OpenSea, once the leading marketplace for non-fungible tokens, was built on a promise of perpetual royalties for digital artists. Then came upstart Blur, whose no-fee, trader-friendly platform put the focus on pricing and costs.



It only took a few months to kill the art world’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/03/17/what-blurs-success-reveals-about-nft-marketplaces/?sh=19e61c2a189f">utopian dream</a> of long-lasting income streams for content creators.



As of September 1, OpenSea, once the leading marketplace for art linked to non fungible tokens, rescinded its policy of mandatory royalty payments to NFT creators. The decision came after it lost its dominance to no-fee competitor Blur, which only appeared on the scene in October but then quickly gobbled up market share by not charging platform processing fees and became the top NFT trading site in February. Overall NFT trading volume has plummeted from about $5.36 billion in January 2022, according to The Block, to $410 million in August. OpenSea’s share of the struggling NFT market has plummeted to under 30%.



Besides the lack of platform fees, Blur does not force sellers to abide by royalty agreements, which creators who launch their works on OpenSea and a few smaller marketplaces can require on transactions in their artworks after the initial sale. OpenSea, which did police such arrangements, said it would no longer do so after August 31, and it seems unlikely that many buyers will offer the payments.



Without the guarantee of a long-term royalty stream, the appeal of creating works linked to NFTs lessens, and prices for the kind of computer-generated art often linked to the tokens are plunging anyway. So why should artists bother with NFTs?



“Making art is an act of risk-taking,” says Amy Whitaker, associate professor of art business at New York University. “It makes sense, therefore, for artists to share in the upside that they helped to create.” She termed OpenSea’s decision to abandon royalties “unfortunate.”



Digital works encoded onto blockchains rose in popularity in 2021 after the artist Beeple sold a collection of images previously published on his Instagram page for $69 million. Seeing the big bucks to be made in a seemingly simple process–just upload a digital file to an NFT marketplace, which would encode it, for a fee, onto a blockchain–hundreds, if not thousands of artists joined in. NFT aficionados, including artists and collectors, claimed that blockchain-linked art would democratize access to a murky and difficult-to-break-in market, making the opaque system of well-connected galleries and deep-pocketed buyers obsolete. The decentralized system for royalty payments, they contended, would also ensure that artists would directly participate in the appreciation of their works, typically earning a 10% cut on each subsequent sale.



Each marketplace maintained its own policy for awarding royalties to artists. Beeple for example, famously would sell his “drops” for $1 each, but as they were bid up and resold on NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway for hundreds of thousands of dollars, he earned tens of thousands in royalties on each transaction.



In its brief life, NFT-linked art has largely been digital, often in series of similar images with various unique features that make some more collectible than others. But anything can be linked to a token–traditional art, real estate, even musical instruments–and then tracked on its associated blockchain. So, the technology could speed transactions and cut out middlemen in many industries.



<abbr>T</abbr>he fight for royalty payments has largely played out in the court of NFT marketplaces, websites that allow creators and sellers to list their pieces in primary and secondary transactions. In order to better compete with Blur, OpenSea launched what it called its operator filter, which allowed creators of NFTs to prohibit their tokens from being sold in marketplaces that did not enforce royalties. In other words, the filter blocked OpenSea’s competitors and required collections to trade either on its own marketplace or others that did enforce royalty payments, keeping them away from Blur.



Market forces did not cooperate with OpenSea’s strategy. Free trades and optional royalty payment policies quickly drew sellers, which in turn attracted buyers. Since prices and volume were controlled by traders, seeking quick, if marginal, returns, voluntarily paying royalties to artists were easily dismissed by them.



OpenSea’s trading volume plummeted to 27% in August as Blur’s skyrocketed from a mere 5% to 60% in the same time frame, according to data from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theblock.co/data/nft-non-fungible-tokens/marketplaces" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Block</a>. Even OpenSea Pro, OpenSea’s no-fee aggregator and direct competitor to Blur which launched in April, has been unable to take market share from Blur, accounting for only 33% of trading volume on NFT aggregators in August (63% of trades happened on Blur), according to data from<a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/nft-aggregators" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Dune Analytics</a>.



But the playing field is not level for OpenSea. With no marketplace fee, Blur is living mostly on its $11 million in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/04/13/forget-art-lets-trade-how-a-10-person-startup-came-to-dominate-nft-markets/?sh=227ffacc2680">venture capital funding</a>&nbsp;and a&nbsp;<a href="https://docs.blur.foundation/tokenomics" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hefty</a>&nbsp;supply of blur tokens, reward tokens given out to its founding team and traders as rewards for using the platform. While Blur has attempted to grow its customer base with the launch of its lending products (Blend) and more uses for its token, how long its dominance will last will depend on its reliance on its token model, which could make it susceptible to regulatory action.



Ultimately, OpenSea has not only lost market share to Blur, but it is taking a smaller piece of a smaller pie. After peaking at $16 billion in January 2022, NFT trading has plummeted, with only $559 million worth exchanged in August in 3.2 million transactions, a more-than-<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/08/03/stan-lee-becomes-nft-superhero-illustrating-a-downward-shift-in-prices/?sh=6de9fb6d5ae5">60% volume decrease</a>&nbsp;from last year, according to industry research firm&nbsp;<a href="https://dappradar.com/blog/blockchain-industry-regains-traction-as-2-million-unique-active-wallets-interact-daily/#Chapter-4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DappRadar</a>. Even then, only 15% of unique active wallets contributed to August’s NFT transactions. In July, only 4% of wallets traded the NFTs.



Few transactions and even fewer users (measured by the number of unique wallets) points to a new normal in NFT trading which is bad news for digital artists: traders rule the market, and most refuse to pay royalties.



Blur’s predecessors, aggregators like X2Y2 and LooksRare which listed NFTs available in various marketplaces, set the standard for royalty-free marketplaces geared toward traders by offering quick no-fee transactions. Others, like Magic Eden, the largest marketplace for NFTs on the Solana blockchain, and Ethereum-based OpenSea, had to respond to draw customers back to their platforms, lowering costs one way or another. Magic Eden took the first step, moving to a royalty-optional model in&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/MagicEden/status/1581101016686399491?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1581101016686399491%7Ctwgr%5E9d190b061a3b95519526e7d4bab1ea7a5ea8bfbb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coindesk.com%2Fbusiness%2F2022%2F10%2F15%2Fmagic-eden-moves-to-optional-royalty-model%2F" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">October</a>&nbsp;as trading declined, preceding OpenSea by two weeks.



<abbr>T</abbr>he royalty policy changes at OpenSea and other marketplaces should send a loud wake up call to Bored Ape Yacht Club maker Yuga Labs. Since it debuted in April 2021, Yuga has received $58 million in royalties from the resales of its Bored Ape collection. Its Mutant Ape Yacht Club and “Otherdeed” collection brought in nearly $100 million more. Chiru Labs, which designed the anime-inspired Azuki collection, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariagraciasantillanalinares/2022/09/13/reddits-ohanian-leads-54-million-doodles-capital-raise/?sh=84266a63bf38">Doodles</a>, purveyor of pastel-forward illustrations are also likely to take big revenue hits.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-top-10-royalty-generating-nft-collections">TOP 10 ROYALTY GENERATING NFT COLLECTIONS</h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-through-august-2023-profile-picture-collections-have-received-the-most-in-total-royalties-since-launch-garnering-millions-in-fees-from-secondary-trading-but-when-it-comes-to-effective-royalty-rates-metaverse-and-gaming-nfts-with-rates-of-8-to-9-are-the-winners">Through August 2023, profile picture collections have received the most in total royalties since launch, garnering millions in fees from secondary trading. But when it comes to effective royalty rates, metaverse and gaming NFTs, with rates of 8% to 9%, are the winners.</h4>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Even prior to OpenSea scrapping royalty payments, 10% royalties were more of a goal than a reality. According to Nansen, the average royalty for the highest earning collections was between 2% and 4%. Top-performing gaming collectibles were earning 5% to 10%.



