Category: NFTs

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Crypto News Events NFTs

Warner Bros is Creating 6 Million DC Comics with Redeemable NFTs

Warner Bros Consumer Products along with Cartamundi are launching DC Hybrid NFT trading cards. The ‘hybrid’ card packs will be priced from a modest US$5 to US$120, with buyers using an app called Hro to gain access to their physical cards’ redeemable NFTs.

Warner is creating over six million DC Comics-inspired physical trading cards packaged with redeemable NFTs, available later this month. Cartamundi, a card and board game manufacturer, is responsible for the design of the cards, which will feature 155 different superheroes. The accompanying NFTs will be minted on the Ethereum sidechain Immutable X.

Beginning with the first DC-based hybrid NFT trading cards, Hro will give fans the opportunity to own a physical trading card with an NFT component, bringing blockchain technology together with physical in-store presence for the first time. Using NFTs minted on Immutable X, DC Hybrid Trading Cards by Hro will hit shelves and digital wallets in March 2022, with additional and limited-edition content coming throughout the year.

Cartamundi and Warner Bros joint release

Warner also has plans to issue a few limited-edition cards using images from characters in the latest DC Comics hit movie, The Batman. This is not the first NFT endeavour for WarnerMedia-owned DC Comics. Last year, the two companies announced a partnership with Palm NFT Studio to create a new line of free NFTs tied into upcoming events. For its part in the collaboration, DC offered up digital collectibles based on popular comic book covers such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn.

NFTs the New Trading Cards

NFTs are akin to the trading cards of the past because of their subjective value, collectible ethos, and variable rarities.

As Pam Lifford, president of WarnerMedia Global Brands and Experiences, has said, “Trading cards have been a favourite of fans for decades. Combining that enthusiasm for collecting with a custom NFT is just brilliant, and this program brings the DC brand to fans in a way that’s never been done before.”

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Fashion NFTs Retail

Diesel Jeans’ ‘D:VERSE’ NFT Project Drops on Rarible

Italian denim brand Diesel Jeans is set to debut its NFT collection, ‘D:VERSE’, on Rarible. The project’s goal is to offer customers a digital experience without completely straying from the physical, with the NFTs purchasable via crypto or fiat money.

No Universal Love for the ‘Phygital’

D:VERSE is Diesel’s newest platform and as of March 12 is the place to find NFT versions of the brand’s runway garments. The site will also be a hub where physical pieces can be purchased; hence ‘phygital’, as physical and digital collide, wordplay that not everyone seems to appreciate:

Anyone who becomes a D:VERSE NFT holder will also have access to the D:VERSE-KEY and the discord channel. The D:VERSE-KEY grants holders exclusive rights to raffles, metaverse outfits, NFT presales, and more.

Features of the first NFT release will include pieces from February’s Diesel FW22 runway show. Among them are a puffer jacket, a pair of sneakers, and a fur jacket, purchasable on a first-come-first-served basis in either crypto or fiat money. The public sale will last for 55 hours on the Rarible marketplace from March 12.

Fashion Retailers Queue Up to Launch NFTs

Everyday fashion retailers are taking the plunge into the world of NFTs as more and more brands launch digital collectibles. Earlier this year, even Crocs – “the world’s ugliest shoe” –  jumped into the NFT space and trademarked its intellectual property.

And popular US brand ‘The Gap’ has launched its NFT collection on the Tezos blockchain. The project collaborates with Brandon Sines, the creative mind behind Frank Ape, and will also feature a digital experience called ‘Gap Threads’.

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Australia Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs Regulation

NFTs ‘Inadvertently’ Taxed, Says Australian Senator During Sydney Art Exhibition

Australia is preparing policy ahead of the federal election in May focusing on clearer rules for digital assets and artists. Policy specifically relating to NFTs needed to be implemented quickly to stave off a potential “brain drain” on Australia’s economy, according to NSW Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg.

Tax Restructuring Sorely Needed

Senator Bragg, speaking this week at Sydney’s inaugural 3D art NFT exhibition, Satellite, said the country needed to hear from artists on the best way forward for digital asset regulation. Tax restructuring was sorely needed to counter local firms looking to establish themselves in more favourable jurisdictions overseas, including in Singapore and the UK, he added.

At the moment, I think there are cases where NFTs are being taxed inadvertently. There’s no real transfer of value. We want to make sure that we’re not doing that – we need to make sure we’re tax-competitive. Otherwise, why would you do business here?

NSW Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg

What Does the ATO Say?

