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Feb 23 2021

Altcoins nurse double-digit losses as Bitcoin bulls fight to retake $49K

Another wave of selling pressure hit the cryptocurrency market on Feb. 23 as Bitcoin struggles to reclaim the $49,000 level.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that Bitcoin fell under intense pressure in the early trading hours on Tuesday and this pushed the price of BTC as low as $44,927 before buyers arrived to stop the descent.

The majority of altcoins and DeFi tokens are now even deeper into their double-digit losses and Bitcoin (BTC) price has dropped by more than $10,000 in the past 48 hours. 

BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

At the time of writing, BTC is trading at a price of $48,600, which reflects a 11% decrease for the day, but according to Cointelegraph analyst Marcel Pechman, pro traders have looked to buy the dip and opened new leveraged long positions.

Today’s market downturn has overshadowed several positive developments for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, including the news that Bitfinex and Tether have settled their case with the Office of the New York Attorney General and agreed to pay $18.5 million for damages to the state of New York. Both parties also agreed to submit to periodic reporting of their reserves.

Interest in the first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in North America has also continued to explode as the Purpose Bitcoin ETF has grown to $564 million in assets under management just five days after the fund was launched. Filings also show 2,251 BTC being added to the fund on Feb.23.

Pullbacks are a sign of a healthy market

Despite the marketwide carnage, many crypto traders and professional investors view the current pullback as a necessary break that allows overbought assets to retest key underlying support levels.

As pointed out by Twitter user “Bitcoin Archive,” corrections like these are par for the course and were commonplace during the 2017 bull market, which had “9 dips between 20–40%”. Despite these reoccurring deep corrections, the market still increased by “20 times from its previous all-time” high over the course of 2017.

Significant BTC price pullbacks during the 2017 bull run. Source: Twitter

Summing up how that relates today and where BTC is headed, Bitcoin Archive stated:

“We are now sitting on 2.35x the previous cycle ATH OF 20k. This rally is just getting started”

Traditional markets rebound

Traditional markets also faced early selling pressure on Tuesday morning, but they were able to climb back into the green shortly after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reaffirmed that the Fed will maintain the current accommodative policies, including keeping benchmark rates near zero and asset purchases at the current pace of $120 billion per month.

By the closing bell, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.13% and 0.50%, respectively, while the Nasdaq closed down 0.50%.

Altcoins take a beating, with recent high flyers hit the hardest

Bitcoin’s $13,000 drop over the past 48 hours has taken a heavy toll on the altcoin market, and many of the recent high-flying decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens took the brunt of the damage.

Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360

Crypto.com Coin (CRO) saw a 33% pullback, and Binance Smart Chain’s Venus (XVS) DeFi protocol saw its price drop 24% to trade at $58.63.

A select few projects were able to buck the trend and post positive gains on Feb. 23, as new announcements about blockchain interoperability-related projects provided a well-needed lift to tokens focused on layer-two and cross-chain transactions.

Solana (SOL) rose 11.23% to trade at $14.94 after the release of its new automated market maker protocol Raydium. Fantom (FTM) price also rallied by 24% after the team announced a collaboration with Yearn.finance and the rollout of a cross-chain bridge to the Ethereum network.

BTC/USD daily chart. Source: Coin360

The overall cryptocurrency market capitalization now stands at $1.44 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 62%.

Altcoins nurse double-digit losses as Bitcoin bulls fight to retake $49K

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: cryptocurrency · Tagged: 2017, altcoin, altcoins, analyst, Binance, bitcoin, bitcoin etf, Bitcoin Price, blockchain, btc, btc price, Bull Market, crypto, cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, decentralized, decentralized finance, defi, ETF, ethereum, Ethereum network, fed, Federal Reserve, finance, fund, gains, green, market, market capitalization, Market Update, markets, more, New York, news, S&P, Solana, tether, tokens, trade, trading, Transactions, Twitter, view, Yearn

Feb 22 2021

Price analysis 2/22: BTC, ETH, BNB, DOT, ADA, XRP, LTC, LINK, BCH, XLM

Every uptrend witnesses periodic bouts of profit-booking as short-term traders tend to unwind positions either on adverse news or at critical technical resistance levels. This occurred with Bitcoin (BTC) today as the price momentarily dropped below $48,000 and traders scrambled to close or top up positions before being liquidated.

