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- NFT market grew throughout August as new and old projects accounted for billions of dollars in collective bargaining volume.
- Recent NFT trends include generative artwork, the division of valuable collectibles, and the involvement of big brands in established communities.
NFTs are experiencing a fierce renaissance.
Having generated more than $ 2.5 billion in sales in the first half of 2021, the sales volume of these blockchain-based digital deeds has tumbled off a cliff amid mounting criticism of the environmental impact of Ethereum, the blockchain network where most of this action is taking place (and the criticism that it was all a bubble).
Fast forward to the past few weeks, and NFT are really back, with a plethora of new designs and trends making headlines. se are the hottest trends in the NFT industry that are fueling the discussion about the new cryptocurrency subculture and changing millions of dollars in capital.
1. Membership in a club: Bored Apes
NFT enthusiasts can point to CryptoPunks as the main brand of NFT. But fashion is nothing but fickle, and earlier this month a new contender for the NFT crown emerged. NFT world has gone gaga for Bored Ape Yacht Club, a series of NFTs depicting (bored) monkeys in various facial expressions.
y’re also selling for a lot of money – a single Bored Ape NFT sold for $ 2.25 million ETH this week, with the collection moving over $ 400 million in total volume to date, for CryptoSlam. Many more than 100 NFT Bored Ape are currently being auctioned at Sotheby’s, with an estimated loot of up to $ 18 million once all is said and done.
Monkey owners make their monkey their profile of, making it a status symbol, but they also get a ton of perks with their property: access to a Discord chat for other owners (including characters like the NBA star Steph Curry); access to merchandising items reserved for owners only (such as streetwear brand Hundreds); and additional free NFTs from BAYC, such as Mutant Apes and Bored Ape Kennel Club.
It’s about community. Apes and other collections (Pudgy Penguins, Weird Whales, Gutter Cat Gang) look like membership clubs and are leading the second wave of NFT purchases.
In short, NFTs represent, for some, a unique moment in history and culture. If Visa is right (scroll down) and NFTs really are, I am later in a series of “historical artifacts of commerce,” not surprisingly these digital images are rekindling interest.
2. Legacy OG NFTs: EtherRocks, CryptoPunk
If you’re an NFT skeptic who shakes your head at the idea that images of monkeys and penguins sell for thousands of dollars, look the other way now.
EtherRocks is a 100 NFT series with royalty free rock clip art. Other than color differences, they are all the same. However, these pictures of cartoon rocks, yes rocks, were selling for over $ 100,000 in early August. By the end of the month, they were exchanging hands for millions of dollars.
fame of EtherRocks is twofold. First, these NFTs were inspired by the classic Pet Rock toy craze that was prevalent in the 1970s. Second, they have a venerable vintage, as they are among the first non-expendable tokens created in 2017 and with only 100 available, they have become a fashionable property among NFT collectors.
CryptoPunks remain the gold standard in NFT ownership (for now) for the same reason: their age. Punks have been around since 2017 and they have held their value. y are “old” by NFT standards.
And as with Bored Apes, a punk avatar is a status symbol, to the point where punk owners can even rent their avatars to others for “social reporting.”
3. Big brands are buying: Visa, Budweiser
During the latest wave of NFT craze, companies began putting together brand artwork depicting toilet paper rolls or wads and minting them as NFT.
But in the second NFT boom, brands are doing something slightly different and considerably more interesting: they’re buying existing NFTs, rather than making their own (which most people don’t want).
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Last week, Visa Announced the purchase of a CryptoPunk NFT for 50 ETH (approximately $ 165,000) with the goal of adding it to its collection of ‘historical trade artifacts’.
“Today, as we enter a new era of NFT commerce, Visa welcomes CryptoPunk # 7610 to our collection,” Visa tweeted on August 23.
Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s chief cryptocurrency officer, is extremely optimistic about NFTs and believes they are here to stay. “NFTs are gaining momentum as digital sports memorabilia,” he said in a prepared statement, adding that Visa expects a “wide range of new cases in the coming years.”
Visa isn’t the only well-known brand that NFT has bought lately.
Budweiser also bought a standalone NFT last week. beer giant changed his profile picture from to an incomplete NFT beer rocket that he bought for $ 26,000, roughly 8 ETH at the time.
