By Joy Loftus
The NFT.NYC Happy Hour Clubhouse returned this Wednesday to speak with a group of six experts from the NFT Collectibles and Gaming space.
The discussion included current events’ topics like the CryptoPunks sold at Christie’s Auction House this week, emphasized educating mainstream users about NFTs, and provided thoughtful approaches to blockchain gaming.
One of this week’s featured speakers gmoneyNFT tweeted about his special gift in the mail this week — a custom collectible 1/1 pair of NFT Kicks
Read on to find out more about:
- NFT Collectors’ insight into the market
- The Importance of Educating the Mainstream: CryptoPunks at Christie’s
- What makes a blockchain game different from a regular game
NFT Collectors’ insight into the market
The first speaker, gmoneyNFT, is an NFT Collector who amassed a large following after he purchased the rare “Ape” CryptoPunk for 140 ETH in January — a time when the average CryptoPunk sold for a few hundred dollars. gmoneyNFT is a regular on Twitter where he tweets insights about the NFT market.
He told us about his shiny new Nike NFT Kicks, custom collectibles.
They sell on OpenSea, and his brand new pair:
“I’m torn on whether I want to wear them or not because they’re one of ones.”
Are these sneakers? Or are they art?
The Importance of Educating the Mainstream on NFTs: CryptoPunks at Christie’s
This past week a collection of nine CryptoPunks were sold at Christie’s Auction House for $16.9 million. gmoneyNFT, who was at the auction, said that he felt the price of the CryptoPunks was fair.
gmoneyNFT said that he thought the CryptoPunks pieces lacked visibility. He also felt that more information could have been provided to non-crypto art buyers to understand the significance of the artworks. He told the Clubhouse:
“If an auction house is going to take a 15–20% commission, and only sell to a crypto audience, then an NFT collector might as well sell on an NFT marketplace with no commission fees and to a crypto native audience…
The purpose of listing CryptoPunks at Christie’s is to introduce them to the traditional art space and a non-crypto audience.”
[UPDATE: Noah from Christie’s reached out to the Cryptopunks community on Discord Wednesday to provide additional background on the way Cryptopunks were displayed at Christie’s. Noah stated, “I devised of the Easter Egg-style Punk hunt as a way to playfully present the Punks as basically sneaking into Christies.” Read Noah’s full statement and gmoneyNFT’s related tweet here.]
The next Clubhouse speaker, Shea Newkirk @cryptostache, is an NFT collector and content creator who runs the CryptoStache. It is a YouTube community dedicated to educating people on NFTs, blockchain gaming, and crypto.
He followed up gmoneyNFT’s observations with an emphasis on education:
“We have this ever-expanding universe of marketplaces; There are people who come into NFTs and they don’t realize all of the options they have and how to best utilize them.
We need to show people that there is more than just Ethereum out there and there is more than just one or two popular NFT marketplaces.”
Daniel Killeen from Ava Labs seconded his view: “There’s a lot of other potential out there besides Ethereum” and explained the advantages of the Avalanche blockchain, a layer 1 solution which allows for “super-cheap, super-fast eco-friendly NFTs.”
Follow This Week’s Clubhouse Featured Speakers:
- gmoneyNFT, @gmoneyNFT
- Malachi Threadgill, @malachii
- Shea Newkirk, @cryptostache
- Sebastien Borget, @sebastienborget
- Tim Dierckxsens, @korgast
- Robby Yung, @robyung
What makes a blockchain game different from a regular game?
Sebastien Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox, explained the features that distinguish blockchain gaming from regular gaming. He told the Clubhouse that:
“The main benefit of blockchain gaming is the ownership benefit. Blockchain game developers put the community first by giving users self-sovereignty of their digital assets and currency in the game meaning that they can trade these assets in a permissionless way.”
He continued: “If you acquire a sword in a game as an NFT you can actually resell that sword on a marketplace that is not the marketplace of the main game or transfer it to another user between digital wallets.”
The SAND Token powers The Sandbox Game, co-founded by Sebastien Borget.
Moderator Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands, also helped to identify some of the fundamental differences between blockchain games and regular games and why these differences matter for blockchain game developers:
“I find that game developers tend to get stuck in a traditional mindset of how they’ve always made games. Blockchain games are very different because at the heart of it you’re building a game that has a virtual economy, and all of a sudden it’s a little bit less virtual because you need to apply actual economic principles, especially if you’re tokenizing your in-game currency.”
A Clubhouse guest John Wolff came to the stage and put it succinctly:
“The blockchain game economy process is just as important as the game development process.”
Next Week’s Clubhouse Topic: VC Funding
If you’re passionate about NFTs, and have an interesting use case to share with the community, please apply at our website NFT.NYC.
Speaker applications close July 31st, 2021.
Weekly Clubhouse “Happy Hour” sessions will be hosted every Wednesday at 4pm ET in the NFT.NYC Club. Wednesday, May 19th, will feature VC Funding experts.
Follow us on Twitter @NFT_NYC for additional details coming soon.
Still not sure what an NFT actually is?
NFT.NYC is releasing an NFT 101 Guide to spell it out for you.
Sign up for your guide to NFTs here: https://www.nft.kred/creators
Frequently Asked Questions
What is blockchain gaming?
Since blockchain data is immutable, smart contracts disable developers to reclaim in-game properties. This means that gamers can now monetize their talents by selling or trading their game-winning digital products, or even purchasing them from other players.
What is the largest benefit of blockchain gaming?
The largest benefit of blockchain gaming is ownership, the privilege of possession. The creators of blockchain games placed gamers first by granting players self-sovereignty over their digital assets and currency in the game. For the first time, this allows gamers to share in-game assets without requiring permission.
What makes blockchain gaming different from regular games?
In regular gaming, assets are typically held by the game development platform. Therefore, when you get a rare skin in Pub-G or Fortnite, you have to keep it on the game itself. The value is only contained within the game, even if it took 1000 hours of playing to unlock the digital asset. Through the use of blockchain gaming, players are put first and can own the assets they unlock within the game, allowing them to transfer the assets out.
