Coinbase Around the Block sheds light on key issues in the crypto space. In this edition, Justin Mart and Ryan Yi take a look at the mania around NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
At this point, NFTs have taken over public discourse of crypto in a way reminiscent of ICOs in 2017, including mainstream and pop-culture coverage. Global search interest for NFTs has now surpassed that of Ethereum’s ICO frenzy in 2017.
- Source: this can be any unique asset that exists. However, to drive value the source itself should come from the asset issuer (ie Jack’s tweet from Jack).
- Primary Issuance: these are platforms that “tokenize” the source into an NFT. Platforms can be closed (“invite-only”) or open (anybody can mint an asset).
- Secondary Exchange: these are platforms that facilitate the buy/sell of NFTs. Oftentimes, secondary exchanges have their own native primary issuance funnels.
The future of NFTs
Today, most cryptocurrency products live only in a digital format. But NFTs may begin to mark a transition where we may eventually be able to map real-world assets onto a blockchain in meaningful ways, perhaps including some sort of legal framework that secures actual ownership. In this future, imagine if a sports franchise like the LA Lakers tokenized their season tickets as NFTs? They could live in their fan’s wallets, secondary market price discovery could happen with P2P price discovery, and they would be immortalized as NFTs that live in this expansive, composable, digital metaverse.
News roundup
Retail
- BTC breaks $60K all-time high
- Etoro to go public via SPAC at $10B
- FTX wins naming rights to the NBA Miami Heat stadium
- Paypal acquires Curv
- Beeple sells $69M NFT via Christie’s
Institutional
- Blockchain.com raises $300M
- NYDIG raises $200M led by Morgan Stanley
- Fireblocks raises $133M led by Coatue (incl. BNY Mellon)
- Taxbit raises $100M led by Tiger Global
- Lukka raises $53M
- FalconX raises $50M led by Tiger Global
- Visa allows settlement of USDC on its network
- Avanti raises $37M
- Grayscale rolls out new trusts
- GBTC Trust falls discount to NAV
Ecosystem
- Uniswap v3 launches
- Dapper Labs (Flow) raises $305M
- Starkware raises $75M
- Opensea raises $23M
- Circle rolls out payments solution for NFT marketplaces
- Compound Grants program launches
- Livepeer launches Filecoin co-mining pilot
- Staked launches ETH 2.0 trust
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Around the Block #12: NFT mania was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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