Though they stand to have the most dollars to lose, some big creators are insulated by the brand recognition they’ve garnered, including shows at traditional&nbsp;<a href="https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/magazine/article/the-centre-pompidou-in-the-age-of-nfts" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">museums</a>, and can still claim the big bucks on primary sales. Chiru Labs, for example, raised $38 million ahead of its much-anticipated “Elementals,” although investors ultimately thought that collection of characters with&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/wizardofsoho/status/1673772462289350657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1673772462289350657%7Ctwgr%5E1f3046daac6098742355f02bd7c2633d1e660522%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdecrypt.co%2F146464%2Fazuki-nft-prices-plummet-collectors-blast-identical-elementals-art" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">almost identical designs</a>&nbsp;was a flop.



The most dire consequences of the loss of royalties are likely to fall on the smaller creators whose monthly payments have been in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars but who have included the income in their financial planning, according to Calderon.



At the $6.7-million collection Rektguy, the loss of royalties is having tangible results, says co-founder Ovie Faruq. “We&#8217;ve used royalties to pay a moderator, to put-on real-life events, to build different competitions and build our website and community,” he says. “So, when you strip that out, it changes the business model.”



Combined with the evaporating royalties, NFT participants face new U.S. regulatory issues. The Securities and Exchange Commission last month required Los Angeles-based&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/08/31/sec-opens-a-new-can-of-worms-with-nft-enforcement-action/?sh=4aba9c3921ab">Impact Theory</a>, a digital media studio which raised $30 million from its NFT sales since 2021, to revise the smart contract underlying its Founders Keys NFTs to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/admin/2023/33-11226.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">eliminate</a>&nbsp;any royalty payment the company may receive from future secondary market transactions. The SEC alleges the company sold unregistered crypto securities through its sale. Because Impact collects and profits from the royalties (set at 10%), rather than the digital artist, the SEC contends, its NFTs are securities. This week, the SEC also fined the creators of the Stoner Cats collection&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-178" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$1 million</a>&nbsp;over the sale of unregistered securities.



Impact Theory’s NFTs offered a number of exclusive opportunities to holders, including discounts and early access to videos and gaming content. To settle charges that it was selling unregistered securities–the first SEC enforcement action against an NFT issuer–Impact Theory also agreed to destroy its remaining supply of the tokens and pay a $6 million fine.



If the SEC is looking at royalty payments as a potential criterion for treating the tokens like securities, NFT studios, collectors and even the marketplaces they’re traded on could be susceptible to the same kinds of enforcement actions the agency has been taking against cryptocurrency companies. The way the Impact Theory NFTs were structured may have made them especially susceptible.



“There&#8217;s a pretty good argument for the artists receiving royalties downstream, based on certain case law,” says James Walker, co-lead of Perkins and Coie’s fintech enforcement and compliance team referring to the way the entertainment industry compensates musicians, actors and screenwriters, for example. “But there’s a stronger argument [that NFTs are securities] when you have a company [like Impact Theory] that isn’t involved in the creation that is getting royalties downstream from certain NFTs issued.&#8221;

Collage of woman falling through the metaverse

Requiem For Royalties: NFT Exchanges Abandon Recurring Compensation For Artists

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The Associated Press on Thursday cancelled a planned sale of a non-fungible token of a video of “migrants drifting in an overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean” after backlash on Twitter to a post advertising it, with many deeming it distasteful.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



The tweet garnered at least 227,000 views before the news outlet deleted it, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/CLElaytown/status/1496990837368098817?s=20&amp;t=8suVg0PlNA6gydaVXo296A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">screenshots</a>&nbsp;posted of the ad by Twitter users following its removal.&nbsp;



The AP intended to sell the video, along with other NFTs from AP photographer Felipe Dana, on its photojournalism NFT&nbsp;<a href="https://apmarket.xooa.com/p/drops" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">marketplace</a>&nbsp;the following day.&nbsp;



The image in the tweet&nbsp;<a href="https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2018/5/7/refugees-and-migrants-rescued-at-sea" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">matches</a>&nbsp;one of Dana’s on an AP image blog of refugees being rescued off the Libyan coast in 2018.&nbsp;



An AP representative confirmed to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that the post was deleted and the image would not be put up for auction,&nbsp;stating,“This was a poor choice of imagery for an NFT.”&nbsp;



Twitter users called the post “<a href="https://twitter.com/CivesVero/status/1496990657646411776?s=20&amp;t=8suVg0PlNA6gydaVXo296A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dystopian</a>,” “in extremely poor&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BunnyNC/status/1496997875141816320?s=20&amp;t=8suVg0PlNA6gydaVXo296A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">taste</a>” and “<a href="https://twitter.com/megm4926/status/1496998071238262784?s=20&amp;t=8suVg0PlNA6gydaVXo296A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hyping</a>&nbsp;up the monetization of human suffering.”



Dana did not immediately respond to&nbsp;Forbes’ request for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT WE DON’T KNOW</h2>



&nbsp;It is unclear if the video will still be sold on the AP’s NFT marketplace, but the sale was scheduled for Friday at 12 p.m.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The AP began turning its photos into NFTs last month, launching its marketplace via the blockchain technology provider Xooa. In its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2022/ap-to-launch-nft-marketplace-built-by-xooa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">release</a>&nbsp;announcing the marketplace, the non-profit news organization said proceeds from the sales would “go back into funding factual, unbiased AP journalism.” Images currently available on the marketplace are selling for as much as $1,799 worth of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. NFTs are images stored on the blockchain, an encrypted ledger, making them unique to the owner.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“AP’s NFT marketplace is a very early pilot program,” the outlet told Forbes. “We are immediately reviewing our efforts.”



By Mason Bissada, Forbes Staff

A microphone of Associated Press (AP), an American non-

AP Cancels Sale Of NFT Of Migrants Floating In Overcrowded Boat In Mediterranean￼

Yat Siu&nbsp;is exhausted. The 49-year-old Austrian-born, Hong Kong-based exec isn’t sleeping more than a few hours a night these days but can’t stop himself from jumping into high gear when asked about his blockchain gaming business, Animoca Brands. Sporting a hooded black jacket and half-rimmed glasses, he wildly gesticulates as he expounds on the glorious destiny he sees for gaming decentralization and digital property rights.



“Maybe we can even reshape how people think about classic forms of capitalism,” he says.



Already this future—ruled by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain technology—has been Siu’s salvation. Just over four years ago, Animoca Brands was struggling. Revenues at the tiny mobile game business—which he had cofounded with David Kim, a former Softbank partner and ex-CEO of early internet success Mail.com, in January 2014—had fallen 25% to $5.2 million, and its market capitalization (improbably Animoca Brands was public, trading on the Australian Stock Exchange) was less than $6 million.



Then, in 2017, Siu stumbled across CryptoKitties, an early blockchain-based marketplace where users bought, sold and collected virtual pets. He caught the bug and invested in its Vancouver-based parent, Dapper Labs (then called Axiom Zen), a company now worth $7.6 billion. It was the first of what would grow into more than 150 NFT-related investments. Animoca Brands now has stakes in most of the world’s largest and most successful NFT businesses, including OpenSea (the largest NFT marketplace with estimated 2021 revenues of $375 million); Dapper Labs, which created the NBA’s Top Shot platform (nearly $1 billion worth of basketball “moments” sold since November 2020); and Sky Mavis, maker of&nbsp;Axie Infinity, last year’s blockbuster NFT game (valued at an estimated $3 billion).



