June 24 - 28: This week in NFTs, recapped in one letter

Gm friends,

What a week! 

Things started off bearish with BTC taking a dive, which seemed to have everyone biting their nails. But what happened?

Former Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, which closed in 2014 after a hack, is repaying lost BTC this July. Meanwhile, the German and US governments shifted some crypto assets to Coinbase, adding further market pressure. And the cherry on top, NFT market volume dropped 50% in the last 30 days. Yikes.

There’s still plenty to be hopeful about though, so keep your chin up. We can tell July’s going to be a good month:

Already we’re seeing movement in ETH NFT floor prices and the SEC could approve spot ETH ETFs as soon as July 4th. Plus, Ethereum Mainnet fees dropped below 3 gwei for the first time since January 2020. 

As sentiment recovers, big names bring big news. Coinbase has announced a new partnership with Stripe, making onboarding to crypto a little bit easier.

💛 This week at Rarible we’ve got SpamTV, a group drop by a bunch of seriously talented people. If you like color, fun, and a little bit of madness - this one’s for you.

• Pudgy Penguins launches parent company Igloo, with the aim to expand their community and lead the way for consumer crypto.

• Billionaire investor Mark Cuban returns to the NFT market to sell $30,000 plus worth of NFTs, with most of the profit coming from a Pudgy Penguins NFT.

• Coinbase is suing the SEC and the FDIC, accusing the regulators of trying to block crypto out of the banking sector.

• Metallica’s X account was hacked and went hard shilling memecoins.

Is OG NFT gen art art making its comeback this summer? Snowfro’s full spectrum 'Chromie Squiggle #3830' sold for 57,600 USD. Although this isn’t the highest grossing sale of the week, Chromie Squiggle is the genesis project of ArtBlocks and it's great to see they’re still going strong.

This is the energy we’re looking for folks 💪

This summer is going to be HOT: wear sunscreen 🌞