The Defiant

NFT Roundup: Floors Up 2X, Visa Apes In, and a Fidenza Sells for $3.3M

Investor appetite for NFT art and collectibles shows no signs of abating.

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NFT Roundup: Floors Up 2X, Visa Apes In, and a Fidenza Sells for $3.3M

NFTs have pulled in huge money and a notable financial incumbent fan in the past couple days.

Investor appetite for NFT art and collectibles shows no signs of abating. Sales volumes on OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, topped $100M for three consecutive days, a new record for the platform.

Art Blocks FOMO

And it was another record weekend for Art Blocks, the platform for creating and minting generative NFT art on the Ethereum blockchain. On Friday, August 20 alone, Art Blocks saw 14,559 ETH, or $48M, in sales.

According to this Dune dashboard, more than 14K wallets now hold Art Blocks NFTs, up 55% in August from roughly 9K on July 31.

Floor prices across almost all Art Blocks collections have doubled or more since last week.

A 1,000 ETH Art Block

Then on Monday, August 23, Fidenza #313, an Art Blocks piece, sold for 1,000 ETH — or $3.34M at the time of writing. This is a new sales record for the collection, which was created by artist Tyler Hobbs.

The new owner, who goes by punk6529 on Twitter, made the following statement shortly after the purchase.

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The Defiant reached out to punk6529 over Twitter DM and wanted to know what was going through his mind as he initiated the huge transaction.

“It was quite exciting. I felt it might be an important and historic moment in my life,” punk6529 told The Defiant. “No second thoughts about the purchase. The Tulip is one of the handful of most important Fidenzas in the world.”

The collector continued, touching on the broader market, saying: “I can’t wait to see what comes next for Art Blocks as this work is understood better by the world at large. We are still at day 1.”

Visa Buys a CryptoPunk

Although we’re still very early in the NFT lifecycle, the technology is already being taken seriously by financial incumbents.

On August 23, payments giant Visa announced its purchase of CryptoPunk #7610, stating that the company is building its “collection of historic commerce artifacts.”.

In a Visa blog post, Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa said, “We expect a huge range of new cases in the years ahead. The ability to track and leverage a digital asset in multiple environments could mean exciting new opportunities in ticketing, gaming, music, art and beyond.”

Other NFTs On The Rise

Ready Player Cats and 0N1 Force were notable NFT launches this weekend. Both quickly jumped into the top 5 NFT projects by sales volume, according to Nansen.

Both projects are avatar projects like CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and many others. According to some users on social media, Ready Player Cats seems like it’s going to be the BAYC of the Chinese market. The story behind 0N1 Force is that of post-apocalyptic characters. It’s roadmap suggests that there will be merch and comics to go along with the NFTs.

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