Category: NFTs

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Gaming NFTs Press Release

NFT Gaming Platform Balthazar Raises US$3 Million via Token Sale Led by Animoca Brands

In a bid to be the leading NFT gaming platform in the metaverse, Balthazar has kicked off its Token launch with a US$3 million token sale, valuing the DAO at US$30 million.

Animoca Brands, a global leader in gamification and blockchain with a large portfolio of over 150 investments in NFT-related companies and decentralised projects, was the lead token purchaser in the round and will be providing advisory services to Balthazar. 

Other token purchasers include Finder Group (through Hive Empire Capital, which is led by Fred Schebesta), Zip co-founder Larry Diamond, Digital Asset Capital Management (DACM), Fantom, ZED Run, Darling Ventures, Pluto Digital, San Francisco-based VC Side Door Ventures, Algorand, Rising Capital, Saltwater Ventures, eFrontier, and Three Arrows Capital’s TPS Capital.

Launched in September 2021, Balthazar aims to be the largest decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) in the play-to-earn space. It’s a community-focused platform, removing the barrier to entry for gamers to access play-to-earn games through its scholarship program with no upfront costs.

Balthazar is more than a guild, with plans to develop its tech platform, its rent-to-earn lending model, and to scale up its community.

John Stefanidis, CEO of Balthazar, said the token sale marks a significant milestone for the DAO.

“We are so thrilled to be backed by Animoca Brands and all of our supporters in helping to shape the metaverse and to continue assisting and expanding our community. This support means we can fulfill our vision of empowering the biggest community of gamers to create a self-sustaining, wealth-building ecosystem. 

“We are developing the most incredible platform that will bring together gamers, crypto holders and individuals through our own NFT games, valuable tokenomic strategies and gaming partnerships.

“I’m excited about the future of the play-to-earn space, in particular how it’s spreading earning opportunities to those who need it most, as well as providing a new use-case for cryptocurrency.”

Yat Siu, the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, commented: “Balthazar has a thriving and fast-growing community, offering opportunities for all people to be involved in the NFT gaming space, including gamers, game companies, and crypto holders. With its dynamic leadership, we believe that Balthazar will be able to tap growth for NFT-based gaming in new markets, and we are excited to be part of its journey.”

Prior to the token sale, Balthazar deployed 1,100 scholars into several NFT games including Axie Infinity, Splinterlands and Thetan Arena, with a further 30,000 people on its waitlist and a community of more than 70,000 people in its Discord channel.

Balthazar has opened a private token sale round, with plans to sell US$8 million in tokens at a token cap valuation of US$150 million by February 2022.

For more information about Balthazar, click here to read its Whitepaper.

About Balthazar:

Balthazar is a scholar-driven NFT (non-fungible token) gaming platform for the metaverse, one of the first in Australia. Balthazar aims to be the largest Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) in the play-to-earn space. It’s a community-focused guild for gamers to access play-to-earn games with no upfront cost, supporting a fun and competitive team of players. It also offers a rent-to-earn feature where NFTs can be rented to Balthazar for the scholars to use in games. Balthazar supports the guild through social networks, educational resources, and training and development around gameplay and learning cryptocurrency investment.

About John Stefanidis:

John Stefanidis, 29, is the CEO of NFT gaming platform Balthazar and one of Australia’s leading digital marketing and ecommerce experts. After graduating from University of Technology Sydney with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business/Marketing in 2014, John has developed and scaled several businesses, including digital marketing agency Covert. As a serial entrepreneur and avid video gamer, John is passionate about the NFT gaming space.

Categories
Crypto News NFTs Scams Solana

Developers Pull Off Third NFT Rug-Pull for $1.3 Million, ‘Verified’ Project ‘Big Daddy Ape Club’

The Big Daddy Ape Club, a non-fungible token (NFT) project on Solana (SOL), has pulled the rug on investors for 9,136 SOL (an estimated US$1.3 million), even though the project was verified.

