Matt Bellamy’s recorded a new production of Guiding Light on Jeff Buckley’s iconic Telecaster, sold as three distinct NFTs Sunday night for a total of 40.405 ETH ($75k USD, ETH @ $1856) Photos: Suhaimi Abdullah / Getty, Guitar.com
We attended the Christie’s Art + Tech Summit: NFTs and Beyond last week and had the opportunity to hear from a slew of entrepreneurs, creators, and collectors in the space. One panel highlighted OneOf CEO Lin Dai and Mythical CEO John Linden who shared the stage to discuss how NFTs will disrupt the music and video game industries respectively.
An announcement that the OneOf launch will include an NFT of a never-before-heard piece from Whitney Houston’s vault brought out some “aahs” in unison. The company’s mission is to be a marketplace for music NFTs which are extremely easy to use and environmentally sustainable. When Lin Dai says he is going after “more than 100 million users”, it is music to our ears. Stay tuned for the launch of the platform built on Tezos and for our larger report on music NFTs, spotlighting OneOf, in the coming weeks.
Back to the Matt Bellamy pieces, they were sold as part of the relaunch of Cryptograph.io / Perpetual Altruism, a platform we have known for many years. After many drops of iconic celebrity art, the team halted Cryptograph at the end of September 2020 due to the high gas fees and energy usage of the Ethereum platform. Interestingly, instead of using another “side chain” (e.g., Polygon/Matic) the team decided to build their own solution. The block explorer went live last week, and this first drop went as smoothly as planned. The team plans to continue to mint iconic, one-of-one NFTs, which will donate the bulk of the proceeds to the artists’ charity of choice each time they change hands.
The Matt Bellamy NFT production is a great example of innovation that we haven’t seen in the past in that it truly shrinks the distance between artists and fans, and drives deeper and more meaningful engagement. As Micah Johnson, a digital artist featured on Async.Art, said during the Christie’s summit, “Buying is the new liking!” At Signum Growth Capital, we are interested in mass market adoption (>100 million users) meets crypto so we were especially happy to see media coverage from non-crypto music outlets like Rolling Stone, Guitar.com, Stereogum and Uncut.
Also, stay tuned for a new product launch from Perpetual Altruism - they are currently building a new NFT marketplace for a wide variety of markets, such as domain names, which will connect to the Polkadot ecosystem. This will enable interoperability with Ethereum and other blockchains, and will allow these products to access Polkadot’s security. OpenSea is the market leader NFT marketplace, which has also built its own side chain to address Ethereum gas fees. Note the news this morning - OpenSea just raised $100M at a $1.5B valuation!
While digital art and collectibles have garnered the majority of the press in the NFT space, we are increasingly watching the rapid development of Experiential NFTs, or NFTs that go a step further than digital trophies by providing access to exclusive products, experiences, and communities. We are closely watching artist Damien Hirst’s current sale of 10,000 works of art - they will be offered as either digital or physical in format, and priced equally. We believe this could expose a new digital preference among collectors.
In other news, the Kusama network (Polkadot’s canary network) parachain auctions continued. Khala (Phala’s canary network) has secured the fourth parachain slot on Kusama, thanks to 2759 contributors committing 132,280 KSM to its Crowdloan. The Khala/Phala teams are building a highly-scalable cloud processing platform that leverages blockchain technology to allow for large-scale adoption without sacrificing data confidentiality. The level of participation is what gets our attention - the first Kusama parachain winner, Karura (Acala’s canary network) garnered over 20,000 participants in its Crowdloan. The fifth and final of the Kusama parachain auctions ended today at 9:00 am GMT. Bifrost won the slot with over 136,817 KSM committed by 938 users. Now that the Kusama parachain auctions are a wrap, stay tuned for a similar, highly anticipated parachain rollout on Polkadot!
Many thanks for reading.
Angie Dalton & the Signum Growth Capital team
In the press -
NFTs/Digital Assets/Crypto
Large Bank in South Korea to Enter Crypto Custody: Woori Financial Group has agreed to launch a blockchain-based digital asset custody joint venture with blockchain company Coinplug. Several large Korean banks have made similar announcements in an effort to support crypto custody through joint ventures, as Korean banks cannot legally support custody of digital assets on their own. The Korean government plans to announce further regulatory measures in September.
$33 Million Have Been Taken By Ransomware Attackers: Ransomewhere data shows that about $33 million of Bitcoin has been stolen since the start of 2021. This number could rise dramatically in the near future should cybercrime syndicate, REvil, receive the $70 million it demanded from nearly 200 US companies. Research shows a 200% increase in Bitcoin related cyber-crimes since last fall.
Ronaldo’s Euro 2020 Top Scorer Trophy is Now on the Blockchain: The physical trophy that Cristiano Ronaldo received will be paired with a unique blockchain collectable on Alibaba’s centralized blockchain, AntChain.
