Hanging by a Thread

Blockchain Snitches. Bearish Vibes. And the Battle for CT.

👋🏽 Hello everyone, gm gm, WELCOME BACK to another edition of the Overpriced JPEGs newsletter, where we’re catching you up on web3, NFTs, and the greater world of emerging tech.

🍸 Happy Hour Tour Update 🍸

Our LA event is back on!! Although we’ll miss Betty, we’re excited to announce Cool Cats Artist Clon and CEO Stephen Teglas as the guests of our July 25 event at the Danvas Gallery in LA.

OPJ, Cool Cats, Deadfellaz, and Nouns Builder holders can all head to OPJTour.com to reserve your tickets now!

🌟 As always, thank you to our generous event sponsors, OpenSea, Web3Sense, Liquid Collections, and Nouns Builder 🌟

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🥃 Oh, What a Week!

• It’s a big day for crypto, with Coinbase and the SEC heading to court on its pre-motion hearing this morning, where we’ll likely get an early look at how Judge Katherine Polk Faila views this significant legal battle. We’re on the edge of our seats.

• After the hot mess that was Azuki’s Elemental mint, we’re not surprised that the degen play of the week was Fatzukis. Not much to say here, other than sit back and enjoy the memes.

• Decrypt held an Ordinals treasure hunt, hiding words from a seed phrase in its articles throughout the week. User AnonYMouse front-ran the competition by guessing the final word and unlocking Skullx and Bitcoin Whales from one of several prize wallets

• Sure, we got 7-11 NFTs, Google Play warming up to digital assets, and Ice Cube reppin’ DeGods this week, but there’s still plenty of evidence that NFTs are falling apart at the seams:

  • Beanie says multiple founders feel trapped in NFT projects that have run out of runway now that royalties have all but evaporated. Kevin Rose spoke to this at a recent OPJ Happy Hour event, admitting that he’s been approached by a bunch of projects seeking to be acquired by PROOF.

• • After a pretty bullish outlook, Sega’s COO did a 180 on blockchain gaming, calling P2E games ‘boring’ and questioning whether the tech is ‘going to take off in this industry, after all.’

  • And then there’s NFTStats’ rather grim look comparing projects with 100+E in volume in 2021 to their 2023 volume:

• TLDR: Either crypto’s in a far better place than anyone gives it credit for … or it’s all going to zero

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📹 Farkham All

• Early this week, Arkham Intelligence announced its new ‘on-chain intelligence exchange,’ or in other words, a marketplace for buying and selling crypto owners’ personally identifying information

• While Arkham claims to be filling a C2C demand for on-chain analysis, people found plenty of things to take issue with, from the company’s centralized business model to the very  non-web3 idea of incentivizing people to dox others for profit

• You can probably imagine all the different ways this could go wrong, but if you’re having trouble, Aleo CEO Alex Pruden paints a pretty dark picture of potential scenarios should one’s private info get into the wrong hands 

• Beyond even the meat of the issue, the company itself is kind of train wreck:

  • First off, this is the CEO. Should we keep going? Okay, twist our arm …

  • Their website and marketing content are riddled with spelling errors.  No, seriously. Arkham Intelligence somehow misspelled the word intelligence. 

  • And perhaps the most egregious of all offenses, hundreds of private emails were publicly exposed via Arkham’s referral program (including the firm’s own Head of Biz Dev) despite the team having been aware of the issue for months

• Oh, and Arkham is issuing a token - because of course they are

• And while this is usually the place I say ‘we’ll see how this ends,’ I think we all know what happens to snitches …

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🧵 Threading Us Along

• Just in case you aren’t already spending enough time on NFT Twitter - or Bluesky, Lens, Farcaster, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Mastodon, or [insert preferred web3 social media platform here] - enter: Threads

• And by all accounts, Zuck’s new town square has been a pretty big hit with the masses, clocking 100M users in under a week, including yours truly. But what does that mean for our little corner of the world where crypto reigns supreme?

• For starters, Meta’s committing to an open social network, where creators can eventually interact with other decentralized platforms, or even take their audience (and content) with them. CoinDesk does a great job explaining how this works, along with demystifying the oft-used, but little understood term ‘Fediverse’

• When it comes to user experience, reviews have been pretty mixed as CT micro influencers awkwardly try to gain relevance amongst the IG mainstays of big brands and major celebs. Most seemed to agree that early engagement was high, but Threads is littered with crap content 

• Big picture, this looks like Zuck’s battle to lose, as Elon puts his insecurities on full display in their public pissing match while simultaneously hedging his bets with yesterday’s launch of a new artificial intelligence startup, xAI

hey you: this ain’t real

• Threads’ inception has several CT influencers calling it game over for Twitter, where bots are out of control and scammers are running rampant

• For others, like Bobby Hundreds and Frank DeGods, the jury’s still out. A week ago, Frank was ready to sign over his first-born, calling Threads engagement ‘max dopamine.’ How’s he feeling this week? 

