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

🍦STATE OF THE MARKET

• NFT Total Market Cap - $22.19B - 7 day change  -2.36%

• Volume Traded Prev 7 Days - $221M +20.49%

The market sentiment is heating up. We get it, it's still cool, but a sentiment score of 35 is the highest we have seen it in a long time and a 20% spike in trading volume is impressive.

Crypto markets have seen significant pumps over the past few weeks, we have seen low to mid-caps rally significantly. If history tells us anything, it's that the NFT market rallies follow rises in the crypto markets. It could be too soon to tell, but given the crypto market may be running be cooling off in the short term, could it be time for NFTs to shine?

🐋 WHALE WATCH

In the last 7 days Whales have been scooping up:

• 1st Place - Sewer Pass

• 2nd Place - Otherdeeds

• 3rd Place - Art blocks

• 4th Place - Doodle Genesis Box

• 5th Place - Checks VV edition

🍯 THE MELTING POT

How has our basket of NFT gems performed this week? Let's dive in.

Total Melting Pot Value - 3.14ETH.

ETH / Melting Pot Performance since 5th Jan (-37%)

We hold our position here for now, stay tuned.

🍦SCOOPS OF THE WEEK

🍦WTF are ordinals?

🍦Hermes Court Case Concludes

🍦NFT Marketplace for E-Learning Launched

🍦2 NFTs Sell for Over $1m

🍦LooksRare Announces New Partnership

WTF are ordinals?

Unless you have been living under a rock, by now you have seen the term Ordinals bounded across Twitter, the euphoria to acquire them is off the charts. One recently sold for $215K and it doesn't seem like the interest will be slowing down any time soon.

But what are they? Strap in and get your Bitcoin cap on.

Ordinals are like NFTs but they are not on Ethereum, they sit on the founding father of Web3, where all this craziness began. Yup, it's Bitcoin.

Each Bitcoin is split up into units called Satoshis, or sats for short. You may have heard Bitcoin OGs say "Sit back and stack Sats". There are 100,000,000 satoshis per bitcoin. The new protocol Ordinals allow those who run Bitcoin Nodes to inscribe data into each sat, known as an Ordinal.

This inscribed data can then include smart contracts which allow for the minting of NFTs directly onto the Bitcoin Blockchain.

The new Ordinals Protocol has certainly given Bitcoin a new lease of life outside of being primarily a store of value. Will the Ordinals trend continue?

Right now, minting, sending & buying ordinals can be a little tricky for the nontech savvy, there is currently no set marketplace for Ordinals and everything is being handled 'over the counter' meaning you need to put a lot of trust in an individual to send you the ordinal NFT if you want to purchase it from them.

With Frenzy, always comes scams. Keep your wits about you Scoop fam, we imagine there is going to be a whole host of phishing scams pop up out of this to try and steal you precious ETH.

We found a brilliant thread listed below, which serves as a great guide for those native to Ethereum if you want to take a more deep dive into ordinals.

Hermes Court Case Concludes

The trial got underway at the end of January with the Jury tasked with answering a question that would have consequences throughout the Web3 space. The question was, to what extent are real-world trademarks enforceable in the digital world and what rights do creators have?

In case you missed the details, the trial was between luxury brand, Hermes, and digital artist Mason Rothschild.

Hermes was accusing the artist of trademark infringement for promoting and selling MetaBirkins, an NFT collection inspired by the brand's famous handbag.

Hermes argues that Mason improperly used the trademark and potentially tricked customers into believing the brand supports the project. Mason argues that his work is protected under the 1st Amendment which allows for no limits on free expression.

Well, the jury has spoken and we have the result...

It was decided that Mason did profit from Hermes' goodwill by producing NFTs based on the Birkin bag design. As a result, Hermes have been awarded $133,000 in damages.

The most important outcome of the trial is the ruling that NFTs are not protected by the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Following the outcome, Mason released the following statement which can be read here.

NFT Marketplace for E-Learning Launched

Marketplaces are a regular feature right now within these sections. We are seeing continued developments so customers can have a safe and simple experience.

The latest introduction to the space goes to show how new ideas with the right execution can continue in making our lives a whole lot easier.

Flare and Uppercent have created the first-ever marketplace for E-Learning.

The concept of the marketplace is that NFTs would be issued on the Flare network and these NFTs would be used as access passes to unlock high-quality online courses taught by the top 1% of achievers worldwide.

Uppercent members will be able to purchase, sell and trade access passes to exclusive courses. The instructors cover a range of fields not limited to but including social media management, business, and more.

The platform will be rolled out in March 2023 with the first courses and instructors set to be announced.

2 NFTs Sell for Over $1m

There is no story in the world today that displays this sort of bullish intent.

A BAYC and CryptoPunk have each been purchased for over $1m.

Let's take a look into each.

Bored Ape #7090 which is ranked the 62nd rarest in the 10k piece collection was sold for 800 ETH ($1.26m). The seller is Jimmy McNeils who owns the NFTs behind Universal Group's Bored Ape virtual band, Kingship, as well as creating the Avastars project. The buyer is currently unidentified.

CryptoPunk #5066 was sold for 857 ETH ($1.35m) by Kevin Rose, the co-founder of Proof Collective. In case you missed it 2 weeks ago, Kevin was at the centre of a hack which saw $1.1m of his NFTs being stolen.

Again, the buyer is unknown but the NFT was quickly transferred to another wallet straight after the purchase.

This news is terrific for the space in general, we have seen both of these projects rise from inception and it goes to show how far the right projects can reach.

LooksRare Announces New Partnership

As we said above, marketplaces are coming up with new ways to try and make the investing experience safe and simple.

LooksRare has teamed up with Crypto payments firm MoonPay to do just this.

The concept of the partnership is to allow LooksRare customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies and NFTs through MoonPay. For the NFT side of things, debit cards or credit cards can be used removing the requirement to use cryptocurrencies.

This move aligns with MoonPay's strategy of a more efficient facility for crypto payments with the target of mass adoption. The company partnered with Mastercard in June 2022 following an initial raising of $555m in November 2021 to get going.

Another positive move for the customers.

🏆SCOOP'S WEEKLY WINNER

They recently partnered with the Premier League and adoption is certainly improving.

They have just smashed their all-time sales record following a recent auction.

SoRare NBA put up for auction a 1/1 NFT of Giannis Antetokounmpo which sold for an impressive 113.9 ETH ($187,000)

This sale was over 3x of the previous record sale of 49 ETH (which was $62,000 at the time)

The company are going from strength to strength and has raised over $545m worth of volume to date since its launch in October 2022.

Congratulations on your highest sale...come collect your trophy.

THE REKT SECTION 😡

The company couldn't have been clearer in the instruction...all users have to do is obtain a score higher than 0 to validate their pass which will "transform them into a mysterious power source".

Well, roughly 11.6% of Sewer Passes were not claimed by those able to do so. What's even potentially worse is that 960 claimed Sewer Passes were not used in the game.

The ramifications are not yet confirmed but to sleep on Yuga is a mind-boggling decision.

For that reason, those who didn't claim and those who claimed but didn't play...You've Been REKT.

🤡 WHOEVER CONTROLS THE MEME CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE

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.