. HKT/SGT (12:30 a.m. UTC): Jibun (Japan) bank services purchasing managers index (Jan.)

8:30 a.m. HKT/SGT (12:30 a.m. UTC): National Bank ANZ (New Zealand) commodity prices (Jan.)

8:30 a.m. HKT/SGT (12:30 a.m. UTC): National Australia Bank’s Business Confidence (Q4/QoQ)

5 p.m. HKT/SGT (9 a.m. UTC): Markit Economics services purchasing managers index (Jan.)

CoinDesk TV

In case you missed it, here is the most recent episode of « First Mover » on CoinDesk TV:

Grayscale Launches First Future of Finance ETF (GFOF), Impact of India’s Crypto Tax Proposal, Sheila Warren Joins Crypto Council for Innovation as CEO

« First Mover » hosts spoke with CoinDesk sister company Grayscale’s Global Head of ETF Dave LaValle as the company launches its first exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the Bloomberg Grayscale Future of Finance Index. CoinDesk « Money ReImagined » co-host Sheila Warren shared her plan for the Crypto Council for Innovation as she starts her first day as its CEO. Plus, « First Mover » offered insights into India’s crypto policy change from Tanvi Ratna, founder of Policy 4.0.

Headlines

Blockchain Bridge Wormhole Suffers Possible Exploit Worth Over $250M: The popular bridge is now attempting to negotiate on-chain with the hacker.

Don’t Listen to Celebrities Shilling Crypto, Says Binance Celebrity Ad: The campaign featuring NBA star Jimmy Butler launches ahead of the Super Bowl, during which Binance rivals FTX and Crypto.com will be running ads.

NFT Platform Pixel Vault Closes $100M Investment: The funding by Velvet Sea Ventures and 01A, the venture capital firm founded by former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, will help the startup support a range of projects.

Coinbase, Genesis Highlight Massive Institutional Growth at MicroStrategy Conference: More retailers are interested in NFTs, and that can lead them to hold more crypto in their treasuries, says Coinbase Institutional’s chief.

Neopets Pitched a Metaverse Pivot. Fans Balked: For many Neopets fans, an effort to bring the early-aughts classic into Web 3 is throwing up red flags.

PayPal Shares Slump as Revenue Growth Slows: The payment giant’s quarterly revenue increased 13% in the fourth quarter, down from a 25% increase a year ago.

Longer reads

What ‘Line Goes Up’ Gets Wrong (and Right) About NFTs: A new documentary makes the case that NFTs are the top of the funnel for this whole crypto-pyramid-scheme-thing.

Today’s crypto explainer: Crypto Arbitrage Trading: How to Make Low-Risk Gains

Other voices: ‘I Forgot My PIN’: An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin

Said and heard

“The focus has clearly turned to earnings. We’ve seen strong results from big tech companies. But at some point we might have sentiment turning back to macro data and the [U.S. Federal Reserve] – we think we will oscillate between these two points. For financial markets, this means more volatility.” (Luc Filip, head of investments at SYZ Private Banking to The Wall Street Journal) … « The carnage marks one of the worst starts to a year for fundamental stock pickers in recent memory. It adds to rare losses many growth and technology hedge funds suffered last year, as expectations of higher interest rates hit many of the stocks they favor. » (The Wall Street Journal) … « There is a fairly large supply and demand gap in the Indian [non-fungible token] market. NFT creators here are proliferating while collectors remain nonexistent. Both sides paint a different picture of how they see the NFT opportunity in India. » (Tanvi Ratna for CoinDesk) … « But if you’ve ever had to transact with a Swiss crypto exchange, you probably breathed a sigh of relief upon reading the news, because getting your crypto off a Swiss exchange is a pain in the bum. » (CoinDesk columnist Leah Callon-Butler)

Neopets Pitched a Metaverse Pivot. Fans Balked

What’s crypto’s hottest play-to-earn, NFT-based pet game?

If you guessed Axie Infinity, you’re right – but the Neopets Metaverse team wants to change that. At least, that’s the stated plan.

The project, which launched last September, aims to bring the once-popular pet collecting game – which peaked in the early 2000s and has been on a slow decline ever since – into the Web 3 era.

According to an October 2021 Medium post, the Neopets Metaverse team plans to create a “vast immersive environment where players can interact” and establish a “sophisticated economy integrated on the Solana blockchain” where players can earn real money, all based on the original Neopets game.

It may sound like a dream come true for many of Neopets’ remaining die-hard players, but the Neopets Metaverse project has been received more like a nightmare. Fans of the original game have banded together to push back against the project, taking to social media and fansites to voice their complaints.

