NFTs on Instagram???

Happy Monday!  Welcome to the first edition of Morning NFTea, the World's Most Factual NFT Newsletter.  In today's copy, we will be covering everything from NFTs on Instagram to Beeple collabing with Madonna.  Grab some tea (or coffee) and let's get into it.

Instagram to Start Testing NFTs

On May 9th, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram will start testing “digital collectibles” so creators and collectors can display their NFTs on their profiles.  Considering Instagram already has 1 Billion active users, this is huge news for the NFT space.  Initially, Instagram will support Ethereum and Polygon blockchains with Rainbow, Metamask, and Trust Wallet.  Coinbase, Dapper, and Phantom are said to follow.  Zuck also hinted at allowing similar functionality on Facebook in the near future.  Meta's adoption of NFTs comes as no surprise, as they have already invested $10 billion into VR alongside changing their name to "Meta".  Let's also note that Facebook is currently a $545 billion dollar company with 1.79 billion daily users.  NFTs lay the foundation for supporting a digital marketplace of goods in the metaverse.  It's safe to say Zuckerberg is very bullish on NFTs.

Azuki Floor Price Tanks 

On just May 3rd, Azuki had a floor price of over 30 eth ($85,000 at the time).  Shortly after this peak, the founder "Zagabond" published a blog revealing his involvement in past NFT projects that were labeled as "rug pulls".  Since then, Azuki's floor price has dropped down to about 12 eth.  Vagabond denies the rug pull accusations, of which includes CryptoZunks and CryptoPhunks, which lets just say were “inspired” by CryptoPunks NFTs.  Azuki is a collection of 10,000 anime-themed avatars released by Los Angeles-based artists in January 2022.  Utility involved exclusive NFT drops, streetwear collabs, live events, and access to “the garden” social club.  Azuki quickly reached #6 in NFT volume on Opensea and was widely considered a blue-chip project within the NFT world.  Azuki was started by Churi Labs, of which most of the team kept anonymous.  Zagabond even told Forbes “There’s a mystique and magic allure to something where the project isn’t really about our identities and our past experiences”.  The importance of this?  As projects drive NFT technology forward, this Azuki crash is an example of despite having community and utility, the founders and team are often the biggest driving force for projects.  Just as they are for any normal business, so let's ensure we are backing the right jockeys.

VeeFriends Collab With Johnnie Walker

The world-renowned scotch whiskey brand of Johnnie Walker has collaborated with Gary Vee's project, VeeFriends, to give a specially designed and engraved Johnnie Walker Blue Label bottle to the 555 ‘Gift Goat’ NFTs from the series one collection.  Johnnie Walker is an extremely popular company that was founded in 1820 and is enjoyed by people all over the world.  Collaborations like this are the stepping stones to normalizing and legitimizing NFTs to the general public and bringing us closer to the NFT future that we all envision.

Madonna x Beeple

It is said that the $69 million dollar NFT sale of Beeple's “Everydays - The First 5000 days” was one of the best strategic moves in the crypto market.  The buyer “MetaKovan” was the founder of the Metapurse NFT project, and his whale purchase sent media frenzies all over the world exposing millions of people to the term “NFT” for the first time.  Beeple and his overnight 7-digit payday still continue to make extraordinary digital art and NFTs, and his newest collaboration is with Guinness World Records best-selling female recording artist of all time; Madonna. The collaboration was decided on a year ago by the pair, and consists of three NFTs that depict the pop superstar as the mother of all creation, and sheesh that's definitely one way to describe it.  These three NFTs were auctioned off on May 11th for a grand total of $77,494, with the proceeds going to three different charities.  Although the NFT space has been haunted by rug pulls and influencers looking for a quick buck, art collaborations like this are a great way to shine a light on the NFT art revolution.

Polygon Invests $9.3 Million in Paper (That's a company, they're not buying paper)

The Polygon Network has high hopes for a crypto-focused payments processing company which launched in February.  They aim to allow onboarding of non-crypto natives by allowing users to create wallets through their email addresses and purchase NFTs with credit cards across Polygon, Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche blockchains.  The promise comes through a Software Development Kit (SDK) that will allow developers to more smoothly build a checkout experience within their own sites and apps.  NFTs will allow a vehicle of consumerism into the Web3.0 world, and although emails may feel more like Web2.0, the consumer experience is a very important factor that is currently lacking in this ecosystem, so its great to see activity on the frontend.

That's it for today folks.  Huge thanks to anybody who made it this far.  Have an epic week and we'll be right back at ya on Thursday for some more exclusive content!

DISCLAIMER: 

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.