GM Scoop Family. You've been missed. Now let's dive in.

🍦STATE OF THE MARKET

• NFT total market cap - $21.23 Billion dollars - No movement this last week

• Trading volume last - 7 days - Up +18.37%

• Trading volume last - 30 days - Up +57%

• Whales are scooping Everything Yuga Labs: 1st place - Otherdeeds Land, 2nd Place - Bored Ape Yacht Club, 3rd place - Bored Ape Kennel Club, 4th Place - Meebits, 5th Place - 10KTF, 6th Place - Mutant Ape Yacht Club

It has been a tough several months for NFTs with a number of projects having been obliterated in Floor price. From our perspective, the deadwood is almost flushed out and the market is ready for a fresh start in 2023. Overall sentiment / Market Mood for NFTs is picking up and projects with solid fundamentals & leadership are showing strength against the bear. We expect far more utility & innovation to come into play in 2023. We feel very excited & bullish about the future of the industry.

There are certainly some solid discounted picks to be scooped up right now which we will cover below.

Crypto

• Crypto total market cap - $826Billion

• ETH is down 1.9 % in the last 7 days.

• BTC is down 1.7% in the last 7 days.

🍦SCOOPS OF THE WEEK

🍦AI Arena Exclusive Interview

🍦China to Launch NFT Marketplace

🍦New Service For Unwanted NFTs

🍦BMW Blockchain Loyalty Programme

🍦South Park Release SBF Video

AI Arena - Exclusive Interview

ChatGPT has swept the globe, but that is just the start of what AI has in store for us.

So what about AI fighting AI? Yep, you heard it right. If you recall The 2004 movie 'I Robot' with Will Smith, that reality could be closer than you think.

Welcome to 'AI Arena' the highly anticipated Web3 game backed by Paradigm that is set to take the web3 gaming world by storm. We are privileged to have got an exclusive interview with the team at AI Arena. LFG!

1) First up we asked Chief Operating Officer Wei Xie, to explain what AI Arena is all about and how it is played.

In AI Arena, gamers can purchase, train and battle AI-enabled NFTs in a PvP platform fighting game. The objective is to knock your opponent off of a platform. You train your NFT character through Imitation Learning, where the AI learns to play the game by copying your actions. This is a process called data collection, and your AI is really only as good as the data it trains on. So the more skilled the gamer is, the more skilled the AI will be. You coach your AI’s where you’d like them to improve, targeting specific areas of opportunity. When you feel your character is ready for battle, you submit the NFT into the arena to compete. Your NFT then enters the Arena to autonomously fight opponents trained by players all around the world. The game is all about training the most powerful AI NFT, climbing the global leaderboard, and winning web3 native awards!

We have a full video tutorial anyone can watch here!

2. Next up, we explored with CEO Brandon Da Silva what made the team incorporate AI into the game in such a unique way.

Our team has been experimenting with developing indie games since 2018. We’ve always wanted people to use AI in an engaging way without the need for any technical skills of their own, so we knew a game would be the ideal way to deliver AI education. Given a game's universal appeal and ability to meaningfully expand our target market, it made perfect sense for us to create a competitive and entertaining game to use as a medium to distill the complexity around AI. It was in 2020 that we first discovered NFTs and found inspiration in what are essentially “containers” that could house any digital item with value. This sparked the idea of wrapping AI in NFTs, and thus began our journey in developing AI Arena, a game that not only enables people to learn AI intuitively but transfers the captured value that they create stored in NFTs.

3. Next CEO Brandon Da Silva's shared his thoughts on what the biggest use case for AI in the gaming industry will be.

The biggest use cases in the near term are going to be the low-hanging fruit, and it's all about scalability. AI-generated assets will be a massive one for sure. Indie game developers will be able to scale up much quicker and won't need AAA budgets to make a game—think tooling for game development. These tools will be enabled by AI to allow game production to scale faster with smaller teams.

4. Do you envisage AI Arena also having a mobile version of the game? What's the timeline for it?

The game is desktop and browser-based. Mobile is not currently a priority. It is something that we may consider over time. - Wei Xie, COO

5. Head of Business Development 'Michael Moscarelli' shared why he joined Web3 & What his first mint was - Hint - it was a good one!

Joined Web3 because we believe in the power it has to change how we interact in almost every context. We believe a technological revolution from Web3 is inevitable because it is objectively more efficient for certain uses, provides a new template for value, and gives power to people that were disenfranchised by previous models of the Web. My first mint was an Azuki for a combination of factors such as brand power, art, community, and the price at the time.

6. We asked the Head of Product 'Malcolm' - "In the future, players will be able to use partner NFT as assets in-game, what 3 communities are you most excited to onboard and why?

In truth, we built this game to welcome all communities. Our Dendroid NFTs allow anyone with an NFT/ PFP to project their favorite online identity onto the Dendroid and have it play in-game. This is a big part of the AI Arena spirit, to let people bring themselves to the game and shine a light on the communities that matter most to them. During this Beta we have 10 teams. It's going to be exciting to see who wins the top 3 teams. Once we know, those will definitely have a special place in our hearts!

