ICYMI: Last Week in Crypto - Yuga Labs Bitcoin Ordinals sold out, Starbucks roll-out the 'Sirens', Vitalik the new King of Opensea
Like Poseidon🧜🏽♂️, he's in charge of what you sea👀
Last week, Yuga Labs Bitcoin Ordinal NFTs swooped over $16.5m in less than 24 hours during the launch auction and The ‘Vitalik’ NFT collection took the top spot on OpenSea. Also, Zero Knowledge-based crypto startup raised over $15m in a seed round as Meta announced they were working on a new decentralized social app.
Yuga Labs' initial Bitcoin NFT auction nets $16.5 million in just one day.
The first-ever Yuga Labs Bitcoin Ordinal nonfungible token collection's auction has ended, bringing in $16.5 million for the company in just one day.
The "TwelveFold" collection's Bitcoin NFTs were won by a total of 288 bidders. According to Yuga, unsuccessful bidders will receive their bid amount back within 24 hours while winners will receive their inscriptions within a week.
The auction produced 735 Bitcoin, which are currently valued at $16.5 million. One of the pieces was purchased for just over 7 BTC ($161,000) by the highest bidder out of the 288.
Late in February, Yuga revealed the collection. He called it a "base 12 art system localized around a 1212 grid, a visual allegory for the cartography of data on the Bitcoin blockchain."
There are 300 limited-edition generative pieces that are inscribed on Satoshis on the BTC network. The fortunate winners couldn't wait to share their brand-new NFTs online:
“Proven” Zero-Knowledge Crypto Startup Raises $15.8m in Seed Funding
Proven, a company that creates zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to help exchange and asset management clients demonstrate their solvency, has raised $15.8 million in a seed round, led by venture capital firm Framework Ventures, which specializes in the cryptocurrency industry.
According to a statement, Proven will scale its infrastructure and grow its team with the aid of the capital raise. Balaji Srinivasan, Roger Chen, and Ada Yeo were also investors in the round.
The fundraising effort follows a year that saw a number of prominent cryptocurrency collapses related to financial problems, including the multibillion-dollar centralized exchange FTX.
ZK proofs, a type of cryptography that can establish the veracity of a claim without jeopardizing anonymity, are combined with quantitative approaches in Proven's technology. Without having to publicly disclose their balance sheets or other sensitive information, exchanges, stablecoin issuers, asset managers, and custodians can show their assets and liabilities to prospective customers, partners, or regulators. For greater transparency, Proven's "Proof of Solvency" can be run every day.
"The last few months have highlighted an issue that has long plagued both traditional financial and digital asset firms – efficiently fostering trust with customers while maintaining a necessary level of privacy. The absence of this has led to significant distrust and, of course, contagion," said Proven co-founder Richard Dewey in the press release.
"We designed Proven to be a win-win solution that enables customers and regulators to have confidence in their exchanges, lenders, asset managers and stablecoins while at the same time protecting sensitive customer information," he added.
With prior experience at Jane Street, PIMCO, Two Sigma, and Elm Partners, the Proven team includes seasoned quantitative traders, researchers, and portfolio managers. The cryptocurrency exchanges Coinlist and Bitso, the stablecoin TrueUSD, and M11 Credit, an institutional credit underwriter for decentralized finance, are among the clients of Proven (DeFi).
NFT Company Palm Foundation Partners With Pussy Riot to Foster Activist Art
Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot will collaborate with Palm Foundation, the organization behind non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem Palm network, to teach a course on digital activism and to organize an upcoming feminist art competition with PalmDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
In her "Activist Master Class," Tolokonnikova will draw on her experiences as a creative activist who has fought for social and political justice. Through the Palm Academy, the network's native learning hub, the course will be accessible to all members of the Palm community in May.
According to a press release from Tolokonnikova, she hopes the course will enable students to speak out for the causes that are most important to them while also introducing others to the value of digital art on-chain.
“I'm proud to work together with Palm to support and inspire creators, especially female-identified and LGBTQ+ creators, who have been smashed by patriarchy for way too long,” said Tolokonnikova.
The feminist art competition will take place in April in conjunction with the NFT.NYC Conference is another way that Palm and Tolokonnikova will keep empowering artists. Artists and activists are being encouraged by PalmDAO to enter their work in the competition. Then, Tolokonnikova will choose five finalists to present at the competition, where one winner will receive $1,000 and an exclusive exhibition of their work.
“We are so excited to have Nadya Tolokonnikova as our first curator, especially during International Women’s Month and right after curating her collection for Sotheby’s,” - Andrea Lerdo, executive director of the Palm Foundation.
