Monday, April 5, 2021

Non Fungible Tokens - A New Asset Class - The Birth of NFTs

Birth of Non Fungible Tokens

Birth of NFTs as an asset class

25 February 2021 Christies accepted and sold by auction the first standalone NFT work of art for $60.25 million, plus 9 million in fees which for the first time was also paid in cryptocurrency.

The NFT in concern was a collage of digital images that the artist Mike Winkleman ( Beeple) created one a day every day for 13.5 years. A total of 5000 digital images sold as a single lot  above. 

This single event is recognised as one that ushers in NFTs as a new asset class.



Asset Classes : Companies : 87.61   ETFs : 5.95  Gold  : 10.97 Cryptocurrencies : 2.03 Trillion 

Cryptocurrency is now a new asset class and is already valued at 2.03 trillion dollars, meaning that 2.03 trillion dollars have already flowed into this asset class. 

The Need For A New Asset Class

Since the financial crash of 2008, almost every country in the world have embarked upon a program of Quantitative Easing ( money printing ). This does not produce any goods and services and is therefore inflationary, except that the inflation moved into assets like company stocks, real estate, gold and even cryptocurrencies. With interest at zero, near zero and even negative and yet even more money printing going on, money has found its way into NFTs and in a big way. 

This phenomenon is no accident. The purchaser of the Beeple NFT was Vignesh Sundaresan also known as MetaKovan, who previously purchased of the Delta 1-1-1 Formula 1 NFT for a price in excess of $100,000. He revealed that he was willing to pay even higher for Beeple as it was history in the making and would usher in a new age for digital arts. NFTs are rising in value because money is looking for another asset class. This is because the existing assets like Stock, real estate, bonds. gold and perhaps cryptocurrencies are already in bubble territory and so much more liquidity is still flowing in through endless money printing everywhere.

What is an NFT

We can define an NFT as a blockchainaised digital file. A digital file, time stamped on a public blockchain. As there is not enough space to hold the complete file containing image and perhaps text, the blockchain stores a link to an external database where the contents are stored.

As any asset. Its price is determined by supply and demand, and value is determined by Usefulness to society and scarcity. An item that is very useful and very scarce commands a very high price. An NFT is a virtual asset. Its value is in the eye of the beholder.

Andrew Steinwold gives a good account on the chronology of the development of NFTs HERE. Without a doubt the first Everdream Soft were the first to issue NFTs on the Counterparty and Bitcoin platform for their Spells Of Genesis Game.

The Market For NFT

Best place to get a grip on the NFT market is at DAPRADAR. This space is very new, daily sales are only around $30 million. Most of the current NFTs are issued on the Ethereum blockchain however the earliest NFTs were issued on the Bitcoin blockchain by Everdream Soft on the Counterparty platform.

The value of an NFT can be boiled down to age and content. Age determines scarcity as there can nver be anymore created and backdated. The Blockchain is a timestamp and we can therefore value an NFT by the date on which it was minted. 

There is of course no reason just to hold a transaction with a link pointer. The content is important. In the case of Beeple, even though the age of the transaction is recent, It represents the ownership of 5000 digital drawings by the artist over 13.5 years. A feat that cannot be duplicated. Being 1 off, sold at Christies ( A renown art trading house), gives it that value. If it comes up again for auction many people will still be willing to pay even more for it. It is both a store of value and an inflation hedge. It does not also carry all the cost of physical ownership.

Even if Bitcoin or Ethereum is outlawed, because it competes against a national digital currency, NFTs would still be legal as it will be regarded as an asset. Not a means of payment.


SOG cards - The most undervalued throve of NFTs 

When cryptokittes traded for $100,000 as an ERC721 token, not much attention was paid to Spells Of Genesis cards even though they were issued 2 years earlier in 2015. 

The Satoshicard was the most highly valued card and it sold for around $3000 back in 2016, but nothing like the hundred of thousands for Crypto Kitties. It may have been marketing or just that the Ethereum community was so much larger and supportive of anything Ethereum. Bitcoin was only seen as a payments system and a store of value and app developments were hampered because of the high transaction cost then. A curse that is also visited on the Ethereum blockchain today.