Elon Musk’s tweet on Feb. 20 that said Bitcoin prices “seem high” and the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s warning today on Bitcoin being “extremely inefficient” could have dampened short-term sentiment.

Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360

Another possible factor that may have exacerbated the fall could have been the unwinding of excessively leveraged long positions. About $1.64 billion worth of Bitcoin futures positions were liquidated during today’s sharp pullback.

However, derivatives data for Bitcoin futures do not show any negative development, as highlighted by Cointelegraph Markets analyst Marcel Pechman.

Let’s analyze the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to spot the critical levels on the upside and the key support levels on the downside.

BTC/USD

Bitcoin broke above the resistance line of the ascending channel on Feb. 19, but could not pick up momentum. This showed that the current uptrend was tiring out. Traders aggressively booked profits today, which pulled the price down to the 20-day exponential moving average ($48,081).

BTC/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

However, the lower levels continue to attract buyers as seen from the long tail on the daily candlestick. If the price sustains above the midpoint of the channel, the bulls will again try to push the pair above the channel.

If they manage to do that, the BTC/USD pair could resume the uptrend. The next target on the upside is $60,974.43 and then $66,000. The upsloping moving averages and the relative strength index (RSI) in the positive territory suggest that bulls are in control.

Contrary to this assumption, if the price sustains below the midpoint of the channel, the bears will again try to break the 20-day EMA support. If they manage to do that, the pair may drop to the 50-day simple moving average ($39,885).

ETH/USD

Ether (ETH) turned down from the resistance line of the ascending channel on Feb. 20, indicating that traders booked profits after the price reached the psychologically important level at $2,000.

ETH/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The selling continued today and the ETH/USD pair dropped to the support line of the ascending channel. However, the positive sign is that the bulls purchased the dip as seen from the long tail on the day’s candlestick.

If the buyers can push and sustain the price above the 20-day EMA ($1,753), the positive momentum may remain intact.

On the contrary, if the price sustains below the 20-day EMA, the bears will try to sink the pair below the channel and the 50-day SMA ($1,465). If they succeed, the correction could deepen to $1,200 and then to $1,000.

BNB/USD

Binance Coin (BNB) has been witnessing volatile moves in the past few days. After the sharp rally on Feb. 19, traders aggressively booked profits on Feb. 20. The bulls tried to resume the uptrend on Feb. 21, but the higher levels have again attracted profit-booking.

BNB/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The bulls are currently attempting to defend the zone between the 50% Fibonacci retracement level at $233.3485 and the 61.8% retracement level at $206.1262. If they succeed, the BNB/USD pair may continue the volatile range-bound action for a few more days.

On the contrary, if the bears sink the price below $206.1262, the decline could extend to the 20-day EMA ($168). This is an important support to keep an eye on because a break below it will suggest a trend change and a likely fall to $118.

DOT/USD

Polkadot (DOT) broke above the ascending channel on Feb. 19 and rose to a new all-time high at $42.2848 on Feb. 20. However, the long wick on the day’s candlestick showed profit-booking at higher levels.

DOT/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

After forming an inside day candlestick pattern on Feb. 21, the DOT/USD pair slumped back into the channel today. However, the bulls bought the dips and have pushed the price back above the channel.

The buyers will now try to push the price above $42.2848 and resume the uptrend. On the other hand, the bears will try to sink the pair back into the channel. If they succeed, the pair may drop to the 20-day EMA ($28.89).

ADA/USD

Cardano (ADA) surged above the $0.9817712 overhead resistance on Feb. 20 and reached $1.1980811. However, the long wick on the daily candlestick showed profit-booking at higher levels.

ADA/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The selling intensified today and that pulled the ADA/USD pair down to the 20-day EMA ($0.834). However, the long tail on today’s candlestick shows aggressive buying at lower levels.

If the price sustains above $1, the bulls will try to resume the up-move. A breakout of $1.1980811 could open the doors for a rally to $1.25 and then $1.50.

Conversely, if the price slips below $0.9817712, the pair may again drop to the 20-day EMA. This is an important support to watch out for because if it cracks, the correction may deepen to $0.6879684.

XRP/USD

XRP continues to trade inside the $0.50 to $0.65 range. The altcoin bucked the trend today and rallied while most other major cryptocurrencies were witnessing sharp selling.

XRP/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The price had rallied to $0.65155 today but the bulls could not sustain the higher levels. This shows the bears have not yet thrown in the towel.

