NFT NYC, Protests, Moonpay, & More!

Author

BuckyGang đź’«
June 24, 2022

Hey readers, welcome back to the latest Morning NFTea. To shed some light on the rough market conditions, NFT.NYC decided to put on quite the show. We have some great stories surrounding this topic, so let's get into it!

Largest NFT Conference In The World: NFT NYC 2022

From June 20-23 at seven venues around Times Square in New York, the 4th annual NFT.NYC was hosted. This brought together artists, brands, developers, entrepreneurs, gamers, collectors, and everyone in between. NFT.NYC has been said to be the Superbowl of NFT events as this year it had 1,500 speakers and over 14,000 attendees, which trumps the recent Veecon with just over 6,900 attendees. This celebration of NFTs sees massive growth from the event last year that saw just 5,600 participants, highlighting the dramatic growth we have been having in the NFT space. The conference sees NFT projects host events for their holders, such as the much-awaited ApeFest which is the coveted annual festival for BAYC and MAYC holders. NFT NYC comes at a great time as we see the monetary value dwindle, but this conference shows the unmeasurable value that comes from strong communities looking towards a collective future.

NFT Protest??

Timed perfectly with NFT.NYC, the streets of Manhattan saw protesters roaming around with signs such as “God hates NFTs”, “Vitalik is the Anti Christ”, “Make Fiat Great Again”, and “Not Falling for iT” amongst other creative word plays. The protest was quickly trending through Twitter with over a million views in 6 hours, and articles from news sites weren't far behind to jump on the train. The protesters were actively ridiculed by people online, but little did they know the joke was on them. This was all actually a publicity stunt by the streetwear brand “The Hundreds” with their 25k NFT collection “Adam Bomb Squad”. Co-founder of the 20-year-old fashion brand Bobby Kim, posted the original viral videos as they showed up outside his pop-up store for NFT.NYC, but he later confessed to hiring the actors. This marketing ploy very much plays on the saying “all publicity is good publicity”, and has been an excellent way of engaging people on both sides of the NFT fence.

Moonpay Making Moves At NFT.NYC

Moonpay is a Web3.0 infrastructure that quickly became popular with investors in 2018 when it enabled buying and selling cryptocurrencies with major payment methods, such as debit and credit cards. Now they are evolving their successful platform with NFTs through “HyperMint”, which is a “self-service, developer-focused platform” allowing brands and companies to easily create, mint and manage utility NFTs. The announcement came from Moonpay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright at NFT.NYC, who said “Utility NFTs are going to go way beyond collectibles and towards real-world functionality. And MoonPay’s HyperMint is the enterprise-level infrastructure that will make that monumental shift possible.” These are some big moves in the NFT space as HyperMint has initial launch partnerships with the likes of Fox Corporation and Universal Pictures. Moonpay was a step forward for the crypto space by improving the accessibility and ease of use for newcomers, and now it's pretty exciting to see that same energy being spent on developing infrastructure in the NFT space.

Words From The Founder

Continuing the NFT.NYC theme, we are going to touch on an interview with the founder of the festival, Jodee Rich, and why he is remaining upbeat and not sweating the recent fall-off in NFT sales. As we see about 70% declines from BTC and ETH all-time highs, Jodee says “the success or decline of cryptocurrencies, for starters, isn't necessary to the success of NFTs, and the blockchain technology underpinning NFTs is what shows the most promise”. He explained that tradeable NFTs, such as those on OpenSea, represent less than one-third of the total NFT market, and are entirely separate from the rest of the technology at hand, "Tradeable NFTs are a very, very small part of our overall event and ecosystem. NFTs are really going to disrupt most industries. Identity, ticketing, brands, music, fashion, real estate, and more — we are still very early stage, and this is the beginning of a long-term trend". If you're here reading this newsletter (thank you), then you're probably at least invested in NFTs, and it's hard to ignore the macro of what the markets doing right now. So I think these comments from Jodee are important to highlight, as they bring the view on NFTs back to the fundamentals. NFTs are not just tradable jpegs, but a whole technology that is going to revolutionize the world, and as NFTs are still in the infant stage, it's no surprise we are still finding our feet.

Thanks for popping in on this latest edition, we hope to see you in a couple of days with the next round-up of stories, take care!

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None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.