Besides being the earliest minted cards many of the cards also carry a theme of real events occurring in blockchain history. The Satoshicard celebrated the creator of Bitcoin. The Genesis card chronicle the birth of Bitcoin and the whole blockchain industry from the minting of the Genesis block. The Battle For Blocksize brings up all the arguments and flame wars which lead to the forking of Bitcoin into BTC and BCH, and many more.

These are some of the cards linked to Bitcoin and Blockchain history.

Satoshicard
Genesis Card
Fdcard
Goxcard
Bearwhale
Emeraldether
Ethxcpcard
Edscard
Cardaugur

As this asset class matures, and increasing number of investors are exposed to the history and development of NFT, SOG cards will gain prominence. The earlier ones connected to blockchain history will be the most sought after.



LINKS

Birth Of A Creative Economy - HERE 

Christies and Beeple - HERE 

First NFT sells for 69 million - HERE





Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Bearwhale - The Feasting Of The Bearwhale - SOG Bearwhalecd

 The Feasting Of The Bearwhale



Bearwhalecd - The Feasting Of The Bearwhale

Issued : Friday July 24 2015 , Epic card.

In Circulation : 3000   ( Click to see distribution of card holders ) 

Card Description :  The Bearwhale hides deep down in the caves of jewels. From time to time he gets out and pours a great quantity of precious gems, gathered in his gaping mouth.

Artist Impression : Spells Of Genesis artist, portrayed the head of a whale on the body of a bear to represent the bitcoin whale in a bear market. Interestingly the CNN portrait was the reverse. The SOG version looks more interesting and dynamic in my opinion.

This is an epic card with issues locked at 3000 units. Although 3000 is the maximum number in existence. The true number will never be known as like Bitcoin owners may have lost passwords or keys.

Legally Everdream Soft owns the copyright to the image, even though others may own copies of the card. The situation is similar to owning a limited edition copy of a book.

Bearwhalecd is relatively rare but it does mark a very important point in time in Bitcoin history. A true collectors item. 

The price of these sought after NFTs are basically decoupled from the price of Bitcoin. Serious crypto holders should hold some as hedge against their crypto holdings.

__________________________________________________________

The Marketplace  How Much Is An NFT Worth ? Short article   HERE

Bearwhalecd price on the Dex :  Counterparty Dex 

Open Sea :  Opensea  

Opensea is the largest peer to peer marketplace for trading digital assets.

Auction : @nftauctions 

An auction house is the best place for price discovery. Theo Goodman started his telegram site @nftauctions to do this. Sellers send their items to him on escrow and buyers register to bid. This is a trust based system.

                        A copy of Bearwhalecd is up for auction on Saturday April 03. This is part of a batch of cards so we will not now how much value is attributed to the Bearwhalecd. 

                       ___________________________________________________________

History

Monday October 6 2014 was a day to remember in Bitcoin History. Bitcoin reached a high of just over $1000 in January and then started a bear market drop to around $320 over the weekend in the beginning of June. Then on Monday morning June 6 a bitcoin whale placed a limit order selling 30,000 Bitcoins @ $300. Never before has such an event happen in Bitcoin history and many feared the death of Bitcoin as been predicted so many times to date.

However over the course of the day and by the evening the whole order was devoured. Prices began to rise after but only to enter into a near 2 year bear market with prices as low as $120.

Strangely we have not had the equivalent Bullwhale depicted even as Bitcoin reaches $60,000! 


CNN artist Billy Mabrey impression of the Bearwhale. Read the article HERE

_________________________________________________


@NFLAUCTIONS Theo Goodman Telegram Auctions

Theo Goodman started a telegram community @nftauctions where he took it upon himself to auction off any transferable NFTs. It is a simple model based on trust. Sellers send him the NFT to hold in escrow. The successful buyer would send him the money (Btc/Eth) and he would forward on this payment less his commission. 

FDCARD was sold for $45,000 at the March 20 2021 auction. This caught the SOG community including Shaban by surprise. This signals that there was indeed a big demand for early NFT cards which was a market that never existed before. Auctions are the best mechanism for price discovery outside of  a liquid market.

Prices can still be spoof at an auction by insiders selling among themselves. I made an analysis of the March 20 2021 auction results HERE.