One of the largest NFT rug-pulls in Solana’s history occurred on January 11, the scammer getting away with almost US$1.3 million in investor funds. Digital artist and NFT blogger Faith Orr described it as an especially harsh incident since “most rugs do the basic courtesy of leaving their victims with NFTs even if they don’t ever get listed on secondary markets”.

According to some, it might even be the same individual or group of people responsible for multiple rug-pulls that have happened in the past. Shortly after the incident, the project’s Twitter, Discord and website went offline, followed by Solanart verifying there had indeed been a rug-pull:

Verified Project Disappoints

Even though the project had been verified by Civic, the developers were still able to run off with the funds. Does this mean the devs were just extra-shady, or did Civic drop the ball? In its defence, Civic stated that it designed the program as a free service for creators to verify their real-world identities and build trust within their communities:

We are aware of the reported Big Daddy Ape Club rug-pull and that there are victims involved. We take this attack on the NFT community seriously, and are taking steps to offer all the assistance we can.

Chris Hart, Civic CEO

Civic CEO Chris Hart conceded that its solution doesn’t perform due diligence other than identity verification, and that no verification process is 100 percent effective all of the time. Civic’s verification process is mainly designed to protect participants in the case of an incident where identity information can be shared with relevant authorities in the event something happens.

The Civic Pass program works by verifying control of the project’s Twitter handle, oversight of the project’s domain, and identity verification of the project founders through ID document capture. The verification process also includes a 3D face scan of the person.

Civic Takes Steps Toward Recourse

Civic is now taking the next steps in order to solve this case, and in a statement to Decrypt said that “the identity of the individual who held themselves out as the founder of the BDAC project was verified through our program”, adding that “we are cooperating with law enforcement to assist in their investigation, but do not know how long their investigation will take”.

At the start of January, a decentralised P2E game on Solana turned out to be a rug-pull. Hopefully, the BDAC community can pull together after this one, as was the case with the Frosties NFT rug-pull on January 15.

Categories
Crypto News Ethereum NFTs Social media

Twitter Launches NFT Profile Pic Verification

Delivering on a promise made last October, Twitter has released its official verification mechanism for non-fungible token (NFT) profile pictures. However, it is only available to those who sign up for the “Labs” feature via the company’s Twitter Blue subscription service.

Though the verification tool is initially limited to Ethereum-based NFTs via OpenSea, a Twitter spokesperson says it is simply the “first iteration” of a feature that may support other blockchains in future.

How It Works

Link your Ethereum wallet to your Twitter account, and you’ll be presented with a list of NFTs you own. Choose an NFT, and your profile picture – usually enclosed within a circle – takes on a distinctive hexagonal border. If someone right-clicks on your NFT in an attempt to appropriate it as their profile picture without first buying the token, they will be able to use the image but will be limited to the circle frame.

Still Some Refinements to be Made

A persistent right-clicker might re-upload that same image to an NFT platform, mint a visually identical NFT and use that as their profile picture instead, complete with a hexagonal frame signifying ownership on the blockchain. Twitter has yet to come up with a solution to this advanced form of deception, which has become increasingly common as the NFT space has continued to explode over the past year.

For now, NFT verification is available only for users with Twitter Blue, the company’s US$2.99-a-month subscription service. For NFT fans, it may be a price worth paying.

Twitter is also limiting the release to iOS users but says Android and web users will be able to see when a user changes their profile pics to an NFT.

Categories
Crypto News Facebook Metaverse NFTs Social media

Meta is Experimenting with an NFT Marketplace on Instagram

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is looking to launch an NFT marketplace on Instagram, reportedly drawing up plans to allow its users to create and display NFTs on both their Instagram and Facebook profiles.

Meta Makes More Moves in the Metaverse

According to a report by the Financial Times (FT), Meta will allow its users to create and display NFTs on their profiles, along with a prototype feature for minting tokens in the pipeline. The report comes after Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri admitted it was “actively exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a wider audience”, and after Meta announced its upcoming metaverse product would support NFTs.