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• Republicans are calling on federal agencies to investigate Prometheum’s alleged ties to China

• Zack Guzmán’s chat with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce is worth a listen

• The SEC is investigating lesser-known DeFi protocol BarnBridge DAO, potentially hinting at a more expansive regulatory sweep of crypto firms

• Cygaar says Brazil’s CBDC contract gives the Central Bank a crazy amount of control over user funds

• Canada courts declare thumbs-up emoji as a binding contract agreement

• Former SEC Chair says it’ll be hard to resist approving a spot Bitcoin ETF

• Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy found to have owned $250k in BTC after previously denying owning any

• BRICS nations will release a gold-backed digital currency to threaten the dominance of the US dollar as a global currency 

• Study shows 24 central banks across emerging and advanced economies will have digital currencies by 2030 and 94% of banks are exploring potential CBDCs

• A class action lawsuit against rug pull founders cites on-chain sleuth ZachXBT’s investigative work 

• Kraken Co-Founder is being probed for claims of hacking and cyberstalking that are supposedly unrelated to his role as a crypto founder

🌐 web3 + NFTs

• Sound.xyz raised $20M: a16z leads the round that includes investors Snoop Dogg, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, Collab + Currency and several others

• BAYC teased “Made by Apes” coming later this month

• Ethereum Punks founder says Yuga Labs requested he take down the website, remove images from Ethscriptions, and delete tweets related to the project

• Snowfro mints another 81 Squiggles and revealed revised plans for the remaining supply

• Mintify announces a token drop, genesis mint, and leaderboard launch

• Krapopolis, an NFT-powered project by the co-creator of Rick and Morty, is premiering September 24

• OpenSea is now supporting NFTs minted on Zora

• Arcade escrows a $35k loan backed by a Patek Phillipe watch as collateral 

• Memeland released deetz on $MEME presale for holders, including priority distribution, and announced an airdrop for all NFT holders

• Blend announced support for Azuki Elementals and Elemental Beans, including trait bidding points eligibility

• NFT Now ran it back with The Biggest Rug Pulls in NFT History

• Dune wizard hildobby updated their NFT dashboards to include Blur v2 stats

• Creators of STEPN are back with new NFT game, Gas Hero

• Goblintown community member King Kong announced a group trip to Bali for select holders

• A threadooor released the Ultimate HV-MTL Blueprints Guide 

• Celo drops a carbon-offsetting NFT designed to neutralize 100% of the network’s annual carbon emissions

• Vitalik shares his thoughts on Ordinals in a recent Twitter space with Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall

📈 Brands + Biz

• UFC Strike (originally launched by Dapper Labs) is now partnering with Concept Labs; Will launch NFT mobile game Fight Camp and have several IRL activations

• NFT Inspect and Moonpay collab on a Chrome extension that lets you buy and sell crypto via Twitter with credit or debit cards

• FTX brand ambassador Tom Brady and ex-wife Gisele Bunchen lost a combined $48M after the exchange collapsed

• Wimbledon partners with Andy Murray and Refik Anadol for unique data-inspired piece tracking every match he’s ever played

• Coffee brand Café Bustelo filed two trademark apps for NFTs and virtual experiences 

• Despite Sega’s COO being uber bearish on NFTs, the company is still partnering with 3rd parties like Line Next to provide web3 gaming content

• Lawyers discovered T-Swift actually signed a touring partnership with FTX, but the exchange backed out before the deal went through

🤖 AI + Metaverse

• Players of Satlantis, a Bitcoin-themed Minecraft server, can earn satoshi rewards for playing; the crypto integration isn’t endorsed by Minecraft or Microsoft, which previously hinted at an NFT ban

• Venture capital funding for crypto startups fell 71% year-over-year in Q2 and some of them are also pivoting to AI

• Google’s medical AI chatbot rolled out months ago in Mayo Clinic and other hospitals

• Roblox appears to be walking back from its metaverse-branding strategy, embracing more ‘user-generated content’ verbiage

• Blockchain infused-AI could be a boon for authenticity and verification 

• OpenAI is now using facts and code to fight against flat Earthers

• YouTube is experimenting with AI-generated quizzes targeted for educational content 

• Sarah Silverman sues OpenAI and Meta, claiming their AI models were trained to illegally acquire works including her copyrighted IP

• Jon Rogers is back for another installment of our Blockbuster series exploring the intersection of blockchain and Hollywood. In this episode, Carly and Jon discuss the challenges studios face today when it comes to the important distribution (or go-to-market) vertical. Jon says studios that fail to adapt will be increasingly undermined by those fully embracing web3 in all aspects of the film-making process.

• Carly, Gavin, and Zeneca check in on the biggest news of the week post-Azuki and Captainz reveals. They’re covering BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, Pudgy Penguins’ high-end physical toy drop, and going all in on a spicy debate about how Blur’s incentive structure is impacting NFTs. Catch it all here!

Thanks again to our generous sponsor, Stickies! If you’re interested in showcasing your brand in the OPJ Newsletter, fill out this form and we’ll be in touch.

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Got something to share with our readers? Leave a comment below or connect with me @hawaiianft on Twitter or @sparkitysparkz on Threads 🤙🏾

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