Happy 2022!
Damn, what a ride. We started off the year with a rise in almost all NFTs across platforms - Ethereum, Solana, Polygon. You name it and it’s pumped! If you’ve been on Crypto Twitter all week, you’d see many people selling out of their high-profile NFT plays with sick gains and talking about how much NFTs have changed their life.
However, on a macro outlook, most of what happened in the first half of the week got overshadowed in the second half of the week when crypto decided to take a dump on all of us amidst speculations of the Fed’s talk of increasing interest rates and liquidations of leveraged positions.
Nonetheless, it’s been a pretty eventful week for NFTs if you’ve been looking past the smoke and mirrors. Without further ado, the 6 main things that happened this week.
6 things this week.
NFT trading volume is too damn high!
Granted the chart presented by @farokh only shows NFT volume for Ethereum, a look across the pond for Solana NFTs on Solanalysis shows a 10% increase in traded volume across the past week.
Each of the bars in the graph below denotes a day. And the bar that seems to go beyond the chart? Yeah, that’s the second day of 2022 for traded volume - $243 million in a day!
Sunday’s rally marks the third-best day of trading to date on OpenSea, behind the record of nearly $323 million set on 29 August 2021, and $267 million the following day.
Mega Mutant Serum Madness
Starting off the new year with some BAYC news, Deepak (@dt_chain) bought a Mega Mutant Serum for 1542.069 ETH after upping it from 1111 ETH when the seller did not accept the offer. That’s $5m on a jpeg (when he bought it, not prices today xD), or 10 $500,000 houses, or many burgers to last you a lifetime.
There’s only one more Mega Mutant Serum… who knows what it’ll fetch! It’s wild just thinking how the serums were a free airdrop.
Eminem x BAYC
Guess who’s back, back again? Bored Ape’s back, tell a friend.
Eminem capitulates and joins the Bored Ape crew for $450,000. However, this isn’t his first NFT rodeo. For those uninitiated, he’s bought a whole lot more under his Opensea moniker Shady_Holdings.
The icing on the cake of it all was @Gee__Gazza managing to sell his ape to Eminem. For months, GeeGazza was hoping to sell Eminem his ape as he felt that it embodied the rapper’s style of ‘hat and gold chain’.
I’m living in a simulation. Thank you @Eminem for buying my ape and joining the club! Madness. Let me write a lyric in your next single 🤣Back in November, he even said “I still think Eminem is destined to buy my Bored Ape one day.”. I guess dreams do come true if you think about it hard enough!
Metaverse Fashion Week
You’ve heard of Paris Fashion Week and New York Fashion Week. How about the Metaverse Fashion Week? Decentraland announced this week that the 4-day event will be hosted in collaboration with the luxury marketplace, UNXD.
The event will feature an array of different immersive experiences for its viewers, from catwalk shows and showcases, to pop-up shops and after-parties.
Will you attend?GameStop working on NFT marketplace for gaming
On 6 Jan, the Wall Street Journal reported that GameStop will be entering the NFT and crypto markets in 2022 as part of its turnaround plan.
GameStop is launching a division to develop an NFT marketplace and establish cryptocurrency partnerships, according to people familiar with its plansThis might not have come as a surprise for some keen-eyed job seekers spotting their job advertisements, hinting at a possible entry into crypto. As part of this plan, they have reported hiring more than 20 people thus far to run its new NFT section.
Their new platform is looking to allow for buying, selling, and trading of video game NFTs such as clothes, and weapons.
Just like how we’re trying to make it after many hard years, seems like GameStop has seen the light and see crypto as a way to reverse all their years of losses 👀
Square Enix outlines plans for blockchain gaming
Yeah, another one joins the fray. Square Enix’s President, Yosuke Matsuda, penned an open letter for the New Year, highlighting that the company is currently exploring the potential of a massive gaming metaverse and the NFTs required for its ecosystem to work.
The letter touches upon the possibility of having a token-based economy, and robust play-to-earn gaming mechanics, building centralised and decentralised games. Matsuda also mentioned how 2021 was “NFTs: Year One”, and how digital goods will one day become as familiar as dealings with physical goods.
The letter is largely sobering in helping understand how Square Enix recognises how NFTs can be a game-changer but where their place is in the whole metaverse play. It is also one of the few companies, as shown in the letter, that have publicly acknowledged that some of its current players and users might not take the whole NFT and metaverse play too well.
Thanks for reading!
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