Category: Crypto Art

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Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs Social media

Twitter Will Allow Users to Buy and Sell NFTs Through Tweets

NFTs are set to become an even more prominent part of the Twittersphere, with Twitter sharing news today that it’s making it possible for NFT images and details to appear in tweets for the first time.   

Twitter’s development team announced that tweeting links to some NFTs —from select NFT marketplaces— will now show a larger picture and useful details like the artwork name and its creator. 

Potential Boom For NFT Sales

Not only will Twitter users be able to visually showcase their NFTs more easily, the new feature includes a link to marketplace listings, which could significantly boost sales and the value of the NFT market more broadly. 

NFT marketplaces included in the test include Rarible, Magic Eden, Dapper Labs, and Jump.trade.

Twitter is a popular playground for crypto and web3 enthusiasts, with Twitter’s own trends report released in March 2022 showing a huge jump in tweeted conversations on topics including NFTs, DeFi, DApps, and DAOs.

Twitter Developing for Dynamic Experiences 

Twitter began testing its customisable tweet formatting feature called Tweet Tiles in August this year with the accounts of major news outlets The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. In introducing Tile Tweets, Twitter said: “These formats are designed to easily engage with content and make your timeline more dynamic and visual.” 

This latest move to include embedded NFTs in Tweet Tiles expands the social media platform’s support for NFTs following its work earlier this year to allow users to use NFTs from their collections as their Twitter profile picture.

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Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

Justin Bieber and Paris Hilton Called Out for Shilling NFTs

US consumer watchdog group Truth in Advertising (TINA.org) has called out a list of 19 celebrities, including socialite Paris Hilton and pop star Justin Bieber, for shilling NFTs.

TINA alleges the promotion of NFTs on social media by big accounts creates a space that is “rife with deception”.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/celebrities-warning-letters-nft-ftc
Paris Hilton (above) is on the list of NFT-shilling celebrities warned by TINA.

TINA Warns of ‘Undue Influence’

All 19 celebrities on the list have now received a letter from TINA reminding them that failing to “disclose material connections” on their promotions is in violation of US Federal Trade Commission guidelines.

Only 17 of the letters were sent out this week. Paris Hilton was one of those 17, having been extremely active about her NFT-related ventures of late. However, actor/producer Reese Witherspoon and Justin Bieber, an investor in the inBetweeners NFT project, received their letters in June. Bieber’s legal team has since denied wrongdoing yet vowed to update the posts.

The point TINA is working to make is that celebrities can unduly influence the value of collections in pitching them to impressionable would-be investors.

https://truthinadvertising.org/team/bonnie-patten/

When it comes to NFTs, some celebrities are able to take financial risks due to their wealth, but many vulnerable consumers don’t have that luxury … Consumers deserve to understand the full picture behind a celebrity endorsement so they can make fully informed decisions on whether or not to invest in NFTs.

Bonnie Patten, executive director, Truth in Advertising

There is immense volatility and financial risk for fans of celebrities who choose to invest in speculative digital assets without knowing all the details, TINA says. While the 19 letters dispatched serve as a gentle reminder, TINA suggests it will take the matter further if celebrities are not more careful about how they promote their NFT interests.

Who Else Got Called Out?

Also on the list of celebrities who received the notice were rapper Snoop Dogg and pop culture icon Madonna, both of whom have been well immersed in the world of NFTs of late. In September last year, Snoop revealed that he owned US$17 million in NFTs when he announced he was the creative mind behind the Cozomo de’ Medici Twitter account, explaining his reasoning in creating an alter ego.

And who can forget Madonna’s recent collaboration with artist Beeple on a collection of NFT ‘soft porn‘? The series featured multiple animated videos of “Madonna-as-mother” in virtual-reality simulations in which she “births” robotic centipedes, butterflies, and even a tree. It was a collection that left nothing to the imagination.

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Blockchain Crypto Art Crypto News Flow NFTs Social media

FLOW Pumps 50% Amid Instagram NFT Integration in 100 Countries  

A new Instagram feature that lets people post NFTs minted on the Flow blockchain saw the value of the FLOW token surge over 50 percent within 24 hours.

FLOW rose from less than US$2 on August 4 to US$2.98 the following day after social media giant Meta announced its support for digital collectibles minted on the blockchain. 

So far, the rally has been sustained, with FLOW’s price sitting at US$2.89 at the time of writing – however, it’s still down over 93 percent from its all-time high of US$42.40 in April 2021.

Expanded NFT Integrations on Instagram 

Meta began testing a feature to let Instagram users in the US upload NFTs at no cost in May, with support for crypto art minted on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. Meta said that being able to showcase NFTs would help creators build a broader audience and more monetisation opportunities.