“The only place we’re not in is probably Antarctica,” Siu says with a laugh.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">Blockchain gaming is either the future—or another bubble waiting to burst.</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



In mid-January, Animoca Brands raised nearly $360 million at a valuation of $5.4 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/01/17/blockchain-gaming-company-animoca-brands-raises-360-million-in-quest-to-build-the-open-metaverse/">more than doubling</a>&nbsp;its previous mark of $2.2 billion from October.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates that Siu has a 10% stake worth nearly $500 million. Investors included Liberty City Ventures, Soros Fund Management and Winklevoss Capital. (Animoca Brands is reportedly in talks with global investment firm KKR to add around $140 million to the January round.) Since its dark days in 2017, the company has grown from 57 employees to more than 600. In the first nine months of 2021, Animoca Brands generated $670 million in revenues, with about $530 million coming from gains on digital assets and investments. Its coin reserves were valued at nearly $16 billion at the end of November.



Overall, the global market for NFTs swelled to $25 billion last year, from $100 million in 2020. A fifth of that comes from video games, according to NFT tracker DappRadar. Much of the action has occurred in places like the Philippines, where low-income players have embraced a “play-to-earn” model that can net them a steady income of a few dollars a day. Western gamers have been less eager to embrace the trend. Blockchain gaming is either the future of the $200 billion video game industry—or another bubble waiting to burst. Given the range of Animoca’s holdings, lots of smart money is looking to the success—or failure—of Siu’s outfit as a litmus test for the viability of blockchain gaming.



“There’s very few times that you can feel like you can help shape an industry,” Siu says. “That’s very different from seeing a rising tide and an opportunity to participate. But here, you could help shape it in the manner that, at least we think, could be a net positive for everyone.”



The concepts behind blockchain gaming have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/01/06/why-video-game-makers-see-huge-potential-in-blockchain-and-why-problems-loom-for-their-new-nfts/">around for some time now</a>, dating back to the thriving economies of online multiplayer games of the early 2000s, especially&nbsp;World of Warcraft, and later the proto-metaverse project&nbsp;Second Life, which had its own digital currency (the Linden Dollar) and was home to the&nbsp;<a href="https://fortune.com/2006/11/27/anshe-chung-first-virtual-millionaire/#:~:text=Anshe%20Chung%2C%20a%20real%2Destate,worth%20more%20than%20%241%20million." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first virtual real estate boom</a>&nbsp;(and later bust) in 2006. Blockchain gaming is a massive bet on the idea of “true digital ownership” where players can buy and sell items (think unique clothing or superpowered swords) within a game and also where those assets have an existence (on the blockchain) independent of that game. How that plays out practically in an industry where competing game developers can’t even agree on the most basic standards (there is disagreement on which direction should be considered “up”) is anyone’s guess, but one NFT-gaming application has already caught on: play-to-earn.



Consider&nbsp;The Sandbox, a mobile game that Animoca Brands acquired in 2018 and transformed into a blockchain product. A player can purchase a virtual piece of land for about $4,000; fill it with custom buildings, objects or characters; and flip it for a higher price, just by putting the time in. Animoca Brands pockets a fee every time they’re traded.&nbsp;The Sandbox&nbsp;also has its own in game-currency, called SAND, that corresponds to real-world value—its market cap is currently $4.5 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Animoca Brands doesn’t collect royalties on the token but has accumulated a reserve that shows up on its balance sheet.



“Nobody’s thinking about, in a game design, how much can we give back to the players?” Siu says. “It’s really been always about the business.”



Siu’s passion for technology burned from an early age. Growing up in Vienna in the 1980s, he felt like an outsider because of his Chinese heritage. He found refuge in computers, and the burgeoning internet, to escape his loneliness.



He taught himself to code on an early Texas Instruments computer—a “glorified calculator,” as he says—and later progressed to an Atari ST. Using its MIDI port to connect to a keyboard, the teenaged Siu started publishing music composition software online. Unaware of his age, Atari reached out to him to discuss a job, only to be dumbfounded when he arrived at the company’s Austrian outpost. Still, they liked his online postings enough to hire him as a consultant.



After dropping out of college, and bouncing around through a handful of entrepreneurial ventures, Siu founded Hong Kong-based email company Outblaze in 1998. It was his first big score. In 2009, he sold the company’s cloud division to IBM for a sum in the hundreds of millions. Siu used most of his multimillion-dollar payday to help recapitalize the company during the ensuing economic downturn.



Inspiration for what to do next came in the unlikeliest of places. Sick of carrying around a stack of Baby Einstein flash cards to quiz his first child, Siu asked his team at Outblaze to develop a mobile app version. It was downloaded around 20 million times, leading him to create Animoca, an Outblaze subsidiary, to develop games in 2011. Renamed Animoca Brands, it was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2015.



It was hardly smooth sailing. In 2012, Apple, one of Animoca’s biggest distribution platforms, abruptly removed all of Animoca’s games from the App Store. No explanation was given. Siu suspects his strategy of launching a new game every week was deemed “spamming” by Apple. He shifted the company to producing kids’ games that licensed popular brands like&nbsp;Thomas and Friends, landing back on the App Store in 2013 until Apple de-emphasized the category, dealing a crushing blow. (Apple did not reply to a request for comment.) By 2017, Animoca Brands was a failing business.



Then a cofounder of a gaming startup Siu had funded told him about their new NFT project: CryptoKitties. The virtual felines were an instant success, becoming so popular that a month after their launch, in December 2017, they nearly crashed the Ethereum blockchain. Months later, the crypto market itself tanked, leading to 2018’s “Crypto Winter,” which left Bitcoin and Ether trading at momentary lows of $3,200 and $87, respectively.



Siu held strong. That year he congregated with what he called “250 die-hard believers, all just really willing to drink our own Kool-Aid” at a NFT conference in Hong Kong. He used the forum to forge relationships with companies that would turn to be some of his biggest wins: OpenSea,&nbsp;The Sandbox&nbsp;and Decentraland, a virtual-real-estate play with districts modeled after places like Las Vegas.



Embracing crypto put Siu in the crosshairs of the ASX, which was taking a cautious approach to digital assets. The exchange gave him a stark choice: Give up crypto, or get out. “It was scary,” Siu says. “If you’re delisted, no stock exchange was willing to look at you.” Animoca Brands was delisted in March 2020. (Technically, the company remains “public, but unlisted,” which means it operates like a private company with around 2,500 shareholders.)



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“Nobody’s thinking about, in a game design, how much can we give back to the players?”</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Promising as the technology may be, the world still hasn’t figured out how to regulate cryptocurrency and NFTs. The controversial “play-to-earn” model and use of in-game currencies stoke fears of gambling, market manipulation and exploitation of workers in the less-developed world, who often rent NFTs from players in more developed countries in return for a share of their earnings. Some Axie Infinity players, mostly based in the Philippines, play the digital monster game as their&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/14/people-in-philippines-earn-cryptocurrency-playing-nft-video-game-axie-infinity.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">primary source of income</a>.



Last year, the U.S. Congress&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2021/12/27/in-2021-congress-has-introduced-35-bills-focused-on-us-crypto-policy/">introduced 35 bills</a>&nbsp;on crypto and blockchain policy. Only one passed, although in Australia the ASX announced plans to allow cryptocurrency exchanges and ETFs to trade on the exchange. Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square) listed there in January. “It’s too big to ignore,” says former ASX regulator Greg Medcraft.



