NFTs In A Nutshell: A Weekly Review

NFTs continue to show strong performance in new and existing wallets, there are no more memes about ‘wen Coinbase NFTs,’ and Twitter has some serious issues for those in the NFT space (Elon chatter aside). Oh, and there could potentially be a new ‘blue chip’ project in town – we’ll leave that for the market to decide.

It’s just another week’s worth of NFT activity, which we recap each and every weekend here at Bitcoinist. Let’s take a look at the biggest stories, dominant projects, and headlines to keep an eye on as we head into the last week of April.

This Week’s Non-Fungible Token News

Coinbase NFT Marketplace Opens In Beta

“Back in my day, we used to troll about how long the Coinbase NFT marketplace would take to arrive.” Well, those days are in the rearview – or at least one step closer this week, as the long-awaited Coinbase NFT product has finally made it’s initial debut.

However, while anyone can view and explore the beta release of the marketplace, a small selection of testers are only able to actually buy and sell assets currently. The company’s timeline to release NFTs with access for all users – or more users at least – has yet to be disclosed.

Twitter Blue Check Scams Targeting NFTs Run Rampant

Regardless of how you feel about Twitter’s ‘blue check’ process – those in the NFT space have a very clear issue that has infiltrated the social media platform this week: fake blue check account spam. In our deep-dive report this week, our team covered the immense and immeasurable amount of fake verified accounts spamming NFT drops.

Hackers are seemingly hijacking verified user accounts, rebranding the account as if it was a dev or creator account of a new or highly-anticipated NFT project, tagging tons of accounts associated with crypto, and teasing fake airdrops in an effort to have users connect their wallets – leading to an eventual phishing attack, of course. Projects such as MoonBird, Azuki, ApeCoin and many other notable NFTs have been copycatted en mass.

For those on Twitter involved in crypto and NFTs, it’s becoming unbelievably annoying and painstaking – another hinderance that the social media platform desperately needs to address.

The $30M+ NFT Lockup

In our daily NFT recap, The Nightly Mint, we capped off this week with the crazy drama surrounding AkuDreams, a highly-anticipated NFT project that became all the rage over crypto Twitter in recent days.

The AkuDreams contract had a bug that resulted in over 11,000 ETH – north of $30M – stuck and unaccessible to both individuals and project devs. It’s a first in NFT contracts, and a bizarre set of circumstances that are a reminder that deep-dives into smart contracts are a must before heading to mint.

Related Reading | Will Austria Get 12 Bitcoin ATMs Soon?

Coinbase is finally releasing it's beta version of it's marketplace for NFTs, however it's publicly traded stock has faced trading activity akin to much of the publicly traded tech stocks on the stock market lately. | Source: NASDAQ: COIN on TradingView.com

MoonBirds Dominate The Conversation, And The Volume

CryptoPunks this, Bored Apes that. The talk of the town this week was undoubtedly MoonBirds, a new NFT project that launched last weekend that quickly gained unparalleled momentum. There is not a single NFT project to date that has picked up steam this quickly, establishing a 30+ ETH floor in just a few short days.

As we’ve jumped into the weekend, the floor continues to rise and is quickly approaching 40 ETH. Project volume in the past 24 hours is over double that of legendary projects like BAYC. And the MoonBirds’ market cap is well on it’s way to seemingly crossing past 500K ETH.

Can a project become a ‘blue chip’ in essentially a week? MoonBirds will be an interesting case study around rapid hype and if it can sustain it’s momentum, a testament to how fast things move in the NFT space.

Activision Blizzard Addresses NFT Rumors

Last weekend, and headed into early this week, rumors were swirling that gaming monster Activision Blizzard was polling interest around NFTs and ‘play to earn’ gaming – two buckets of immense growth in the crypto space this year.

Those rumors were swiftly shut down after the company’s President Mike Ybarra responded on Twitter directly stating: “No one is doing NFTs.”

Related Reading | Brian Armstrong: Apple Does Not Allow Features That Make Phones Crypto-friendly

Featured image from Pexels, Charts from TradingView.com

The writer of this content is not associated or affiliated with any of the parties mentioned in this article. This is not financial advice.