NFT Market Update — Week Ending March 25th, 2022

State of The Market, U.S. Justice Cracks Frosties, A 320 ETH Fidenza, XCOPY Delivers Max Pain, Spotify NFTs, and more!

Curated by the $WHALE Market Strategy team: Ekaitza, Frank, and Song 📊
To get the full report and discuss market activity with the team, Join $WHALE

📈State of the Market📉

Total number of sales in past 30 days. Data from nonfungible.com.

Market activity for the past 7 days:

Comment: There seem to be some anomalies in the data set as NonFungible continues to roll out their new aggregates. We'll continue to monitor variances.

This was another week of strong recovery. Almost all the measures shaply increased with the tamest being Average NFT in US$. Total Sales in US$ was 442.7 Million, which increased 19.6% based on last week’s number. Number of active market wallets reached 106K, which is 30% higher than last week. With both BTC and ETH prices moving up, I expect the up trend of the entire NFT market will continue for the next few weeks

-$WHALE Market Strategy Team

⚖ NFT Fear and Greed Index ⚖

The NFT Fear and Greed Index (NFGI) is currently at 52 (Thurs. Mar 24th 2022), up from last Thursday’s (Mar 17th) index of 44.

Readings for the NFGI are as follows: 0–20 = Extreme Fear, 20–40 = Fear, 40–60 = Neutral, 60–80 = Greed, 80–100 = Extreme Greed.

🥇 Top 3 Sales 🥇

Top sales in USD for the past 7 days.

This is another APE week. One piece of Artblocks (Fidenza) took the №1 position and BAYC took the remaining 9 of the top 10. This is the second week a Punk did notshow up on the Top 10 list. When will we see Punks again?

1. Fidenza #692 320 ETH (US $995 K)
2. BAYC #3250 250 ETH (US $716 K)
3. BAYC #5979 190 ETH (US $563 K)

Recent Events

⚖ US Justice Cracks Down on NFT Rug-Pulls ⚖

The US Justice Department charged those behind the Frosties NFT with money-laundering and wire fraud after scamming their investors of over $1 million. Facing criminal conspiracy and financial crime charges, they are among the first criminal NFT defendants in the rug-pull era. The Homeland Security Investigations New York’s Dark Web & Cryptocurrency Task Force identified and shut down the fraudsters as they prepared to launch the sale of another NFT project.

🕹 G2 Esports Files Against Bondly 🕹

G2 Esports filed a lawsuit against NFT provider Bondly accusing the company of botching a deal for the development and sale of NFTs based on the esports brand’s intellectual property. In the filing, G2 alleges that Bondly misled leadership at the gaming and entertainment company about its capabilities and failed to meet deadlines for deliverables, including payments to G2, resulting in damages of over $5.25 million.

🧩 Immutable X Builds w/ Loopring 🧩

There is some confusion over the direction that GameStop is taking regarding its transition to NFTs. Initially, it was believed that they partnered with Immutable X but recently they announced that their NFT platform will be built using Loopring’s scaling solution.

🎼 Spotify NFTs? 🎼

Spotify is drawing up plans to add NFTs to its streaming service, which will boost artists’ earnings and to also maintain market share in an industry that is likely to be threatened by Web3 companies such as Royal.

💰 Upshot’s Who’s Who For Their Series A2 Raise 💰

NFT appraisal company Upshot raised $22M in series A2. Upshot is a blockchain-based protocol providing industry-leading non-fungible token (NFT) appraisals, it’s also the first, and leading, technology company that can accurately and reliably appraise the value of digital assets like NFTs at scale. Polychain Capital joins previous investors Framework Ventures, CoinFund, Blockchain Capital, Slow Ventures, Mechanism Capital, and Delphi Digital, among others who led Series A2 round of $22 M fundraising.

🥇 Notable Drops 🥇

XCOPY dropped on Nifty Gateway on Thursday March 24th with 2 auctioned pieces — an edition of 6 called WASTER (total raised = $571,842) and an edition of 12 called DAMAGER LUXE (Total raised = $914,670).

A $1 drawing for an edition of 24 was also available called GOURMET SPICY as well as an open edition MAX PAIN with a 10 minute window (7,394 editions sold for a total of $22,980,552 …. in 10 minutes).

With many artist conversations revolving around market immaturity and the value bestowed upon PFPs, the auction served as a reassurance of sorts that consumer demand for art and 1 of 1 is alive and well.

📢 Upcoming Drops 📢

• Zlatan Ibrahimovic drops The Laws of Adrenaline: An NFT Collection on Makersplace. Zlatan challenged eleven artists to create works based on his latest autobiography, Adrenaline: My Untold Stories. Eleven quotes from his autobiography inspired each piece, which were produced in collaboration with ArtsLife, Wrong Theory, and ARTN to assemble this collection.
• Flyod Mayweather is back again and, to be honest, this should not be on people’s radar given his behavior in the NFT space in the recent past.
• Huobi NFT has partnered with blockchain game distribution platform NEXTYPE to launch a NFT collection featuring Japanese actress and singer Hanazawa Kana. The collection is entitled My MetaGirl!
• Liverpool FC announced its debut collection in partnership with Sotheby’s Metaverse. The collection’s artwork will feature generative imagery of each of its 24 players and will also feature 24 “Legendary” one-of-one editions, one for each player, that will be auctioned off individually on March 30. The rest of the NFTs will be sold at lower price points starting at $75.

🐳 The Tao of WhaleShark 🦈

Life is the Greatest Teacher

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