Apple’s stock price jumped in after hours trading after CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call that he sees considerable potential in the Metaverse space.
When asked on Jan. 27 during the call about Apple’s opportunities within the Metaverse, Cook responded “we see a lot of potential in this space and are investing accordingly.”
“We’re always exploring new and emerging technologies and I’ve spoken at length about how it’s very interesting to us right now.”
The Metaverse is an interoperable virtual universe created in part by users, offering socialization, gaming and even live concerts. Although it can be accessed with a browser, the experience is better with virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR).
APPL had dropped about 3% to $159.22 during regular trading hours, but has since jumped up 8% to $167.23 in after hours trading. The Metaverse was just one of the topics discussed on the call.
Appleinsider reported that in the Jan. 27 call, Cook pointed out that Apple (APPL) already has a bevy of 14,000 apps on its App Store that have been designed using the AR developer platform ARKit. Apps designed using ARKit could help users gain access to the Metaverse.
Whereas Meta has leaned toward using the Oculus headset to immerse users into the Metaverse, Apple is placing its bets so far on AR technology. An Apple headset was scheduled for release in 2022, but Bloomberg reported on Jan. 14 that it may be delayed due to hardware and software challenges.
Despite Cook’s embrace of the Metaverse, the headset in development is believed to be focused on gaming, communication, and content consumption. So far, the largest company in the world by market cap is lagging behind other tech leaders like Meta and Microsoft, both of which are moving forward with public plans to develop in the Metaverse.
Related:Meta poaches staff from Microsoft and Apple for metaverse plans
Microsoft recently purchased Activision Blizzard for $69B with the intention of expanding Metaverse gaming.
“NFTs will soon replace transactions that will require proof of authenticity. We believe NFT adoption is inevitable,” stated Dropp GG founder Edmond Truong.
Boxing icon Mike Tyson has stepped into the ring this week, after he shared his enthusiasm for Solana and unveiled a partnership with mental health-focused crypto project TheDreamChain ($DREAM).
In the first round, Tyson — who previously launched an NFT project on Ethereum via OpenSea last year — tweeted on Jan. 13 that he was a born-again Solana (SOL) proponent while sharing a screenshot of a new NFT he’d snapped up from the Catalina Whale Mixer project.
The Solana-based Catalina Whale Mixer NFTs currently have a floor price of 15 SOL ($2,200), and Tyson’s NFT depicts a whale version of himself wearing a world championship belt along with his famous face tattoo.
All in on Solana… Just copped a Catalina Whale… pow pow! pic.twitter.com/97voS15B8y
— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) January 12, 2022
In round two later that day, the 55-year-old tweeted about either what appears to be a partnership or paid celebrity promotion with TheDreamChain. The token’s unusual selling point is that it’s just as difficult and limited to trade as a stock.
“It’s the first of its kind that can only be traded during US stock market hours. Could revolutionize the space and help the mental health of the crypto community.”
According to TheDreamChain’s website, its token $DREAM is only available for trade between the standard stock exchange hours of 9:30am to 4:pm, with the idea being that 24/7 trading is causing a mental health crisis amongst crypto traders.
The project states that it will divert 0.5% of all transaction fees to its own foundation, which will donate funds to mental health charities or use the capital to sign partnerships with non-profit organizations.
Apple looking at AR, not the Metaverse
Amid a landrush from tech giants toward the Metaverse, Apple won’t be rushing in with its latest gadget according to Bloomberg’s Apple tech reporter Mark Gurman.
Gurman shared snippets from the latest Q&A section of his paid consumer tech newsletter via Twitter on Jan. 10 regarding Apple’s upcoming virtual reality headset. He noted that:
“Here’s one word I’d be shocked to hear on stage when Apple announced its headset: Metaverse.”
“I’ve been told pretty directly that the idea of a completely virtual world where users can escape to — like the can in Meta Platfroms/Facebook’s vision of the future — is off-limits from Apple,” he added.
According to Gurman’s understanding, current and former Apple execs such as Jony Ive have always envisioned the firm’s VR headset to be a device used in short “bursts” for gaming, content consumption and communication and not as part of a full-blown Metaverse experience.