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has provided broad guidelines on the tax treatment of NFTs. You pay tax according to the method that applies to your particular use case:

  • under the capital gains tax (CGT) regime;
  • on revenue account as trading stock;
  • as part of a business or profit-making scheme; or
  • depending on the terms of the NFT smart contract and the rights it grants, a combination of the above.

For most users who are buying or selling NFTs, crypto art assets are treated in the same manner as normal cryptocurrency as they fall under the same rules for capital gains. The following actions involving NFTs are considered disposals and will accordingly attract CGT:

  • selling NFTs in exchange for cryptocurrency;
  • exchanging one NFT for another NFT or fungible cryptocurrency; or
  • giving an NFT as a gift (unless it is to a tax-deductible entity such as an Australian charity).

Minting an NFT is generally not subject to tax. Only the disposal of an NFT (through sale, trade or bridging) constitutes a CGT event.  The exception is when the value of the asset the NFT was minted for has increased since the original purchase, which would constitute a CGT event in itself.

Last month, the ATO signalled its intention to apply more pressure on Australian crypto traders and investors this year, as cryptocurrencies become more popular among the general Aussie population.

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Australia Crypto Art NFTs

Sydney Plays Host to ‘Satellite’ International NFT Art Exhibition

Sydney, Australia’s largest city, is the first to host Satellite, a major international contemporary NFT art exhibition utilising and showcasing non-fungible token technology.

The event, taking place from March 10 to April 3 at beachside Bondi’s Twenty Twenty-Six Gallery, serves as an introduction to the world of digital art. Satellite aims to engage and educate the public on the fast-evolving NFT art movement through a digitally immersive and sensory experience. The exhibition is designed to empower artists in digital media and to inspire both existing and new audiences to embrace the evolution of the digital art world:

Exhibition Will Shape the NFT Space and Creative Economy

The Satellite audience will be invited to connect with NFTs beyond the screens of personal devices by using QR codes in the exhibition space that link to the NFT marketplace Foundation, where art can subsequently be bought.

The curator of the exhibition, David Porte Beckefeld, says the exhibition at a Sydney fine arts gallery is the fulfilment of his dream, but not so much in regard to anything relating to blockchain or tokens. Beckefeld has brought together over 40 NFT artworks from an array of leading Australian and international artists, thereby shaping the NFT space and creative economy.

Artists include Jonathan Zawada, Serwah Attafua, David McLeod, BossLogic, LIŔONA, Mikaela Stafford, Chris Golden, Jessica Ticchio, Yambo, Trevor Jones, and Beeple.

Satellite to be Carbon Neutral

The exhibition is committed to sustainability and will work to offset the carbon footprint of all NFTs included in the event, including carbon emissions associated with NFT minting, bidding, sale, and transfer of ownership. To compensate for emissions, Satellite will buy carbon credit units from Carbon Neutral’s reforestation project located in the Yarra Biodiversity Corridor of Western Australia.

For all other information about the exhibition, visit Satellite’s website.

Australia Leads in NFT Art Exhibitions

Last year was the year of the NFT. In June 2021, the art world launched Australia’s first physical NFT gallery exhibition. Hobart’s Museum of Art & Philosophy also launched the country’s first NFT gallery in the Tasmanian capital, where digital and traditional artists from all around the world could display their creations.

Australia auctioned off its most valuable photo collection as NFTs last year, after more than 100,000 original photographs dating back to the 1880s and spanning five generations were found in the home of a Melbourne family. The collection is said to be worth millions.

Australia is clearly an early adopter of NFTs and art, so it was surprising to read news of a survey in December 2021 that determined most Australians still have no idea about cryptos or NFTs.

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Crypto News NFTs Tokens

Early 2000s P2P File-Sharing Platform ‘Limewire’ Returns as NFT Marketplace

If you were a teen in the early 2000s then you might remember LimeWire, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing platform that became a hub for music piracy. Well, after more than a decade, Limewire is making a comeback – but as an NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace.

LimeWire was shut down by a US federal judge in 2010 after a legal conflict with major record companies over copyright infringement.

Hits and Memories

Now, two brothers from Austria, Julian and Paul Zehetmayr, have bought the rights to the defunct platform and aspire to bring the old memories back by relaunching the site as a marketplace for digital collectibles, starting with music.

In the Twittersphere at least, the news has been greeted with a mixture of nostalgia, humour and cynicism:

LimeWire Debuts in May with Its Own Token

According to the Zehetmayrs, LimeWire will debut in May and will do so with its own utility token. The service offered will be related to music NFTs, including merchandise, exclusive songs, artwork, and backstage content.

Even if you look on Twitter today, there’s hundreds of people still being nostalgic about the name. Everybody connects it with music and we’re launching initially a very music-focused marketplace, so the brand was really the perfect fit for that with its legacy.