Not everyone shares Siu’s enthusiasm. Samson Mow, the chief technologist at Blockstream, which builds products to store and transfer Bitcoin, says the economics of an “Open Metaverse,” or an interchangeable collection of virtual worlds, works against game companies. “If&nbsp;Call of Duty&nbsp;sold you some weapons, Ubisoft doesn’t want you bringing them into&nbsp;Rainbow Six&nbsp;because that eats away at their item sales,” Mow says. “I just can’t see it happening to the way people are prophesying it will, like [the novel]&nbsp;Ready Player One, where you just move seamlessly.” Mow adds that blockchain technology is far from being truly decentralized; for instance, Ethereum, the network powering nearly all NFT games, relies heavily on Amazon Web Services.



And much of it can seem faddish.&nbsp;Axie Infinity’s primary token, AXS, has lost nearly 60% of its value in the last three months, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Electronic Art’s CEO Andrew Wilson, who previously expressed interest in entering the NFT space, walked back his comments on a recent earnings call. Valve, the company that owns popular game platform Steam, banned blockchain games and NFTs in October. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has said&nbsp;NFT gaming&nbsp;“feels more exploitive than about entertainment.”



If the world’s major gaming companies are hesitant, Siu is not. He’s quick to brag about&nbsp;Phantom Galaxies, an upcoming PC and Mac game from Animoca Brands that he says will rival the quality of Triple-A games on consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Except for a small misfire from Ubisoft, no major publisher has ventured in blockchain gaming yet. But the audacity of the gamble speaks volumes.



“I think Triple-A has arrived and it’s just going get better from here,” Siu says. “It’s going to happen in a big way.”



By Justin Birnbaum, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration, a NFT (Non-fungible token) sign

How An NFT Pivot Turned A Tiny Mobile Game Company Into Multibillion-Dollar Powerhouse

Video game and electronics retailer GameStop has announced a partnership with blockchain developer Immutable to develop an NFT marketplace, as well as setting aside funding to attract developers. 



GameStop, the&nbsp;gaming retailer&nbsp;at the&nbsp;center&nbsp;of a battle between Wall Street hedge funds and retail traders last year, has announced it is planning to launch its own NFT marketplace.&nbsp;The&nbsp;company&nbsp;made the announcement on&nbsp;Thursday in a press release, confirming retail&nbsp;traders&nbsp;suspicions&nbsp;and heralding a partnership with Immutable, using their platform built on the Ethereum blockchain.&nbsp; &nbsp; “An NFT marketplace which can&nbsp;capitalize… on probably the most rabid fanbase in the world right now for any company is an exceptional move by them,” said Robbie Ferguson,&nbsp;Immutable’s&nbsp;co-founder and President&nbsp;on February 4 during&nbsp;Bankless&nbsp;livestream, a channel dedicated to crypto related news.&nbsp; &nbsp; Indeed, it was the company’s fanbase that predicted that GameStop would be moving into the NFT and Web 3.0 space, after several job postings seeking experts in these fields were posted on the company’s hiring pages.&nbsp;



The marketplace announcement highlights GameStop’s transition from&nbsp;brick-and-mortar&nbsp;retailer to a modern consumer electronics&nbsp;organization&nbsp;that is beginning to dabble in cryptocurrency and technology, a pivot driven by the April 2021 appointment of Ryan Cohen as Chairman of the board. Cohen, a noted entrepreneur and investor of PetSmart fame, has driven a&nbsp;turnaround of the&nbsp;company, hiring top executives from Amazon and clearing GameStop’s debt.&nbsp;



&nbsp; The use of the Immutable X platform is aimed at reducing some of the drawbacks of Ethereum, such as high transaction fees or “gas fees” and environmental costs, with Immutable promising to pay carbon offsets for any environmental costs they do incur.&nbsp;



“The partnership establishes an up to $100 million fund in Immutable X’s IMX tokens, which the parties intend to use for grants to creators of non-fungible token (“NFT”) content and technology,” continued the press statement. The fund&nbsp;aims to provide game developers and studios grants to build products on the Immutable X platform and NFTs, using&nbsp;Immutable’s&nbsp;proprietary IMX tokens.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The marketplace announcement is the biggest news since the company became a highly-publicized&nbsp;“meme stock” battle between hedge fund short sellers and retail traders in early 2021, which saw the company’s share price skyrocket amidst increased volatility, and a generation of young traders on public forums such as Reddit following the company’s every move.&nbsp;



It remains to be seen&nbsp;GameStop’s&nbsp;transition to NFTs and Web 3.0 will ultimately be received, as many other gaming related NFT offerings from major game developers being met with intense backlash.&nbsp;The retailer’s primary business is largely still driven by consumer electronics and videogame sales, and it is as yet unknown what NFT’s the marketplace will feature – but, given the publicity of the company of the last year and the cult-like following it has engendered, any further developments are likely to&nbsp;be received with bated breath.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Ends&nbsp;

GERMANY-SHARES-GAMES-LEISURE

GameStop’s NFT Marketplace And $100 Million Development Fund

The NFT craze has minted its first billionaires.&nbsp;



The founders of buzzy blockchain startup OpenSea have joined the three-comma club following a fresh funding round announced Tuesday that values the company at $13.3 billion—up from $1.5 billion just six months ago. With estimated 18.5% stakes in OpenSea, cofounders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah are each worth about $2.2 billion, Forbes estimates. (Forbes applies a discount to the value of privately-held companies due to limited liquidity. An OpenSea representative declined to comment.)



Founded four years ago, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/11/23/what-every-crypto-buyer-should-know-about-opensea-the-king-of-the-nft-market/?sh=10edd5c62f89">New York City-based startup was an early player in the NFT market that took off in early 2021</a>. Shorthand for “nonfungible tokens,” NFTs are computer files used to track ownership of unique digital assets like art, music and even virtual sports cards on a ledger known as a blockchain. OpenSea bills itself as a peer-to-peer platform on which users can create, buy and sell all sorts of NFTs—in exchange for a 2.5% cut of each sale.&nbsp;



OpenSea has grown rapidly over the past year. In March 2020, the five-person outfit counted roughly 4,000 active users doing $1.1 million in monthly transactions,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/11/23/what-every-crypto-buyer-should-know-about-opensea-the-king-of-the-nft-market/?sh=10edd5c62f89">for about $28,000 in monthly revenue</a>. Its luck changed in February 2021, when platforms like the Winklevoss twins’ Nifty Gateway&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2021/04/05/revenge-of-the-winklevii-facebook-winklevoss-bitcoin-nft-billionaire-revenge/?sh=b87bb51572af">generated buzz</a>&nbsp;by auctioning off high-end digital art. By July, OpenSea had closed a $100 million funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and recorded about $350 million worth of transactions that month. The next month, transactions hit $3.4 billion—a staggering ten-fold increase that earned the company $85 million in revenue from commissions.&nbsp;



The NFT market cooled off slightly in the months that followed, before heating up again in December. OpenSea&nbsp;<a href="https://dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">processed more than $3.3 billion worth of sales last month</a>, generating&nbsp;about $82.5 million in revenue for itself. Today, the company employs more than 70 people.&nbsp;



Finzer and Atallah, each around 30 years old,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/11/23/what-every-crypto-buyer-should-know-about-opensea-the-king-of-the-nft-market/?sh=10edd5c62f89">have familiar resumes for young tech billionaires</a>. CEO Finzer grew up in the Bay Area, studied at Brown University and took a job as a software engineer at Pinterest. In 2015, he cofounded his first startup, a search engine called Claimdog, before selling it to Credit Karma a year later for an undisclosed sum. Colorado-born Chief Technology Officer Atallah proved to be a spreadsheet whiz from a young age. While he was a student at Stanford, he worked at Palantir, according to his LinkedIn profile, and after graduating worked at Silicon Valley startups Zugata and Whatsgoodly.