The company’s latest announcement opens up the feature to users in 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and the Americas, as well as adding support for the Flow blockchain.

Digital wallets that can be connected to Instagram now include Coinbase, Dapper, Rainbow, MetaMask and Trust Wallet. Once a user has connected their wallet, they can share NFTs on their Instagram profile and public information will also be drawn in and displayed – such as a description of the NFT and the Instagram usernames of the creator and collector (unless accounts are private).

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Australia Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

Australia’s First NFT Gallery Opens on the Sunshine Coast

Australia’s first non-fungible token (NFT) gallery has opened at Baringa – a new suburb near Caloundra – on the Sunshine Coast, with the goal of making the Queensland holiday region a hub for digital artists and tech enthusiasts:

According to Kenny Lienhard, chief executive of the METACOLLECT Gallery, the global NFT community – now worth billions of dollars, although its total value has slipped amid the current bear market – is poised to extend across business, sport and the wider community once market conditions improve.

Ideal Timing for an NFT Gallery

“Crypto artists now have the ability to sell their art and make a living via a global platform on their own terms,” Lienhard says. And with Australia ranking second in the world in terms of interest in NFTs, the timing of project makes perfect sense.

“We’ve developed our own NFT marketplace and publication, both focused on undiscovered Web3 artists while also providing the opportunity for the general public to easily mint NFTs and broadcast them directly onto gallery frames,” Lienhard adds.

METACOLLECT was co-founded by Lienhard and Sean Ballent, who in 2018 also jointly launched Cryptowriter, a blockchain-agnostic, community-driven crypto publication. “We decided our publication needed a brand mascot and our first NFT product was born.”

METACOLLECT’s John Williamson, Kenny Lienhard (centre) and Jimmy McRae at the gallery.

Two sold-out NFT collections later, the pair also designed an NFT art brand that would become UNDRGRND, formulated to discover and support underappreciated NFT artists.

Artist Publication Morphs into Gallery, Token and Marketplace

The UNDRGRND publication was launched in November 2021 and the next logical step for Lienhard and Ballent was to deliver their $COLLECT token, NFT marketplace and Web3 IRL gallery, under the collective banner of METACOLLECT.

The gallery is open to the public every Saturday from 10am-4pm. The address is Unit 11/9-13 Matheson St, Baringa.

Hand in glove with the country’s inaugural NFT gallery, Australia’s first NFT-ticketed music festival, The Grass Is Greener, will also take place later this year in several east coast locations plus Canberra.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Metaverse NFTs

Christie’s Art Auction House Bets Big on Web3, Launches Investment Fund

Venerable auction house Christie’s has entered the intersection of art and finance with the establishment of Christie’s Ventures, an investment fund for fintech companies looking to make breakthroughs in the art market:

Christie’s, renowned for auctioning art treasures by van Gogh and more recently NFT art by Beeple, is also famous in crypto circles for auctioning off Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales’ first blog post in the form of an NFT, along with the iMac used by Wales when Wiki launched in 2001.

First Investment in LayerZero Labs

The Christie’s venture capital fund is aimed at making investments that “enable seamless art consumption”. The new fund will initially focus on three broad categories: Web3.0 innovation, art-related financial products, and solutions and technologies that enable seamless consumption of art.

The venture fund’s first investment will be in LayerZero Labs, a cross-chain interoperability company with a strong vision and business model. LayerZero Labs reduces friction in a client’s ability to move assets between blockchains. The project’s co-founder and CEO, Bryan Pellegrino, said in a statement: “We look forward to working with their team to find new and innovative ways to create the most accessible, frictionless experience with assets indexed over multiple blockchains.”

Christie’s has said its new fund will “work alongside portfolio companies to help accelerate their progress, simultaneously advancing Christie’s activities in the presentation, education, and sales of fine art and luxury goods”. According to Devang Thakkar, global head of Christie’s Ventures, “We will focus on products and services which can solve real business challenges, improve client experiences, and expand growth opportunities, both across the art market directly and for interactions with it.”

Auction Houses Step Into the Metaverse

Christie’s is not the only auction house to dabble in the metaverse and Web3 space. In October 2021, Sotheby’s launched its own NFT marketplace, dubbed “Sotheby’s Metaverse”, becoming the first auction house to do so. The platform is powered by Mojito, an NFT studio and technology platform that provides services including brand identity, strategy, and management for NFT businesses.

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Crypto Art Crypto News Metaverse Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs

Snoop Dogg to Open Bored Ape-Themed Dessert Restaurant

Superstar rapper, recording mogul and NFT enthusiast Snoop Dogg has linked up with the Food Fighters Universe team to launch “an immersive retail dessert experience” to be known as Dr Bombay’s Sweet Exploration.