Nothing to announce yet but we are definitely actively exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a broader audience. I think it’s an interesting place that we can play … and also a way to hopefully help creators.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri

No Particular Blockchain in Mind … Yet

According to the FT report, it is still unclear which blockchain network these features would be built on. At the moment, NFTs exist on several blockchains including Solana, Tezos, Ethereum, Flow and WAX. The report says teams at Facebook and Instagram are looking at NFT integration, with Meta discussing the possibility of an NFT marketplace.

Meta’s digital currency wallet Novi is also said to be a key component in its push into NFTs. Novi is a new crypto wallet used for sending digital payments through WhatsApp, and is currently being trialled for a limited number of people in the US.

However exciting the news, users are urged to keep in mind that the initiative is still in the planning stages.

Categories
Crypto News Institutions NFTs Payments

Mastercard Partners with Coinbase Enabling Easy NFT Purchases

Payments giant Mastercard has partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase to enable easier NFT (non-fungible token) purchases.

In a blog post, Mastercard said that buying NFTs should be as easy as buying goods on e-commerce sites, which is why it will soon allow customers to use their debit/credit cards on Coinbase’s upcoming NFT marketplace.

Buying NFTs on decentralised marketplaces such as OpenSea is a step-by-step process in which the user is required to set up a cryptocurrency wallet such as MetaMask, fund the wallet, and then connect it to the platform to start buying and trading NFTs. This is a normal process for most in the cryptosphere, but not as easy for newcomers to the space.

A Million on the Coinbase Waitlist

Coinbase’s NFT platform hasn’t gone live yet, but it has a waitlist with more than 1 million people signed up already. It will be one of the first marketplaces to allow card payments to buy NFTs. Other platforms such as Nifty Gateway and OpenSea have thought about adding this modality in the past, though the third-party requirements are still there.

Coinbase was basically an on-ramp for crypto for many, many users. Millions of people were able to access bitcoin for the first time by using Coinbase. So we want to do the same thing for NFTs with Mastercard by solving the pain points – to make it as easy as possible to buy an NFT and make sure it’s the best consumer experience.

Prakash Hariramani, senior director of product, Coinbase

On October 27 last year, Mastercard announced a partnership with crypto firm Bakkt to enable its 1000-plus banks and merchants in the US to buy and sell digital assets through Bakkt’s crypto custody services.

And to keep things safe, a month earlier Mastercard acquired blockchain forensic firm CipherTrace to enhance its operations in the crypto industry, enabling both companies to combine their technologies in the space.

Crypto Community Takes it with a Pinch of Humour

The news drew a mixed reaction from crypto Twitter, some claiming the NFT movement is nothing but a major Ponzi scheme, others saying teenagers and kids will use their mothers’ credit cards to buy NFTs just like they do with Fortnite skins.

Categories
Crypto Art Crypto News Metaverse NFTs

Turn Street Graffiti into NFTs? ‘NFT Hack 2022’ Throws Up Some Interesting Ideas

Of all the innovative ideas put forth at this week’s NFT Hack 2022, minting street graffiti as non-fungible tokens is quite possibly the wackiest.

Graffiti Mint is a decentralised application (dApp) that aims to digitise, mint, and monetise graffiti events. It integrates ERC1155 NFTs for 4-tier season passes for event supporters and ERC751 contracts to mint street art produced in graffiti events at city parks as NFTs.

Event supporters get an OG (Original Gangster) NFT from each artwork made at events from their season pass, while artists earn funds from the auction of Event Edition NFTs and a percentage of the OG NFT sales.

Last year, Australian street artist Lushsux gained international recognition for his large mural paintings depicting internet meme culture. Melbourne-based Lushsux has since become one of the highest-paid artists in Australia, selling his NFTs for over A$500,000 each.