The FDCARD transactions to me looks legit. This will be further verified by future auctions.



Related Articles

Non Fungible Tokens. NFTs. The Ultimate Store Of Value

How much is an NFT worth ? HERE

Bitcoin Origins - Genesis Card

The Stealing Of Mt Gox - GOXCARD

First Bitcoin Fork - Blocksizecd




Note : Please feel free to contribute in the comments to improve this page and to use, for promoting your sales.





Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Litecoin Creator - The Immitator - SOG Satoshilite

 The Immitator


Satoshilite - The Immitator

Issued : Wednesday February 05 2016 , Legendary card. 

In Circulation :  500  ( Click to see distribution of card holders ) 

Card Description :  After Satoshi created the Genesis Block and the first crystals of Askian, others followed by creating different kinds of crystals shortly afterwards. One of the first and most successful ones was a man called "The Imitator". He created the coin of lite, and magically filled the Askian mountains with it.

Artist Impression : Spells Of Genesis artist, portrayed Charlie Lee as a lesser wizard compared to Satoshi, masked and with his lower part of his face exposed. He is shown clearly conjuring up Litecoin.

A legendary card. 500 were created. This card is indivisible. Although 500 is the maximum number in existence. The true number will never be known as like Bitcoin owners may have lost passwords or keys.

Legally Everdream Soft owns the copyright to the image, even though others may own copies of the card. The situation is similar to owning a limited edition copy of a book.

Satoshilite is a very rare card. A true collectors item. Like a limited edition copy of the "Mona Lisa" this NFT was issued by Everdream Soft on Wednesday February 05 2016

The price of these sought after NFTs are basically decoupled from the price of Bitcoin. Serious crypto holders should hold some as hedge against their crypto holdings.

__________________________________________________________

The Marketplace  How Much Is An NFT Worth ?   HERE

FDCARD price on the Dex : Counterparty Dex 

Open Sea :  Opensea  

Opensea is the largest peer to peer marketplace for trading digital assets.

Auction : @nftauctions 

At the March 20 2021 @nflauctions a Satoshilite card was sold for a record $3300. This would give Satoshilite a market capitalisation of $1.65 Million

18/04/2021 Lot 43 sold for $1250

An auction house is the best place for price discovery. Theo Goodman started his telegram site @nftauctions to do this. Sellers send their items to him on escrow and buyers register to bid. This is a trust based system.

Shaban explained that Charlie suggested that he be portrayed as an immitator. 

                        __________________________________________________________

History

Let there be Lite. Charlie Lee created Litecoin on October 13, 2011, in his own words "as silver to Bitcoin gold".

Litecoin is an open source fork of Bitcoin, however instead of 10 minutes block time Litecoin was 2.5 minutes, and total supply was increased to 84 million.

Instead of SHA 256, Litecoin uses Scrypt. This was deliberate as Bitcoin was increasingly being mined using Asics, thus making it more profitable for GPU miners to mine Litecoin.

Charlie created Litecoin while he was still at Google. He worked on Litecoin in his own time out of his own interest in the project. He left Google to join Coinbase in 2015.


Charlie Lee explains why and how he created Litecoin


In December 2017 Charlie Lee sold all his holdings in Litecoin to avoid being accused of talking the price up. Interestingly he sold at near peak of around $300 the price crashed after and did not recover till this year.

_________________________________________________

@NFLAUCTIONS

Satoshilite was sold at auction for $3300 at least twice. This puts the marketcap for Satoshilite at $1.6 million.


Related Articles

Non Fungible Tokens. NFTs. The Ultimate Store Of Value

How much is an NFT worth ? HERE

Bitcoin Origins - Genesis Card

The Stealing Of Mt Gox - GOXCARD

First Bitcoin Fork - Blocksizecd



Note : Please feel free to contribute in the comments to improve this page and to use, for promoting your sales.


Monday, March 29, 2021

The Healing Formula - First NFT issued by Everdream Soft - SOG FDCARD

The Healing Formula


FDCARD - The Healing Formula

Issued : Friday March 13 2015 , Legendary card. ( This is the first known NFT card ever issued).

