Author: Fortune Magazine
The average monthly trading volumes of NFTs jumped from $64 million in the first half of 2021 to more than $750 million in the second half. Now the NFT space is a $41 billion industry with thousands being traded on a daily basis. NFT stands for non-fungible token, which basically means that it’s a unique digital asset that belongs to you and you alone. The most popular NFTs right now include artwork and music, but can also include videos and even tweets. NFTs can be stand-alone, or they can be part of a collection, which can also allow their owners to feel as though they are joining an…
On Thursday, the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill to legalize cryptocurrency, preparing a framework for the regulation and management of digital assets like Bitcoin. “This will legalize crypto exchangers and cryptocurrencies, and Ukrainians could protect their assets from possible abuse or fraud,” Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov announced on Twitter. Ukraine’s parliament previously passed a law legalizing cryptocurrency last September, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vetoed the bill the following month. Zelenskyy said Ukraine couldn’t afford to create a whole new regulatory system for managing crypto. The new version of the Law on Virtual Assets, which passed…
We all know the saying, “Life imitates art,” but that doesn’t make it any less strange when life imitates the art on a satire site. Just as The Simpsons has eerily predicted many modern-day head-scratchers, Cracked.com found one of the prophecies it included in a video parodying NFTs to be right on the nose. After warning artists that many NFTs were made from stolen art, someone stole the fake NFTs in the video and posted them for sale on the OpenSea marketplace. The parody-to-theft time frame was about one week. It took OpenSea about three days to remove the artwork, said Jordan Breeding, who edited the video. It all started…
The rapper/entertainer/crypto enthusiast has announced plans to make Death Row the first NFT music label. Snoop bought the label, which was founded by Dr. Dre and Suge Knight, among others, and which launched his career, last week. The announcement took place on social media channel Clubhouse. “Death Row will be an NFT label,” said Snoop. “We will be putting out artists through the metaverse…Just like we broke the industry when we was the first independent to be major, we want to be the first major in the metaverse.” Snoop (né Calvin Broadus Jr.) is hardly a newcomer to NFTs. Last September,…
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently recognized the potential of Web3 technologies such as NFTs to create an additional revenue stream for Youtubers. Just last May, one of YouTube’s most viral videos of all time, “Charlie Bit My Finger,” sold for $760,999 as an NFT via Origin Protocol. After being auctioned as an NFT, the original video was deleted from Youtube. This was a wake-up call: YouTube is missing out on potential opportunities to profit from NFT sales. It’s also at the risk of losing some of its most viral videos that could follow a similar trajectory. YouTubers have experienced their likeness being used without…
In the past week, Bitcoin and Ethereum sunk and then popped, both currently trading roughly flat as of Tuesday evening, after having pared some losses from a precipitous decline that began in mid-November (both are still down over 30%). Amid a longer wild ride stretching over several years, Leigh Drogen, general partner and CIO at Texas-based digital assets quantitative hedge fund Starkiller Capital, whose current assets under management are $50 million, thinks the “HODL” (or hold) approach to investing in crypto isn’t the best strategy. In fact, he’s even called it “dangerous” before. “It all depends on knowing how you’ll behave when certain things happen in…
Micah Johnson may have never become an NFT artist if he hadn’t taken a paint and sip class in 2016 that revealed his creative side. Johnson is a former professional baseball player who was active in the league from 2015 to 2017, playing for the Chicago White Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and The Atlanta Braves. After multiple injuries, including a fractured wrist and a torn shoulder, Johnson retired from professional baseball to become a visual artist in 2018. With a child on the way in 2019, Johnson felt a newfound urgency to try innovative new ways to sell his art, and stumbled upon NFTs.…
Cryptocurrency, once a niche industry unknown to most Americans, will make arguably its biggest leap into the mainstream this weekend as a barrage of related ads debut at the Super Bowl. Companies in the crypto industry, like exchanges FTX and Crypto.com, have forked over millions for 30-second ad slots to be aired during the face off between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. Super Bowl broadcaster NBC said some ad spots have sold for up to $7 million per 30 seconds, a 27% jump from last year. But the crypto industry, unlike other Super Bowl advertisers, has its own vocabulary that is unfamiliar…
NFTs seem to be everywhere as of late, whether being touted by celebrities ranging from Justin Bieber to Heidi Klum, but data show they account for just 1% of the overall cryptocurrency market. Nonfungible tokens have a combined value of about $16 billion, a sliver of the roughly $2 trillion ecosystem of thousands of digital assets, according to an analysis of NFTGo data by crypto information and research firm Messari. That’s even with some selling for millions of dollars. “The market can be saturated in some regards, but it can also be small compared to where it will be in several years from now,” said Mason Nystrom, senior research analyst…
Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies plunged following the release of the latest consumer price index, which showed an increase of 0.6% in January and an annual inflation rate of 7.5%, much higher than analysts were expecting—and the biggest gain since February 1982. In just over 30 minutes, Bitcoin fell more than $1,600, while Ethereum dropped more than $150, a 5% plunge in the blink of an eye. Other cryptocurrencies, including Solana, Cardano, and even Dogecoin and Shiba Inu also saw immediate similar cliff-like plunges—and were continuing to trend downward as of 9:15 a.m. ET. To put those numbers into perspective, Bitcoin saw its market capitalization…