Also showcased at NFT Hack 2022 (January 14-16):

Charisma, a tool that “reads” your personality by analysing your wallet’s NFT assets and your on-chain activity;

OxPhotos, a stock photography marketplace that puts creators first, where NFTs become future cashflow-positive assets that can be traded on other NFT marketplaces; and

Cropsin, a platform that pays creators in crypto to place independent music artists’ songs in their videos and invests in album art, songs, tickets, metaverse merch and song royalty NFTs.

For a comparison, see Crypto News Australia‘s guide to the top 10 NFT art projects of the past few years.

Categories
Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

Mercedes Launches NFT Collection to Celebrate G-Class Series

In celebration of its signature car, Mercedes-Benz has teamed up with Art2People to create an exclusive NFT collection based on its G-Class vehicle line, according to a tweet from the German prestige car maker.

Mercedes commissioned five NFT artists to create various G-Class-inspired designs, each using different digital mediums to render unique pieces. The artists involved in the project come from diverse areas such as music, graphic design, fashion, creative marketing, real estate, architecture, and luxury design. They include Anthony Authie, Roger Kilimanjaro, Charlotte Taylor, Baugasm, and Antoni Tudisco.

The launch is set to take place on Sunday, January 23, jointly by Mercedes and Nifty Gateway. The drop will only last for one hour and will include pieces in various price categories, ranging from an affordable US$222 all the way up to US$1,554.

To add to the drop, when it hits US$1 million in collective sales, there will be a physical G-Class raffle available for all NFT holders. Another raffle will be held when the drop reaches US$2 million, and each NFT can be bought without having to hold cryptocurrency by using a credit card.

Mercedes Joins Lamborghini and Audi in the NFT Space

Mercedes is not the first luxury vehicle brand to move into the NFT space. In August last year, compatriot German prestige car maker Audi released an NFT collection in collaboration with XNFT Protocol, a decentralised creation and aggregator platform for NFTs. In the same month, Lamborghini launched an NFT collection to celebrate its founder.

Also last year, Australian auction house Lloyds auctioned off 50 NFTs of classic 1970s Aussie muscle car the Holden Torana A9X.

Categories
Crypto News NFTs

World’s Ugliest Shoe ‘Crocs’ Steps into NFT and Digital Collectibles Space

Colorado-based footwear manufacturer Crocs, Inc is dipping a toe into the NFT (non-fungible token) space. As per a recent US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) report, Crocs has trademarked every intellectual property of its belonging. The software for trading these types of digital assets would also be covered.

CROCS™ trademark registration is intended to cover the categories of downloadable digital media, namely digital assets, digital collectibles, digital tokens and NFTs. Downloadable virtual goods created with blockchain-based software technology and smart contracts, in the nature of footwear, clothing, bags, accessories and charms for decorating [them]; downloadable computer software for creating, managing, storing, accessing, sending, receiving.

USPTO report

The file was issued on an “intent-to-use” basis, so it’s safe to assume that Crocs could soon launch a NFT collection based on its products. The footwear company had a positive 2021, with 67 percent revenue growth year on year.

Fashion and Footwear Brands Moving into NFTs

This year could mark a new trend for fashion accessories and shoe brands in the NFT industry, especially with the emergence of the metaverse. Crypto News Australia reported on January 14 that clothing retailer Gap Inc was set to launch an NFT collection on the Tezos blockchain, working with NFT artist Brandon Sines, who’s behind Frank Ape.

There are also Aussie fashion companies betting on the NFT wave, such as Ordre, a global online wholesale fashion tech company based in Byron Bay that last year raised US$9 million to expand its fashion services and accelerate the development of its blockchain-based platform and NFT technology.

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Metaverse NFTs Tokens

Walmart is Quietly Preparing a Push into the Metaverse

Not wanting to miss out on the multi-trillion-dollar metaverse market, US-based retail giant Walmart is pressing on with its plans to make and sell virtual goods.

The world’s second-largest retailer (recently outranked by Amazon) is planning to launch a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and create its own cryptocurrency.