In Circulation :  299  ( Click to see distribution of card holders ) As a legendary card there were 300 issued but a fraction of 1 card was burnt leaving 299 complete cards*.

Card Description :  Spells of Genesis and Moonga card

Artist Impression : Spells Of Genesis artist, gives us that AHA moment when a discovery is made! Apt perhaps because so many discoveries were made. Blockchain, Tokenisation, First NFT....

Being a legendary card, only 299 were created. This card is divisible. Although 299 is the maximum number in existence. The true number will never be known as like Bitcoin owners may have lost passwords or keys.

Legally Everdream Soft owns the copyright to the image, even though others may own copies of the card. The situation is similar to owning a limited edition copy of a book.

FDcard is a very rare card. A true collectors item. Like a limited edition copy of the "Mona Lisa" this NFT was issued by Everdream Soft on Friday March 13 2015 to help support protein folding to find cures for cancer and other diseases.

The price of these sought after NFTs are basically decoupled from the price of Bitcoin. Serious crypto holders should hold some as hedge against their crypto holdings.

__________________________________________________________

The Marketplace  How Much Is An NFT Worth ? Short article   HERE

FDCARD price on the Dex : Counterparty Dex 

Open Sea :  Opensea  

Opensea is the largest peer to peer marketplace for trading digital assets.

Auction : @nftauctions 

At the March 20 2021 @nflauctions FDCARD was sold for a record $45,000

An auction house is the best place for price discovery. Theo Goodman started his telegram site @nftauctions to do this. Sellers send their items to him on escrow and buyers register to bid. This is a trust based system.

                        __________________________________________________________

History

This was a partnership between Folding Coin and Spells Of Genesis

Folding coin participants earned these FDCARD by merged folding starting in March 2015 until May when all 300 were "mined" and distributed proportionally to the work units completed by participants who ran the Folding at Home model to help find cures for cancer, Alzheimer, diabetes etc

This was the first blockchain card issued by Shaban Shaame under Spells Of Genesis and perhaps the first NFT card ever issued.

“Bitcoin and blockchain is reserved today to a small group of people. One of the reasons is that understanding bitcoin is difficult for mainstream users. The SoG economy will open the bitcoin technology to a large user group who are gamers. By getting digital assets in the game, players will step a foot into the bitcoin economy. They will be able to buy and sell their game assets for bitcoin and slowly learn about decentralized trading. A large part of them might become interested in getting bitcoin in order to buy and sell their digital assets. This way, by giving concrete use of bitcoin, we expect to be a part of cryptocurrency mass adoption,” -- - Shaban Shaame, CEO and Founder of EverdreamSoft

Read The Article : HERE

_________________________________________________

@NFLAUCTIONS

FDCARD was sold for $45,000 at the March 20 2021 auction. This caught the SOG community including Shaban by surprise. A day before an FDCARD actually sold on the Counterparty dispenser for $20,000. Of course price discovery is better gauged at an auction.

Prices can still be spoof at an auction by insiders selling among themselves. I made an analysis of the March 20 2021 auction results HERE.

The FDCARD transactions to me looks legit. This will be further verified by future auctions.



Related Articles

Non Fungible Tokens. NFTs. The Ultimate Store Of Value

How much is an NFT worth ? HERE


Other Cards

Bitcoin Origins - Genesis Card

The Stealing Of Mt Gox - GOXCARD

First Bitcoin Fork - Blocksizecd

The Immitator  Satoshilite


Note : Please feel free to contribute in the comments to improve this page and to use, for promoting your sales.


 Contributors
* Helene.

Sunday, March 28, 2021

First Bitcoin Fork - The Battle For Blocksize - SOG BLOCKSIZECD

 Battle For Blocksize



BLOCKSIZECD - The Battle For Blocksize

Issued : Thursday August 26 2015 , Legendary card

In Circulation :  300  ( Click to see distribution of card holders )

Card Description Politics in Askian are complex, decisions require consensus. The stakes for mountain miners and residents are high, thus creating friction within the community.

Artist Impression : Spells Of Genesis artist, painted an allegoric representation of the main characters around a table arguing over Big Blocks and Small Blocks. 

