Creators Take Control: How NFTs Revolutionize Art, Business, and Entertainment by Edward Lee, pre-order now

Happy Valentine’s Day! I am so happy to announce my book Creators Take Control: How NFTs Revolutionize Art, Business, and Entertainment is now available for preorder. Please visit the book website for links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other major outlets.

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Rolling Stone article revels in NFTs becoming “totally worthless,” but omits Rolling Stone’s past promotion and sale of NFTs, including its own collaboration with Bored Apes. But we kept receipts.

The article is pretty one-sided and negative about NFTs.
Even worse, the article fails to acknowledge that the Rolling Stone helped to promote NFTs and in fact collaborated with the Bored Ape Yacht Club to sell special edition Rolling Stone covers depicting Bored Apes.

But we kept receipts.

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Should NFT projects buy back their NFTs in crypto winter? Nouns DAO offering 35.5 ETH to disgruntled owners who “rage quit” Nouns

The Nouns NFT project was one of the most innovative projects. It adopted a unique model of selling one new Nouns NFT a day–to my knowledge, not replicated by any other project. And it also adopted the Creative Commons 0 license, abandoning all copyrights in their Nouns characters.

The project has been quite successful, including engaging in a partnership with Anheuser Busch, which included the Nouns signature square glassses in a Super Bowl ad two years ago.

Well, I was pretty surprised to learn that all is not well with the Nouns project. Apparently a vocal faction of Nouns holders have convinced the Nouns DAO to buy back their NFTs at 35.5 ETH ($55,359)!!

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Refik Anadol’s AI artwork “Winds of Yawanawa” NFTs, in collab with Yawanawa people, defy NFT market decline

In a set of NFTs titled “Winds of Yawanawa,” Anadol collaborated with the Yawanawá people in Brazil to create 1,000 “data paintings” generated from real-time weather data taken from the Amazon rainforest, where the Yawanawá people live; and the data are then fed into an AI program to produce the stunning visual artworks.

The collection of NFTs have continued to rise in floor price, at one point reaching an ATH of 12.22 ETH. Currently, the floor price is above 10 ETH ($16,228 USD). It defies the massive downturn in the NFT market–and shows that some artists are still flourishing.

Anadol is donating all of his proceeds back to the Yawanawá people. So far, the NFT sales have raised $3 million for the Yawanawá people to “build a museum, school, and village.”

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Will NFT projects have to buy back their NFTs if they are unregistered securities?

Let’s assume that Impact Theory’s NFTs aren’t the only ones that might be unregistered securities under the Howey test. What corrective action will the NFT companies face if they face an enforcement action or lawsuit in which it is found the NFTs are unregisered securities?

Rescission offer: Well, the SEC says on its website that companies violating the registration requirement for securities might have to refund the monies to their investors, plus interest, in what’s called a rescission offer.

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Utility NFTs aspiring to be “decentralized Disney” were unregistered securities, says SEC; Tom Bilyeu-led company settles, agrees to pay $6.1M, destroy its NFTs, and disable all creator royalties. Which project or token is next?

Why utility NFT projects should be worried Will NFT projects be required to buy back their NFTs?

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Nou AI Art podcast interview Hanne Van Briel, artist, Part 1

Hanne Van Briel is a generative AI artist, photographer, and abstract artist based in Belgium. In this podcast, she shares her experience using Midjourney, an AI text-to-image generator, and how it has sparked her creativity and artistic pursuits. We also discuss the debate over AI art as a new art, and whether AI art should be eligible for copyright. You can follow her art on Twitter.

In today’s selection, we discuss how Van Briel first became interested in generative AI, what her first reaction to Midjourney was, and how she has amassed so quickly a following of her art on Twitter.

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NFT market crashes. Many question, Is Blur to blame?

As the entire NFT market for pfp collections saw a blood bath, the news media started to investigate the possible reasons for the crash.

Many experts and commentators pointed to the same culprit: Blur.

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Azuki makes rookie mistake: dilutes OG collection causing floor price to crash and burn

On June 28, 2023, the blue-chip Azuki project made a rookie mistake. It launched a second generation of Elemental NFTs with characters that, well, frankly looked like clones of the first-generation or OG Azukis.

This is such a rookie mistake — it’s hard to believe one of the top projects can make it in 2023.

The Azuki team tried to explain why they used basically the same art style for the Elementals: they considered other styles, but wanted “to come back to the art that ppl knew and loved.”

If that’s the reason, it’s a terrible strategy.

Anyone who has followed NFTs knows that the cardinal sin is diluting the OG project with a second-generation that looks too similar to or even better than the first generation.

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The Bored Apes’ floor drops 78% from ATH, 50% in past 90 days: Why?

This week, the FUD about the Bored Ape Yacht Club has hit an all time high, as its floor price continues to plummet.

Down 78% from its ATH on April 30, 2022 (153 ETH), and down nearly 50% in just the past 90 days, the FUD about BAYC on NFT Twitter has been loud this week.

Meanwhile, the CryptoPunks’ floor has fared somewhat better. It’s down 60% from its ATH (125 ETH) on Aug. 28, 2021, and around 25% in the past 90 days.

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