GM and happy first week of June! ☀️

After a wild May, the crypto market seems to be somewhat calmer overall....

Meaning, always a good time to take a deep breath and grasp some news!

But before you do, it's really worth taking a moment to watch this video of the memorable FakeWhale exhibition we held in our Gallery last weekend.

The synergies between the artists and artworks…the colors, the details, the vibe…It’s safe to say that this is an exhibition we won’t be forgetting anytime soon. ✨

P.s. If you scroll all the way down to our Events section, you will be able to find the link that takes you to the virtual tour!

🎨 NFT & Metaverse News

Prada had already debuted into the NFT space with the Adidas for Prada re-source project in collaboration with digital artist Zach Lieberman and SuperRare a while back but now, it has launched its very first independent NFT collection tied to the “Prada Time Capsule”: an online event hosted on the first Thursday of every month since December 2019 that gives access to exclusive clothing items on its website for 24-hour limit of time.

This first Thursday of June marked the 30th drop, tied to a special series composed of 100 unique NFTs, airdropped free to buyers that purchased the latest physical merchandise in collaboration with Cassius First: the asset’s design is decorated with Cassius Hirst’s signature mask and brain scan designs, which symbolize Unity and Togetherness.

✨ Kanye West does a u-turn in and registers trademarks to launch Yeezus branded NFTs

That’s right, Kanye West did change his opinion on NFTs after all. We all remember the Tweet he shared a few months back…(now deleted)

After all, he did say “Ask me later”.

Anyway, back to us: rumors now have it that Kanye West’s NFTs are imminent, as on May 27th 17 new trademark applications around the rapper’s YEEZUS brand were filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office mentioning blockchain-based non-fungible assets, currencies and tokens as well as online retail store services including digital art.

Sure, now we know the reveal is imminent, but how imminent?

✨ A new study by Analysis Group suggests the metaverse might add $3 trillion to the global economy within the next 10 years

Recently economic experts at international consulting firm Analysis Group released a study that claims that the metaverse could potentially contribute $3 trillion to the global GDP within the next 10 years if it continues to evolve the same way mobile technology previously did in terms of adoption.

Which was a key factor since the analysis was in fact realized by using other successful technologies as reference to then re-apply them to the metaverse, along with other essential details such as the rate of user adoption and the overall impact on GDP.

The report then concludes with its thesis that technically, if the mass adoption of metaverse technology starts this year, it will lead to a 2.8 percent contribution to the global GDP by 2031.

How many years are you going to give mass adoption to take?

You can read the full report here.

📈 DeFI News

✨ Crypto Inheritance: Kirobo aims to decentralize the inheritance of crypto and NFTs

Crypto inheritance is hands down one of the biggest questions and debatable topics for crypto owners as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) by nature don’t allow anyone except the owners to control their assets.

Just think about Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.000.000 bitcoins nobody will ever have access to.

A study in 2020 conducted by the Crenation Institute mentioned how about 20% of the total circulating BTC was estimated to be lost forever due to lost access to the private key, with a high percentage caused by death.

The study also found that nearly 90% of cryptocurrency owners were actually worried about what would happen to their crypto assets if they had passed away, but nonetheless despite the concern, were four times less open to using wills for inheritances than non-crypto investors due to trust issues.

But despite this data, the topic of cryptocurrency inheritance is increasingly taking over the scene: Israeli crypto software provider Kirobo is a key player within this segment at the moment, as on June 1st it released a new inheritance solution that will allow users to generate and execute an automated last will without the need of any third party or centralized entity.

The launch went into further detail of the inheritance feature on its decentralized crypto wallet “Liquid Vault”, and how it is backed by its unique “future conditional transactions” technology; a feature that will allow users to designate specific crypto wallets in order to inherit their assets: all users will need to do is select up to a limit of 8 beneficiaries and choose the exact date they wish their assets to be transferred to these wallets.

In an interview with CoinTelegraph, CEO of Kirobo Asaf Naim commented: “Future conditional transactions is a unique infrastructure, based on smart contracts. It allows users to sign future transactions and to condition them on almost anything.”

At this stage Liquid Vault’s inheritance tool supports ETH and ERC-20 tokens, but Kirobo is also looking into how to integrate the inheritance of further tokens, as well as NFTs.

✨ Binance Staking completed the initial phase of the Terra 2.0 airdrop

On May 31st, cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced the completion of the first stage of airdropping new Terra Luna (LUNA) tokens to holders of Terra Luna Classic (LUNC), TerraUSD (USTC) and AnchorUST (aUST).

Definitely great news, but despite Binance’s smooth and successful drop, Terra developers did confess that many users received less LUNA than expected caused by an error on their end (that they should be working on at the time of writing).

Not to mention that there was another error within the ecosystem the same day, a LUNC pricing error that caused another exploit that completely drained all the funds belonging to the Mirror protocol built on Terra.

The main question still stands: does Luna deserve a second chance?

✨ Bitcoin briefly got back to $32K for first time in 3 weeks

Staying on the more positive side of things, Bitcoin and Ethereum, which always claim their spot as the top two cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, finally got to experience a temporary 5% jump in price at the beginning of the week after 3 full weeks, with Bitcoin reclaiming $32,000 even just for a brief span of time before falling again.

✨ Binance Labs announced its new commitment to investing $500 Million in Web3 projects

Binance Labs is well known for having backed over 100 Web3 projects since 2018. But now, it revealed its new generous budget for the cause: $500 Million, a fund backed by Internet investment capital firm DST Global and global venture capital firm Breyer Capital.

“The goal of the newly closed investment fund is to discover and support projects and founders with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, Metaverse, social, and more,” Binance’s founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao commented.

Also adding that “In a Web3 environment, the connection between values, people, and economies is essential…If these three elements come together to build an ecosystem, that will accelerate the mass adoption of the blockchain technology and crypto.”

🍿 Events this Month

FakeWhale Physical - The Virtual Exhibition

For those who missed the latest FakeWhale Physical that took place at the Valuart Gallery in Lugano-Paradiso last weekend, you can still continue to enjoy the exhibition thanks to the Virtual Exhibition now online 👇

MetaVanity. A meta-exhibition.

📅 Ongoing exhibition.

📍HADEM.

📚 Book of the Month

Time is up! Have you finished reading “Check your Financial Privilege”, by Alex Gladstein?

Full video review will be up next Friday, as well as June’s new book reveal, so stay tuned!

🐥 Tweets in highlight this week