The market has spoken.

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NFT’s are ostensibly what the market wants. There, I “said it.” Digital asset investors and some Chief Strategist have not yet groked how to incorporate ERC-721's into their corporate strategy. Substantially increasing the wealth of your entity in the future depends on incorporating digital assets in your overall strategy now.

The U.S. Department of Treasury released a report: “Study of the Facilitation of Money Laundering and Terror Finance Through the Trade in Works of Art.” The report was mandated by Congress in the AML Act of 2020. It specifically mentions NFTs. (Press release, Study, Blockchain Law Center) According to the report, NFTs are vulnerable to money laundering because “NFT platforms range in structure, ownership, and operation, and no single platform operates the same way or has the same standards or due diligence protocols.” The report specified that NFTs used for payment or investment may fall under the virtual asset definition, and some NFT platforms may qualify as virtual asset service providers (VASPs), depending on the characteristics of the NFTs that they offer. This means that popular platforms might have to increase KYC/AML and comply with the dreaded Travel Rule.

If they are talking, you should implementing….

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• John Reed Stark was chief of the SEC office of internet enforcement for 11 years. He has a few things to say about NFTs: Market manipulation of NFTs appears not only rampant and tolerated, but also encouraged. Fraud not only rewarded, but also taught. (Linkedin)
• It’s Super Bowl weekend. Expect to see a massive amount of marketing dollars go toward shilling crypto and NFTs. Crypto.com, FTX, and Binance are among the major advertisers. (Hollywood Reporter) (NYT)
• Bored Apes are also rumored to appear at the Super Bowl, in some shape or form. (Bloomberg)
• Twitter accounts that have been speaking out against NFTs are being reported by bots, their accounts suspended and/or locked. This happened to @NFTEthics and @interlunations. (Twitter)
• Sotheby’s is planning to auction off a set of 104 CryptoPunks on Feb. 23. The set is expected to bring $20 million to $30 million in crypto. The original buyer was 0x650d, who scooped them all up in July 2021. Here is the Etherscan confirming his purchase. (Artnet News)
• He bought them for $7 million because he “chose wealth.” (Twitter)
• Following the news of the Sotheby’s auction, the celebrity shilling begins. German-American model Heidi Klum just announced on Twitter she owns a Punk. (Tweet)
• Who paid for her Punk? That’s not exactly clear. Mike Burgersburg (not his real name, obviously) has tracked down links between Bitclout investor Reade Seiff and Klum’s Punk. (Dirty Bubble)
• Burgersburg also says whoever is funding Reese Witherspoon’s NFT purchases probably has a financial interest in promoting the WOW project. (Dirty Bubble)
• The counterfeit NFT problem is getting worse. Bots are scraping artists’ online galleries, or even keyword searches on Google Images, and then creating collections with auto-generated texts. Those listings have proliferated on OpenSea. (Verge)
• Sotheby’s made headlines last year when it sold Kevin McCoy’s Quantum NFT (2014) for $1.47 million. Now, that sale is in the headlines once more, this time for a lawsuit being filed against McCoy and the auction house by a holdings company whose owner claims he owns Quantum. (Artnews)
• Indie game platform itch.io has come out strongly against NFTs: “NFTs are a scam. If you think they are legitimately useful for anything other than the exploitation of creators, financial scams, and the destruction of the planet the we ask that [you] please reevaluate your life choices.”(Twitter, PC Gamer)
• YouTube is launching new creator tools to expand monetization, including allowing creators to sell content as NFTs so fans can “own” videos. (NBC News)
• The Alfa Romeo Tonale SUV is the “first car on the market” to come with an NFT digital certificate that the automaker says will increase the car’s residual value. How? Technical details are thin. (Verge)
• A group supporting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange raised $50 million in ETH by selling an NFT of a clock to a DAO (called AssangeDAO) set up to support his legal bills. The NFT, titled “Clock,” is a joint creation by Assange and digital artist Pak. AssangeDAO contributors receive JUSTICE. (Wired)

Always do your own research and consult professional services.