Visa buys CryptoPunk: Adding to 60 Year Collection of Commerce Artifacts
No longer are NFTs just a passing fad craze… The last 2 months have seen celebrities, music icons, contemporary artists, gamers and even AI embracing the world of NFTs. The outside world of crypto hasn’t failed to capitalise on the opportunities that NFTs have presented; artistic marketing campaigns have been curated that have brought in millions in revenue for the creators. Most recently Eminem who sold a series of art pieces titled “Shady Con NFTs” inspired by his childhood collectables, from a chainsaw sporting “Stan” action figurine, to multimedia visuals layed on top of exclusive beats produced by Slim Shady himself. The NFT craze doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
This week hosted a historical event in the crypto and NFT sector as the world’s largest payments infrastructure business, Visa, purchased CryptoPunk #7610 for around $150,000 on August 19. Visa’s sudden big splurge on a female CryptoPunk may have come as a shock to some, however, the payments giant explained that their purchase was driven by identifying a “new chapter in digital commerce”. They will be adding Punk #7610 to a collection of historic commerce artifacts that the company has been building up for 60 years. CryptoPunks really are solidified in the history books now as an evolutionary form of digital commerce with trade, transfer and verifiability features, all built on blockchain.
Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s Head of Crypto, shared his comments stating, “we want to have a seat at the table as the crypto economy evolves. By participating actively in this space, we gain deeper firsthand knowledge, ultimately allowing us to better support our customers as they enter the space”.
The reason for Visa’s bold move is clear, the company is a commerce payments giant, and they wish to have greater understanding about the market processes surrounding NFTs. Visa explained that NFTs will play an important role in the future of retail, social media, entertainment, and commerce. It is clear that Visa is moving quickly to understand the infrastructure requirements to purchase, store and leverage NFTs. Visa revealed that they will be revealing some interesting concepts and partnerships, and are exploring ways in which they can apply their expertise in enabling seamless and secure digital payments to make NFT-commerce accessible and usable for buyers and sellers. This seems a bid to be ahead of their competitors, possibly envisioning a sub-category NFT marketplace, or even a payment gateway to be able to buy NFTs directly using their payment infrastructure.
It is evident that the wild west of NFTs is rapidly becoming the stable center of design, contemporary art, ownership rights, music and gaming, especially for creators that previously experienced barriers in gaining visibility, without having an existing mass following.
$BURP — Connecting NFT partners in the Digital Ecosystem
Until now, the growth of the NFT industry has been nothing short of extraordinary, but we are far from the peak of its popularity. As NFTs become more mainstream and their utility continues to expand to different industries, they will attract the attention of new users, gamers, collectors and digital art traders, who will undoubtedly want to enter the space.
The $BURP ecosystem hosts a wide array of NFT project partners in the space featuring the likes of The Sandbox, Avastars, NFT Boxes, Polychain Monsters, Ethermon, ChainGuardians, and Crypto Prophecies, with more to come. $BURP has recently pioneered an NFT Raffle concept that features exclusive generative and partner NFT rewards, so be sure not to miss out!
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About $BURP
$BURP is the official token of the $BURP ecosystem of products including but not limited to non-custodial token management, staking mechanisms, NFT raffles and swap-fee rewards via $BURPback.
Important Information
Cryptocurrencies and crypto tokens are generally not regulated and investors do not have access to recourse or compensation schemes such as, for example, in the UK, the Financial Ombudsman Service or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Investing in cryptocurrencies and purchasing crypto tokens can be high risk and investors should carefully evaluate their appetite for risk and their understanding of trading cryptocurrencies prior to entering into a transaction.
