Jay-Z used his CryptoPunk NFT as his Twitter profile picture

The GOAT Jay-Z went viral for changing his Twitter profile picture to that of a CryptoPunk, to set up his first NFT sale at auction house Sotheby’s.

CryptoPunks is a collection of 10,000 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, released by software company Larva Labs in 2017. Each Punk features a pixelated face of a human, ape, alien, or zombie. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique cryptocurrency tokens that can represent an image, video, or piece of music.

This specific CryptoPunk was purchased on April 25 for 55 ETH, worth $126,000 at the time (although just $102,000 today). The punk is male and features a gold chain and wild hair, both relatively rare traits.

Since Jay-Z identified the CryptoPunk as presumably his, other crypto users have started sending NFTs to the Ethereum address associated with the CryptoPunk. He has already been sent multiple Shiba Inu-themed NFTs and one from the TheWickedCranium collection.

The address, however, is rather empty, containing just $166 in ether (ETH) and no other ERC-20 tokens beyond the CryptoPunk itself. (While most NFTs are based on the ERC-721 standard, as likely the first-ever NFTs on Ethereum, CryptoPunks had to make do with — and slightly modify — the ERC-20 standard).

The collection of pixelated, unique characters has remained popular in the crypto ecosystem. Most recently, on June 11, a rare CryptoPunk alien sold for $11.8 million in a sale hosted by Sotheby’s, making it the most expensive CryptoPunk sale to date.

Jay-Z is auctioning off an NFT at Sotheby’s

Not only is Jay-Z likely buying NFTs, but he’s planning on selling them too.

The musician is auctioning an NFT based on his debut album Reasonable Doubt at Sotheby’s, according to a statement. Jay-Z has commissioned digital artist Derrick Adams to create a one-of-one animated digital collectible that is meant to “recontextualize” the album cover, which was originally released exactly 25 years ago.

Called Heir to the Throne, the NFT is composed of a single animated image featuring bright colors, multi-layered textures, and flat surface dimensions. According to the statement, the image was inspired by both Jay-Z ‘s and Adams’s experiences with “life in the urban streets.”

The exhibition will be available at Sotheby’s New York but also digitally in the virtual world Decentraland, which uses the Ethereum blockchain. The sale will run until July 2, with bidding to begin at $1,000. Buyers have the option of paying in ether, bitcoin, or fiat currencies. A portion of the proceeds from the auction will go to the Shawn Carter Foundation, which helps individuals from low-income backgrounds further their post-secondary education.

Top 5 Publicly Traded Companies In Bitcoin

Tesla (TSLA) said it invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin (BTC) and will allow customers to buy cars using the digital asset.

The move also opens up another way for people looking to invest in bitcoin – via ownership of Tesla stock. The stories circulated over the last few months about the people who may technically be millionaires but are locked out of their gains due to lost passwords, illuminated some of the difficulties of assets secured with cryptography.

This is one of the main tradeoffs for bitcoin: It may be a clever system, valuable, and groundbreaking, but it also has a learning curve. There are platforms that make investing easier, but bitcoin evangelist and Fundstrat founder Tom Lee points to companies like Tesla as another option. If you don’t want to own bitcoin, you can buy stock instead to get exposure.

MicroStrategy and its CEO Micheal J. Saylor are probably the most notable bitcoin bulls putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to their treasury. After putting in slightly more than a billion dollars in USD into bitcoin, they’ve seen that amount close to treble in value in a few months. MicroStrategy is a business intelligence company that is listed on the Nasdaq NDAQ -0.9% Index.

Michael J. Saylor is an interesting convert to bitcoin — in 2013, he had tweeted about how bitcoin reminded him of an online casino and that its days “were numbered”. Now, however, he has become a strong advocate for bitcoin. Shares of his company have now increased significantly in value as a result.

COVID-19 helped accelerate a number of digital reforms in companies large and small.

“We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said back in April.

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain have been part of that transformation. The companies utilizing these technologies run the gamut, from traditional financial powerhouses looking to develop their own cryptocurrencies, to fintech firms looking to add Bitcoin functionality to their products, to other companies using blockchain to improve their operations.