Being a legendary card, only 300 were created. This card is indivisible. Although 300 is the maximum number in existence. The true number will never be known as like Bitcoin owners may have lost passwords or keys. Even Shaban the founder of Everdream Soft and Spells of Genesis personally only holds 2 copies 1 of which he is putting up for auction.

Legally Everdream Soft owns the copyright to the image, even though others may own copies of the card. The situation is similar to owning a limited edition copy of a book.

Blocksizecd is a very rare card. A true collectors item. Like a limited edition copy of the "Mona Lisa" this NFT was issued by Everdream Soft on Thursday August 26 2015 to chronicle the bitter dispute over many years until it resulted in the split into BTC and Bitcoin Cash. 

The price of these sought after NFTs are basically decoupled from the price of Bitcoin. Serious crypto holders should hold some as hedge against their crypto holdings.

Shaban : This card has a special meaning for me. It represents the battle for bitcoin blocksize that eventually led to the chain split between bitcoin and bitcoin cash. The picture depict allegorically some of the famous people of the bitcoin scene at that time.

When I posted this card on reddit I got shadow banned from r/bitcoin reddit where the policy was to ban any post mentioning blocksize. This card is a witness of that incredible time and is loaded with memories.

The allegoric characters are

Big Blocks

Jesus like Figure standing up - Roger Ver

Orange Cloak  - Eric Voorhees

Back towards us - Gavin Andresen 

Small Blocks

Standing Up  - Gregory Maxwell

Hands Folded in blue - Adam Beck 

Lady in blue - Perianne Boring 

__________________________________________________________

The Marketplace  How Much Is An NFT Worth ? Short article   HERE

Blocksizecd price on the Dex : Counterparty Dex 

Open Sea :  Opensea  

Opensea is the largest peer to peer marketplace for trading digital assets.

Auction : @nftauctions

An auction house is the best place for price discovery. Theo Goodman started his telegram site @nftauctions to do this. Sellers send their items to him on escrow and buyers register to bid. This is a trust based system.

                        __________________________________________________________

Blockchain History

When Bitcoin was created the blocksize was unlimited. In order to protect against denial of service attack, Hal Finney in late 2009, with the reluctant consent of Satoshi and Mike Hearn set a block limit of 1MB. This was done on the understanding that it was temporary and would be removed later to allow Bitcoin to scale. A fact that was confirmed by Mike Hearn. 

Around 2012, as Bitcoin adoption grew, talk started surfacing on increasing the blocksize. This soon led to full blown flame wars between the Big and Small blockers. Roger Ver led the big block campaign and was the target of much hate from the small block community. The small block supporters had the advantage because they gain control of Bitcoin source code.

The argument against was that big blocks could not propagate across all nodes fast enough for decentralisation. Luke Jr even proposed decreasing it to 400 bytes. Gregory Maxwell wanted it to run on his raspberry PI. 

To get a feel of what it was like have a look at this video although Roger Ver was the only person supporting big blocks here


BTC developers proposed Segwit as a conciliatory means to increase the blocksize and solve Bitcoin's malleability problem at the same time. This was a step too far for the big blockers as according to them, it destroys the fundamental property that Bitcoin is an unbroken chain of signatures.

To avoid Segwit On 01 August at block 478559 Bitcoin split into BTC ( Bitcoin)  with 1MB transaction blocks and BCH ( Bitcoin Cash ) with 8MB transaction blocks. 

Even after that the attacks continued. It was a very divisive time fought on all media and scars remain to this day.

Bitcoincd card above referred to this first Bitcoin split into BTC and BCH. BCH would later again split into BCH and BSV.

These articles chronicle much of what happened in the early days of Bitcoin.

Resolution of big block experiment Lucas Nuzzi

Coingeek Article - Bitcoin History Part 1

Coingeek Article - Bitcoin History Part 2


Related Articles

Non Fungible Tokens. NFTs. The Ultimate Store Of Value

How much is an NFT worth analysis of 3/20/2021 @nftauctions? HERE


Other Cards

Bitcoin Origins - Genesis Card

The Stealing Of Mt Gox - GOXCARD

The Immitator  Satoshilite


Note : Please feel free to contribute in the comments to improve this page and to use, for promoting your sales.