However, the upsloping 20-day EMA ($0.50) and the RSI in the positive territory suggest the path of least resistance is to the upside. If the bulls can propel and sustain the price above $0.65, the rally may extend to $0.78608.

This positive view will invalidate if the price turns down from the current levels and breaks below the $0.50 support. If that happens, the XRP/USD pair may drop to $0.3855.

LTC/USD

The bulls could not sustain Litecoin (LTC) above the $240 overhead resistance from Feb. 17 to Feb. 21. This failure to resume the uptrend could have attracted profit-booking from short-term traders, which resulted in a sharp fall today.

LTC/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The LTC/USD pair broke below the 20-day EMA ($198) and the $185.5821 support today, but the long tail on the day’s candlestick shows the bulls purchased this dip. The flattening 20-day EMA and the RSI just above the midpoint, suggest a balance between supply and demand.

If the price sustains above the 20-day EMA, the bulls will again try to resume the uptrend. On the contrary, if the price again slips below the 20-day EMA, the pair may drop to the 50-day SMA ($165). A break below this support could pull the pair down to $120.

LINK/USD

Chainlink (LINK) turned down from the resistance line of the ascending channel on Feb. 20 and formed a Doji candlestick pattern on Feb. 21. The uncertainty of the Doji candlestick was resolved to the downside today.

LINK/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The LINK/USD pair plunged below the 20-day EMA ($30) and the support line of the channel today. However, the long tail on the candlestick shows aggressive buying by the bulls at lower levels.

If the bulls can sustain the price inside the channel, it will suggest that the uptrend remains intact. On the contrary, if the price again breaks below the channel, it will indicate a possible trend change.

The next critical support on the downside is the 50-day SMA ($23.82) and if this support also cracks, the decline may extend to $20.1111.

BCH/USD

The range-bound action in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) resolved to the downside today when the price dipped below the $670 support. This breakdown showed that the equilibrium had tilted in favor of the bears.

BCH/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView

The BCH/USD pair broke below the 20-day EMA ($610) and fell to an intraday low at $533.33 today. However, the bulls aggressively purchased the dip below the $539 support, resulting in a sharp rebound.

If the price sustains above the 20-day EMA, the bulls will again try to push the price back into the $670 to $745.39 range. If they succeed, it will suggest that the current correction could be over.

On the contrary, if the price sustains below the 20-day EMA, the pair may again drop to $539 and then to the 50-day SMA ($510).

XLM/USD

Stellar Lumens (XLM) failed to resume its uptrend in the past few days, which showed a lack of demand at higher levels. This could have attracted profit-booking from short-term traders who may have dumped their positions today.

XLM/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The XLM/USD pair broke below the 20-day EMA ($0.44) and the $0.409 support today, but the bulls purchased at lower levels. The flattish 20-day EMA and the RSI below 58 suggest the bullish momentum may be weakening.

If the bulls fail to sustain the price above the 20-day EMA, the bears will again try to sink the price below $0.409. If they manage to do that, the pair could slide to the $0.35 support.

On the other hand, if the price sustains above the 20-day EMA, the bulls will again try to resume the uptrend. A break above $0.535 will suggest an advantage to the bulls and may result in a retest of $0.600681.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Market data is provided by HitBTC exchange.

Price analysis 2/22: BTC, ETH, BNB, DOT, ADA, XRP, LTC, LINK, BCH, XLM

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: cryptocurrency · Tagged: ada, altcoin, altcoins, analysis, analyst, author, BCH, binance coin, bitcoin, Bitcoin Futures, bitcoin-cash, bnb, btc, BTC/USD, cardano, Cash, Chainlink, cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, data, Derivatives, ETH, ETH/USD, ethereum, exchange, fail, Futures, index, investment, LINE, Litecoin, LTC, LTC/USD, market, markets, more, news, opinions, other, Polkadot, Price Analysis, research, ripple, risk, said, stellar, target, The Fall, trade, trading, u.s., U.S. Treasury, upside, view, watch out, xlm, xrp, XRP/USD

Feb 20 2021

Decentraland celebrates 1 year anniversary with virtual party

User-owned virtual world Decentraland is celebrating its one-year anniversary true to form with a virtual party open to all. 

“Relive the past 12 months of events, competitions, exhibitions, gatherings and more with messages from the community and the results of the #DCLFilmClub promo video contest screened for all,” read the party’s announcement blog post.