Bitcoin might not be right for many investors. In addition to not being able to buy it directly through a brokerage account, it might simply be too volatile for some.

“Cryptocurrency investing today is a bit like living in the early days of the 1850s gold rush, which involved more speculating than investing,” says John LaForge, Head of Real Asset Strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

Let’s dive into our top 5 list:

BLK LUV and Enjin Partner to Merge NFTs and Augmented Reality

BLK LUV [org] has announced it’s browser game LUV MetaVerse in partnership with Enjin that enables users to build a virtual Wakanda powered by LUV. Our gamers will have the ability to create a a new universe to awaken and elevate a new golbal dynamism. With the power to trade NFT’s, bring their digital avatars to life, wear and interact with the NFT fashion, share videos on social media, inside Minecraft, one of the world’s most popular games.

“Education is key to empowering the next generation of innovators. Enjin is proud to work alongside Microsoft to generate innovative opportunities for merging virtual worlds, bringing digital communities closer together, and celebrating powerful women in science and tech,”

said Bryana Kortendick, VP of Operations & Communications at Enjin.

“Enjin’s platform powers innovative projects across the gaming and wider blockchain ecosystem,”

said Sherry List, Azure developer engagement lead at Microsoft.

BLK LUV will create a line of tradable non-fungible tokens (NFT) to bring much-needed diversity to the gaming industry and onboard the African American community on Ethereum blockchain. These Enjin powered NFTs will be a representation of our culture, that we finally have the ability to capitalize off of with no middleman thanks to blockchain. LUV Metaverse will give small business owners the ability to create a virtual business, network, and even get married on blockchain. That’s because the Ethereum blockchain records the ownership data. Our virtual Wakanda will be the next level of social media allowing users can snap selfies, create customized hyper-realistic avatars and make them interact in a real-world environment. Moreover, these fashion items are probably owned by the users.

“This game is one of our many solutions to eradicate systemic racism by teaching the African American community how to survive in this new digital economy,”

said Hahz Terry Founder of BLK LUV.

“Systemic racism operates like a rigged game of Monopoly. Where the black players are being bet against to lose, specifically black men who are being handed the go straight to jail card as a means of making hedge funds rich. We’re taking a new age approach to addressing the disease of racism because with 5 billion in pledges and commitments made to racial equity organisations we still don’t have a solution.

Our approach was created from knowing the only two human emotions being Love (LUV) and Fear. So in our game the two teams are #TeamLUV and #TeamFear. The game of race that created systemic racism is powered by #TeamFear. We’ve been trying to end systemic race-ism for over 400 years from the angle of race, that only adds fuel to the fire as we seen last year with BLM. Trump ran a #TeamFear campaign and showed the world his achielles heal was us all no longer giving #TeamFear any energy. The world needs to choose a team, that allows us to know who has love for #TeamLuv. The game of LUV is measured by a leaderboard to see who is spreading the most LUV. #TeamLUV sees beyond the illusion of a racial group that applies to no human technically, similar to the label of American Indians. Our community is a #LUVTribe that has the goal of uniting humanity and spreading LUV. Our game and token of $LUV has a higher purpose that is aligned with the 5D universe to raise the consciousness level of the planet to the vibration of LUV where #Team fear can no longer exist. Our platform allows gamers to become their higher self while earning $LUV.

NFTs + Minecraft: How it works

On the first leg of the journey, a user embarks on a quest to spread LUV and recruit new users from a failing economic ecosystem – the text-based part of the quest. Upon obtaining a Ankh shown above and referring 5 players, the user is then forwarded to a web page where they are asked to scan a QR code. The code provides an NFT that drops automatically into a user’s Enjin wallet, from there they can link their wallet to cross-platform gaming network MyMetaVerse.

NFTs acquired by playing the game will allow players to unlock a new “quest” inside the LUV MetaVerse Minecraft server. Users can then spawn Kemet pieces via the EnjinCraft plugin into the popular game.