Julian Zehetmayr

The duo has also made it clear that LimeWire will not be an alternative for subscription-based streaming platforms like Spotify, rather an “additional channel for artists to sell exclusive music and art directly to collectors”.

As more and more marketplaces come together to try to take on the current market leader of NFT platforms, OpenSea, LooksRare launched in January with the aim of being a community-focused marketplace that intends to develop new features based on what its users want. It, too, is built around its newly launched token, LOOKS, and it seems LimeWire has taken a leaf from LooksRare’s playbook.

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Bitcoin Bored Ape Yacht Club Charity Crypto News Kraken NFTs

Crypto Donations to Ukraine Exceed $100 Million as Kraken and BAYC Join In

Two weeks into the Russia-Ukraine War, total crypto donations across Ukrainian government wallet addresses, charities and relief efforts have passed US$108 million.

Ukrainian Clients of Kraken to Receive $1,000 in BTC

On March 9, Kraken announced it would distribute over US$10 million for relief efforts to clients who created an account from Ukraine prior to that date. Those clients will each receive US$1,000 in bitcoin during the first tranche of funds disbursement, which can be withdrawn immediately. The exchange also waived currency exchange fees for withdrawals of up to US$1,000.

BAYC Developers Match Contribution

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has also pitched in on the fundraising effort. After collecting nearly US$1 million in ETH from wallets containing a BAYC non-fungible token (NFT), the developers behind BAYC said it would match the contribution with a US$1 million ETH donation of their own.

Good News Follows Bad

Both these pieces of good news come after the cancellation of a planned airdrop from the Ukrainian government earlier this week, accompanied by a spate of scams looking to capitalise on the crypto community’s generosity.

Last week, an NFT of the Ukrainian flag was sold for 2,258 ether – about US$6.75 million – with the proceeds directed to ‘Come Back Alive’, an organisation that donates supplies to Ukrainian civilians and members of the military.

In other donations news, Binance’s Ukraine Emergency Relief Fund has received over US$11.3 million in various cryptocurrencies since its inception. Kuna’s Crypto Fund of Ukraine has also accepted over US$14 million in major altcoins such as Polkadot, Tether, Candle, USD Coin and Dai.

Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, says that cryptocurrencies have been “essential in this conflict, in terms of helping our army”. 

In a situation like this where the national bank is not really operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately.

Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation
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Crypto News DeFi Illegal NFTs Scams

Suspicious Code Detected in ETH Smart Contract Putting NFT Projects at Risk

According to the famous DeFi detective who goes by “Zahcxbt” on Twitter, 31 NFT projects may be at risk due to what he calls “suspicious code”. He posted a lengthy thread on Twitter and raised the issue of NFT project Thestarlab, which he alleges was compromised for 197.175 Ether (ETH), worth about US$580,325.

Zachxbt quoted his fellow blockchain investigator “MouseDev” who came to the following conclusion after reviewing the code behind Thestarlab:

What this means is that the contract can never truly be renounced or transferred! Only an additional owner. The original deployer will always be considered the owner! You can also check the relinquish and transfer ownership functions to see they never overwrite _creator.

MouseDev

MouseDev supposes that when the developer of the project deployed the contract, they stored two variables as the owner. “Then they later changed one of them to the null address to appear as though they relinquished but kept another unchanged variable,” MouseDev claims.

According to this information, Zachxbt claims to have uncovered 31 NFT projects that all contracted the same Fiver developer to launch the problematic smart contract. Zachxbt also remarked: “Please do proper due diligence. Always review the contract beforehand, especially if outsourced. Luckily, since then a few of the projects were able to migrate contacts and confront the Fiver dev. After reviewing internally, a few found other red flags as well.”

Thank Goodness for DeFi Detectives

DeFi detectives have been many a project’s saviour. “Void-of-Silence” posted on Twitter: “Some old info I’ve posted along with some new info out today 💚 a readdressing of the situation would be awesome or a new post about it all 🔥”

Another fellow detective who goes by “Thats AOK” replied to MouseDev’s Tweet by saying: “RUG RUG RUG RUG RUG RUG RUG.”

Last month, an infamous “internet detective” who goes by “Coffeezilla” confronted YouTuber “Ice Poseidon” and got him to admit to stealing US$500,000 in a blatant crypto scam. Coffeezilla later in February managed to expose an NFT scam that would have cost its users US$20 million, had it actually come to pass.