On top of her work as an activist, Tolokonnikova has already established a name for herself in the world of digital art. In celebration of International Women's Day this week, Tolokonnikova curated a Sotheby's auction that included pieces made by feminist artists in the traditional and Web3 art worlds. Shepard Fairey, a fellow activist artist, and she collaborated in January to publish an NFT collection in support of the Ukrainian military.
Starbucks Odyssey Launch First Limited-Edition NFT Drop, ‘The Siren Collection’
On Thursday, Starbucks Odyssey, the coffee company's Web3 loyalty program, unveiled its first batch of "Stamps," or limited-edition non-fungible tokens (NFT). Members of the program, which is still in invitation-only beta, can participate in tasks like quizzes and in-store purchases to earn Stamps, which they can then collect or sell on Nifty Gateway.
The 2,000-item "Siren Collection" includes a replica of the business's famous Siren; each stamp costs $100. Starting at 12 p.m. ET, Starbucks Odyssey customers could purchase two stamps each and pay with a credit card or by connecting their MetaMask wallet.
When the site first launched, users of the Starbucks Odyssey Discord group reported access issues and error messages, with the site appearing to be overloaded with traffic.
Despite the problems, the collection was sold out in 18 minutes, and subsequent sales grew significantly. The floor price for a Siren Stamp has already surpassed $550 as of this update.
The Nifty Gateway secondary market already offers NFT Stamps that members have unlocked by completing Journeys, with the floor price of the "Holiday Cheer Edition 1 Stamp" reaching $1,398 and $170,636 in trading volume as of this writing.
Starbucks launched its Odyssey program on the Polygon blockchain and aims to make the experience friendly for noncrypto natives, emphasizing the ability to purchase Stamps with only a credit card. Odyssey is a "next-generation loyalty platform," according to Andy Sack, co-founder and co-CEO of Forum3, which collaborated with Starbucks to launch the program. Odyssey aims to strengthen consumer brand loyalty to Starbucks.
‘Vitalik’ NFT Drop goes Top on OpenSea
After its open edition mint ended on Wednesday, the Gitcoin Presents non-fungible token (NFT) collection is skyrocketing in value and has taken the top spot on all major marketplaces. Despite Vitalik Buterin not being directly involved in the NFT drop, there is a rapid increase in interest in and value for the collection due to his association with the project.
Collectors produced 9,221 tokens in a single week at a floor price of 0.5 ETH, or about $770. The collection has already made a significant impact on the secondary market. Data from OpenSea show that at the time of writing, the collection had a trading volume of 7,763 ETH, or almost $12 million.
The mint, created by blockchain funding firm Gitcoin and NFT platform Metalabel, aims to honor a 2018 paper about the Quadratic Funding mechanism that Buterin, Harvard University economist Zo Hitzig, and economist and social activist Glen Weyl co-wrote.
A digital copy of the paper and two essays by the Gitcoin creators commenting on the effectiveness of the funding mechanism are provided to collectors who purchase the NFT.
The "Signature Edition" records of twelve of the tokens in the collection were reserved for collectors to mint at 10 ETH, or more than $15,000, and buyers received a copy of the original white paper that had been signed by the three co-authors.
Despite the buzz surrounding the project on Twitter and among NFT collectors, some users expressed skepticism about what some are referring to as the "Vitalik NFT drop," with others doubting whether it is a "official" drop from Buterin.
Gitcoin, Metalabel, and technology research organization Plurality Institute will all receive a portion of the collection's earnings, with the intention of continuing to fund public goods.
“Since this idea was introduced, more than $70 million has been directed to public goods and open source projects using quadratic funding by Gitcoin and other organizations,” according to the collection’s website.
Report: Facebook Parent Company Meta Exploring Decentralized Social App
According to a Friday TechCrunch report, Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms (META), is developing a decentralized text-based app.
The report cited a Meta spokesperson and claimed that the app would be a stand-alone item for text update sharing. MoneyControl, an Indian business news website, broke the news first.
"We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests," a Meta spokesperson said, according to the report.
The P92-designated app is still in the development stage. Users will be able to sign in using their Instagram credentials to access Instagram, another Meta-owned social media platform for sharing photos.
According to the report, it will support the ActivityPub protocol, which is also supported by Mastodon, a decentralized social media platform that gained popularity after Twitter was bought by billionaire Elon Musk.
In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg's social media hegemony changed its corporate name from Facebook to Meta Platforms, ostensibly to reflect its Web3-related goals, particularly those centered on the metaverse. In 2022, the company's metaverse division lost $13.7 billion.
In premarket trading, Meta's shares were little changed at $182.21.
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