Instead, Apple is said to be eyeing the augmented reality space (AR) in which the user’s physical experience is enhanced with digital or virtual features via devices such as eye lenses, as they can be worn all day and don’t distract from the immediate environment.
Lots of interest in my take on “Apple Reality” and the Metaverse https://t.co/ZmacFcOC9k pic.twitter.com/C4SNbFbULp
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) January 9, 2022
Artemis launches mobile-focused NFT social media platform
Hong Kong-based blockchain firm Artemis Market launched a new social media and NFT trading platform yesterday.
According to a Jan. 13 announcement, the Solana-based platform has initially launched a desktop and mobile web version with limited functionality, and will be rolling out a mobile app and full social features in the near future.
Artemis is hoping to attract new users with 0% transaction fees on trading until the end of February.
We know all of you have been waiting for this day…
And we are finally LAUNCHING NOWhttps://t.co/OBLamZSR18
What’s more? ✨0% TRANSACTION FEE✨until end of Feb!
Join us and start trading on Artemis NOW!#Solana #NFT #NFTlaunch #NFTmarketplace #SocialFi #ListAndEarn #0TxnFee
— Artemis Market (@Artemis_Market) January 13, 2022
The firm stated that it was focused on building a one stop shop mobile platform to provide a user-friendly platform that can be accessed on the go, as it highlighted that the NFT sector currently lacks a “compelling user experience” despite its booming popularity.
“We want our users to be able to conduct their whole NFT experience all in one app. From discovering and hanging out with creators, to collecting NFTs, to interacting, sharing and commenting with friends.”
Related:China aims to separate NFTs from crypto via new blockchain infrastructure
Steve Aoki stops live show to flaunt NFT acquisition
Millionaire DJ Steve Aoki abruptly stopped one of his live music events this week to flaunt a freshly acquired NFT that many of his fans could only dream to afford.
Aoki tweeted a video on Jan. 12 sharing his glee at snapping an NFT from the Doodles collection accompanied by a caption that read:
“Had to stop my show to celebrate my excitement on my doodle! Nfts make me feel like a kid again.”
The Doodles project consists of 10,000 NFT avatars featuring art by popular Canadian artist Burnt Toast. The NFTs currently have a floor price of 11.75 Ether (ETH) worth roughly $38,300 at the time of writing.
Aoki is a major NFT proponent with his fingers in multiple honey pots, and his latest behavior suggests early signs of a crippling NFT addiction.
Other Nifty News
A group of editors on Wikipedia voted against classifying NFTs as a form of art on Jan. 12, opting to exclude NFT art sales from the list of top art sales of living artists. They have agreed to re-open discussions at a later date however.
U.S.-based music streaming platform LÜM is slated to relaunch as an NFT platform later this quarter. It is shifting its focus to musician-focused fan NFTs that enable users to support the artist of their choosing.
Altcoins are on the up. Tezos is up 23% in the past 24 hours to $8.7, Terra is up 15% to $43, Arweave is up 15% to $56 and Solana is up 8% to $171.
Combined, the rise of the coins, which apart from Solana have market caps well under $10 billion, helped notch up the market cap of the entirecryptomarket by 2.2% in the past day.
Tezos(XTZ), a proof-of-stake blockchain network, reached an all-time high of $8.83 this morning. The rise started on Wednesday, when XTZ was worth just $5.51. This month, Tezos hit 5.8 million contract calls, breaking last month’s record of 3.2 million.
Terra (LUNA), ablockchainnetwork that powers an algorithmic stablecoin, is up 15.69% on the day and 20.35% on the week. On Thursday, Terra launched a network upgrade called Columbus-5. The upgrade stopped transferring burned LUNA to community pools in order to maintain TerraUSD’s peg to the US dollar. Instead, the coins are burned forever. The upgrade also furthered Terra’s integration with the multi-chain Cosmos ecosystem.
Arweave (AR), a decentralized storage project, is up 15% in the past 24 hours and 27% in the past week. In August, Arweave rose 66% in a week as NFTs boomed.NFTsales dwindled shortly thereafter but the market has begun to pick back up. On Friday, Arweave announced that it would integrate The Graph, a decentralized protocol for sorting information on blockchains and allowing people to query Web 3.0 APIs.
