NFTs in a nutshell: A weekly review

Despite a relatively mild week for NFTs, with disappearing volumes and headlines, there was plenty of action and activity in what resulted in an overall busy week for crypto. A flurry of hacks and exploits, drama and activity at DevCon Bogata, and new deals like Coinbase and Google working on cloud payments together have driven most of the “noise” around crypto over the past week, leaving little room for NFTs to to make a lot of a splash.

Despite this, there are continuous highs and lows that we look to assess and encapsulate each weekend to take you through the final week of NFT action. Let’s go over everything from last week as we hit the middle of October.

This week’s non-fungible token news

Yuga Labs under the SEC microscope

New regulation around NFTs may be on the SEC’s future agenda, as reports emerged early last week that the US regulator is looking into NFT player Yuga Labs, the operator of several blue-chip projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Meebits and CryptoPunks.

In addition, the SEC is reportedly examining Yuga’s ApeCoin token as to whether it meets the criteria for a security.

Hopkins’ collection sells out quickly

Academy Award-winning actor Anthony Hopkins has recently expressed some interest in NFTs through various press releases. That has come to a head this week, as Hopkins’ NFT release has finally come and gone, resulting in a sold-out debut in less than 10 minutes.

Hopkins released 1,000 NFTs in his ‘The Eternal’ collection, which featured images from his various roles that he played during his career. While the project debuted at OpenSea, it was a collaboration between Hopkins and young NFT marketplace Orange Comet.

Konami the next big game player in NFTs?

Billion dollar Japanese conglomerate Konami is the latest entertainment giant to enter the crypto space, and NFTs are naturally a first step. Konami has legacy IP for the likes of Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dance Dance Revolution and more.

Konami representatives have said that they “plan to launch a service where players can trade … in-game NFTs (digital objects) through a unique distribution platform that uses blockchain.”

Ethereum (ETH) continues to be the dominant NFT leader despite substantial market share gains from chains like Solana. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com

OneOf Pairs with Ziggy Marley

NFT audio platform OneOf taps into another music partner this week, Ziggy Marley. Coming from a remarkable lineage of talent, the Jamaican reggae artist is yet another big win in the music category for growing platform OneOf.

Starting next week, the two will offer NFTs that include ‘IRL engagement’ such as an unreleased demo, a signed guitar, and even a special royalty-included merchandise collaboration.

OpenSea daily volume hits 15-month low

OpenSea daily volumes hit a shocking new 15-month low earlier this week, bringing to earth a once soaring market to daily volumes seen before the boom late last year. This week was completely bone dry in terms of volumes relative to the peak market, with only a single day during the weekday last week exceeding $10 million in volume. Although there are still strong numbers in the market, they have been declining over the past year, and blue chip NFTs have had less of an impact than smaller projects.

However, OpenSea still had reason to celebrate this week, as the NFT marketplace added growing NFT blockchain Avalanche to its burgeoning list of supported chains. Avalanche has emerged as a young but significant NFT contender recently.

CNN Closes NFT Marketplace, “The Vault”

News conglomerate CNN is shutting down its NFT marketplace, “The Vault”, after just over a year of operation. However, CNN has left a community unhappy after the overnight shutdown, suddenly describing “The Vault” as an “experiment” despite never having used that language before, and despite releasing a year-long roadmap the last few months. While the collectibles that CNN has released so far will remain supported on the platform, CNN announced that support for managing the surrounding communities — and likely active maintenance of the platform — will cease.

So far, few news outlets have found success in NFTs.

Featured image from Pexels, Charts from TradingView.com

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