Attendees will receive a Proof Of Attendance Protocol NFT, and will get the first look at The White Rabbit, an in-game club. Community members are also pitching in on the effort, with one land rental service offering legendary item giveaway to celebrate.

DJ and crypto aficionado RAC posted on Twitter that he’d be performing a “live” DJ set:

playing a special set in less than 1hr!
happy bday @decentraland https://t.co/OxORgmIemm pic.twitter.com/Tgwv6WXmJY

— RAC (@RAC) February 20, 2021

While the project has been open to investors and early supporters since 2019, the virtual world welcomed the wider world in February of last year. The project found immediate success, quickly selling $1 million in virtual land. Since then, the world has become home to numerous NFT art galleries, casinos, and other attractions. 

More recently, new features such as a virtual casino, layer-2 scaling via Polygon (nee Matic), and voice chat sent native tokens LAND and MANA soaring in early 2021.

The platform also frequently makes headlines for the high-priced sums its virtual plots of lands can fetch on the open market. Digital land is a particularly hot commodity for NFT investors, and LAND is no exception, often making the news for six-figure sales.

It’s been a similarly strong year for the wider Metaverse. Multiple digital worlds have made strides in functionality, playerbases, and interoperability — enough so that Fortnite game studio founder Tim Sweeney has said the tech is “going places.”

Players who are interested in the festivities can hop in now and follow a trail of confetti to the party, where RAC currently has the stage.

Decentraland celebrates 1 year anniversary with virtual party

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: cryptocurrency · Tagged: 2021, art, chat, Community, crypto, dao, Decentraland, digital, events, founder, game, Headlines, market, matic, Metaverse, more, news, nft, other, RAC, rental, said, scaling, style, tech, tokens, Twitter, video, Virtual Land, world

Feb 18 2021

Congress is blaming Robinhood, not Reddit

Vlad Tenev, Robinhood’s CEO, very much occupied the hot seat in today’s hearing before the House Financial Services Committee over January’s market volatility. 

None of the representatives seemed particularly interested in putting the screws to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and many seemed to give Keith Gill the same props the rest of us did.

These aren’t the market manipulators you are looking for

Gill, in all fairness, was the most likeable character involved, introducing his remarks by saying “A few things I am not: I am not a cat and I am not an accredited investor.” Gill, who really started this chain of events by posting about his investment into GameStop in June 2019, even doubled down on his opinion that GME remains a good buy today, at current prices. This is despite the fact that wild GME trading has attracted criminal investigation.

That lack of scrutiny towards Gill and Huffman does much to quell widespread fear that the events surrounding explosive trading in GameStop (GME) shares at the end of January would kick off probes into social media platforms’ role in potential market manipulation.

This is even as the House Antitrust Subcommittee announced today more hearings to scrutinize the biggest players in social media. Reddit, for now, seems to have flown under the radar.

Congressman Warren Davidson, who sits on the committee, noted this rare area of consensus, telling Cointelegraph: “I was hopeful right out of the gate because early on in the news cycle AOC was sticking up for the Reddit users, saying these people should have a right to trade. And then Ted Cruz, on the other end of the political spectrum said, ‘well, we agree.’”

Tenev’s business model

Though broadly, Republicans were more lenient than Democrats in addressing Robinhood’s activity, and especially the firm’s controversial shut-off of buying but not selling of GME and other high-volatility stocks, everybody wanted answers from Tenev.

The nature of Robinhood’s revenue model, which is based on the sale of order flow, while advertising itself as commission-free, fell under mass scrutiny, as did it’s dependence on a $3 billion injection of capital to meet collateral requirements.

“I believe a vulnerability was clearly exposed in your business model,” said Congressman Anthony Gonzales while questioning Tenev. “We just can’t live in a world where my constituents can have their shares liquidated if you can’t make a capital call.”

Many called out Robinhood’s claims to be busy democratizing finance. Tenev consistently pushed the figure of $35 billion as Robinhood users’ total gains, which Rep. Jim Himes said “you and anybody else schooled in finance know is meaningless without a rate-of-return.”

But while today’s hearing revealed a lot of hostility towards Tenev, it wasn’t all that educational.

Despite Chairwoman Maxine Waters’ admonition that “This is not political theater at all,” there didn’t seem to be any concerted sense of solutions to the epic trading that fueled GameStop’s (GME) meteoric rise at the end of January.