In January 2018, the duo teamed up for the Y Combinator startup accelerator with an idea for paying users crypto to share their Wi-Fi hotspots. But CryptoKitties—the cartoonish virtual cats that were among the earliest examples of NFTs—captured their imagination.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/11/23/what-every-crypto-buyer-should-know-about-opensea-the-king-of-the-nft-market/?sh=10edd5c62f89">Finzer and Atallah quickly pivoted to launch OpenSea and relocated to New York.</a>



Since its start, OpenSea has raised more than $420 million from investors, according to data from PitchBook. The $300 million series C haul announced Tuesday was led by venture capital firms Paradigm and Coatue. OpenSea says it plans to increase its headcount, with a focus on its “trust and safety” teams, and invest in making its products more accessible to a wider audience.&nbsp;



OpenSea faces heightened competition, including from crypto giant Coinbase, which in October announced plans to launch its own NFT exchange. Critics have also called out the potential for fraud and scams in the NFT world. In September,&nbsp;<a href="https://opensea.io/blog/announcements/employee-information-use-at-opensea/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Finzer requested the resignation of OpenSea’s head of product</a>&nbsp;after he was discovered to be buying NFTs shortly before they went live on the marketplace. And, just last week, a New York art gallery&nbsp;<a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/opensea-freezes-2-2m-of-stolen-bored-apes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly claimed that $2.2 million worth of NFTs had been stolen from him</a>&nbsp;and listed on OpenSea.&nbsp;



If the company can navigate the choppy waters, even greater riches could be on its horizon. Some $23 billion worth of NFTs exchanged (virtual) hands in 2021, according to data tracked by&nbsp;<a href="https://dappradar.com/blog/2021-dapp-industry-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DappRadar</a>–and the market is just getting started.



“Our vision is to be the destination for these new open digital economies to thrive,” Finzer said in an emailed statement.



By Eliza Haverstock, Forbes Staff

Screenshot 2022-01-25 at 14.12.10

The First NFT Billionaires: OpenSea Founders Each Worth Billions After New Fundraising

BY TIANA CLINE



IN AN INTERNET ENABLED VIRTUAL WORLD, THERE NEEDS to be a way to own digital items. Non- fungible tokens (NFTs) are already proving this is possible. Locally, the debut collection from artist Norman Catherine fetched $53,000 at Africarare, the first South African VR metaverse.



In November 2021, Nigeria&#8217;s contemporary art fair partnered with Super rare to showcase digital works by African artists such as Linda Dounia and Rendani Nemakhavhani.



Collecting NFTs is becoming increasingly popular but what if you could use something you’ve bought online? Created by Larva Labs, Meebits are one of the first NFT collections to be created as 3D avatars. Avatars are an important part of the metaverse because they’re what will ultimately represent a person, digitally. Microsoft, for example, is adding 3D virtual avatars to Mesh, their new collaborative platform which will enable mixed realities within Teams, as part of their metaverse strategy.



When the collection of (approximately 20,000 different) Meebits launched in May, it sold out in six hours. And to date, the most expensive Meebit has been sold for $222.9K.



“Meebits are algorithmically generated 3D characters linked to NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. They are rendered in voxels (or pixels with volume) similar to characters from popular games such as Minecraft or Roblox. You can use these NFT characters as metaverse avatars, or in games, and virtual reality,” explains Zhulik the Meebit. “If you purchase a Meebit, you get the 3D model. You can then take the 3D model and animate the avatar in real time using VR equipment such as a headset and controllers or a full body suit.” 



Because Meebits have utility as a 3D avatar, they can be used in various ways which has only added to their growing popularity. 



“For the first time, we have true digital ownership and I believe we are going to see an even bigger wave of creativity and innovation in intellectual property. The exciting thing about NFTs is that this is only the beginning.”

BRITAIN-BLOCKCHAIN-NFT-TOKENS

The Future Of NFTs: ‘This Is Only The Beginning’

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



“Everydays: The First 5,000 Days,” a piece of digital artwork, finds itself alongside paintings made by the likes of Picasso, Rothko, van Gogh and Monet as one of the most expensive art pieces sold at an auction in 2021, a year when non-fungible tokens (NFTs) garnered mainstream attention and emerged as one of the hottest tech trends.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Made by the 41-year old artist, Mike Winkelmann—better known as Beeple—the digital art<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/03/11/beeple-art-sells-for-693-million-becoming-most-expensive-nft-ever/">&nbsp;was sold</a>&nbsp;in the form of an NFT for $69.3 million, becoming the most expensive piece of digital art to go under the hammer.



Christie’s—the auction house that sold Beeple’s artwork—<a href="https://www.christies.com/presscenter/pdf/10337/Christie's%20EOY%202021%20Press%20Release_10337_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;last week that it has sold NFTs worth $150 million in 2021.



In simple terms, an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/02/26/what-is-an-nft-and-should-you-buy-one/?sh=10db653024b2">NFT</a>&nbsp;is a type of unique or non-replicable digital token that is registered on a blockchain—the same decentralized technology used by cryptocurrencies—that can be used as a record or authenticate the ownership of assets both in the digital and physical world.



This has meant that everyone from&nbsp;<a href="https://tarantinonfts.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">celebrities</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://nbatopshot.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the NBA</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.marvel.com/articles/gear/first-ever-marvel-digital-comic-collectibles-nft-veve" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Marvel Comics</a>&nbsp;and even&nbsp;<a href="https://decrypt.co/87752/ubisoft-first-major-gaming-company-launch-in-game-nfts" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">video game</a>&nbsp;makers have jumped on board the NFT bandwagon as mainstream interest in digital collectible items surged.



According to <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2021-01-01%202021-12-31&amp;geo=US&amp;q=NFT" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Trends data</a>, search interest in the term “NFT” spiked briefly in March and April before hitting its currently ongoing surge in August and a <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2021-01-01%202021-12-31&amp;geo=US&amp;q=how%20to%20buy%20NFT" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">similar trend</a> can also be seen for the phrase “how to buy NFT.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$23 billion. That’s the total value of all NFT sales that took place in the past year, according to data&nbsp;<a href="https://dappradar.com/blog/2021-dapp-industry-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published</a>&nbsp;by DappRadar. In comparison, total NFT sales in 2020 were worth less than $100 million.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



NFT was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/24/nft-is-collins-dictionary-word-of-the-year" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">declared</a>&nbsp;as 2021’s “Word of the Year” by Collin’s English Dictionary last month, as it beat out the likes of “crypto” and “cheugy” to claim the top spot.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h2>



While NFT-based art pieces—like the ones made by Beeple—grabbed the bulk of the headlines in early 2021, a majority of interest in NFTs was driven by digital collectibles. Similar to rare Pokemon or baseball trading cards projects like Cryptopunks offered thousands of unique digital collectibles with varying degrees of “rarity.” One particular collection that gained a lot of attention online was the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnet.com/how-to/explaining-the-bored-ape-yacht-club-nft-collection/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bored Ape Yacht Club</a>&nbsp;which is made up of a collection of 10,000 NFT-based avatars. Owners of these cartoon ape avatars, which cost a minimum of $210,000, include celebrities like Post Malone, Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallon and DJ Khaled. Owners of the expensive digital asset have received exclusive invites to meetups in California, New York, Hong Kong and several other places. These meetups have included an actual yacht party in New York and a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.inputmag.com/culture/bored-ape-yacht-club-nft-nyc-ape-fest" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">concert</a>&nbsp;featuring the likes of&nbsp; Chris Rock, Aziz Ansari and The Strokes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CONTRA</h2>



