Meta has announced plans to charge 47.5% on each item sold on its new Meta Quest app store, including nonfungible tokens (NFT) when they are available. The Meta Quest app store sells apps and games on the Horizon Worlds platform which Meta, formerly Facebook, is using to build its part of the Metaverse. CNBC reported on April 13 that the store is also expected to sell NFTs. The fee is broken down as a hardware platform fee of 30% per transaction plus a 17.5% usage fee on Horizon Worlds. Potential customers aren't pleased with what is seen as an outrageously …

Iconic former English Premier League footballer, David Beckham, has become a global brand ambassador for the DigitalBits blockchain, launching his own range of NFTs in the process. Beckham will release a series of NFTs and “other Blockchain-based digital assets” according to the brand ambassador announcement, with minting taking place on the DigitalBits blockchain. Excited to announce #DavidBeckham has become a Global Ambassador for #DigitalBits! Get ready to explore the world of #Blockchain, #NFTs and #Metaverse with Beckham. More details https://t.co/yafO7W2OuL Thread pic.twitter.com/n54BMeDsnE — DigitalBits (XDB) (@DigitalBitsOrg) March 24, 2022 Beckham said the NFT collections were an “opportunity to create new …

In further signs of crypto adoption among the art world, a leading United States auction house will accept crypto as payment for a series of paintings. A Jean-Michel Basquiat collection is up for auction by Phillips, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) listed as payment options. The showstopper 16-foot painting, Untitled, 1982, is “estimated in the region of $70 million” (roughly 1650 BTC or 25,513 ETH). It will go under the hammer in New York on May 18th. Scott Nussbaum, Senior International Specialist, 20th Century & Contemporary Art from Phillips told Cointelegraph that buyers “are interested in the option of …

CryptoPunks enthusiasts and hopeful bidders gathered Wednesday night at Sotheby's auction house in New York City for what tuned out to be a non-event after the consignor of 104 CryptoPunks decided to hodl. In the wake of this announcement, however, a live panel discussion on the history of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and CryptoPunks took place. The panel consisted of Sherone Rabinovitz, technologist and CryptoPunk expert, and Kenny Schachter, art critic and curator. Colborn Bell, founder of the Museum of Crypto Art, moderated. "Should we just tell everyone that there are actually 100,000 Punks?" Pre-panel shenanigans with Colborn Bell, ahead of …

NFT enthusiasts and fine art collectors have been left confused, after an auction for a collection of 104 CryptoPunks estimated to be worth around $30 million was canceled at the last-minute. The event, hosted by famous fine-goods auctioneer Sotheby’s, was on track to be one of the largest NFT auctions in history — up until the pseudonymous owner of the ‘Punk It!’ collection suddenly withdrew from the auction. The CryptoPunk hodler’s reasons behind the move remain unclear, however in the aftermath of the canceled auction, the anonymous owner who goes by ‘0x650d’ on Twitter sent out a seemingly nonchalant tweet …

After a banner year of 2021 for individual object sales through nonfungible tokens (NFTs), 2022 is poised to be the year of MetaFi. A recap of Beeple, Christie’s, Visa and endless aping-in celebrities hardly feels necessary, except to point out that we seem to be standing on (or perhaps have already crossed over) a fundamental precipice. While the rocket-propelled ascent of NFT prices will not continue forever, numerous voices have predicted that a mature tech stack for discovering, vetting, valuing, trading and protecting collections of digital assets will soon emerge, without a crash. But these optimistic takes may even be …

“Rampant” issues relating to minting counterfeit nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have forced popular platform Cent to halt some operations. Founded in 2017, Cent kicked off as a “social network and informal platform for creative experimentation.” In 2020, the team also launched an NFT platform called Valuables to mint and auction iconic tweets. Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, “just setting up my twttr,” sold for $2.9 million on the platform in March last year. On February 6th, the platform ceased NFT trading due to “a spectrum of activity” that "shouldn’t be happening." Cameron Hejazi, co-founder of Cent told Cointelegraph: “People in this …

When Gavin Wood co-founded Ethereum, he stated that it would “allow people to interact in mutually beneficial ways without anyone needing to trust each other.” In theory, such a platform would pave the way for Web3, characterized by decentralized or distributed network architectures, that would lay the groundwork for a truly open internet where we would not have to blindly entrust our data to monopolistic corporations or get permission from them in order to participate. Since its inception in 2015, however, Ethereum has simply failed to adapt fast enough and keep up with the pace. Transactions costs for decentralized applications …

A collaborative NFT project from belagued Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and pseudonymous digital artist Pak is set to drop next week. Assange has been confined in a London prison since April 2019 after his asylum status in the Ecuadorian embassy of London was terminated. The following month he was indicted on 17 counts of espionage in the Eastern District Court of Virginia relating to classified documents he published on Wikileaks. His legal team is currently fighting an extradition case which could see him face the charges in the United States and spend the rest of his life behind bars. The …

John Lennon’s eldest son Julian is selling some of the rarest pieces of music history from his private collection. John Lennon’s coat from the “Magical Mystery Tour” film, his cape from “Help!,” three guitars and Paul McCartney’s handwritten arrangement notes for “Hey Jude” are some of the most sought after memorabilia from music history up for nonfungible token (NFT) auction. The NFT series, called "Lennon Connection: The NFT Collection," has opened up for bidding on Monday and will commence on February 7 in collaboration with NFT marketplace YellowHeart and Julien's Auctions. A portion of the sale from the NFT auction …

Late Saturday, Spice DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that owns a copy of an unpublished manuscript of Frank Herbert and Alejandro Jodorowsky's never completed Dune film, announced its roadmap going forward. In the Tweet, Spice DAO said it would "Make the book public, produce an original animated limited series inspired by the book and sell it to a streaming service, and support derivative projects from the community." The group had previously won the Christie's auction in November for the copy's sale at 2.66 million euros, or about 89 times its price estimates at the midpoint. However, there was just one …

A group of editors on Wikipedia, the free user generated encyclopedia, have voted against classifying NFTs as a form of art and have come to a consensus to shelve the issue until a later date. A survey and debate started on the platform at the end of December revolving around the most expensive art sales by living artists and whether NFT art sales should be deemed as “art sales” or “NFT sales.” “Wikipedia really can't be in the business of deciding what counts as art or not, which is why putting NFTs, art or not, in their own list makes …