7. What is 2023 going to look like for Web3, NFTs, and AI Arena? - Malcolm Head of Product

2023 for us is going to be all about, utility, transformation, meritocracy & most importantly Fun!

AI Arena - Linktree

China to Launch NFT Marketplace

One minute they are making crypto illegal and the next they are building a Metaverse future.

As unpredictable as the weather, who knows what they will do next?

For now, the latest is that the Country is set to launch a National Digital Asset Marketplace on the 1st of January with a ceremony celebrating the launch to take place in Beijing.

The platform is to be controlled by 3 state-owned entities as well as private entities.

Not much is known about how the platform will be operating but it will be intriguing to see how they have worked around the number of illegal formalities that are in place which include buying NFTs with cryptocurrency.

We recently witnessed the law in China regarding NFTs changing to ensure customer protection as NFTs now have the same legal protection as property.

There is certainly a trend just now of new marketplaces, as we saw earlier in the week with Fidelity.

New Service For Unwanted NFTs

It's getting to that time of the year when you see an NFT being sold for 100x under the floor price in anticipation of the dreaded tax returns.

A new service has recently been launched which will allow for NFTs to be converted into tax write-offs.

The company is called Unsellable, and they state that they will be building the largest collection of NFTs by purchasing them for a fraction of the original purchase price and providing an official receipt for tax purposes.

They only launched last month and already have over 5000 NFTS and they expect this to rise to 15000 by the end of January.

Company founder, Skyler Hallgren, has gone on record as saying "We realized there was a practical problem that was locking up a lot of resources and we could create a lot of value for people by offering to buy up their worthless NFTs allowing them to harvest the losses"

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BMW Blockchain Loyalty Programme

It was only at the start of December that the German car giants applied to trademark their logo on several Web3 avenues.

BMW's intention was for the logo to feature on virtual clothing, footwear, headwear and vehicles whilst also suggesting there are plans for downloadable virtual goods such as online environments and games.

Nobody saw their next move coming.

They have announced that they will be integrating decentralized technology in two phases.

The first phase will be with its daily operations to remove complex paperwork and the second phase will see the development of a customer loyalty programme.

Regarding the customer loyalty programme, BMW has teamed up with Coinweb to launch a customized Web3 app where blockchain-based rewards will be used to incentivize BMW owners. Like all reward systems, tier and status will be determined by the loyalty rewards acquired by fulfilling certain criteria.

It's been confirmed that owners will be able to use rewards to purchase goods and services from BMW.

BMW has also confirmed that Binance's BNB chain will be used for the programme.

As always, if it's too good to be true then it probably is and in this case, the current rollout is for Thailand only, with a future global rollout on the cards.

South Park Release SBF Video

For fans of South Park, you will be all too familiar with how up-to-date the show is regarding current affairs.

If you are not a fan of the show, as the above states, new episodes are written only a few days before release, so there is no time between a broken story on the news and then that story featuring in an upcoming episode.

Amazon may have the mini-series but South Park has the comedy element that Amazon will not be able to produce.

The video teaser has been released which you can follow below.

🏆SCOOP'S WEEKLY WINNER

It was back in August that the project announced a new advisory board to take the project to the next level...and take them to the next level they have.

The floor was floating around the 2.2 ETH region and rose to 3.8 ETH following the appointment of the new board but over the last month we have witnessed this project go from strength to strength.

Pudgy Penguins...come on down!

The project has boasted some very impressive stats over the last 7 days with a volume of 1559 ETH.

This time last week you could have purchased an NFT for 4.5 ETH which quickly rose to 7.2 ETH before retracing back to 6.5 ETH.

It is worth noting however that there is a thin sell wall of only 9 items until a 7 ETH floor again.

THE REKT SECTION 😡

If there was a caught in 4K for our world then this is it.

It has been revealed that SEC Counsel, Dan Berkovitz, received perks and pay-outs from SBF.

Berkovitz also worked as a commissioner of the commodity futures trading commission so as you could imagine this is a terrible look.

Well, as soon as the news came to light, Berkovitz was off into the night before you could say SBF and announced his resignation.

The latest position regarding SBF is that he is due to testify next week so keep your eyes peeled.

WHERE WOULD WE BLOW 5-10 $ETH?💰

Not financial advice you know the drill!

The Plague

We have recommended 'The Plague' as a solid project to get into many times before, we even had the chance to interview their Founder 'Pons' before launch (Great guy), but we would like to take this opportunity to bring them back to your attention. But Why?

The Plague has demonstrated a thriving community and strong leadership from the start, not to mention their amazing artwork. Recently the project has gathered attention from some top influencers on Twitter including Elliotrades as well as many others.

It can't be ignored that 'The Frogs' have maintained a healthy Floor price despite tough market conditions. The Army type Frogs hold a Floor of around 0.5ETH & OG Frogs (Rarer) at 1ETH

Pay attention to projects that thrive in the bear markets, if they do, then you can expect wild things to come in the Bull.

Disclaimer

The NFT Scoop newsletter or podcast is not financial advice, it is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only.

NFT’s can be highly illiquid markets, causing sharp drops in prices due to changes in narratives and trends.