As their popularity surged in the past year, NFT also emerged at the center of several controversies including accusations of art theft and their potential environmental impacts. A majority of NFTs&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-hot-effect-earth-climate/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rely on</a>&nbsp;the “proof-of-work” blockchain Ethereum, which keeps a record of NFT&nbsp; transactions through a process called mining. Environmental advocates have warned that mining, which relies on a decentralized network of computers around the world, consumes a significant amount of energy that can lead to a rise in carbon emissions. Another controversy around the technology has involved the theft of digital art where original creators are not attributed. Several illustrators and artists who host their content online have&nbsp;<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/artist-stealing-nfts" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">complained</a>&nbsp;that their work is being turned into NFTs without their consent or any attribution.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/02/26/what-is-an-nft-and-should-you-buy-one/?sh=10db653024b2">What Is An NFT—And Should You Buy One?</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2021/12/23/nfts-generated-over-23-billion-in-trading-volume-in-2021/?sh=62ea52375f0a">NFT Market Generated Over $23 Billion In Trading Volume In 2021</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-hot-effect-earth-climate/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NFTs Are Hot. So Is Their Effect on the Earth’s Climate</a> (Wired)



By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Africa

Van Gogh, Monet—And Beeple? As NFTs Exploded One Of The Most Expensive Art Pieces Sold In 2021 Was Entirely Digital.

<p id="h-startups-are-supposed-to-specialize-but-opensea-s-founders-thrived-by-building-a-wide-open-market-for-creating-and-trading-all-manner-of-nfts-whether-art-music-or-gaming-now-that-they-re-centimillionaires-and-poised-to-become-billionaires-they-have-other-worries-competitors-fraudsters-and-the-next-crypto-crash">Startups are supposed to specialize, but OpenSea’s founders thrived by building a wide-open market for creating and trading all manner of NFTs, whether art, music or gaming. Now that they’re centimillionaires and poised to become billionaires, they have other worries: competitors, fraudsters and the next crypto crash.&nbsp;



In March 2020, as Covid-19 began to spread, OpenSea founders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah held a gut-check phone call. Their five-person startup had built a platform on which users could create, buy and sell all sorts of nonfungible tokens (NFTs)—computer files used to track ownership of unique digital assets like art and music on a ledger known as a blockchain. Yet 26 months after going live, they had just 4,000 active users doing $1.1 million in transactions a month, which translated (given OpenSea’s 2.5% sales commission) to a paltry $28,000 in monthly revenue. The NFT market had a “dead feeling,” recalls CTO Atallah, who conducted his side of the call from the basement of his parents’ Colorado home, where he had gone to work as New York locked down. Ominously, Rare Bits, a direct and better-funded competitor, had just announced it was folding. The pair set a do-or-die goal of doubling business by the end of the year—and met it in September.&nbsp;



Finally, in February 2021, the NFT market roused from hibernation—and went crazy. In July, OpenSea processed $350 million in NFT trades. That same month, in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, it raised $100 million in venture capital at a $1.5 billion valuation. In August, as NFT hype (and FOMO) reached a fever pitch, volume spiked tenfold to&nbsp;<a href="https://dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$3.4 billion</a>—an $85 million commission windfall for OpenSea in a month when it likely burned less than $5 million on expenses. Although transactions have since retreated to around $2 billion a month, the platform now has 1.8 million active users and a dominant share of the market. It’s up to 70 employees and is scouting for dozens more, including much-needed customer service reps.&nbsp;



Recently, there’s been talk of another round of venture investment at a valuation that could reach $10 billion. With a 19% ownership stake each, CEO Finzer, 31, and Atallah, 29, are centimillionaires on the cusp of becoming crypto’s newest billionaires.&nbsp;



Yet Atallah was humble as he chatted in November at a restaurant in New York’s kitschy new Margaritaville Resort Times Square, sitting near its 32-foot Statue of Liberty replica, which hoists a cocktail instead of a torch. He was there for the third annual&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nft.nyc/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NFT.NYC</a>&nbsp;convention, which boas­ted 5,500 registrants with 3,000 on the waiting list. Young enthusiasts prowled the hotel wearing&nbsp;<a href="https://opensea.io/collection/boredapeyachtclub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bored Ape Yacht Club</a>&nbsp;sweatshirts—a tribute to a collection of 10,000 simian NFTs whose owners treat it as a social club as much as a collectible or investment.&nbsp;



You might say humility was at the heart of Finzer and Atallah’s successful strategy. Some advisors had urged them to specialize in an NFT niche—say, art, gaming or music. But they opted to build a category-agnostic platform because they didn’t think they were prescient enough to predict which NFT types would catch on.&nbsp;



Beyond casting a wide net, Finzer says, OpenSea has thrived simply by “being in the right place at the right time” and listening to users about what they want. The platform tracks NFTs on ethereum and other blockchains, and all purchases are made in crypto. Sellers can opt for a fixed-price or auction format. Artists can reserve a percentage of each resale price. Ultimately, Finzer sees the NFT ownership verification model working for anything from concert tickets to real estate—he’s just not sure what will succeed when. “I’ve always had a pretty gray view of the future,” he says.&nbsp;



Despite its sudden success, OpenSea faces big and varied risks—from fraud and another NFT market bust to new competition. In October, Coinbase, the nation’s largest crypto exchange and an original investor in OpenSea, announced it will launch its own NFT peer-to-peer marketplace. Within weeks, Coinbase had 2.5 million sign-ups for its waiting list, and CEO Brian Armstrong was predicting the new business “could be as big or bigger” than its core crypto trading business.&nbsp;



OpenSea’s open-market approach heightens the risk of counterfeits, scams and fraud—just ask Amazon or eBay. For example, a scammer can copy an image of someone else’s art and sell it as an NFT on OpenSea. Finzer says the site is working on an automated way to spot fakes and has moderators who investigate suspicious offerings. Still, people can present problems too. In September, Finzer&nbsp;<a href="https://opensea.io/blog/announcements/employee-information-use-at-opensea/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">requested the resignation</a>&nbsp;of OpenSea’s head of product after Twitter users&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/0xZuwu/status/1437921263394115584" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">discovered</a>&nbsp;a crypto wallet linked to that executive was buying NFTs shortly before they appeared on the price-moving OpenSea home­page—in other words, he was allegedly frontrunning his own employer’s decisions.&nbsp;



While they come across as humble, OpenSea’s founders are hardly low on ambition. Raised in the Bay Area by a physician mom and a software engineer dad, Finzer says he was “devastated” to be rejected by Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Yale. (He settled for Brown.) After a short stint as a Pinterest software engineer, he cofounded his first startup, Claimdog, in 2015 and sold it to Credit Karma a year later.&nbsp;



As a kid, Atallah, the Colorado-born son of Iranian immigrants, made spreadsheets to compare the attributes of everything from birds to brow­sers. After graduating from Stanford, he worked as a programmer before teaming up with Finzer. In January 2018 they entered the Y Combinator startup accelerator with an idea for paying users crypto to share their Wi-Fi hotspots. But at that point, CryptoKitties—the cartoonish virtual cats whose ownership records were digitally inscribed on the ethereum blockchain—had captured the public imagination. “It was the first time people who didn’t really care about crypto were suddenly getting interested in it for reasons other than flipping a coin. I thought that was really powerful,” Atallah says. They quickly pivoted to OpenSea and later moved their operation to New York City.&nbsp;