Grayscale’s Digital Large Cap Fund Now an SEC-Reporting Company: Grayscale, the largest crypto asset manager has received approval for its Digital Large Cap Fund to report to the SEC. Importantly, investors will now be able to liquidate shares on the secondary market after six months instead of 12 twelve.
London Police Seize $250 Million in Crypto: The London Metropolitan police seized roughly $250 million in cryptocurrencies, breaking the record of $158 million seized just three weeks ago. Both seizures reflect the increasing regulatory concerns regarding money laundering with digital currencies.
Axie Infinity is Up to a New All-Time High: The in-game token of the “Pokémon-like” Axie Infinity, Axie Infinity Shard (AXS), rallied 811% from June 21 to July 16 and hit a new all time high of $29.09. In order to begin playing the game, a player must obtain three “Axies” which trade from $150- $100k.
Fidelity Grows Crypto Staff by 70%: Fidelity Digital Assets, a branch of Fidelity Investments, plans to add about 100 new employees to expand its crypto operation beyond just Bitcoin. Tom Jessop, the President of Fidelity Digital Assets, said that “Bitcoin has been the entry for a lot of institutions. It’s now really opening up a window on what else is going on in the space.”
Compass Mining Signs Deal With Oklo: Compass Mining makes purchasing and mining on Bitcoin mining machines accessible to anyone around the world, and has signed a partnership with Oklo to set up crypto mining facilities in nuclear energy facilities in the United States that will have significantly lower carbon footprints than traditional facilities.
Jack Dorsey Announces Bitcoin-Focused Development Platform: Jack Dorsey, a long time Bitcoin advocate, has announced plans for his company, Square, to create a platform to increase accessibility to decentralized financial services.
UK‘s FCA Plans $15M Campaign to Warn About Crypto: The FCA plans to launch a $15 million marketing campaign to warn younger investors about the risks that come with certain investments, including cryptocurrencies.
PayPal Raises Limit on Bitcoin Purchases to $100,000 Per Week: The online payment firm, PayPal, raised the Bitcoin purchase limit on its platform from $20,000 to $100,000 weekly. There is also no longer a yearly limit.
Esports
Soccer Star Mason Mount named a Combat Gaming Ambassador: The Chelsea Football Club player has been named the official brand ambassador of the esports organization Combat Gaming. He will also host Combat Gaming’s new esports show, set to launch this summer.
League of Legends’ US Championship Welcomes In-Person Fans: This year’s League ofLegends Championship Series finale, kicking off on August 28 in New Jersey will allow a live audience to attend the tournament.
Tencent’s New Facial Scans Will Catch Kids Playing Late at Night: In China, minors cannot legally play video games past 10pm. Tencent is launching a new facial recognition technology which will scan gamers faces in hopes of catching minors breaking this law, in an effort to prevent video game addiction.
Anheuser-Busch InBev Partners With Optic Gaming: The Belgian beverage company InBev has announced a partnership with OpTic Gaming to launch an esports viewing platform called TheCooldown.gg. The platform allows fans of esports teams to meet up for watch parties or put on events at local restaurants and hangout spots.
Gen.G Partners with Galorants for All-Women Valorant Competition: The esports organization, Gen.G, has announced its partnership with Galorants to launch several all-women Valorant tournaments. The series is aimed at the organization’s 13,000 members who are trying to get women more involved in esports.
Video Games
Google Partners with Unity to Make Chrome More Gamer Friendly: Unity has revealed a partnership with Google to expand the gaming capabilities of android devices on the Chrome operating system.
Niantic Develops “Pokemon-Go” Style Game: Niantic, the company which created Pokemon Go, has announced that it will be launching a similar-style Transformers game, Transformers: Heavy Metal. Like Pokemon-Go, Heavy Metal will be an AR enabled, location-based game.
Study Shows Video Game Influencers Have Most Loyal Fans: A study conducted by Tubular Labs revealed that video game influencers have some of the most loyal viewers in the world. YouTube viewers that watch gaming content are 53% more loyal than average website audience members. Similarly, when the top 1,000 influencers were compared to the top 1,000 media companies, gamers had 17% higher loyalty levels.
First WNBA Player on Variant Cover of NBA 2K22: NBA 2K released some possible options for the 2022 release of the game and one of the cover options includes a WNBA player, Candace Parker. This is the first time ever that a woman has made the cover of a 2K game. Although the gameplay itself will not be changed by the cover, women are becoming a much larger part of the gaming space, and this change reflects corporate interest in releasing gender agnostic games.
Epic's Tim Sweeney calls Steam Deck an 'Amazing Move by Valve': Valve released a new gaming system called the Steam Deck that will run SteamOS by default, but will be an open platform allowing players to download the operating system of their choice. Some tout open-source and cross platform gaming as the future of gaming.
Other Emerging Tech Fund Raising and Acquisition
iQoo Z3 Gaming Smartphone Released in India: The Chinese manufacturer iQoo has released their new iQoo Z3 into India’s smartphone gaming market. The mobile gaming market has boomed with the release of mobile games like Roblox and Fortnite, and this highlights a push to capitalize on further potential growth.
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