NFTs are digital assets that represent a wide variety of physical goods as well as intangible assets, in the case of BLK LUV’s initiative, digital badges. Key characteristics of an NFT include the fact they are non-interoperable, indivisible, indestructible, and verifiable. Built on Ethereum’s ERC-721 and ERC-1155 token standards, they contain information that makes them distinct from other NFTs. Because they are easily verifiable, no two are the same and are unable to be traded with each other, differing from typical cryptocurrency standards.

It’s important to gamers because they can access forms of value that unlock perks and benefits across multiple platforms, games, and apps, creating integrated experiences that can potentially travel with them across the internet.

On the final leg, a user needs to link up MyMetaVerse to Minecraft enabling access to Microsoft’s NFTs within the blocky 3D world.

Once inside Minecraft, a user can type a directive /wallet that will spawn collectible “companions” who follow the user around the server and protect them.

“NFTs are important because they provide irrefutable proof of digital scarcity”,

said Simon Kertonegoro, vice-president of developer success at Enjin.

“With over 126 million users, the ability to spawn blockchain assets inside a Minecraft server is a huge step towards NFT adoption,”

Finally, completing the quest in Minecraft will enable players to unlock fungible tokens that provide benefits in Telegram and Discord. The “Wand” token can be used to unlock exclusive chat groups in popular social messaging apps.

LUV MetaVerse will kick of the LUV Era of 2021 on 3.1.21.

Jack Dorsey and Jay Z create ₿trust to fund Bitcoin development in Africa and India

Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey linked with Roc Nation CEO Jay Z to create an endowment to fund bitcoin development initially in Africa and India, Dorsey announced on Friday.

The partnership created an endowment called ₿trust which will hold 500 bitcoin, currently worth $23.6 million. Dorsey said the fund will be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, adding that the duo won’t be giving any direction to the team. ₿trust is also hiring three board members.

The mission of the fund is to “make bitcoin the internet’s currency,”

a job application describes. The government in India has been reluctant to embrace bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies thus far. Friday’s move comes as New Delhi is inching closer to introduce a law that would ban private cryptocurrencies in the nation. It is also looking to create its own digital currency.

“Even though India is the software development capital of the world, we haven’t contributed to bitcoin core development in any significant way,”

explained Varun Deshpande, co-founder of OnJuno, which is building a digital banking platform from India for Asian Americans, to TechCrunch.

“India always had the skills to contribute but lacked the right incentives. Today’s initiative is even more significant since it provides the right incentives for developers from the world’s largest democracy to contribute and have a say in bitcoin’s protocol development and bring in a diversity of thoughts in shaping the future of money. The irony is as India prepares a bill to ban bitcoin in India, the world is turning to our massive technical talent in India to secure and safeguard the bitcoin network.”

Africa, most especially Nigeria, on the other hand, has experienced a surge in cryptocurrency transactions in recent years. Last year, Nigerians traded more than $500 million worth of cryptocurrency on major local crypto exchanges, and the country is only second to the US in terms of volume of bitcoin traded in the last five years.

Africans that trade cryptocurrencies rely on them because they offer protection against currency devaluation and for value exchange during cross-border transactions. In Nigeria, bitcoin trading became ubiquitous last year during the #EndSARS protests that rocked the country. When donations for the protests began to flow from all parts of the country and in the diaspora, the government shut down the bank accounts used for this effort. But bitcoin became a lifeline keeping the crowdfunding activities alive.

Since then, there have been growing concerns that the government had intentions to regulate cryptocurrency in the country. Last week, those doubts were actualized as the country’s apex bank gave a directive to banks and financial institutions from dealing in cryptocurrency or facilitating payments for cryptocurrency exchange platforms.

Dorsey has long supported the adoption of cryptocurrency. Square already supports bitcoin and last year acquired about $50 million worth of bitcoin for its corporate treasury, and Twitter is studying the potential use of bitcoin to pay its employees and vendors.

In an interview with CNBC earlier this week, Twitter Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal said,

“We’ve done a lot of the upfront thinking to consider how we might pay employees should they ask to be paid in bitcoin, how we might pay a vendor if they ask to be [paid] in bitcoin and whether we need to have bitcoin on our balance sheet should that happen. It’s something we continue to study and look at, we want to be thoughtful about over time, but we haven’t made any changes yet.”