Real-time solution?

Some proposals, including from Tenev himself, as well as Davidson, were that the situation would not have developed at all if the U.S. had trading that settled the day of, rather than two days later — termed T-0 rather than T-2. Tenev noted “The existing 2-day period to settle trades exposes investors and the system to risk.”

Kenneth Griffin, CEO of Citadel, which he described as “the largest market maker in the world,” disputed the likelihood of a real-time system for securities trading in the next several years, saying: “The issue is everything has to work perfectly.” Real-time trading, he said, “requires that every bit of the workflow is perfectly synchronized across the parties.” Davidson disagreed, saying “Clearly in your business the technology exists for trading firms that are engaged in high-frequency trading.”

Davidson noted the potential role of blockchain. The potential of security tokens to solve issues with intermediaries and brokers has been one of the long-promised benefits of blockchain, though that is changing.

Today’s hearing was just the beginning, Chairwoman Waters affirmed. She said the committee aimed to hold two more with different witnesses.

Congress is blaming Robinhood, not Reddit

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Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: cryptocurrency · Tagged: A CAPITAL, accredited investor, advertising, blockchain, business, ceo, Congress, constituents, events, finance, financial services, gains, GameStop, government, In The News, investment, investor, market, Media, Model, more, news, opinion, other, Reddit, revenue, risk, Robinhood, said, securities, security, shares, social, Social Media, steve huffman, STO, Stocks, Technology, trade, trading, u.s., us, US Government, vulnerability, work, world

Feb 16 2021

NFT ‘art revolution’: Beeple on his 5040 day labor of love

At the age of 26, Wisconsin web designer Michael Winkelmann began creating a new piece of digital art in his personal time every single day. He calls them ‘Everydays’.

“I saw a pretty big step-up in the work that I do,” he says. “The ‘Everydays’ are basically just the pictures that I do every single day, and I’ve been doing those for over 5,000 days now.”

Thirteen years later Beeple, as he’s better known, has been commissioned by huge acts like Justin Bieber and Imagine Dragons and he emerged in 2020 as a trail blazing figure in the NFT community. His digital art collections have fetched record prices in the millions at NFT auction houses including Rarible and Nifty and he’s about to take a major step into the mainstream, with Christies offering a collage of 5000 Everydays pieces at auction from Feb. 25 until Mar. 11.

“This monumental digital collage marks the first time Beeple’s work will be sold at a major auction house,” Christies said in an announcement. “It’s also the first-ever purely digital artwork (NFT) to be offered at a traditional auction house, with its authenticity assured thanks to blockchain technology,”

Beeple’s work touches on politics and pop culture, with a typical example being a recent image depicting Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as an octopus that he created on the day that the billionaire announced his upcoming retirement as CEO. Winkelmann says his daily ritual has made him a better artist.

“The broader message with this entire Everyday project is just about practicing and looking at things long term. I look at it as one long-term project. And so, incrementally improving and just sticking with something.”

Beeple's Everydays
NFT artist Beeple has created a new digital artwork every day for 13 years. (beeple-crap.com/everydays)

Winkelmann, 39, only discovered NFT’s around four months ago, and immediately set to work converting his freely available Instagram art into highly sought after digital collectibles. In November he sold an election-themed digital collectible for $66,666.60, and a December auction brought in $3.5 million dollars. While one piece went for as much as $777,777, he also sold hundreds of images for $969 each of which have since gained in value exponentially.

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token, which means each token is unique and thus distinct from other tokens. Unique tokens make it possible to designate them as representing ownership of specific digital goods, allowing for transferable ownership of digital images, texts, or even in-game items.

“I think it’s just going to be seen as the digital art revolution. I truly believe this is the start of the next chapter in art history.”

The Wisconsin artist says that while everything is reproducible on the internet, NFTs allow for individual ownership of a piece even though it is copied and circulated widely.

“I’m very open with allowing people to share stuff and post it wherever,” he says. “You can’t police the f—ing Internet. You post on the Internet, it’s the f—ing Internet! The cool thing about the blockchain is that you can kind of have it both ways.”

He adds that NFT’s are a “very advantageous way of collecting art, because it will live on as long as the blockchain lives on, and it can take all different forms.”

Got 4 offers today in the $12-$14k for @beeple‘s Politics is BS NFT.