Much like Beanie Babies, their cloth-and-stuffing ancestors, CryptoKitties turned out to be duds as investment-grade collectibles—the supply was too great to make most of them worth much. After spiking in early 2018, interest in both crypto and NFTs went into hibernation.&nbsp;https://view.ceros.com/forbes/sidebar-2-3-1?heightOverride=741



What awakened the market in early 2021 wasn’t OpenSea’s doing. Instead, platforms like the billionaire Winklevoss twins’ Nifty Gateway&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2021/04/05/revenge-of-the-winklevii-facebook-winklevoss-bitcoin-nft-billionaire-revenge/?sh=4c2e24a01572">captured attention</a>&nbsp;with curated, high-quality art. Last March, Christie’s auctioned the NFT for digital artist Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”&nbsp;for $69 million, the third-highest price ever paid for work by a living artist.&nbsp;



As NFTs fetched eye-popping prices, more and more ordinary folks decided they too wanted to become creators, collectors or speculators—and turned to OpenSea, with its anyone-can-be-an-artist ethos, built-in secondary market and handy features. For instance, the site has an advanced filtering system so users can find NFTs with the rarest—and theoretically most valuable—attributes. (Only 46 Bored Apes have solid-gold fur, and they command a hefty premium.) When a new NFT is created and recorded on ethereum, the site automatically spawns a webpage displaying it—a nice feature as NFTs became a status symbol, with people sharing their OpenSea pages and changing their Twitter profile pictures to an NFT they own. “It became this circular feedback loop, driven by envy and desire. And OpenSea really captured that market,” observes Richard Chen, a partner at VC firm 1Confirmation and an early OpenSea investor.&nbsp;



Dani, 27, a former fashion designer living in Georgia, has turned a $17,000 investment in NFTs like the World of Women into a portfolio worth $715,000. AJ, a 37-year-old former gaming company CEO from North Carolina, put less than $10,000 into NFTs and now values his digital assets at $1.3 million. He recently convinced his gastroenterologist brother to start buying NFTs. The brother, in turn, hooked his own buddies. “They’re pretty much doing colonoscopies and then checking their phones for new NFT drops,” AJ says.&nbsp;



Sounds like a bubble, all right, raising the question of how OpenSea will fare when it bursts. Responds Finzer: “We have a large amount of padding in case we need to weather a winter.” 



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/"></a>By Jeff Kauflin, Forbes Staff

Non-fungible token art.

What Every Crypto Buyer Should Know About OpenSea, The King Of The NFT Market

NFTs have been making waves in the art world, with recent high-profile pieces selling for millions of dollars and high-profile art auctioneers participating in the sales. However, many see the main benefits of NFTs in allowing transparency of ownership and royalties for the artists. One online South African art fair is in agreement, and launched their own NFT offering this week.



Imagine a world where artists earn royalties for every sale of their work in perpetuity, a world where ownership of a piece’s history is public record? With the advent of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) transforming the art world globally, that reality is here, and South African art and artists are entering the NFT game along with museums, and looking to transform the way art is bought and sold forever. Confused by what an NFT is? First, we need to understand what is termed ‘the blockchain’, on which NFTs are built. Here’s a simple analogy; your bank processes all transactions between yourself and others, and keeps track of your account balance and those of thousands of others. It also talks to other banks which do the same thing. Now imagine that these transactions are public, and being managed by thousands of different computers across the world – that’s the blockchain. An NFT is a symbol or representation of something that’s unique; imagine you own a jacket for 10 years. You could buy a new jacket of the same make and the same size etc, but it wouldn’t be the exact one you’ve had for 10 years – that’s an NFT. The proof of these transactions and the contracts of sale are built into the blockchain itself, so they can be verified independently.



Think this is too complicated? You’re not alone.



“I’m clueless but excited,” says Koos Groenewald, one half of Jana + Koos, an art and design duo who are participating in South African online art fair Latitudes’ first NFT offering. “It’s like an internal combustion engine. You don’t need to understand how internal combustion works in order to benefit from it.” Latitudes aims to be “the first African marketplace for art-focused NFTs”, and made their first offering in the space yesterday with their Made it to the life raft collection, which offers silk scarves for sale online by eight South African artists. The first 25 people to purchase each scarf receive a free NFT with their purchase. “You can’t really be in the art world right now and not be thinking about NFTs,” says Roberta Coci, Latitudes co-founder in an interview with FORBES AFRICA. In South Africa, some in the art world are excited by the possibilities that NFTs represent, particularly due to the ability to implement what are termed “smart-contracts”, essentially terms of sale or re-sale that are built into the artwork, which have strong implications for authenticity verification and royalties. NFTs in the artworld have hit mainstream news over the last year, with several high-profile sales garnering millions of dollars – today, around 5% of major sales at auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christies being made up from NFT sales. (Art Market Research, 2021).



Latitudes started examining the space earlier this year. Originally founded as a highly-successful physical art fair which aimed to promote a platform where artists, galleries and independents could come together on an equal playing field, hosting another physical art fair was hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Like many others in the industry, Latitudes made the move online. “We launched [latitudes.online] in July 2020 with around 350 artists. Now we are closer to 900 and growing nicely and quickly – we’re basically a third-party marketplace with galleries, artists, curators… as long as you have good art to sell you can bring it on to the platform,” says Coci.



Partnering with NFT experts and social marketplace Momint for the implementation, culminated in yesterday’s ‘soft launch’ of Latitudes’ NFT offering. This democratized ethos fits in well with the benefits that NFTs can bring to the art world; increased transparency of art origination and ownership, as well as perpetual royalties for the artist even after the first sale – preventing the phenomenon of people “flipping” an artwork. “The main gamechanger is that ownership rests with the artists, that you can build the royalties into the smart contract… this way, every time a work is sold, the artist will receive royalties,” says Coci.”Ultimately, it’s a very practical application in the end.”



And indeed, even though the concept of NFTs can be confusing and misunderstood due to the novelty of the technology, participating artists clearly see the possibility of benefits.



“The royalties – they’re sure exciting for me… especially with digital and moving pictures in art. A print is tangible, but if something’s intangible it doesn’t hold the same value. NFTs are bringing up the value of intangible work – and it’s very exciting,” says Groenewald. While Latitudes is amongst the first online art fairs to make an NFT offering, Cape Town-based art Gallery WorldArt also presented an NFT sale earlier this year.



“This is a ground-breaking development in the art world. I am particularly thrilled that this mechanism guarantees artists royalties when their artworks are resold,” says gallery owner Charl Bezuidenhout. Museums, and even rhino-conservation efforts are moving into the space, with a tokenized pen-gun owned by South African anti-apartheid activist OR Tambo and a digital rhino horn going on sale in the weeks to come. “We are still at the early-adopter stage,” says Coci, “But once the hype dies down, we’ll begin to see the real value that NFTs offer.”

NFT CryptoArt displays in art gallery

How The South African Art World Is Entering The NFT Space

“I’m a geriatic Millennial,” laments Alexis Ohanian, the 38-year-old cofounder of Reddit. “Even I don’t understand it all.”



He’s referring not to the online oddities—memes, GIFs, NSFW comment threads— that have turned Reddit into&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/02/08/fresh-off-gamestop-mania-reddit-raises-250-million-in-new-funding/">a prosperous virtual hangout spot</a>&nbsp;with over 50 million users. Instead, he’s talking about another topic that takes up a lot of the internet’s attention today: NFTs.



