A week in NFT

Last few weeks were packed with NFT-related news.

One of the favourite moments in my life was when, after being out of school for 10 years, I applied to study Mandarin in Taipei’s university. The feeling of newness and starting something from scratch was amazing, breathtaking really. It’s the dizziness of new knowledge and a headache that is earned by trying to figure out what it all means. I love learning, and I’m here to learn with you.

Now I’m learning about the crazy chaotic world of NFTs, and here’s what went down in the last couple of weeks:

1. Bitski raised $19 million for a platform for all kinds of digital goods, running on blockchain. Jay-Z, who I met randomly on a pier in LA a few years back, and who’s security told me to pack and move (that’s a story for another time), also invested.

2. Gary Vaynerchuk is basically selling access to himself via NFTs. While many celebrities will find it’s easy to pull off things like that, fiat money or even a crypto payment works just fine (without a need for a complex solution).

3. Showtime, yet another NFT platform, raised $7.6M just 4 months after releasing their alpha product. Many NFT marketplaces are racing to “own” the market, yet missing huge gaps in the market.

4. Connoisseurs of fine rare NFTs, RTFKT (not to be confused with TFRKT or KRTFK) also raised $8M, and also from A16Z (same as Bitski).

5. The New York Times published an article on how to combat misinformation in our day and age. Fixing this would be fun, if only Apple would implement that natively in the iOS — that would be game changer.

6. There will be lots of virtual museums with NFTs (why go to real Louvre?), here’s one of such examples from Saru.

I’m starting this ‘stack to post weekly about musings of technology, startups, NFTs, building business in Asia. Ping me on Twitter, or just subscribe — ✌🏼