What is going on 😱

I bought it for $1k like 2 months ago. pic.twitter.com/q94wXmi3xh

— Matty (@DCLBlogger) February 8, 2021

Turning point

Last December, Winkelmann hit the crypto news headlines after he auctioned off a collection of digital artworks for $3.5 million on the Nifty platform. While the previous 13 years of Everydays accompanied a steady career progression of better clients and ever-increasing paychecks, he wasn’t quite prepared for “overnight” success.

“That was the big shift where it was like ‘oh shit this is it’, this is a crazy opportunity to look at my work that I never really thought about as being collectible, and now suddenly it’s like ‘wow this is very collectible!’”

But he points out he wasn’t a starving artist before the auction: “[Many people] think this is a little bit more rags to riches than it is. I was making pretty good money before.”

While he credits his success to a large social media following and established name as “one of the most well known digital artists,” Winkelmann acknowledges that he was also in the right place at the right time with little competition.

“There’s a lot of low hanging fruit […] In more mature spaces, you really need to come up with a fantastic idea to stand out, everybody has already got the easy shit. It feels like there’s still a lot of easy shit to try.”

Nevermind by Beeple
Nevermind by Beeple, created April 29, 2020 (beeple-crap.com/everydays)

An artistic revolution

It is said that art is either plagiarism or revolution. The art world is in a constant state of redefinition, and it’s normal for new styles to begin as underground ‘degenerate’ movements that struggle for acceptance in the established art world. In this way it’s similar to cryptocurrency, which was first dismissed and derided by traditional investors and institutions, many of whom are now re-evaluating.

In the past, Winkelmann says that neither graphic art, nor graphic artists, could really exist in the traditional sense. No graphic artist could truly sell their personal work — they had to work as artisans because working as an independent digital artist was not an option.

“It wasn’t. There was just no way to collect your work. The technology did not exist, and the market did not exist… Everybody was just, you know, freelance, or they just had a job or whatever.”

This means that the innovation of NFT’s representing ownership of digital art represents a pivotal moment in art itself: art no longer needs be a physical item to be sold and displayed, but is equally legitimate as a digitally expressed and cryptographically transferrable manifestation of the artist’s mind.

Winkelmann said the upcoming Christies auction of his collage will be another milestone, as its a major auction house conducting “their first ever 100% digital auction. There will be no physical piece; they’re literally just auctioning off a JPEG. And so, I think that will be a very big moment, and big validation for this space. They’ll also be accepting Ether for this auction for the first time ever.” (Christies auctioned a combination physical work/NFT piece last year for $130,000.)

“Whoever buys it, I will work with them in the future to be like ‘okay, so how do we want to show this?’ Do we want to project it on the side of a building, do we want to make a giant canvas of it? Do we want to put it on a big screen? The artwork itself can take a bunch of different forms; that’s the beauty of digital art.”

Christie’s is proud to offer “Everydays – The First 5000 Days” by @beeple as the first purely digital work of art ever offered by a major auction house. Bidding will be open from Feb 25-Mar 11.

Learn more here https://t.co/srx95HCE0o | NFT issued in partnership w/ @makersplaceco pic.twitter.com/zymq2DSjy7

— Christie’s (@ChristiesInc) February 16, 2021

Banksy on it

Beeple’s NFT journey from avant-garde to acceptance follows an arc not dissimilar to other hugely successful artists like Banksy, whose graffiti stencil art reliably sells for millions today. “20 years ago that wasn’t the case. That was vandalism. Like graffiti is not, you know, ‘art’, it’s vandalism.”

Indeed, we need not go far back in time to find similar narratives within the blockchain space. Back in early 2018 Cryptokitties, one of the first NFT projects, was slowing down the entire Ethereum network causing people to accuse the lovable but useless NFT cats of ruining Ethereum.

It is an unfortunate arc d’art that experimental artists are often under-appreciated in their time, with the likes of Van Gogh and Monet dying in obscurity before achieving wide recognition for their work. “So are you saying I’m going to die?” Winkelmann asks sarcastically but with a hint of existential dread, to which I reassure him that he appears well ahead of his historical peers. He agrees. “I feel very lucky to be in this position, especially so young to be able to capitalize on this.”

While he may now have a lot of money, Winkelmann won’t be rushing out to buy a Lamborghini.