As a guy who’s lived on the web for decades, Ohanian’s being modest, but his comment gets at a core truth. The NFT world is a hard-to-navigate space, full of unfamiliar people, complex ideas and jargon galore, like what even is an NFT. (For the record, it is a non-fungible token,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/02/26/what-is-an-nft-and-should-you-buy-one/">a digital collectible or art</a>&nbsp;bought and sold through online marketplaces.) Ohanian will do his best to work through it all as the cohost of a podcast launching today dedicated to NFTs,&nbsp;<a href="https://itsprobablynothing.xyz/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“Probably Nothing,</a>” available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, the name a nod to how the virtual asset is often dismissed as fundamentally worthless.



For a cohost, Ohanian has teamed up with another internet enthusiast,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/09/23/everything-youve-wanted-to-know-about-gen-z-but-were-afraid-to-ask/?sh=3425d5cf3d19">24-year-old Tiffany Zhong</a>, whose startup, Islands, offers a platform for digital influencers looking to better monetize their following. The pair originally met at a Y-Combinator hackathon in 2014 when Zhong was still in high school: She went and a built a speed-reading app, he was then a Y-Combinator partner. (Ohanian has also since started his own venture capital firm, Seven Seven Six.) They struck up a friendship more recently after noticing they had similar interests on Twitter.



“We were just exchanging NFT memes with each other, talking about interesting projects. It’s grown out of a conversation we’ve had in our DMs”—their direct messages between each other on Twitter—“for several months,” says Zhong.



They’re not the only ones thinking about NFTs, which have become one of the biggest stories of 2021. A year ago, the digital assets recorded less than $10 million a month in sales. By constrast, $323 million worth of NFTs traded hands on a single day in August, a record unbeaten for now.MORE FOR YOU<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/09/23/in-bid-for-growth-a-new-clubhouse-feature-aims-to-increase-private-chats/">A New Clubhouse Feature Aims To Increase Small, Private Chats—And Deeper Engagement</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/09/22/facebook-apple-privacy-change-software/">Facebook Admits It Reported Faulty Numbers To Advertisers, Blames Apple</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2021/09/13/aocs-tax-the-rich-dress--ultimate-fashion-statement-or-display-of-hypocrisy/">AOC’s ‘Tax The Rich Dress’ – Ultimate Fashion Statement Or Display Of Hypocrisy</a>



But as even money and attention has picked up, the space remains seperate from the regulated world of mainstream finance and investment, making it a place uncomfortably rife with speculation and speculators. To defend against any criticism of bias, Zhong and Ohanian say they will be open about their own crypto investments on the podcast and have publicly published links to the digital wallets containing their holdings. “People are starting to looking for more content in this space, to look for people who are not trying to pull a fast one,” Zhong says. “We want to be the go-to space with legitimate guests and topics that span being a collector, a creator and an investor in this space.”



Unsurprisingly, many of those guests aren’t exactly household names, such as Farokh Sarmad, an active NFT investor, and ThankYouX, an artist whose work has been sold by Phillips auction house. Zhong and Ohanian also plan on speaking to people like Keith Grossman, the president of&nbsp;Time&nbsp;magazine, which&nbsp;<a href="https://time.com/5948741/time-nft-covers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">has offered</a>&nbsp;some of its archival covers as NFTs, and Noah Davis, the Christie’s executive who helped established the company as an early mover in this world through&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/03/11/beeple-art-sells-for-693-million-becoming-most-expensive-nft-ever/">a record-setting $69.3 million sale</a>&nbsp;of a collage by the artist Beeple in March.



It was around that same time when Ohanian “was talking about the future investment portfolio and how it was gonna look much different,” he recalls. “It’s not going to be just stocks and bonds.”



“The same trends that made Reddit work 16 years ago, are now acting out way more effectively, way faster,” he says, pointing to the speed at which fast online communities can form and flourish today. “And that&#8217;s pretty damn exciting.”



By Abram Brown, Forbes Staff

Web Summit 2018

A New Alexis Ohanian Podcast Hopes To Be A Clarifying Guide To NFTs

FORBES AFRICA is proud to announce its 10th Anniversary on October 1. In celebration of a decade of being a part of the African Growth Story, FORBES AFRICA today unveils its latest graphic cover in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT). This once-in-a-lifetime piece includes 105 covers from each published edition of FORBES AFRICA over the last decade.&nbsp;



This historic moment is a first in African publishing as this graphic cover includes all former cover stars, African icons and global heavy-hitters such as Aliko Dangote, Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Graça Machel, in addition to African of the Year winners, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina and WTO Director-General Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.&nbsp;



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<iframe loading="lazy" title="A First in African Publishing" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q8rtMptsLBY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



The graphic NFT cover will be sold at a limited 72-hour auction beginning (22:00 SAST) Tuesday, September 28 and closing&nbsp;Friday, October 1. The winner will be announced on October 1, as the 10th Anniversary issue of FORBES AFRICA is released.&nbsp;



&#8220;Launching our first NFT to mark ten years of Forbes in Africa is a sign of how the next ten years are going to unfold. We live in a world that is transitioning from the physical to the digital and this is our step in making our mark in the metaverse,” says Sid Wahi, blockchain enthusiast and Director at FORBES AFRICA.&nbsp;



“This is the culmination of all things we have expounded in FORBES AFRICA over the last decade: innovative thinking that leads to new ideas, building communities around futuristic concepts, and creating desirable collectibles, this time away from the physical world in the NFT ecosystem and the metaverse. Such a new and exciting channel!” says Managing Editor of FORBES AFRICA, Renuka Methil.&nbsp;



“These stories of leadership, enterprise and endurance would have been lost, both for audiences within and outside Africa, and FORBES AFRICA became the pan-African platform to showcase African talent, potential and case studies of leadership,” adds Rakesh Wahi, Founder and Publisher of FORBES AFRICA. “A lot has gone into reaching this milestone but the most important quality has been teamwork.”&nbsp;



The NFT, “105 Covers in 10 Years” was taken&nbsp;by multiple photographers over the years, notably Motlabana Monnakgotla, Kelechi Amadi-Obi and Jay Caboz,&nbsp;with covers designed by&nbsp;Art Director Lucy Nkosi and former art directors Lieria Boshoff and Kristijan Srsa.&nbsp;



To be a part of this historic moment and place your bid, click <a href="https://rarible.com/token/0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5:1336193?tab=bids">here</a>.



For more information, important updates and official announcements, follow the conversation on social media @forbesafrica, using the hashtags #FORBESAFRICA10 #DecadeOfForbesAfrica #105IssuesOfFORBESAFRICA #AuctionAlert #NFT #NFTCommunity&nbsp;

Tag: NFT Community

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

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FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

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AP Cancels Sale Of NFT Of Migrants Floating In Overcrowded Boat In Mediterranean￼

How An NFT Pivot Turned A Tiny Mobile Game Company Into Multibillion-Dollar Powerhouse

GameStop’s NFT Marketplace And $100 Million Development Fund

The First NFT Billionaires: OpenSea Founders Each Worth Billions After New Fundraising

The Future Of NFTs: ‘This Is Only The Beginning’

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A New Alexis Ohanian Podcast Hopes To Be A Clarifying Guide To NFTs

105 COVERS FROM 10 YEARS! A FIRST FOR AFRICAN PUBLISHING

AP Cancels Sale Of NFT Of Migrants Floating In Overcrowded Boat In Mediterranean