Facebook's decision this Thursday to rebrand itself to Meta—to indicate its plans to build an avatar-filled metaverse—helped spark a speculative rally across cryptocurrencies that belong to similar virtual world projects. Decentraland, a virtual place with its own economy, currency (MANA), and social events, accessible to anyone with a web browser, saw its market valuation exploding from $1.44 billion to $2.08 billion in the previous 24 hours. That happened as its native token MANA jumped circa 45% to $1.14 in the same period. At its intraday best, the Decentraland cryptocurrency was changing hands for $1.227 Friday, its highest level since May …

GameStop (GME) is assembling a team of blockchain and NFT experts to work on the firm’s upcoming NFT platform. The firm’s GME stock is a cult favorite amongst retail traders as a result of the r/wallstreetbets and Robinhood saga earlier this year. On Reddit the r/Superstonk community boasts 659,000 members, and is dedicated to hosting business and stock discussions related to GME. A post about GameStop’s job listings yesterday has received more than 10,000 upvotes at the time of writing, with many members posting bullish sentiments over GameStop’s latest move. GameStop quietly unveiled a bare-bones website for its NFT marketplace …

It’s no surprise that nonfungible tokens (NFT) have been dominating the crypto market this year. The booming digital asset class generated over $2.5 billion in sales within the first six months of 2021, demonstrating unheard-of financial gains for artists, brands and content creators across the globe. The rise of metaverses has also impacted the adoption of NFTs, as the world is moving closer toward visions of a future defined by augmented reality. As such, NFTs are further demonstrating the convergence of culture with technology, which in turn is having an impact on a number of mainstream industries. Showcasing culture and …

Society is headed towards a new form of digital ownership with an economy and greater metaverse based on the blockchain. The concept of "the metaverse" is typically depicted as actual and augmented reality-based in a virtual world. Most recognize this concept since it is present in several fictional movies of dystopian futures like Ready, Player, One, Minority Report and Avatar. However, the concept has since quickly gained attraction from the technology industry, making it more viable than ever before. The metaverse is seen by many as the natural evolution to what comes next after what people are already doing on …

Nonfungible token (NFT)-game and virtual property developer Animoca Brands has doubled its valuation to $2.2 billion after closing a new funding round that fetched $65 million. The latest funding round was conducted at a pre-money valuation of $2.2 billion, and included backing from gaming giants Ubisoft Entertainment along with Liberty City Ventures, Sequoia China, Dragonfly Capital to name a few. It’s more vindication for a company that was kicked off the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in March 2020, in part for its involvement in cryptocurrencies. According to the Wednesday announcement from the firm, more than 43.8 million newly issued shares …

Galaxy Interactive, a venture capital firm focused on next-generation interactive technology, has announced it has raised $325 million for its second fund from 70 different investors. The fund is focused on virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and blockchain-based games. In a Tuesday announcement, Galaxy Digital, the majority owner of Galaxy Interactive, stated that $150 million from the fund has already been allocated to new portfolio companies, including Republic, 1047 Games, Elodie, Roar, Art Blocks and Masterworks, with other additional investments to be announced in coming months. Established in 2018 by general partners Sam Englebardt and Richard Kim, the company …

Publicly-listed cryptocurrency and blockchain investment firm Tokens.com has announced a landmark agreement to acquire a 50% stake in metaverse real estate firm Metaverse Group in a deal worth in excess of $1.6 million. Tokens.com is expected to capitalize on the purchase — reportedly the highest purchase of a virtual real estate firm — through the development of asset opportunities for public retail investors seeking to gain greater exposure to nonfungible token, or NFT, and decentralized finance, or DeFi, assets. Metaverse Group operates a service akin to a traditional real estate firm in that it engages in property acquisition, development and …

The road to the adoption of blockchain and crypto in the marketing industry is a long and winding road. But make no mistake about it: Transformation is well on its way and the road will soon turn to a highway. As someone who has been a creative director, agency owner/partner, strategic planner, chief marketing officer for fintech startups and an entrepreneur, I’ve seen the marketing industry from multiple vantage points. What’s common in marketing revolutions? And while every so-called “marketing revolution” takes a somewhat different path, there are many commonalities. First of all, marketing agencies will get ahead of the …

One virtual world is being reimagined with nonfungible tokens (NFTs) is Neopets, the virtual pet website. The team has announced the launch of their IP on the blockchain to provide new and improved user experiences. For those unfamiliar, Neopets is one of the very first online games to allow users to adopt a pet that they can explore the vast world with. Neopets can be raised, homes could be built, and rare items could be found. Over the last two decades, millions of people have engaged with Neopets characters in their virtual world of Neopia and shared it with their …

The number of crypto wallets participating in blockchain games has surged in recent months, according to new research. According to DappRadar’s Q3 ‘Blockchain Game Report’, unique active wallets connected to gaming decentralized applications reached a total of 754,000 for the period. This represents almost half of the industry’s activity with the blockchain industry registering 1.54 million daily unique active wallets on average over the three-month period. The unique active wallet metric refers to unique addresses that interact with a given smart contract, so it does not necessarily translate to daily active users. The increase in gaming activity has been driven …

Prestigious auction house Sotheby’s has launched a new Metaverse-themed nonfungible token (NFT) platform. The platform is dubbed “Sotheby’s Metaverse” and was announced alongside the “Natively Digital 1.2: The Collectors” (ND1.2) auction that will run between Monday, Oct. 18 and Tuesday, Oct. 26. The auction consists of 53 lots of tokenized art from the vaults of 19 curators. Welcome to Sotheby's Metaverse. https://t.co/hZvYIkO3xx pic.twitter.com/9Wl9fUwibe — Sotheby's Metaverse (@Sothebysverse) October 14, 2021 The list of curators includes some top collectors in the NFT space such as PleasrDAO, Pranksy and 888 along with crypto-friendly stars such as DJ Steve Aoki and self-described “Boss-Babe” …

With the current interest in nonfungible tokens (NFTs), many companies have started to develop NFT marketplaces to attract as many users as possible. The problem with that is because everything happens so quickly in the NFT space, user interfaces and processes at these platforms are confusing and complex for users, which pushes away a lot of people from the entire experience. Currently, NFTs are designed to never be changed, limiting their abilities as digital assets. However, a solution may be underway. The DeHorizon Foundation has recently announced a new partnership with NFT interoperability Middleware, POD, to jointly launch the First …