24/08/2021 VISA Buys CryptoPunk For $150K, What This Means For The Ethereum Ecosystem

Payment giant VISA has made another bet on the Ethereum ecosystem. The company recently announced the purchase of an item from the popular non-fungible token (NFT) collection CryptoPunk.

Item 7610, one of 3840 “Female” punks with a Mohawk, Clown Eyes Green, and “Hot” Lipstick, VISA purchased this Ethereum-based NFT on August 18th, 2021. The company paid around 49.50 ETH or $150,000, at the time. The company said:

McDonald’s Collaboration Sparks Doodles NFT Floor Price Surge
NFTs weekly sales surge 94% as crypto market continues bullish run
‘We’re working towards Afrofuturism’: inside a radical new NFT exhibition

Over the last 60 years, Visa has built a collection of historic commerce artifacts – from early paper credit cards to the zip-zap machine. Today, as we enter a new era of NFT-commerce, Visa welcomes CryptoPunk #7610 to our collection.

Additionally, Cuy Sheffield head of VISA’s crypto division said that the company has and continues to have a “pivotal role” in commerce transformation. Thus, the payment giant made a bet on NFTs because they consider these assets to “represent the intersection of culture and commerce”.

Therefore, the company expects NFTs, such as the Ethereum based CryptoPunks, to gain more relevance in the social media, online retail, and entertainment sector. Sheffield said:

Over the past year, we’ve built a lot of momentum in bridging the crypto ecosystem and Visa’s global network of 70M+ merchants and we are excited to help our clients understand, participate in, and accelerate the adoption of NFT-commerce.

To strengthen his argument, Sheffield said that in the early days of social media platforms, it was difficult to think that all major corporations would have an account. Now, it is almost impossible to find one without an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, and others, Sheffield said:

 

While Visa may be one of the first major brands to do so today, we expect that over time, many brands will recognize the value of collecting NFTs to express their brand identities as well as to support and connect with passionate communities of creators and collectors.

In that sense, the head of VISA’s crypto division called the CryptoPunk purchased “an opportunity”. The company bought the Ethereum based NFT with its partner, digital bank Anchorage.

What’s In VISA’s Ethereum Wallet?

After the payment company announced their CryptoPunk purchase, community members sent other NFTs to VISA’s associated wallet. Data from OpenSea shows that VISA holds many items from several NFTs collections.

Amongst the NFTs there are items from collections such as “Zombie Baby”, “Wife Collection”, “HDPunks”, “Bastard Forks”, “Lord Kek”, and others. One user sent VISA an NFT with the following text: “Bought with Ethereum for everything else, there’s Mastercard”.

However, the CryptoPunk acquired by VISA will be one of the rarest in its newly formed collection. The NFT is one of only 10,000 that will ever be created, and it’s one of the “earliest” items to be deployed with the ERC-721 standard on the Ethereum blockchain.

Thus, collectors consider this collection to represent a piece of history of the crypto industry in its early stage. In addition, its limited supply makes CryptoPunk one of the scarcest assets in the crypto market, more so than Bitcoin with its 21,000,000 BTC total supply.

This has let some users to claimed that VISA could use these NFTs as a “more efficient” store of value than the number one cryptocurrency by market cap. CryptoPunk 3100, part of the “Alien” punks, was one of the highest-selling of the entire collection after someone paid $7,58 million for it.

On August 1st, 2021, someone offered a staggering $90,5 million for this NFT, but the holder passed on the offer. This and VISA jumping into the market suggest that NFTs will continue to play a big role in the future of finances, the crypto industry, and the Ethereum ecosystem.

At the time of writing, ETH trades at $3,321 with a 4.4% profit in the daily chart.

Ethereum CryptoPunk ETH ETHUSD
ETH on a rally in the daily chart. Source: ETHUSD Tradingview
Arts

https://bitcoinist.com/content-platform-substack-is-now-accepting-bitcoin-payments/

Interesting NFTs
Forms of Love
The ever changing piece, that took you to understand the 10 forms of love. attach string to each of it,connect and try to understand it. how do you perceive it? it's up to you, it's part of me but also part of you at the same time. just don't use logic too much, we never live there anyway from the start.
Kinbaku-bi: Sloth
Kinbaku-bi : 7 Sins "Sloth" A minute turns to an hour, an hour turns to a day, a day into a week, a week into a month, a month to a year... How long has it been? How have a I run out of time so fast? (Kinbaku-bi : 7 Sins is a 7 part series that explores humanity's weaknesses and how to cope, conquer the negative effects of it. 25% of all sales will be donated to various charities)
TPunk 3442
By A1F6BF
Alex in Wonderland
A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.
#95342
By OthersideDeployer