Many high-profile industry executives have called for nations to embrace bitcoin. Balaji Srinivasan, an angel investor and entrepreneur who previously served as the Chief Technology Officer of Coinbase, earlier this month made a case for why India should embrace bitcoin.

“India has the talent to pull this off. Such a move would make international headlines, attract global support from the world’s technologists and financiers, differentiate India from the increasingly zero-sum economic policies pushed by America and China, and put the country at the forefront of a trillion-dollar industry,”

he wrote, envisioning the potential unblocking bitcoin would create for India.

Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Kenya said this week that it will use bitcoin as a reserve currency amid the Kenyan Shilling volatility against the dollar. Last year, the country was only second to Nigeria in bitcoin trading in Africa. Dorsey’s plan is a follow-up on his visit to the continent in 2019 when amid a meeting with key political and tech stakeholders, made a startling reference to the continent’s budding cryptocurrency usage.

“Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!),”

he said at the time. What are your thoughts on this new foundation? My initial thoughts are why this wasn’t done in America first with cryptocurrency being the key to eradicating systemic racism within our country? M

Get in the game and sign up for your free cryptocurrency web wallet here https://www.blkluv.org/wallet/

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Luv Magicians – Magic School Chapter One

I LUV You

Welcome to our universe Luv Magicians,

Luv Magicians is a Role Playing Game that spreads LUV in a dark time while using Telegram, Twitter and NFTs.

To start the game, you must join the Luv Magic lobby here: https://t.me

You need a ENJIN Cloud Wallet to play the game: https://enjin.io/software/wallet

Once you have your wallet send us the address so we can send you stuff!

Luv Magicians Goals

Earn, buy and sell your own NFTs
Complete quests to obtain your lost knowledge, level up your magicians with items and spread LUV across the world.
Meet and network with other Luv Magicians
Build alliances, undermine other Magicians ????????‍♂️
Discover chambers
Become a master of a chamber (to make nfts)
Help build the game, vote… use your imagination

More to come!

NFTs — Gaming Items

“NFT” is just a fancy way to say an in-game asset.

For example, key, scroll, staff, heart, coin…

The NFTs in LUV Magicians can be bought, sold, traded, and they give you powers and special perks in the game and the real world. True ownership, baby!

Here are some items the game has already.

???? Scroll (Base) — Scrolls allow you to participate in dope Quests

???? Key (Base) — Keys allow you access to different Chambers

???? Ticket (Legend) — Golden tickets give you access to robots that help wizards

???? Gold (Base) — In-game currency for trading for items

???? Wine (Base) — Gives Magicians bonus powers for Quests

???? Crystal Ball (Base) — Give you access to all master Chambers

???? Crystal (Base) — Crystals give magicians powers. Magicians need to be powered up to do several things.

⚕️ Staff (Base) — Staffs give administrative rights

???? Knife (Base) — Knives are used on missions and future battles

Quests

You will need a Scroll ???? in order to participate in Quests.

Once you have Scroll you gain access to the Base Quests Chamber and you can do any of the Base Quests.

There will be *many* Base Quests.

Each Quest completed will gain more items, and make you a more powerful wizard.

Temples

The Lobby is the first temple called Hikuptah (this meant “The Soul of the God Ptah”).

Your purpose in the Lobby is to ask questions and obtain the golden Key ???? which is equivalent to the ???????? Ankh = Key of Life.

Once you level up and get a key you officially start the game and gain access to the “Key Holders” room.

(Tweeting or Retweeting content helps!)

Slash Commands

Type the forward-slash ‘/’ (in telegram text input in the Lobby) to reveal commands, these will help you on your journey.

Example of some Slash Commands

/Welcome

/Items

/Quests

/Temples

/Myinventory

Disclaimers

Any gamer can be removed from the game at any time for any reason. Especially when its anything related to negative energy.

The market is always open to trade and sell items in Enjin, but the game IS NOT.

Spread LUV!

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