Brand Web3 Activity
Nike Commits to Video Game Fashion via .SWOOSH
On Friday .SWOOSH laid out their plans for the coming year announcing a focus on the joy of collecting and unlocking rather than speculating over a transaction
To achieve this goal they announced a new line from .SWOOSH “Nike In Game Wearables.
.SWOOSH users will be able to link their game accounts to their . SWOOSH accounts and virtually wear collectibles in games
In the past players have bought Nike products in game, but his new feature allows Nike to control the customer experience across every game they are licensed to from a central hub
Additionally, they called out that they would not be building a marketplace, but would make their items tradable on secondary markets
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Visa Launches Web3 Loyalty Product
Payments giant Visa has been experimenting with web3 for some time, and is now launching a web3 based loyalty solution
Similar to startups in the space, the platform allows brands to offer branded wallets that can receive points and digital collectibles to engage consumers
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X Kills NFT Enabled PFPs
X has long been the platform favored by crypto and NFT enthusiasts alike, but just dropped a feature that allowed users to prove their ownership of an NFT via a hexagon PFP
As of now X has made no public statement as to why they have rolled back this two year old feature, however X has scrubbed all mention of the feature from its website and premium marketing offerings
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FOX Corp Launches Blockchain Platform
Fox Corp, the conglomerate behind Fox News and Fox Media, has partnered with Polygon to launch a blockchain platform that tracks how their content is being used online
The protocol is currently called “Verify” and will be a B2B product whose main purpose is to combat AI enabled disinformation while still allowing AI language models to use their media for learning
A company can register its media via Verify and grant usage rights to AI platforms
The media is cryptographically signed allowing users to easily trace it back to the original source
Over 89k pieces of media were logged on the first day of the public beta
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Mercari to Accept Bitcoin
Mercari is a Japanese ecommerce platform with 22 million monthly users and recently announced that they will accept Bitcoin as a payment option
Mercari is not doing this via a third party, but rather building the internal infrastructure to custody BTC and swap to Yen if preferred
Mercari has also confirmed that in the future the platform will incorporate NFT’s but the timeline has not been made public
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Sotheby's Hosts First Curated Ordinals Auction
Sotheby’s will be hosting a curated auction featuring some of the most prominent artists working on Ordinals
Their first foray into the space will include art from crypto natives, fine artists, and even a piece made by Bugatti
Aside from art Sotheby’s is also auctioning Rare Satoshis which are fragments of Bitcoin that have specific relevance because of when they were mined or who they were mined by
Rare Satoshi’s are not inherently different than any other piece of Bitcoin; the significance put upon them is entirely prescribed to them by collectors. The nature of Rare Satoshi’s makes them not well known and an incredibly niche collectible so it’s surprising to see Sothebys include them in their lots. Nevertheless they are expected to sell for 50,000-120,000$.
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Native Web3
Azuki Announces Narrative Project
Azuki is attempting to expand its IP beyond their NFT collection and has announced it will be releasing a three part narrative anthology series this year
Each part will have its own self contained team of directors and character artists and focusing on the storylines
The anthology will be helmed by Creative Producer Goro Taniguchi who has had wide success in the anime genre in Japan
The casting will be lead by Japanese talent agency Dentsu and is set to release in 2024
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Forgotten Runes Wizard Cult Sells Out Ordinal Collection
Forgotten Runes Wizard Cult are an OG NFT collection that has expanded into gaming, comics and more
FRWC has a complex ecosystem made up of many collections and a community led on-chain lore system call the Book of Lore
Recently a lot of the NFT attention has been on the burgeoning Ordinals scene which are NFTs inscribed onto Bitcoin
Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult were not keen to be left to the wayside and released a collection of Ordinals titled “Shadows” that sold out in under 1 hour
The collection was sold as a ascending bucket auction and the maximum price was hit for each piece netting Forgotten Runes Wizard Cult over $5.5M
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OpenSea Announces Self Custody Wallet
OpenSea is attempting to make buying and selling NFTs more accessible to mainstream consumers via the implementation of a simpler self-custody wallet
What makes the wallet unique compared to others like Metamask is that users will not need browser extensions, seed phrases, or to transfer any crypto
Users can create a wallet just by submitting their email address and setting up 2FA
Further, users will not need to fund the wallet with cryptocurrency to make transactions OpenSea already supports credit and debit card purchases
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AI News
George Carlin Standup Special Release (Post-Mortem) By AI
A comedy based AI model trained on George Carlin’s material put together a 1 hour long special
The video leverages his voice and has him talking about current events well after his death
The special has seen wide reach but was heavily criticized by his daughter
Tesla Releases Footage of Optimus
While most think of Tesla as a car company, Elon Musk has stated that it is an AI company first and that it’s primary product may ultimately be something else
This idea came further into focus as footage of the upcoming Tesla Optimus robot was release
While the task of folding laundry may not be the most exciting feature, we can expect that the AI will rapidly improve
“The robot is designed for tasks that are unsafe, repetitive, or boring for humans. Musk noted that Optimus isn't yet capable of autonomously performing tasks like shirt folding but aims for it to achieve such autonomy in various environments.”
Metaverse / Gaming
Futureverse is Building a Metaverse for Ready Player One
Ready Player One was one of the first IP’s that introduced the idea of a metaverse to the mainstream through the book and eventual Spielberg movie adaptation
Now they are teaming up with a metaverse platform called Futureverse to bring the idea to life
The metaverse is being developed by the Ready Player One author and film producer in conjunction with Futureverse cofounders
The Metaverse currently being called “The Readyverse” and aims to be interoperable with other worlds
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Crypto
Bitcoin ETF Approved
After an extremely dramatic couple of days, 11 Bitcoin ETF products have been approved by the SEC allowing retail investors easier access to BTC exposure via their banks
In the first day of trading volume has exceeded 4.5 billion dollars breaking analysts’ expectations
While the SEC’s hand was more or less forced, they made it clear that they do not think investors should put their money into these products… Further, industry titans like Vanguard and Merrill Lynch have blocked their customers from accessing any and all Bitcoin ETF’s (and are seeing backlash as a result)
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SEC’s X Account Hacked
In the leadup to the Bitcoin ETF approvals, the SEC’s official X account was hacked and used to prematurely announce the approval of the Bitcoin ETF
The compromised X account was swiftly brought back under the control of the SEC however by then billions of dollars of market fluctuations had occurred
Many assumed the SEC had accidentally prematurely posted a drafted tweet as a top government agency being hacked seemed unlikely, however X did an internal security review and confirmed that their account had indeed been compromised
Surprisingly, the SEC had failed to set up two factor authentication making the account more vulnerable to a hack
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BTC ETF Marketing Approaches
With 11 ETF products hitting the markets at the same time, issuers are trying to distinguish their products from a fees perspective but also in the marketing of it
Some like Bitwise and Van Eck are leaning into the is leaning into web3 culture
Bitwise is using the ticker HODL for it’s product
And Van Eck is adding a charitable twist to their future potential profits pledging 5% of all profits to the open source Bitcoin developers at Brink
Others like BlackRock are targeting a non-web3 audience and highlighting the security of their product
Notably, Fidelity is the only issuer that will be custodying it’s own Bitcoin while the rest are working with Coinbase and Gemini
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