At first glance, the critics of the Neopets Metaverse project could be dismissed as blinded by nostalgia, hostile to any changes to the 25-year-old game many of them played as children. Many of the project’s detractors, too, seem inclined towards the knee-jerk negative reaction towards NFTs seen in many online communities.

The blowback has led to a changing of the guard among the project’s staff, current project leads say. And despite the Neopets Metaverse’s efforts to reform, fans still remain suspicious of the project – for what appear to be legitimate reasons.

Underwhelming NFT drop

In November 2021, the Neopets Metaverse team announced its upcoming NFT collection: 20,500 randomly generated Neopets that would, in theory, be compatible with the future Neopets metaverse.

But after getting a less-than-enthusiastic reaction from fans, the team behind the project decided to slash the number of NFTs in its genesis drop from 20,500 to 10,500, with 500 NFTs reserved for the project team.

Despite the drop, however, the collection failed to sell out – only 4,225 NFTs were sold. The rest were burned, angering fans who requested NFT buyers be airdropped the remaining supply. Buyers took to Twitter to complain about the clunky minting process, a floor price around $240-960, and bots driving up prices within seconds.

The quality and style of the NFTs was also an issue. Herdy, a pseudonymous Neopets player who says he has been playing since 2001, told CoinDesk the NFTs were “very low quality and ugly looking compared to the majority of comparable customizations available on the classic site.”

While the NFT art may have been messy, the sale netted a clean $2 million for the Neopets Metaverse project, according to fansite Jellyneo.

A string of scandals

The shoddy quality of some of the NFT art was not the biggest issue for the Neopets Metaverse team, however.

Allegations swirled online that the Neopets Metaverse project had used art generated by a Neopets fan site called Dress to Impress (DTI) as an example NFT before the drop – and even that the DTI website was used to make all of the NFTs. Users pointed to the presence of a glitch unique to the fan site’s software in the image, and it was quickly taken down and replaced without an explanation.

In an interview with CoinDesk, project manager Danning Chen declined to comment on the incident, but sent a follow-up email from the project team saying the current Neopets Metaverse team was new, having made staffing changes in December 2021 after the sale of the NFTs.

“Some of the original team members that worked on the project have left already, we are looking into what happened,” the email read.

Fans of the project have demanded an acknowledgment and an apology from the Neopets Metaverse team, as well as from its owner JumpStart – the company behind a popular series of educational computer games for children.

JumpStart, which was acquired by Chinese gaming company NetDragon in 2017, did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment, but has verified the partnership with Neopets Metaverse as an official one in other interviews and on social media.

In addition to the allegations of art theft, the culture clash between crypto, which is often harsh and irreverent, and Neopets, which has cultivated a gentle, family-friendly atmosphere through the use of strict filters, has plagued the project.

Fans including Herdy have pointed out that a lack of moderation in the project’s Discord and occasionally antagonistic social media presence have failed to keep up the wholesome and welcoming culture of the original Neopets site.

“The project has fostered homophobia, racism, and transphobia in their Discord,” Herdy wrote to CoinDesk, referring to an incident in the project’s Discord chat where an anti-gay slur was allowed to remain up for hours, and a moderator accused complaining users of “fudding,” referring to FUD, the popular crypto acronym for “fear, uncertainty and doubt.”

“[This] is especially damaging given that Neopets has a high LGBT+ membership,” Herdy added. “[They] have never apologized.”

Last October, the Neopets Metaverse Twitter account had to delete a tweet containing a “soyjak” meme mocking “NFT Hateoooors” after Twitter users complained it was offensive.

A roadmap to nowhere?

Neopets players might be willing to let bygones be bygones if the project succeeded in resuscitating their childhood favorite, but that’s looking increasingly unlikely.

In an updated roadmap released on Monday, the project team released details of its plans to take Neopets into the Web 3 era.

The project’s plans for Q1 and Q2 of 2022 are vague: hiring game developers, releasing a teaser trailer and telling fans about the plans for the game’s structure.

According to the roadmap, by Q3 an alpha version of the game will be available for those with “priority access.”

These are lofty goals for a project that, according to Chen, currently has only five full-time team members.

The lack of resources appears evident with some cursory googling. A search for “cartoon fantasy village” pulls up the backdrop of the project’s website, a Shutterstock image that can be licensed for $12. It’s unclear if the team’s current roster includes a digital artist.

What does appear to be concrete in the team’s roadmap, however, are financial milestones: in Q2, a Medium post touts plans for a “private sale of native tokens to strategic investors and advisors.” There’s also a planned “initial metaverse offering (IMO).”

