BBC: NFT: Plans for Royal Mint produced token dropped by government. “Plans for a government backed non-fungible token (NFT) produced by the Royal Mint have been dropped, the Treasury has announced. Rishi Sunak ordered the creation of a ‘NFT for Britain’ that could be traded online, while chancellor in April 2022.”
CNN: Hi-res art scans from famous Taiwan museum leak online… and turn up for sale on Chinese online shopping platform . “A Taiwanese museum that houses some of the world’s most precious Chinese artworks has confirmed that up to 100,000 high-resolution images of paintings and calligraphy leaked online – some of them turning up for sale on a Chinese shopping platform for less than $1.”
Decrypt: Don’t Call It ‘Crypto’: How Some Blockchain and NFT Projects are Rebranding. “Crypto—and all its associated jargon—are now toxic words. Where once simply adding the word ‘blockchain’ to your name increased your company’s valuation, now crypto, Web3, NFT and the rest of the buzzwords that conjured up images of a brave new world are, to paraphrase Charlie Munger, rat poison.”
Bloomberg Law: Hermès Defeats MetaBirkins in the First NFT Trademark Trial (1). “Luxury brand Hermès International SA won its lawsuit against the digital artist behind ‘MetaBirkin’ nonfungible tokens after convincing a Manhattan federal jury that Mason Rothschild’s sale of the NFTs violated Hermès’ rights to the ‘Birkin’ trademark.”
Wall Street Journal: Virtual Birkin Bags on Trial in Hermès Case Testing IP Rights. “Mason Rothschild created a series of 100 digital images he called MetaBirkins, depicting fur-covered purses in the same shape and style as the Hermès luxury product, which he sold as digital tokens on virtual marketplaces. The NFTs sometimes have sold at prices similar to the real handbags. Beginning Monday, Mr. Rothschild’s MetaBirkins go on trial in New York in a case at the intersection of trademark law and constitutional protections for freedom of expression.”
Observer: Bored Apes Were at the Center of the NFT Boom. Now They’re Mired in Lawsuits and Plunging in Value. “In the past few months, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection has been the target of SEC probes, falling sales and questions regarding copyright protection.”
Daily Dot: What creators need to know about Logan Paul’s ‘CryptoZoo’ NFT scandal. “When an influencer promises an investment on their project will soar in value only to disappear with any capital, the Web3 community refers to it as a ‘rug pull’ scam. Accusations of rug pulls often fly, but it’s often unclear and difficult to prove if the founders of NFT projects did cash out for millions at the expense of their followers, and even if they did, if it was premeditated and intentionally malicious.”
Vanity Fair: SBF, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and the Spectacular Hangover After the Art World’s NFT Gold Rush. “If Blockchain Twitter’s sleuthing bears out—and they really do seem to have the receipts—what we’d have is a major Yuga Labs investor inflating the value of Yuga Labs’ most valuable asset by bidding it up at auction. With Bankman-Fried now facing charges of fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations, his trove of Bored Apes remains in the FTX wallet. The old link to the NFT collection now goes to a claims agency.”
CoinTelegraph: Logan Paul backflips on defamation lawsuit against Coffeezilla, apologizes. “YouTuber Logan Paul has deleted a video in which he threatened to sue internet detective Stephen ‘Coffeezilla’ Findeisen over a three-part series that painted Paul’s CryptoZoo project as a ‘scam.’ According to Coffezilla in a Jan. 6 tweet, Paul has promised to drop his threats of filing a defamation lawsuit over the videos.”I know this all seems very gossipy, but I’m interested because Logan Paul is a huge YouTuber who has a long history of doing questionable stuff, and he’s been rather abruptly pulled up and called out lately.
Kotaku: Logan Paul Says Some Of His NFT Game Devs Were ‘Con Men,’ But He Didn’t Scam. “After keeping his mouth shut for roughly two weeks, Logan Paul has finally opened up about his blockchain NFT ‘game,’ CryptoZoo, in a response video to investigative YouTuber Stephen ‘Coffeezilla’ Findeisen. However, if you were hoping for some sort of explanation of what went wrong with the project, you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
Polygon: How NFT video games crashed and burned. “Less than 12 months ago, it felt as if 2022 would be the year NFTs took off in the video game world. Companies like EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Zynga, Niantic, and Take-Two Interactive all, at one point, said that they were brainstorming ways to add NFTs into their games. The idea being that non-fungible tokens would replace everything from loot boxes to character skins to even characters themselves. But none of that ended up happening.”
Yahoo Finance: 2022, the year NFTs fell to earth. “OpenSea’s best trading day of this year, 1 May, saw a record $2.7bn (£2.2bn) in NFT transactions, but on the worst performing day a few months later on 28 August, it recorded just $9.34m in trade volume.”
Hollywood Reporter: Celebrity Promoters Sued Over Bored Ape NFT Endorsements. “Jimmy Fallon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Justin Bieber have been sued in a proposed class action accusing them and a host of other celebrities who promoted Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokens of fraud.”
Bloomberg: NFT Sales Drop to 16-Month Low in FTX Collapse Aftermath. “Almost a year after the nonfungible token (NFT) frenzy crested, demand for the digital certificates of ownership has evaporated.”
Ars Technica: Crypto and NFTs aren’t welcome in Grand Theft Auto Online. “Cryptocurrencies and NFTs have been formally disallowed from Grand Theft Auto Online’s popular role-playing (RP) servers. That’s according to a new set of guidelines posted on Rockstar’s support site last Friday.”
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