As predicted here on NFTCulture, Beeple, has officially announced the opening of his own studio, Beeple Studios, on March 11th in Charleston. This event marks the two-year anniversary of the sale of his piece “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days,” which sold for $69 million at Christie’s and brought significant attention to the digital art space. The studio opening represents the progress of the digital art space and provides an opportunity to showcase additional artists and work to a wider audience. Additionally, the price action for Beeple’s NFTs has started moving, with one of the semi-affordable NFTs, Into The Ether, experiencing a slight decrease to 23 ETH.
Yuga and BAYC do it again. Game Launching Today
The Bored Ape Yacht Club has opened the claim for sewer passes, which is the only way to access the game Dookey Dash. Apes have until Feb 8th to claim their pass. The sewer pass has generated a lot of hype, with over 15,000 sewer passes minted to date. While rumors of a massive dividend fell short, the project has generated nearly 8,000 ETH in around 24 hours. The game launches later this morning, so it will be interesting to see how the hype develops. In terms of comparison, the Sewer Pass is already the 6th biggest project over the last 30 days, behind BAKC, Mutant Hound Collars, MAYC, BAYC, and Punks. Yuga is still supreme.
Rarible Pivots
Rarible, a popular marketplace, has launched a tool to help NFT creators set up bespoke marketplaces for their projects and collections. Rarible’s community marketplace builder allows any NFT collection owner to create their own marketplace easily, with no coding required and no fees charged by Rarible. This feature was originally launched for Ethereum in August and has now been extended to Polygon. Rarible’s community marketplaces also have built-in liquidity via orders aggregated across other NFT marketplaces (i.e. OpenSea, X2Y2, LooksRare, Rarible). So if a collection is listed on OpenSea, those same orders would be automatically displayed on the community marketplace.
Nat Geo Stuggles on Matic and KYC
The challenge of verifying the identity of customers, known as Know Your Customer (KYC), continues to be a challenge for NFT projects. Large companies entering the space are struggling to overcome this challenge. National Geographic, for example, has not been able to sell a significant portion of its 1888 NFTs. This can be attributed to a combination of factors, such as KYC preventing people from signing up and the fact that the project is on Polygon, which may not be the best platform for art and photography. National Geographic’s genesis NFT collection “GM: Daybreak Around the World” has received unfavorable reviews as it has only sold 13% of its collection.
Crypto FUD heating up again
In the crypto world, Crypto.com has recently reported that 425 million people now hold some form of crypto assets, a significant increase of nearly 40% in the last year. This trend is expected to lead to greater adoption of cryptocurrencies and faster progress towards the goal of having a billion people hold crypto assets. On other news, Coinbase has announced that it will be shutting down its operations in Japan and has given a date for customers to withdraw their assets from the custodial system. Additionally, according to reports, Genesis may be approaching a bankruptcy filing. The U.S. has charged crypto exchange Bitzlato with money laundering, accusing them of $700 million. The price of BTC and ETH dropped to $20,700 and $1,532 respectively. Equities also closed lower. Furthermore, The US Treasury and The Justice Department have accused Bitzlato of laundering funds linked to illicit Russian finance and its founder has been arrested. According to officials, the company hosted wallets of criminals buying and selling illegal goods.
