#80 99 Year Old Nets $1.2M At Sotheby’s
A 6x from mint in 48 hours for a pioneering computer artist
GM - this is The Snapshot, edition #80.
Welcome to the new subscribers this week - we are now at 1,941 subscribers!
I write about NFTs/crypto, and solopreneurship in web3.
This is what I’ve got for you this week:
This Week In NFT/Crypto World - 99 Year Old Nets $1.2M At Sotheby’s
Sponsored Post - $6,000 for Lil Nouns Gifs
Notable Sales - CryptoPunk, Pak, Hobbs, Cherniak, Penguins
Thought Piece - 99 Problems and X is one
For sponsorship enquires, please DM me on Twitter.
Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
Have a great day,
B
This Week In NFT/Crypto World - 99 Year Old Nets $1.2M At Sotheby’s
99 Year Old Vera Molnar sells $1.2M of NFTs at Sotheby’s
99 year old Vera Molnar, the pioneering computer artist, successfully sold out 500 NFTs from her ‘Themes and Variations’ collection.
Vera is widely considered a living legend in the generative art space - someone who explored this area before anyone else.
This is her first on-chain generative art project.
It was sold via a dutch auction: the price started at 20 ETH ($38,000), and reduced until it found buyers.
The majority were sold between 1.1 and 1.5 ETH ($2,000 - $2,800).
And now the floor price on the secondary market is 6 ETH - almost a 6x for those that minted!
Fine generative art is alive and well!
WorldCoin launches coin in exchange for your iris
Worldcoin - planned by OpenAI, the same team behind ChatGPT - aims to create a global digital currency which is fairly distributed to everyone in the world.
It launched this week and sits at an FDV of almost $21B (!)
Why is it worth so much?
Well, there is a bit of trickery (unsurprisingly).
The launch has started with only 1% (100m) of the total planned supply (10B).
This means that anyone who wants to buy has an artificially small pool from which to buy - and conversely there are so many potential sellers locked up / who have not been allocated their coins yet that there are artificially fewer sellers.
If you want to read more about the controversy around this potentially dystopian coin - which requires you to physically have your iris scanned by one of their ‘orbs’ - Tyler has written the best full summary I have read.
$250,000 loan provided for an XCOPY 1/1
This epic 1/1 NFT by XCOPY received a 130 ETH ($250,000) loan.
We have spoken a great deal in the last few weeks about how NFT Lending is going to change the lending game because of the ease of liquidation and the unlocking of global liquidity.
This loan was secured for 365 days at 20.00% APR, so the borrower will need to pay back 156 ETH at the end of the lending period.
If the borrower does not pay back on time, the NFT will automatically be sent by smart contract to the lender.
The beauty of smart contracts!
Sponsored Post - $6,000 for Lil Nouns Gifs
Lil Nouns DAO has sponsored Liam from Nounish to create 50 LilNouns GIFs & MP4s for 3 ETH (just under $6,000).
Why?
Because the whole Nouns ecosystem is always looking to “proliferate the meme” and GIFs have proven to be an effective means of proliferation: the Nounish Giphy page has amassed over 126 million views!
As such, Lil Nouns DAO wanted some of that GIF action too - and so we look forward to seeing all 50 GIFs delivered in small batches over a 3 month period.
If you are curious about contributing to a cutting-edge DAO and getting paid to bring your ideas to life:
Check out the successful proposal for more details or reply to this email with any questions you’d like me to answer.
Notable Sales - CryptoPunk, Pak, Hobbs, Cherniak, Penguins
CryptoPunk, Hoodie - 166 ETH ($307,200)
Pak, Legend - 88.88 ETH ($164,200)
Tyler Hobbs, Fidenza - 79 ETH ($146,000)
Dmitri Cherniak, Ringers - 30 ETH ($56,000)
Pudgy Penguin, Ice - 88 ETH ($165,000)
Thought Piece - 99 Problems and X is one
Elon Musk finally changed Twitter to X at the start of this week. (If you want to know the thinking behind X, check out my previous article, Elon’s Twitter Revelations).
Beeple Everyday: Elon Carrying X Up The Mountain
Whilst this may be a cause for celebration for Musk as it marks the start of the realisation of a 20+year dream to create X.com - an all encompassing financial services app - it has come with some serious issues.
The Unexpected Username Change
Gene Hwang, co-founder of Orange Photography, had owned the Twitter handle '@X' for over 16 years. This changed abruptly when Musk's 'X' app took over the account without any compensation to Mr. Hwang. The transition happened swiftly, with the account falling under Musk's control within a day.
Notable Facts:
Musk's 'X' app did not compensate Mr. Hwang for the '@X' account.
Offers of company merchandise were made but no financial payment was proposed (!)
The Rebranding Ripple Effect
'X' also ditched Twitter's branding from its other official accounts, renaming its subscription service to '@XBlue' and '@TwitterSupport' to '@Support'.
More key changes:
All the site's blue bird logos have been replaced with an 'X' logo.
The website domain X.com now redirects to Twitter.com.
Company’s Twitter signage was removed from its San Francisco headquarters.
Potential Legal Challenges
The sudden rebranding move might result in legal difficulties for Musk. Concerns are being raised about Musk's ownership of the intellectual property rights for the letter 'X' in relation to social networking.
In fact - in a very interesting twist - it is his tech rivals Meta and Microsoft who both own trademarks of ‘X’ in certain domains.
Why does this matter?
Freedom of speech..or not? - Elon has been vocal about the censorship which has taken place on Twitter. Now we have seen examples where users’ entire identities have been taken from them without recourse. Will this be an isolated incident, or will we see more draconian overreach of ‘X’ power? It seems important to the integrity of the platform that this does not happen again.
Trademarks are costly - There are almost 900 active trademark registrations in the US across numerous industries for the letter ‘X.” Which has led certain lawyers to suggest “there’s a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued by somebody.”
What do I think?
It is obviously Elon’s default position to “move fast and break things” - and things are certainly breaking as they travel rapidly towards the “everything” app.
It is a great concern to me - and should be to all creators and participants on the internet - that your “internet property” can be taken away from you at any moment and without recourse.
Two thoughts as a consequence:
Sometimes at the start of “empires” bad things may need to be done to pave the way for future good. I do not think there will be continued arbitrary seizing of usernames. (For the avoidance of doubt, arbitrary seizure is bad.)
This makes the case for censorship-resistant digital property ownership even more. I own bcheque.eth via the ENS domain protocol (for those who do not know - think of it like a personal website - but in this case it’s your name for your wallet address.) No government leader, bank boss, or social media owner can take it away from me.
Bullish on censorship-resistant digital ownership.
Have a great day,
B
Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the NFTs mentioned in these newsletters