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Crypto News DeFi NFTs Solana

Adobe’s Creative Platform ‘Behance’ Adds Support for Solana NFTs

Behance users can now connect their Phantom wallets to their accounts to showcase Solana (SOL) non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on their profiles.

Phantom is a Solana wallet built for decentralised finance (DeFi) applications as well as for NFTs. QuickNode, a Miami-based Web3 infrastructure platform, helped build out this feature with Adobe on Solana. 

A More Viable Alternative to Ethereum

Although Behance creators can already display their NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain within their profiles, high energy usage and prohibitive gas costs are driving them away.

As Adobe vice-president William Allen pointed out on Twitter this week, Solana is a proof-of-stake chain that addresses these concerns. He added that a single transaction on Solana “uses as much energy as a Google search and costs a fraction of a penny”.

For its part, Phantom tweeted that this integration is “huge” for the Solana creator economy because it allows artists “an eco-friendly and low-cost way to experiment with NFTs”.

In October last year, Adobe announced it would launch a “prepare as NFT” option to its Photoshop software. Adobe’s Content Credential system would prove that the person selling an NFT is the one who made it and allow NFT sellers to link the Adobe ID with their crypto wallets. This would allow compatible NFT marketplaces to show a verification certificate to prove the art is authentic.

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Australia Gaming NFTs

Australia’s Immutable X Raises $200 Million, IMX Token Soars

Australia’s gaming start-up, Immutable, has announced that its most recent funding round has pushed the company’s value to US$2.5 billion. According to an Immutable Twitter thread, the $200 million round was led by investors from Singaporean company Temasek.

Immutable Supercharges Its Mission

Sydney-based blockchain firm Immutable, the start-up behind the scaling solution for Ethereum NFT games – Immutable X – has just joined the ranks of the crypto unicorns (ie, crypto start-ups worth at least a billion dollars). This comes after its latest round of funding, led by Temasek investors alongside metaverse investment firm Animoca Brands and Chinese Temacent. The increase in funding was not the only benefit Immutable received. As a result of the firm’s promotion to unicorn status, Immutable’s token (IMX) has also soared.

Immutable’s previous funding round in 2021 saw it garner US$410 million. Currently, the Immutable X price prediction is neutral; however, the company only seems to be moving from strength to strength. Immutable hopes that the fresh funds will supercharge its goal of pushing NFTs mainstream through high-quality blockchain games.

IMX Pursues Gaming Industry

Immutable X established several high-profile partnerships and deals in late 2021 and early 2022. A partnership was solidified in October with ESL Gaming, a leading Esports company, which provided the ESL Pro Tour NFTs with gasless trading on its platform.

More recently, Immutable X entered a contract with retail game giant GameStop to develop its new NFT marketplace, with the addition of a US$100 million innovation fund to support the NFT space and its creators.

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Crypto News MetaMask NFTs OpenSea Russia

OpenSea Updates Banned Countries List, Sparking Decentralisation Debate

OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, has updated its list of banned countries according to the US sanctions list and has many bringing up the issue of decentralisation.

US-based OpenSea has reportedly begun barring Iranian users from its platform, which has led to outrage from NFT collectors and sparked a fresh debate regarding decentralisation in the crypto space. The list has expanded since last week, adding Iran to the list after only users in separatist areas of Ukraine were banned, along with users from Venezuela who were added to the list in error.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the US.

US Office of Foreign Assets Control

Iranian Artist Vents to 4,700 Followers

Last week, Iranian users of OpenSea woke up and started posting on Twitter that their accounts had been deactivated or deleted without prior warning from the platform. “Bornosor”, an NFT artist from Iran, vented his frustrations to 4,700 followers in a tweet that gained traction very swiftly, garnering 342 retweets and 1,000+ likes within just a few hours:

According to an OpenSea spokesperson, OpenSea reserves the right to block users based on sanctions:

“Our terms of service explicitly prohibit sanctioned users or users in sanctioned territories from using our services. We have a zero-tolerance policy for the use of our services by sanctioned individuals or entities and people located in sanctioned countries. If we find individuals to be in violation of our sanctions policy, we take swift action to ban the associated accounts.”

As it stands, current US sanctions outline that American companies are not allowed to provide goods or services to any users based in countries on the sanctions list, including Iran, North Korea, Syria, and now also Russia:

Actions from OpenSea Provoke Decentralisation Debate

The actions taken by OpenSea have fostered new debates about whether large blockchain-based firms and services are adequately decentralised, with the MetaMask wallet joining in on enforcing sanctions:

According to MetaMask’s Twitter account, Venezuelan users were accidentally banned from accessing their wallets after blockchain development company Infura inadvertently broadened the scope of its sanctions to the South American country.