Former rich NFT buyers stick to the pain – TechCrunch

by James · July 5, 2022

Welcome back to Chain reaction.

Last week we talked about endless pessimism in the crypto markets. This week we’m talking about parties and tattoos and booze and fun.

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Table of Contents

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It is no secret at this time that many spectators watch the cryptocurrency with joy and laughter as the tokens fall and the NFT volumes shrink. The crypto industry has managed to acquire many consumer enemies through this bullshit – with critics highlighting aggressive energy use, the addictive profile of crypto investments and how NFTs have become “MLMs for dudes” – as justification for their reluctance.

As the beef market nears its end, it’s probably a good time here for introspection on how investors’ web3 vision for the web can give consumers more to be excited about than skeptical, but something tells me that the crypto industry is growing more insular than anyone. gang.

This week, NFT residents descended on Times Square in New York. Expensive photos found their way to the massive billboards, token-gated parties flourished and a number of suddenly less wealthy collectors found their way to compassion and double down. My co-host Anita had the chance to visit NFT NYC in person and gave some thoughts below, but in some ways the positive vibes show an industry that goes from growth mode to survival mode.

Of course, the NFT world’s version of survival looks a little different. At the event this week, the Bored Ape Yacht Club hosted a festival featuring Future, LCD Soundsystem and Amy Schumer. Tame Impala led Kevin Rose’s Moonbirds event where token holders could get owl tattoos on the spot. The NYPD set up token-gated NFT parties. A project hired dozens of protesters holding signs saying “God hates NFTs” for standing outside their event. An NFT startup hired a Snoop Dogg impersonator “Doop Snogg” to go around their event as a tacit pseudo-approval.

Ultimately, it is no secret that the NFT market was filled with an awful lot of nonsense, and any bear market could and should restore some sense to what is left, but the lines look a little blurry in NFT countries.

In some ways, it feels as if the wealthy collectors of the NFT space are throwing themselves into space while the world they built is preparing for a meltdown. So-called blue-chip projects with 10+ ETH floors, venture financing and significant trading volumes have shown surprising robustness in the face of the decline despite the declining values of the underlying cryptocurrencies on which they are based, but NFT projects across the board have gained large strokes as less affluent collectors look for exit liquidity where they can, and struggle all the way down.

the last pod

We started this week’s episode by unpacking some controversy that was incited by none other than Dogefather himself – Elon Musk. Musk and his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, is being sued by a Dogecoin holder to allegedly inflate the value of the cryptocurrency, which has since crashed.

It’s time for NFT NYC this week, a crypto conference that has attracted influencers, investors, celebrities and the like to New York (more on that below from Anita, who has bubbled around the city and talked to the NFT community). We took a deep dive into the NFT market itself and what could be the driving force behind the seemingly overflowing NFT space even in the midst of such serious market conditions for crypto and technology in general. We ended this week’s news with two DAO-related disasters that may not bode well for the future of this recently trendy but undeniably messy management structure.

Musical and visual artist Latasha joined us on the podcast this week to talk about how NFTs helped her claim ownership of and live off her creative work. She shared her vision behind Zoratopia, a festival experience she has hosted at crypto events across the United States, in her role as social worker on the Nora platform Zora.

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follow the money

Where start-up money moves in the crypto world:

FalconXa platform for digital assets for institutional investors, announced a $ 150 million Series D round at a $ 8 billion valuation led by GIC and B Capital.
NFT collection object project Doodles attracted an undisclosed amount from Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six.
Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden raised $ 130 million in a Series B round led by Electric Capital and Greylock Partners, bringing the value to $ 1.6 billion.
Prime Trusta startup of crypto and fintech infrastructure, raised $ 100 million for its Series B from investors including FIS, Fin Capital and Kraken Ventures.
Unauthorized margin trading protocol OpenLeverage obtained a strategic investment of undisclosed size from Binance Labs.
NFT-based comedy and meme tool company Terrible petsa project from the producers of the TV show Silicon Valley, raised ~ $ 4 million in funding led by First Round Capital, XYZ Capital and Moment.
Astariaan NFT liquidity provider, completed a $ 8 million seed round from investors including True Ventures and Arrington Capital.
Final conditionan NFT platform focused on sneakers, raised $ 5.5 million in seed funding from investors including Archetype and Castle Island.
Algorithmic exchange rate protocol Increase raised $ 1.56 million for its ParaFi-led seed round.
Afropolit raised $ 2.1 million in pre-financing from Balaji Srinivasan and other investors to build a digital nation-state for Africans and the African diaspora.

this week in web3

Hi, it’s Anita here, reporting (pretty much) directly from NFT NYC this week. Everyone living in Manhattan, including myself, has been surrounded by a deluge of delighted degenerates who rejected the downturn this week. You can listen to this week’s podcast to hear my thoughts on all of this, but I want to address another question here: Does the crypto-community practice what they preach?

There were tons of complaints on Twitter from people queuing for hours to get their NFT NYC passports. Even those who spoke in panels had to stand in line with all the participants at the event, they told me, who apparently walked around as many as three city blocks.

I’ve lived in New York for a while now, so I’m not easily shaken by a long queue, but it made me think of the irony of the whole thing. NFTs and their associated technology can provide easy authentication and identity verification. NFT shutdowns love to cite the example of incidents as a prime use case for the technology, which they say can make administrative burdens such as checking people into a conference so much more efficient. So where’s that technology at this week’s conference?

I’m sure that arranging a crypto event involves creating order from chaos in a way that is far beyond my own capacity, so I do not exclude NFT NYC’s organizers or anyone else in particular. But the lines at NFT NYC raised a bigger question in my mind about the contradiction between what the crypto community sier is the future versus how the crypto community actually behaves. Like, why are personal conferences such a big part of getting to know people in web3? Shouldn’t we all be past the point where we need to breathe each other’s air to feel human connection?

Based on what I’ve heard over the last year from large parts of the web3 community, I would have expected that we would all hang with our besties in the meta verse 24/7 now. Cryptoconferencing in itself, it seems, provides a tremendous opportunity for web3 enthusiasts to actually leverage the technology they say will change everything about how we live. So far, it seems that the opportunity has been largely overlooked.

TC + analysis

Here are some of this week’s cryptanalysis you can read on our subscription service TC + (written by TC’s Jacquelyn Melinek):

Crypto’s emphasis on community can lead followers of a cliff
The idea of the “family” culture that so many companies are pushing for is seeping deeper into the crypto world as societies are formed on a sometimes toxic, cultic attitude to steadfastly support the projects they are invested in. Misunderstand me right, some parts of the crypto community are great – I myself am part of a few societies – but when it is abused, it can lead to the blind leading the blind.

Crypto-entrepreneurs are facing declining valuations, pulled deals in the midst of market volatility
As the crypto market continues to plunge, the founders of the area are struggling to hold on to investors who are now trying to minimize risk and withdraw from funding rounds. The market is changing to a VC-friendly landscape, but not all founders are happy with the way they are treated now that investors are back in the driver’s seat.

Thanks for reading, and again, if you want to get this in your inbox every Thursday, you can subscribe to TechCrunch’s newsletter page. See you next week!