Food Fighters Universe is the team behind Bored Ape Yacht Club-themed fast food restaurant Bored & Hungry, which opened in Los Angeles earlier this year.

A Bored Ape Eatery in All But Name

As the owner of a Bored Ape NFT, Snoop Dogg is lending the name of his BAYC avatar, Dr Bombay, to his eponymous sweets-only eatery. BAYC, created by Yuga Labs, grants its NFT holders the right to commercialise their owned images. So while Snoop’s project is not an “official” Bored Ape restaurant, the rapper is within his rights to attach his own NFT image to it and trade on BAYC goodwill.

Snoop rules the metaverse.

Like Bored & Hungry, Dr Bombay’s Sweet Exploration will feature branding and decor inspired by Bored Ape and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs owned by the restaurant’s creators. Food Fighters Universe also plans to launch its own NFTs providing a range of benefits around its fast food outlets.

Last year, Snoop Dogg outed himself as the owner of an NFT collection worth US$17 million. In February, the rapper announced his acquisition of famous hip-hop recording entity Death Row Records, which he planned to turn into the world’s first NFT music label. “I want to be the first major in the metaverse,” Snoop said at the time.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Fashion NFTs

Luxury Fashion Brand Prada to Release 100 ETH-Based NFTs

Prada is expanding its presence in Web3 with the upcoming launch of its second NFT collection, which relates back to the series of physical shirts the luxury brand has been selling since December 2019.

Prada’s Timecapsule shirts in white (also available in black).

The 100 Ethereum-based NFTs correspond to the Prada Timecapsule, a 2019 series of shirts available in black or white. The physical project includes 100 gender-neutral shirts designed in collaboration with artist Cassius Hirst – son of Damien Hirst, the UK’s richest living artist – which will directly link to the airdropped NFTs.

The GIF representations of those NFTs are white or black pill capsules (above) that come with serial numbers linking them to each shirt:

Airdrops on First Thursday of Each Month

On the first Thursday of every month since 2019, the Italian luxury brand has featured a limited-edition item drop from the series on its website. In the second phase, including the initial airdrop on June 2, every owner of the physical shirt will also receive an NFT with a unique code denoting each shirt, which features Hirst’s signature mask and brain scan designs. Each drop takes place on Prada’s website for 24 hours only.

Best of Both Worlds

The Hirst family is no stranger to NFTs. Damien Hirst’s first NFT art collection, The Currency, minted in July 2021, allowed buyers to choose between owning a digital token or a physical item. For Prada’s NFT drop with Cassius Hirst, buyers get the best of both worlds.

Prada’s first NFT project in January this year, in which the brand collaborated with Adidas Originals to foster user-generated content and creator-owned art, also involved a well-known artist. New York City-based digital and new media artist Zach Lieberman compiled 3000 community-sourced minted NFT artworks into a single mass-patchwork NFT design for the project, which was later auctioned on SuperRare.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Hackers NFTs Scams

NFT Artist Beeple’s Twitter Account Hacked, $438k Lost in Phishing Scam

Digital artist and NFT creator Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, has been targeted in a serial phishing expedition that netted scammers a total of US$438,000.

Hackers Railroad Louis Vuitton Raffle

In a series of tweets over the weekend, purportedly from Beeple, links posted to a fake Louis Vuitton NFT raffle were made to capitalise on a recent real collaboration between Beeple and the luxury fashion brand.

Earlier this month, Beeple designed 30 NFTs for LV’s ‘Louis The Game’ mobile game, embedded as rewards to players. Scammers posted phishing links from Beeple’s Twitter account to fake Beeple collections that seduced unsuspecting users with the promise of a free mint for unique NFTs.

The phishing links were up on Beeple’s Twitter for several hours, with the first netting the scammers 36 ETH, or roughly US$73,000 at the time. The second link snared US$365,000 worth of ETH and NFTs, bumping the total value of the scam to about US$438,000.

Beeple later tweeted that he had regained control of his account and reminded his followers that “anything too good to be true IS A F*CKING SCAM”:

Beeple Makes Himself a Scam Magnet

Having created three of the top 10 most expensive NFTs released to date, including one that sold for US$69 million, Beeple has made himself a prime target for hacks. Last November, his installation artwork Human One, paired with an NFT, sold for almost US$29 million at auction. That same month, an admin account on the artist’s Discord channel was hacked, with users losing 38 ETH to a fake NFT drop remarkably similar to the latest exploit.

Earlier this month, Beeple made the news for an entirely different reason, partnering with pop icon Madonna on an explicit NFT collection that possibly raised more eyebrows than it did money.

