Coinbase Will Make Short Films Featuring BAYC
US-based crypto exchange Coinbase is reportedly producing a series of animated shorts featuring the popular Non-Fungible token series Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). The new initiative titled ‘The Degen Trilogy’ will be launched in collaboration with BAYC developer Yuga labs.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is a series of 10,000 ape-inspired graphical NFTs that is arguably the most successful and popular crypto art collection to date. The first film from the Coinbase project will be released at the NFT.NYC event in June 2022, while the remaining two are scheduled for next year.
Coinbase is developing the project as a promo for its upcoming NFT marketplace. The crypto exchange also plans to work with individual BAYC NFT holders and might feature some of their characters in the animated clips. Interested collectors can register their NFT for the project at a website portal set up by Coinbase. Once the submissions are reviewed by a casting director, a series of characters will be chosen.
The Ethereum-based BAYC NFT collection has generated over $3.2 billion in trading volume since its inception. The cheapest available BAYC NFT is listed for 109 ETH or $330,000 on the digital art marketplace OpenSea.
White Star Raises $120M For Web 3.0 Fund
Venture Capital firm White Star Capital has raised $120 million for its new Digital Asset Fund (DAF II) to make strategic seed investments into emerging Web 3.0 projects. The fund is primarily backed by publishing giant Ubisoft.
The DAF II will focus on funding innovative decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain-based gaming projects. It has reserved as much as $7 million for each of 20-25 companies from North America, Asia, and Europe operating in this area. Since White Star focuses primarily on blockchain-based Web 3.0 projects, the firm will likely also fund metaverse initiatives.
The investment company has previously backed projects like ALEX, a Defi application built on top of Stacks, and popular decentralized exchange Paraswap. WhiteStar has also invested an undisclosed amount in the Bitcoin Odysessy initiative that seeks to boost adoption of the premier cryptocurrency.
On 11 April, 2022, another game publishing giant, Epic Games, also announced that it had raised $2 billion for metaverse games. Decentralized finance tokens, NFTs, and metaverse tokens appear to be on an upswing despite a broader market downturn.
Financial Advisors Want to Increase BTC Exposure
A NASDAQ survey of financial advisors conducted in March 2022 revealed that nearly 72% are willing to invest their clients’ money in crypto-assets if a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) were available. Nevertheless, only 38% of the respondents believed that U.S. financial regulators would approve such a product in 2022.
The uncertainty surrounding the launch of a crypto spot ETF has not discouraged financial investors from finding other ways to gain exposure to the asset class. Most advisors surveyed by the firm had plans to begin investing in cryptocurrencies or to increase their existing digital assets portfolio. Jack Rapaport, Head of Digital Asset Index at NASDAQ, said, “As demand for these assets grows, advisors will look for an institutional solution to the crypto question which now dominates client conversations.”
Among the 500 financial advisors surveyed, none of them plan to close their cryptocurrency portfolios if they have one, while 86% are looking to increase their holdings. Notably, just 4 managers out of 10 have plans to invest in individual tokens. Nearly 69% of the advisors confirmed that they would prefer to invest in an index fund to diversify their exposure among several assets.
Volt Protocol Raises $2M
Volt protocol, an inflation-resistant stablecoin project, has raised $2 million in its seed funding round led by venture capital firms Nascent and Framework Ventures.
Unlike leading stablecoin projects pegged to the U.S. dollar like Tether’s USDT and USDC , the Volt protocol tracks the Consumer Price Index (CPI) published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Traditional stablecoins, much like fiat currency, gradually lose their purchasing power as inflation rises.
FrameWork Ventures founder Michael Anderson said, “In a time of uncertain monetary policy and geopolitical events, we believe that Volt is in a powerful position to streamline new and accessible forms of wealth protection.”
Volt is built on the Ethereum network and incorporates Fuse, an open interest protocol supporting isolated interest rate markets. In the Fuse eco-system, each lending market is kept separate, ensuring that changes in one market don’t affect others.
Volt plans to launch its mainnet by late April or early May 2022. It uses Chainlink oracle to send CPI data to its smart contracts. Every month the target price of the stablecoin updates itself based on changes in the annual inflation rate.
