Cryptocurrency News Now!: 02/11/22

Friday, February 11, 2022

NFT real estate?

Inside.com

Part of Network

February 11, 2022

The first U.S. real estate NFT has sold for 210 ETH (~$653,000.) This marks a big step toward the dream of simplifying the real estate process with blockchain technology, but it's still far from becoming mainstream.

The on-chain real estate process:

When you are buying a real estate NFT, you aren't really buying the housing deed itself. The NFT that you buy is linked to an LLC that owns the physical asset.

The vision for NFT real estate is to make the process of buying a property as fast as sending a Venmo while replacing the drawn-out, paperwork-filled process everyone is used to.

Where it gets interesting:

Don't expect this process to be used by normal people to buy their forever home anytime soon. Where this technology will most likely be leveraged is by crypto-native investors because of one key feature.

The NFT becomes a DeFi asset that can be borrowed against.

The sale:

The sale was facilitated by the NFT real estate platform Propy.
This marks Propy's second NFT property sale. The start-up facilitated the sale of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington's Kyiv, Ukraine, apartment last year
The seller was Defi Unlimited and Alloy Design & Development co-founder Leslie Alessandra.
The property was a four-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom, 2,164-square-foot single-family home with an additional one-bed, one-bath guest suite in Gulfport, Florida, pictured below:

A much anticipated NFT drop, Squiggles, has been removed from OpenSea after it was revealed to be a rug pull. The project had gone on to accumulate 232,000 Twitter followers and 360,000 discord members before a 60-page dossier was leaked that exposed the project as fraud.

More:

The report revealed that the leaders of Squiggles were behind other successful NFT rug pulls.
The dossier and subsequent Twitter storm appear to have come in time to save anyone from being scammed.
The project was first flagged as suspicious for its extremely high mint price of 1 ETH.
The scam Squiggles is not to be confused with Art Block's Chromie Squiggles.

Read the full 60-page report here.

Internet personality and boxer Logan Paul has filed several NFT related trademarks for marketplaces and DAOs. Paul is no stranger to the NFT sector, having spent $2.6M on digital collectibles in 2021 while publically promoting some projects.

Now two new filings show that he looks to dive even deeper in the years to come.

Filing 1 — Originals by Logan Paul:

Filed under the NFT categorization.
Includes downloadable photos, artwork, art reproductions, digital art files and image files, and videos authenticated by non-fungible tokens.

Filing 2 — Originals DAO:

Online marketplace and community.

Mobile gaming titan Zynga's move into NFT-based gaming will include staff expansion, acquisitions, and some unannounced new playable games. Zynga is taking much more aggressive steps to capitalize on blockchain gaming than its traditional gaming competitors.

More:

Zynga plans to grow its blockchain team from ~15 to potentially over 100 by the end of 2022.
- They are currently hiring for senior positions like a creative director and a tokenomics designer.
The company has been aggressive on the M&A front, so look for an NFT related acquisition soon.
Zynga reportedly wants to keep its NFT games separate from its other established titles, meaning don't expect NFTs to hit Words with Friends or Farmville anytime soon.

Funding Friday — Notable funding rounds this week

Polygon ($450M) — Polygon is one of the leading L2 scaling and development platforms on Ethereum. The funding came from a private sale of Polygon's MATIC token. The round was led by Sequoia Capital India and included participation from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Galaxy Interactive, Tiger Global, Republic Capital, and angels like Kevin O'Leary (Mr. Wonderful from ABC's Shark Tank).

Alchemy ($200M) — A blockchain development platform referred to as blockchain's equivalent to AWS. Lightspeed Venture Partners, a16z, Coatue, and Pantera Capital were among the round's participants.

Pixel Vault ($100M) — A web3 media company behind Punks Comic. Velvet Sea and 01 Advisors participated in the round.

RareCircle ($7.5M) — RareCircle is an NFT membership platform. The rounds participants include Tiger Global Management and a slew of notable web3 angels like Packy McCormick, Joe McCann, Austin Rief, Mike Dudas, Greg Isenberg, and Julien Smith.

Web3 Tweet: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's note to Russia.

Quick Hits

3D technology is changing the future of eCommerce. Threedium has just launched the most powerful low-code 3D & AR engine in the world.*
Uber's CEO says the company will accept Bitcoin in the future. Note: Inside.com's founder and CEO, Jason Calacanis, is an investor in Uber.
Intel will create a blockchain accelerator.
Kenya is looking into a CBDC.
Dr. Oz has filed metaverse trademarks.
OpenSea launched a venture arm and a grant system.
PankakeSwap will reportedly block users in Iran.
Hundreds of thousands of investors are automating their money with this fintech platform.*

*This is a sponsored post.

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*This is a sponsored post.

Trevor Grant is an entrepreneur, investor, and writer based out of Chicago, Illinois. His primary area of interest is web3 venture capital, social tokens, and infrastructure. Other pursuits include screenwriting, yoga, and traveling. He holds a BS in biomedical engineering.

Connect with him on Twitter @trevorisonline

Editor

Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford.

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