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Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

Madonna and Beeple Partner Up for Bizarre NFT Collection

Pop singer and cultural icon Madonna is well-known for her boundary-breaking love of all things risqué and has taken this to a new level. Partnering up with famous NFT artist Beeple, Madonna has released a series of NFTs that leave very little to the imagination when it comes to motherhood.

The series features three videos of Madonna-as-mother in virtual-reality simulations where she respectively “gives birth” to a tree, butterflies, and robotic centipedes:

Madonna Bares All for Women and Children

Madonna sparked confusion and some social media dismay this week with the release of her NFT collection, called ‘Mother of Creation’. The series of three single-edition NFTs features the singer naked and in the act of “mothering” various forms of life.

It’s been an amazing journey building this from an intellectual idea to an emotional story, giving birth to art. I wanted to investigate the concept of creation, not only the way a child enters the world through a woman’s vagina, but also the way an artist gives birth to creativity. Most importantly, we wanted to use this opportunity to benefit mothers and children who are most in need right now.

Madonna, pop singer and cultural icon

The first, titled ‘Mother of Nature’, sees Madonna lying on a laboratory bed and “giving birth” to a tree that starts to blossom as it exits her body. The second, ‘Mother of Evolution’, depicts her recumbent on an abandoned vehicle in an almost destroyed city where she is seen “giving birth” to butterflies. In the final instalment of the series, ‘Mother of Technology’, the singer is seen lying in a forest and “birthing” a series of biomechanical centipedes.

Madonna commented: “When Mike [Michael Joseph Winkelmann, aka Beeple] and I decided to collaborate on this project a year ago, I was excited to have the opportunity to share my vision of the world as a mother and an artist with Mike’s own unique point of view.”

Proceeds Go to Three Worthy NPOs

Proceeds from the NFT sales will benefit three non-profit organisations that support women and children. These are the Voices of Children Foundation, the City of Joy Foundation, and Black Mama’s Bail Out.

The collection has been slated as “soft-core porn” and has upset many who took to Twitter to express their dismay, but Madonna is not the first to bring the porn industry together with NFTs.

Racy online subscription service OnlyFans announced in February that its users could use ETH NFTs as their profile pictures. Also, the original and biggest player, Playboy entered the space last year when it combined its 68-year legacy of arts patronage and progressive conversations on sexuality with an exhibit that invited the digital art community to create original works to celebrate what it called “sexual liberation, gender equality and representation”.

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Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

NFT Artist XCOPY Raises $24 Million in Minutes From Latest Drop

NFT artist XCOPY released an open edition art piece last week, raising US$24 million in a matter of minutes. As part of the drop, several other auctions of more limited XCOPY artwork ran alongside.

Most of the funds came from mints of his Max Pain piece, sold as an open edition, but a series of ranked auctions also brought in a generous amount of money.

Max Pain Sells For a Painful Price

XCOPY has again proven that high-value NFT artwork is not going anywhere fast. The London-based NFT artist launched his ‘Max Pain and Frens’ NFT drop via Nifty Gateway. The total amount raised from the drop sits at a comfortable US$24.4 million, with over US$23 million of that coming from the headline act.

Max Pain NFT. Source: Nifty Gateway

The sale for Max Pain opened at 22:30 UTC, with patrons having a window of just 10 minutes to mint an NFT, with no maximum limit on the amount that could be minted. In total, 7,394 NFTs were minted at a hefty US$3,108 each.

Along with Max Pain, two auctions for more limited XCOPY pieces went ahead. The first, entitled Waster, was launched in an edition of six and used a ranked auction system. The top six bids, ranging from US$101,000 down to $91,000, received NFTs.

Waster NFT. Source: Nifty Gateway

Along with Max Pain and Waster, another limited edition piece named Damager Luxe used the same auction system, with a winning bid of US$79,999.

Damager Luxe. Source: Nifty Gateway

Fans who held five NFTs supported on Nifty Gateway’s marketplace could also enter a raffle to purchase one of 24 Gourmet Spicy pieces for US$1.

Gourmet Spicy NFT. Source: Nifty Gateway

Also, in a follow-up to XCOPY’s last open edition drop, Afterburn holders could burn either one or two of their NFTs to receive a selection of other previously unreleased works. Afterburn was released in March 2021 for US$999 in a five-minute open edition with two other NFTs.  

NFTs Fetch Exorbitant Prices

Last year, two transactions caught the attention of the NFT community for the masses of money involved. An Axie Infinity land plot sold for US$2.5 million, a record for the game. Beeple, another NFT artist known for the inflated amounts his artworks sell for, sold programmable artwork for a whopping US$29 million. Those two cases only add to the amazing feats XCOPY has achieved.