“Honestly, I’m really just putting it back in, making more and more art and cooler projects that I didn’t have the ability to do […] anybody who is collecting my artwork, I very much look at them as ambassadors, and they’ve sort of given me that money to like ‘OK there you go, go do even cooler things’, and that’s what I want to do. I want to do bigger projects, that obviously requires more money, or hiring people, or this or that.”

Considering his generous art budget, I suggest an NFT Bitcoin Lamborghini that comes with a real, physical lambo as a bonus physical token. “I think that’s a good idea, that would be great! Is it a green or a yellow lambo?” he asks. “I’ve got to figure out something like that, I feel like that would be very interesting.”

I tell him I’m claiming a 10% cut on that idea. Beeple laughs. “You’ve got your royalties all set up there!”

Endgame by Beeple
Endgame by Beeple. Created Jan. 6, 2021 in response to the Capitol insurrection. (beeple-crap.com/everydays)

Art markets re-imagined

Speaking of royalties, NFTs open up new opportunities for artists because the pieces can be programmed so that whenever they are sold, a 10% royalty payment is returned to the artist.

This means that if an artist originally sells a piece for $100 and the buyer sells it to someone else some months later for $1,000, the artist will double their earnings to $200. Even more exciting, a $100,000 sale will net the artist $10,000 even years after the original sale, and the artist’s great grandchildren could theoretically benefit from the sale of the art a hundred years after the fact. In this new order, artists have a lifelong relationship with and ambassadorship to their pieces. “When you buy one of my NFT’s, it’s the beginning of us having a relationship,” says Winkelmann.

There are several platforms in which NFT’s can be traded. Winkelmann prefers Nifty Gateway, owned by the Winklevoss twins, for his sales. He’s far from a cryptocurrency maximalist, preferring instead to make his blockchain-enabled artwork as widely accessible as possible.

“The things I liked about Nifty is that they accept credit card payments. And again, I look at the NFT’s and the blockchain as sort of a means to an end, and not like the end. It’s one of these things where nobody really cares how credit cards work. They just work, they make your life easier and that’s how I look at NFT’s”

He adds: “Nobody’s going to give any shit about how NFT’s work or what blockchain they’re on.”

Until recently, a large portion of NFT art has been decidedly close to the ideas surrounding cryptocurrency and blockchain, giving them a sort of meta-quality. Winkelmann believes this will change, as NFT’s are merely “the mechanism used to make these, prove provenance, prove ownership. I don’t think moving forward it’s going to have as much to do with crypto.”

Crypto- themed art will certainly continue to exist, he says, but as “a subset of digital art”.

Future visions

Winkelmann believes that everything is being digitized, and our lives will soon revolve around virtual and augmented reality. This recalls the concept of The Metaverse, which refers to an ongoing, shared 3D space that connects various virtual worlds together. It was originally described by Neil Stephenson in 1992.

This future may be closer than we think. Twenty 1/1 NFT’s in Beeples latest auction were purchased for $2.2 million by an NFT fund (yes, such things exists) for the purpose of launching VR digital art galleries in several virtual words including Cryptovoxels, Decentraland and Somnium Space. The pieces were bundled together along with virtual land and museums, and tokenized as the B.20 token so that anyone can own a piece of NFT history. Winkelmann says we’re only just getting started exploring the possibilities:

“I think we will look back fondly on the days when we were just glued to our phones as the ‘good old days’. The alternate realities that people are living in now will be nothing compared to the alternate reality people will be living in when AR really becomes a very viable thing and people are wearing these headsets all day. I think you’re gonna see some f—ing crazy shit happening.”

NFT ‘art revolution’: Beeple on his 5040 day labor of love

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Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: cryptocurrency · Tagged: 2020, 2021, AR, art, augmented-reality, Beauty, bitcoin, blockchain, Career, cats, ceo, Columns, Community, Credit Cards, crypto, cryptocurrency, Culture, digital, Earnings, ether, ethereum, Ethereum network, fund, Future, Go, going, green, Headlines, hiring, ideas, innovation, instagram, Internet, Journeys, Labor, market, markets, Media, milestone, money, more, news, nft, NFTs, Non-fungible token, other, partnership, payment, payments, phones, platforms, police, politics, Retirement, said, social, Social Media, Space, step, Technology, token, tokens, Twitter, uniswap, us, VR, winklevoss, Wisconsin, work, world

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