Within months after its launch in April 2021, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has become one of the main reasons Wall Street should take the emerging nonfungible token (NFT) market seriously, thanks to its recent sales turnover of over $1 billion. Celebrities ape into BAYC For the uninitiated, BAYC is a collection of 10,000 cartoons of anthropomorphic apes with stylish clothes and disreputable expressions. Each ape is practically an image file that should be worthless in a sane world. Nonetheless, they have been managing to fetch astonishing sums, sometimes from some of the world's most renowned celebrities. For instance, Jimmy …

Millionaire investor and crypto proponent Kevin O'Leary thinks that the NFT sector could be worth more than Bitcoin in the future. Speaking with CNBC’s Capital Connection on Jan. 5, O'Leary — also known as Mr. Wonderful — argued that NFTs provide a greater potential to attract capital than Bitcoin due to their ability to tokenize and authenticate physical assets such as cars, watches and real estate: “You’re going to see a lot of movement in terms of doing authentication and insurance policies and real estate transfer taxes all online over the next few years, making NFTs a much bigger, more …

NFT trading volumes on OpenSea are surging in January amid a renewed speculative frenzy on Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC). According to data posted by “rchen8” on Dune Analytics, OpenSea has generated more than $700 million worth of trading volume since the start of 2022, with Jan. 3 being the biggest day of the year with a whopping $255.8 million worth of 24-hour volume. While popular onlookers as Wu Blockchain have asserted that the volume on Jan. 3 was a record high for OpenSea, previous data posted by rchen8 on Dune Analytics …

Catch up on nonfungible token (NFT)-related news this week as Cointelegraph rounds up the stories you don't want to miss. Bored Apes gets cast in an TV series The Red Ape Family (TRAF) is a new animated comedy series centered on Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs. Episodes are sold as individual NFTs and run between 5 to 10 minutes long. The plot is about a family of Bored Apes that escape Earth to live on Mars. OpenSea is already reselling Episode 1 and the yet-to-be-released Episode 2 is available to mint. One Episode 1 token holder received a Bored …

Catch up on nonfungible token (NFT)-related news this week from restaurants to movies and music. Below is a roundup of stories you don't want to miss. Melania Trump's eyes become an NFT Former first lady Melania Trump launched her own NFT platform and dropped her first digital collectible titled "Melania's Vision," which will be on sale through the rest of the month. "Melania's Vision" is a watercolor art piece by artist Marc-Antoine Coulon. The limited-edition digital artwork will be available for 1 SOL ($150) and includes an audio recording from Mrs. Trump. The Melania Trump NFT platform utilizes the Solana …

The Nation Football League Players Association, or NFLPA, in collaboration with sports betting operator DraftKings Inc., announced the launch of a gamified nonfungible token, or NFT, collection to drop on DraftKings Marketplace during the 2022-2023 NFL season. Starting next year, fans will be able to play NFT-based games featuring their favorite NFL Players, according to the company. OneTeam, the official media business partner of the NFLPA, helped facilitate the deal with DraftKings, giving them the necessary licensing rights to use the name, image and likeness for active NFL players. In a statement shared on the Draftkings website, Beth Beiriger, SVP …

The Matrix’s NFT revelations Soaring demand for the Warner Bros.’ Matrix NFT avatar drop on Nifty’s this week caused the website's purchasing page to crash. Earlier this month, the film studio announced it would be dropping 100,000 unique Matrix-inspired avatar NFTs for $50 each as part of a promotional campaign for the new Matrix Resurrections film set to hit cinemas in the U.S. on Dec. 22. After more than 300,000 Matrix fans queued up for the drop on Nov. 30, Nifty’s was forced to start and stop the queue multiple times due to max capacity-induced “infrastructure issues.” Hello again everyone. …

SAND, the native token of the Sandbox — a blockchain-based gaming platform owned by Animoca Brands, inched higher on Tuesday, building on its gains made all across November, to reach another record high. SAND token price rose to $5.64 after swelling 16.25% intraday but retraced some of those gains to trade at $5.54 at the press time. The move took the Sandbox token's month-to-date (MTD) and year-to-date (YTD) gains to nearly 260% and over 14,700%, respectively, with its market capitalization crossing above $5 billion, making it the 41st-largest coin in the sector. Many catalysts behind the SAND price rally This …

California-based music streaming platform Audius released new functionality that allows artists and fans to embed nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on various blogs and social media platforms such as Twitter and Discord. The “embedded” functionality aims to improve fan engagement for musicians through NFT adoption and Web 3.0 integrations. To enable the feature, artists need to connect their Audius accounts with Phantom wallet, a crypto wallet centered around the Solana ecosystem. Aimed at increasing the discoverability of Solana NFTs, the company stated: “NFT holders can embed their collectibles from the two biggest blockchains on Twitter timelines, personal blogs, and websites. Thanks to …

Sotheby’s, the world’s oldest art and luxury auction house, announced its collaboration with the public health care advocate and nonprofit organization Sostento to auction off its latest NFT collection via the Sotheby’s Metaverse. The auction entitled, ‘Gifted: The 140 Collection,’ is considered to be Sotheby’s “biggest NFT charity auction ever,” with all of its proceeds going towards Sostento. The NFTs were originally gifted by Twitter as part of a giveaway of 140 NFTs to 140 random followers in June of this year. Its recipients became known as “The Besties.” Now, 7 of these Besties have elected to sell the full …

Gala Games' in-house currency GALA rallied by nearly 350% in November, ignoring corrections across the top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC). Notably, GALA price surged from $0.088 to $0.42 between Nov. 1 and Nov. 22. GALA's gains primarily came in the wake of a price rally across a majority of gaming and metaverse crypto assets. For instance, MANA, the native token of Decentraland — a blockchain-based virtual world that allows users to create, experience, and monetize content and applications, climbed by more than 30% month-to-date. Similarly, SAND, the native asset of decentralized metaverse project, the Sandbox, more than doubled in prices …

Boson Protocol is a decentralized commerce protocol that seeks to enable the sale of physical goods, services and experiences in the Metaverse as nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and hopes to provide an infrastructure layer for exchanging assets of non-monetary value. For example, an NFT of a pair of sneakers bought using the Boson Protocol in the Metaverse would then be redeemable for that physical pair of sneakers in the real world, and vice versa. Ahead of the launch of its first Metaverse commerce experience in Decentraland, called Boson Portal, Cointelegraph spoke with Justin Banon, co-founder of Boson Protocol, to learn more …