NFT itself was part of the Rocket Factory NFT series, designed by an artist named Tom Sachs.
Things didn’t go as well for Budweiser as they did for Visa: Blockchains are extremely public and once a wallet is identified as belonging to a particular individual (or brand), it is open to all. Budweiser found his Ethereum wallet awash with weird and wonderful collectibles, including a scrawl called ‘Minimalist Dust. »
4. Fractional NFT
Fractional NFTs have been around for a few months, but have gained prominence in recent days.
While cryptocurrency billionaires gleefully buy Bored Apes and CryptoPunk, those six- and seven-figure NFTs are well outside the cryptocurrency user’s average price range. But unlike traditional works of art, it is possible to divide an NFT, dividing it into several (cheaper) parts that the less well-off can buy.
Many cryptocurrency users now join decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that specialize in buying NFT, to gain exposure to this new asset class. (y also have fractioned the original Doge meme that inspired Dogecoin.)
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However, fractional ownership has another cost. According to SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce, fractional NFTs veer too close to unregistered securities.
“ division allows more people to have a slice of the investment pie. However, companies offering fractional NFTs to any investor may not have realized the regulatory implications of this, ”said Philipp Pieper, co-founder of Swarm Markets in a statement shared with Decipher.
5. NFT games: Axie Infinity, Supdrive
No “hottest NFT trend” would be complete without mentioning gaming NFTs, a subculture of a subculture that is gaining attention in cryptocurrencies.
Based on Ethereum Axie Infinity quickly became the most prominent and successful crypto game, racking up more than $ 1.6 billion in NFT transaction volume since June — more than any other NFT collection or project. It is a monster fighting game where the creatures themselves are NFT and even have to play. Players then earn rewards in crypto tokens, which may be enough to fuel a living wage in some countries.
Even with a minimum total purchase cost of several hundred dollars in ETH, that hasn’t stopped the game from growing, now it has. more than a million active users every day. No other crypto game comes close to Axie’s recent push, although NFT-led fantasy football game Sorare has an avid fanbase and the upcoming 3D metaverse game Sandbox also has great potential leading partners / investors.
Elsewhere in the world of NFT games, Dom Hofmann, co-creator of the Vine video platform, leads Supdrive, an NFT video game project that plans to make every available NFT a playable video game, a ‘fantasy chain console. ,” If you want.
6. Generative art: art blocks
Believe it or not, a blockchain can not only host the token that represents a title deed to a work of art, but actually create the work of art itself.
This is the premise of NFT’s burgeoning market for generative artwork, where a script or algorithm stored on a blockchain produces original and unique artwork during the minting process. Art Blocks is by far the biggest player in the space.
Ethereum-based initiative encompasses a wide range of individual drops from various artists, spanning a wide range of artistic styles and approaches and almost everything has been on the rise as of late. Art Blocks posted $ 583 million worth of trading volume in August alone, as collectors created a frenzy around the new drops and paid the highest dollar for after-market pieces.
A single NFT Art Blocks from Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers collection sold for $ 5.66 million in ETH in late August to Starry Night Capital, a new NFT-focused investment fund launched by Three Arrows Capital. Earlier that week, a piece of Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza project went for $ 3.3 million in ETH.
Meanwhile, an earlier smaller generative graphics project called Autoglyphs, from the makers of CryptoPunks Larva Labs, has seen more individual NFT sales in excess of $ 1 million lately.
7. Building Collective Worlds: Loot
This is a trend that is currently driven by a single project, but that has already had a huge impact and could be very influential in the future.
Loot is an NFT-led project of the aforementioned Dom Hofmann, and within it, there are only a series of lists of imaginary weapons and equipment from the fantasy world. That is all. re is no work of art or direction, no company or creative force that dictates its use. But this is intentional.
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Hofmann released these lists to the world (free) as a request in late August, and the community has already responded by developing a wide range of tools, spin-off projects, guilds, and other initiatives to enrich something else. Is it ultimately something like a full-blown fantasy game? A decentralized intellectual property?
It’s too early to tell – literally a week has passed since the time of writing this article. But the crypto community is buzzing about the possibilities, plus the Loot NFT listings are in high demand – one sold for $ 954,000 in ETH, and there has already been $ 159 million worth of Trading Volume for the total of 8,000 NFTs. . What comes next depends on the collective imagination of the community.
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