Tracking Ethereum & NFT's

Really impressed with the business and collectibles innovation around Non Fungible Tokens (NFT's). NFTs are usually sold as visual works of art, but musicians and DJ's are also reimagining that by introducing audio and rights to music licenses—adding another dimension to the exploding crypto market.

NFT's largest market in on the Ethereum blockchain, but am also following Tezos, Binance Smart Chain and Flow, all of which are touted to be more environmentally friendly due to lower use of computational resources and effort.

You can check-out some NFT markets here - OpenSea is the largest, by far.

I am worried about corruption on the auctions taking place. I looked this week at investing in a CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT but the auction reminded me of a hijacked eBay auction. There is no way to tell if people are inflating the auction prices via duplicate accounts.

Either way, I think it is safe to say that the demand and supply is growing on both sides. Perhaps the NFT market will grow, bubble, pop following the curve of Gartner Hype Cycle:

Anyway, here is a round-up of some signals of traction recently:

1. Renowned musical artist and blockchain enthusiast 3LAU has sold a music album for $11 million on the Ethereum blockchain. The album was sold as 33 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Origin Protocol’s Dshop, a decentralized marketplace built on the InterPlanetary Filing System (IPFS) and Ethereum.
2. Visa has just invested: https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2021/08/18/nfts-mark-a-1629328216374.html
3. Larva Labs CryptoPunks has taken off with an average tradeable price of USD$9,000 and they have just launched their new round of Meetbits, 20,000 unique 3D voxel characters, created by a custom generative algorithm, then registered on the Ethereum blockchain.
4. Stoner Cats, an animated series was funded entirely by NFT's or character cards. The series is only watchable by those with character cards.
5. The OneOf NFT marketplace was founded in partnership Quincy Jones and launched with support for credit and debit cards across more than 135 fiat currencies, along with unspecified cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. The platform features NFTs from artists including TLC, H.E.R, Charlie Puth, G-Eazy, Jacob Collier, The Kid Laroi, Aurora, and Alesso, with further musicians to come.
6. Many well-known musicians have launched their own NFT collectibles and artwork amidst 2021’s surge in value and interest around the digital items, including The Weekend, Kings of Leon, Grimes, Weezer, Snoop Dogg, M.I.A, and the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger.
7. Check out Crypto Kitties

Tips

1. Get yourself a hardware wallet, this is a safe place to store your crypto-currency so that it is mainly offline. I use Ledger.
2. Get yourself a software wallet so you can store daily trading currencies and have a place to store smaller amounts. I use Uphold,
3. Try a few exchange for transforming USD, NZD, AUD, GBP into Bitcoin, Ethereum or other tokens.