Find love in Paris Hilton’s metaverse, BTC CryptoPunk’s soar and more
Swipe right in the metaverse
Famous New York socialite, Paris Hilton believes Metaverse could be the perfect place to find one’s true love.
In a tweet on Feb. 9, the celebrity and reality TV star said she wants to work with The Sandbox (SAND) to bring “Parisland” to life.
The idea is essentially a Virtual Reality (VR) dating experience crossed with a reality dating show and is slated for release on February 13 in time for Valentine’s Day.
According to a February 9 statement, players will participate in an “in-game dating reality show” hosted by Hilton, where they will virtually meet five potential lovers.
The experience will last until March 13, and players will also complete missions to win non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or SAND prizes and memorabilia.
Such missions include choosing a wedding outfit and ring along with “rescuing a castaway and flirting with other contestants.”
Once players have completed all the missions and found the love of their lives, they will have a virtual wedding and Hilton herself will spin the decks for their first dance together.
The event is organized in collaboration with the Hilton-founded entertainment company 11:11 Media. The company’s Web3 and metaverse strategy lead, Cynthia Miller, said it was on “a mission to help people find love” with the experience.
Ordinal’s CryptoPunk knockoffs are making money
Bitcoin (BTC) NFTs enabled by the Ordinals protocol have created quite a stir in the community, but that hasn’t been enough to stop some from paying thousands of dollars for select collections.
A knockoff of the Ethereum-based CryptoPunks NFT collection has come to BTC called Ordinal Punks which currently has a total supply of 100 according to the project’s website.
According to a price feed in the projects Discord, Punk sold 94 on February 8 for 9.5 BTC or around $215,000 at the time.
So far, that’s the most anyone has paid for a BTC clone Punk from the pool, and it’s around double the price of the last sold CryptoPunk from the original Ethereum pool – which sold for 70 Ether (ETH), or $110,000 according to OpenSea data.
Other sales from the last 48 hours show an Ordinal Punk selling for 6 BTC, around $130,000 and others selling for around 4.5 BTC, or around $100,000.
That’s a significant price jump from late last week, where some Ordinal Punks were selling for as low as 0.07 BTC ($2,200) on February 2, according to sales data.
RhiRhi’s royalties are sold out through NFTs
Royalty rights from Rhianna’s hit from 2015 Bitch better have my money has just been offered as part of a collection of 300 NFTs.
Jamil “Deputy” Pierre was one of the song’s producers who has now sold approximately 1% of his stake in streaming royalties through 300 NFTs giving the holder a lifetime stake of 0.0033% in royalties for the record when streamed digitally on platforms such as Spotify .
The collection, sold by Deputy in partnership with NFT platform anotherblock, was posted on February 9 for 0.128 ETH each, or about $210.
On the same day, another block tweeted that the collection had sold out “in minutes”.
anotherblock predicts that an NFT will provide a “likely” first-year return of 6.5%, which would yield $13.65 a year. At that rate, it would take a holder about 15 years to break even on the investment.
It is unclear how much royalty share in the song Deputy has retained after the NFT sale.
Def Jam Launches Virtual Band With Solana NFT Collection
Def Jam Recordings, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, is attempting to build a Web3 native band through a collaboration with Solana (SOL) NFT collective, The Catalina Whale Mixer.
Announced through a Billboard report on February 8, the band, called “The Whales” will consist of the cartoon whale characters that make up the collection similar to the virtual band Gorillaz.
Catalina Whales later revealed in a tweet that the band would be a “gamified music group” and holders of an NFT in the collection could “get a role for [their] whale.”
The musicians behind the project have yet to be confirmed by Def Jam, but it is said to involve a “who’s who” of talent and The Whales will release a full-length album, but did not reveal a timeline.
Def Jam boasts signed artists such as Justin Beiber, LL Cool J, Rihanna and Nas.
In 2021, another Universal subsidiary, 22:22, signed a similar NFT-backed virtual band called KINGSHIP consisting of four monkeys from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection.
Other good news:
Luxury fashion brand Hermès won a trademark infringement case against NFT artist Mason Rothschild for his use of the Birkin trademark for his MetaBirkins NFT collection. The firm was awarded $133,000 in damages.
YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla, lured mixed martial artist, Dillon Danis, into promoting a fake NFT collection that, according to Findeisen, “literally spells SCAM”