Solana is up 8% in the past day and 27% in the past week. The high-speed, low-cost blockchain has shot up in value over the summer because its smart contract functionality allows traders to do the same things on EthereumdApps at a fraction of the cost. On Friday, Solana NFTs hit a market cap of $1 billion.
Crypto behemoths Bitcoin andEthereumremained stable, capping off a week of tremendous growth.Bitcoinis up 0.4% in the past day to $47,919 and 11.35% on the week after a momentous jump on Friday. Ethereum, which joined Bitcoin in its rise, is up 3.46% on the day to $3,402 and up 14.91% on the week.
In the backdrop of the rise is China’s shift to decentralized finance protocols after the government issued (another) blanket bank earlier this month; a market that’s no longer bowled over by the $300 billion Evergrande debt crisis; a new financial quarter bringing fresh allocations to cryptocurrencies, and a U.S. stock market that’s recovering from a September slump.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
Arweave’s native AR token has mounted an impressive rally over the past few hours, rising from $20.24 to its current price of $24.78, according toNomics.
Even more impressive has been the token’s 66% rise over the past week.
Part of this run can be attributed to the growing non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem on the Solana blockchain too. An NFT is a blockchain-based digital certificate that gives the holder unique ownership rights over the content in that NFT, be it art, music, or concert tickets.
This is because Arweave’s technology underpins some of the most popular Solana-based NFTs, includingDegen Ape Academy, Sollamas, and SolanaDoges. Though activity on Arweave has steadily been increasing, there has been a clear spike in the past few weeks.
Weekly number of transactions on Arweave. Source:ViewBlock
On August 15, amid the launch of Degen Ape Academy, Arweave founder Sam Williamssaidthat his team was “increasing the rate limit 2.5x” to make room for the influx of users.
And as the AR token is the currency needed to pay for such storage, its latest price action reflects this demand.
What is Arweave?
Unlike leading cryptocurrencies in Bitcoin and Ethereum, or DeFi’s attractive blue-chip tokens, Arweave is tackling a much less sexy challenge: Permanent metadata storage. Like its peers in Filecoin and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), Arweave is looking to decentralize the data storage monopoly that Google and Amazon currently enjoy.
This is because data stored with large tech companies can be lost, corrupt, or simply inaccessible to the owners. When Google’s servers go down, for instance, any data stored on those machines also becomes unavailable.
These days, this particular service has become critical during the latest NFT boom.
Here’s why.
When NFTs are minted, whether it’s a piece of music, a cartoon penguin, or an in-game reward, its metadata must be stored somewhere. Metadata in this case could be anything from the actual content of the NFT or its underlying code. And sometimes, this data is stored on a centralized server.
6/ NFT media of any size is stored permanently on @ArweaveTeam. Metaplex-minted NFTs are created forever and immutable, made possible by Arweave’s perpetual storage. This solves a major issue facing the long-term viability of NFTs.
— Metaplex (@metaplex) July 31, 2021
Naturally, this storage choice becomes problematic if the server crashes or goes offline. That six-figure CryptoKitties you bought back in 2017 becomes immediately less valuable. Herein lies one of the value propositions of Arweave, Filecoin, and IPFS.
Even metadata from NFTs can be stored on-chain, rendering the content as immutable as the underlying blockchain.
You can now go to a museum in Japan to experience moving digital art. You can also go to a digital platform like Somnium Space, or Superworld, to experience further digital rabbit holes.
Something has been cooking in Helsinki, Finland for a while now though, and we are finally ready to show the world the first snippet of it.
5 BTC + 300 Free Spins for new players & 15 BTC + 35.000 Free Spins every month, only at mBitcasino. Play Now!
So what is now possible?
What you couldn’t yet do, up until yesterday:
Go to a physical immersive crypto art space, in which you can podcast about, sit on, and buy digital art, made physical, that comes with #NFT certificates.
Be guided to buy digital NFT art, on display via digital screens
Have the physical representations come alive via AR apps, so you can watch mini-docs about the art, as well as watch their still representations come alive
Become art yourself, via a bodypainting, stills, video, and psychological process titled Artevo, which is then transformed into multi-disciplined digital NFT & physical art.
Sit on an art couch, put on VR glasses, and go experience the various rabbit holes created by and on the already existing digital platforms, again available for you to collect also.