By next year, the project hopes to launch the beta version of the Neopets Metaverse game, as well as hold a “primary NFT sale of Neopets lands, where Neopians can expand their Neohome on their own plot of land, interact and traverse to other lands.”

When asked how the game would be funded, the Neopets Metaverse team told CoinDesk the initial seed investment would come from the NFT sale’s proceeds, “combined with additional investments from our mother company, NetDragon Websoft,” as well as funds raised from the IMO and “private sales to investors.”

I smell rugpull

— Samuel (@damitsamiam) November 12, 2021

Who is it for?

Many Neopets fans have voiced fears that this project looks a lot like a cash grab – if not an outright rug pull waiting to happen. If at best, it’s just a failed experiment, it wouldn’t be the first in the Neopets canon.

The brand has promoted and failed to deliver on a host of projects, including a mobile app (stalled indefinitely), an animated series (stalled) and even another crypto project – Neopets CryptoQuest, a short-lived, Ethereum-based trading card game from 2018 that died after a few months.

Fans like Herdy are outraged that NetDragon’s money is being used to spin up new projects while their original beloved game is on life support, held together with spaghetti code.

“Leeching money and resources away from the rest of the Neopets brand [could] potentially lead to things like the classic site being shuttered,” Herdy told CoinDesk. “It’s quite certainly the last thing fans of the Neopets brand want.”

Coinbase, Genesis Highlight Massive Institutional Growth at MicroStrategy Conference

Speaking with MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor at the Bitcoin for Corporations conference, Head of Coinbase Institutional Brett Tejpauln said institutions now make up 50% of his company’s business, up from 10% three years ago. Alongside, Coinbase’s institutional group size has grown from about a dozen to 150. What Tejpauln began to see emerging in the last year, and what’s needed even more in coming years, is boosted liquidity as institutions need to know they can transact in large volume.

A far more recent emerging theme, he said, is retailers showing interest in their first NFT deals. This is an initial step to these players eventually holding bitcoin in their treasuries, said Tejpauln, as the NFTs are likely to lead to the companies accepting payment in crypto. Initially, they’ll instantly convert back to dollars, but as their comfort level grows, they’ll begin to keep the bitcoin on their balance sheets.

Tejpauln also took note of speedy stablecoin usage growth – from roughly $10 billion three years ago to $150 billion today. Stablecoins are important, he said, because they keep institutions in the cryptocurrency ecosystem during those times when they’re not comfortable holding bitcoin. To wit, he pointed out a marked increase in stablecoin usage alongside bitcoin’s plunge in December and January.

Taking the virtual stage a bit later was Michael Moro, CEO of digital prime brokerage Genesis, and he had a similar theme to that of Tejpauln. Asked by Saylor about rumors of an “avalanche of hedge funds” entering the Bitcoin space over the past year, Moro confirmed as much. His company’s derivatives business is about eight times larger than a year ago, he said, with borrowing against bitcoin and borrowing to buy bitcoin also showing strong growth.

Genesis is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which owns CoinDesk.

NFT Platform Pixel Vault Closes $100M Investment

NFT development platform Pixel Vault has closed a $100 million funding round, the startup announced on Wednesday.

The company said that the investment by Velvet Sea Ventures and 01A would enable it to to launch a « multi-franchise NFT development platform, » enabling creators and collectors to own digital content.“Pixel Vault projects are built with the key tenets of Web3 at the center – community empowerment, decentralized governance, and true digital ownership,” Pixel Vault founder and CEO Sean Gearin said in the announcement.Pixel Vault launched last May with a drop that included real and digital comic book characters from the CryptoPunks project. The company has a large collection of superhero and villain NFTs that it hopes to develop into a decentralized, studio-scale entertainment enterprise. It is also the creator of the MetaHero Universe, a social and gaming platform.The funding will support the development of projects across television, movies and video games, the company said. Pixel Vault said it has generated almost 100,000 ether ($286 million based on ether’s current price) in primary and secondary transactions. ”Intellectual property is the product, » Velvet Sea partner Michael Lazerow, who will join the Pixel Vault board, said in the announcement. « And Pixel Vault is building it in close partnership with its engaged community of avid collectors, of which I am a proud token-carrying member.”O1A is the venture capital firm founded by former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and former COO Adam Bain.

Nouveau record de vente en Ether (ETH) pour les NFT de Bored Ape Yatch Club

En l’espace de neuf mois, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) a réussi à s’imposer comme la principale collection de NFT du marché. Elle ne cesse d’enregistrer l’adhésion de plusieurs célébrités et les ventes à plusieurs millions de dollars. La dernière en date vient d’établir le record de vente en ETH de la collection. Les détails […]

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