Playboy to release tokenized bunnies into the wild
PLBY Group, Inc, the owners of the raunchy lifestyle magazine Playboy unveiled a new NFT project consisting of 11,953 unique 3D animated bunny avatars.
According to an Oct. 20 announcement, the number of NFTs pays homage to Playboy’s founding year of 1953 and the tokens will serve as “keys to a reimagined Playboy Club,” which gives the owners access to exclusive events, content and merchandise.
The launch of the Ethereum-based NFTs begins on Oct. 24, with a pre-sale for whitelisted investors until Oct. 26. Two public sales launch the following day, one for USD customers, and the other for those paying with ETH.
The sales are being hosted on an official “Playboy Rabbitar” website, and the NFTs will be priced at 0.1953 ETH each or the fiat equivalent (currently $814). Jamal Dauda the Vice-president of Blockchain Innovation at PLBY Group said:
“The Rabbitars mark the beginning of true blockchain-based membership for Playboy. Just as Playboy Club keys gave millions of members a chance to step into the sophisticated lifestyle that the Playboy brand represents, NFTs today can do the same and so much more.”
One CryptoPunk is not for sale
The owner of CryptoPunk #6046 recently turned down a bid of 2500 Ether (ETH) for their tokenized punk avatar.
That’s about $10.5 million which would have represented the largest CryptoPunk sale to date if accepted. According to Larva Labs, CryptoPunk 3100 holds the record, after it sold for $7.58 million in March.
The CryptoPunk #6046 NFT depicts a person wearing 3D shades and smoking a cigarette and was initially purchased for $83,209 by current owner, Twitter user “Richerd.”
Richerd recounted the bid came about after they’d publicly claimed that they would not sell their CryptoPunk, no matter what anyone offered. A startup dubbed “Poap” decided to test that theory, with Etherscan showing a bid of 2500 ETH.
“Come on Richerd. Don’t you want to go down in history as the top CryptoPunk sale to date?” Poap teased.
While admitting that their “mid-tier punk” is most likely not worth 2500 ETH, Richerd promptly declined the bid and went on to claim that they wouldn’t even accept a bid of $1 billion as the NFT holds sentimental value.
“My identity along with the identity of other iconic Punks and apes have value beyond the NFT itself. We have our own brands similar to any other brand and that has value. Because I value my personal brand and identity, this was an easy rejection for me.”
Over past 6 months I have used 6046 as my identity and have built up a significant brand around it.
Most of you know, for:
– co-founder of @manifoldxyz
– smART contract artist
– Crypto security
– NFT insights
– 3D glasses connoisseur
– Namesake of @richerd3DAO
– NFT Degen— richerd (@richerd) October 16, 2021
If Martha Stewart launched NFTs and no one bid …
Martha Stewart, the famous TV personality and lifestyle entrepreneur, has taken the plunge into NFTs by launching her own platform/collection dubbed “Fresh Mint.”
While Fresh Mint hosts a collection of NFTs that were minted on Ethereum, it appears the platform is essentially a gallery, as the auctions and sales are hosted on the OpenSea marketplace.
Stewart’s first NFT drop consists of two Halloween-themed collections depicting “high resolution” JPEG files such as a set of pre-carved and custom carved pumpkins, and Stewart wearing a bunch of spooky Halloween costumes.
The starting price for the tokenized pumpkins is a hefty 2 ETH ($8400) for the pre-carved ones, and 3 ETH ($12,600) for custom carved pumpkins. The highest bidder of the custom pumpkin NFTs can send in a photo and have it carved into a pumpkin and then tokenized into an additional NFT, along with having the physical pumpkin shipped to their door.
At the time of writing, not a single NFT has had a bid placed on them.
Coinbase’s first NFT collections
Coinbase has announced the first round of NFT creators it’s partnered with ahead of the launch of its upcoming NFT marketplace later this year.
BIG NEWS
Starting today, we’ll begin introducing NFT creators we’ve teamed up with for drops on @Coinbase_NFT. We’re excited to highlight the first four creators below. And stay tuned. We’re just getting started!
An appreciation thread …
— Coinbase NFT (@Coinbase_NFT) October 19, 2021
The first four are Ponderware, creators of the popular MoonCats NFT project, Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult, the developers of Forgotten Runes, popular crypto-friendly DJ 3Lau and digital artist “GxngYxng.”
Coinbase also posted an update on Oct. 21 to address rumors of other partnered creators that are “floating around,” noting that if you don’t hear it directly from them, it’s “probably not true.”
Yesterday we announced our first creator partners for Coinbase NFT. We’ll be announcing many more soon, but we want to flag that we’re already seeing some rumors floating around. This is just a quick note to let you know that if you don’t read it here, it’s probably not true.
— Coinbase NFT (@Coinbase_NFT) October 21, 2021
The launch of Coinbase’s NFT marketplace appears to be a highly anticipated one, with Cointelegraph reporting on Oct. 14 nearly 1.1 million people signed up for the waitlist within 48 hours of it going live. It’s difficult to determine what the waitlist is now up to, as Coinbase no longer shows the number to new sign ups.
Roundup
On Oct. 20 NFT-game and virtual property developer Animoca Brands announced that it had doubled its valuation to $2.2 billion, after closing a new $65 million funding round that included participation from Ubisoft Entertainment.
Cointelegraph also reported on Oct. 21 that Chinese online retail giant JD.com is diving into the NFT sector by introducing a special NFT series for its annual JD Discovery conference. Using its proprietary blockchain platform, JD.com will be distributing commemorative NFT certificates to attendees of the JDD 2021 event in Beijing.