A special segment corner of this space, will become a green screen studio, for capturing live performances for NFT art. Brittany Kaiser will be the first international guest, whose life will be turned into integral digital art, launching in Q3 in Dubai & the metaverse. For those still unfamiliar with her story, I recommend “The Great Hack” on Netflix, which now has around 100MM views, revealing the true impact of social media on our lives.
The meta inside the art
Many of you know by now how much effort I put into these artworks, and I’m proud to announce we’ve quietly been working on an AR/VR/AI integrating NFT version of “The Br8ve”, which will drop in a couple of months time. The physical representation of this piece, which took five months to make just into its first version, is now one part of the studio wall in 3x6M size. Soon enough, in Helsinki, Finland, some will be able to point their mobile devices on it, to watch it become alive.
They can then sit on the couch, and experience the full VR experience of it to make further mind-melt bridges on what is possible in this art renaissance of meaning, technology, and purpose.
Here are some insightful influencer comments on FB.
Be Brave
Watch the 30-minute explainer video on “The Br8ve”, revealing the skillset of the potential team behind #BTC – now about to be turned into Physical/AR/VR/AI art.
In order for this space to tranced to earn the meaning behind the word ‘metaverse’, it shouldn’t forget the multi-sensory capacity a human being has in both spirit, matter, and aspiration. I’m incredibly excited to say that this space has a green screen segment for video, a pull-down stills studio inside the circle, sauna facilities, make-up room, chillout area, and much more.
Collect multiple factors of crypto & NFT art history, at once, for less than 1 #ETH.
I recently joined the new Mintable platform with two new experiments. Due to the evolution of how my transition from the legacy art world came about in 2017, most felt my digital art was way too expensive and looked too much like classical renaissance art. The mostly silent critique was that people in the space at the time couldn’t afford it, and the way that I expressed myself ‘was a bit much’. I go into that story more in this episode with Bitcoin LIVE with Nicholaas, which was a real pleasure to do a deep dive with.
I made efforts to course-correct the price thing along the way, but not as significant as these value offers.
The 3D render of the space, with multiple art pieces featuring the whole site, is now available for less than 1 #ETH. All funds will go to build it further. As you might guess, the whole operation will cost significantly more than the edition of 10 will provide, so this is a real opportunity to benefit from helping the independent metaverse culture to thrive.
My long time supporter Mr. Ben Leff already acquired the 1/10 but you can collect:
The 2/10 version here.
The 3/10 version here.
I will mint more as they go, and the price will increase towards the end of the edition.
The other available piece is “Delicatessen”, again, on Mintable.
If someone wants to super secure dip their toes into NFT’s, to guarantee double value #NFT + physical print access, the size of the file that comes with the piece “Delicatessen” allows you to make a wall-size print.
The $99 drop of an edition of 99 (now $130 due to price rise of #ETH) can be found here. The pieces are minted as they sell, and you can get in on the very early mints now for a very affordable price by today’s NFT standards on long-standing career-level work. It’s also a good way to get acquainted with Zach’s printable series concept, in which the piece mints as it is sold, as opposed to floods your store with NFTs and gas fees.
The idea was that you might have 99 problems but affording a cool limited edition #NFT isn’t one. Of course, as we are in a bull run, ETH has gone up a bit, so the price is now at around $120
Delicatessen is now a 150x150cm print on the wall of Flavorium in Helsinki. The file that comes with the NFT allows you to blow it up to the size of the whole wall or more if you like.
Blockchain Valley Virtual
Another worthy mention is all the incredibly exciting things happening with Blockchain Valley Virtual. There will be big news regarding developments soon, but for now, here is a demo on how Niko ain’t playing around when it comes to making our avatar swag.
Last but certainly not least, I’m just going to leave this here with #subtext.
So, we all have at least 99 problems but keep at it folks.
We are in the best possible sector to be in right now – unless if you are the mercilessly ruling class robbing the world blind. In which case you, still, are in the best sector in the world.
V E S A
Crypto Artist All links to physical, NFTs, and more below
If someone wants to super secure dip their toes into NFT’s, to guarantee double value #NFT + physical print access, the size of the file that comes with the piece “Delicatessen” allows you to make a wall-size print.