New Trademark Applications Show Metaverse Intent

On December 30, Walmart filed several new trademarks that indicate its intent to build a virtual Walmart store within the metaverse and allow users to shop for electronics, home decorations, personal care items, toys, sporting goods, and a range of other products available in Walmart stores, offering its own virtual currency as a means of payment.

Walmart trademark application.

Walmart even has plans to offer a crypto wallet, described in its trademark application as: “Downloadable software for use in managing portfolios of digital currency, virtual currency, cryptocurrency, digital and blockchain assets, digitised assets, digital tokens, crypto tokens, and utility tokens; downloadable software for electronic wallet services; downloadable e-wallets.”

Source: Gerben Intellectual Property

Shopping in Walmart in the Metaverse

Watch the video below to get a glimpse of what shopping in Walmart in the Metaverse might look like:

The buzz around the metaverse went ballistic after Facebook announced it was changing its company name to Meta last October. Since then, big businesses across different sectors have been amping up their own efforts for how they can adapt to exist in a virtual 3D world.

Nike entered the Metaverse after acquiring the virtual sneaker company RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”) and teaming up with Roblox to create an online world called Nikeland, following other big sports footwear names such as Adidas and Asics who had already launched their own NFT collections last year.

Many other big brands are also racing to stake their claim in the metaverse. Last week, Crypto News Australia reported that Samsung will open a virtual store hosted in Decentraland. The metaverse is becoming the future frontier for retailers and promises a whole new world of financial opportunities.

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News NFTs

Indonesian Student’s NFT Selfie Collection Goes Viral, Nets $1 Million in OpenSea Sales

An Indonesian student who thought it was “funny” to sell his expressionless selfies as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has made an astonishing US$1 million in sales.

Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali, 22, spent five years taking blank-looking selfies in front of his computer, which he later converted into NFTs and uploaded to popular marketplace OpenSea in December 2021. According to Ghozali, he has made over US$1 million in sales after selling almost 1,000 of his selfies online.

Ghozali’s OpenSea profile. Source: OpenSea

What the NFT Market Will Bear

From 2017 to 2021, the computer science major snapped photos of his expressionless face while standing in front of his computer, all with the intention of compiling the photos to create a video time-lapse for his graduation day. Ghozali decided to upload his selfies in December to OpenSea under the title “Ghozali Everyday” and priced each NFT at US$3, without expecting interest from serious buyers. While monetising his expressionless images, Ghozali said in a tweet:

You can do anything like flipping or whatever but please don’t abuse my photos or my parents will very disappointed in me. I believe in you guys, so please take care of my photos.

Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali

A Story Behind Every NFT

After exceeding his wildest expectations, the student’s NFT offerings blew up further. On the back of their rising popularity, one of the NFTs sold for 0.247 ether on January 14, worth around US$806 at the time of purchase. Some of Ghozali’s selfie NFTs also sold for 0.9 ether, roughly US$3,000. According to his OpenSea profile, the collection subsequently reached a total trade volume of 317 ether, the equivalent of more than US$1 million.

To add rarity to his collection, the young entrepreneur also added a personal touch by providing a bit of background information along with his selfies. Ghozali has also since shared that he would not be listing any more selfies in the next few years.

Should you own a truly rare one of Ghozali’s NFTs, or any NFT for that matter, you can now display them in one of Netgear’s Meural digital frames, which have recently expanded their capabilities to include the display of NFTs.  

Although most users on Twitter see the allure behind Ghozali’s initiative, some remain unconvinced of the endeavour:

Rare and Exclusive Keeps the NFT Business Afloat

Ghozali has managed to preserve the exclusivity and rarity in his collection by announcing he would not be releasing any more NFTs for a couple of years, and it appears to have only added to their popularity.

In another recent example of innovative NFT entrepreneurship, Gary Vaynerchuk, known to the NFT world as Gary Vee, has opened the world’s first “NFT Holders Members Only” restaurant – Flyfish Club. The new premier dining destination will only be accessible by owners of Flyfish NFT tokens, which have unsurprisingly already sold out.