NFT Summer: Art Blocks Leads the NFT Mania This Week while an EtherRock Is Now Worth Over $1 Million

The euphoria around non-fungible tokens clearly states that this summer is all about NFTs.

This week, payment processor giant Visa also announced its entry into the NFT space by buying CryptoPunk for $150,000.

Late on Monday, Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa, tweeted that “NFTs represent the intersection of culture and commerce and could play an important role in the future of online retail, social media, and entertainment.”

After bridging the crypto ecosystem and Visa’s global network, the online payments company now wants to participate in adopting NFT-commerce, he added.

Mathew Graham of Sino Global Capital called Visa buying an NFT “a bigger signal” than El Salvador announcing Bitcoin as a legal tender. However, Ryan Wyatt, the head of gaming at YouTube who recently said he is “bullish on NFTs,” doesn’t see Visa’s NFT adoption as edgy.

“I didn't anticipate a company getting into NFT's on such a short timeline. It was a brilliant move for them, because their earned media they got today was 100x the NFT acquisition itself,” said Wyatt.

Visa picking up a CryptoPunk NFT is big news for the space. But, they 100x'ed their investment on earned media alone today based on the discussions. Props to them on being "corporate first movers" into the space. A lot of people just learned about NFT's for the first time today.

— Ryan Wyatt (@Fwiz) August 23, 2021

Next month, Christie’s is also set to auction CryptoPunks, Meebits, and Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. Ahead of this, every day, the floor prices of these NFTs are climbing through the roof.

The most notable one being digital rocks which are now getting sold for more than a million dollars, while two days ago, the cheapest one was sold for $300k and less than $100k two weeks back.

On Monday, one of the EtherRock collections was sold for 400 ETH or about $1.3 million. With only 100 EtherRock out there, the scarcity of this collection is driving up their value. The website reads,

“These virtual rocks serve NO PURPOSE beyond being able to be brought and sold, and giving you a strong sense of pride in being an owner of 1 of the only 100 rocks in the game.”

But it’s Art Blocks leading the NFT scene this week. NFTs from the Ringers and Fidenza series have made it to the top, now being sold for over $1 million, up from $300k three weeks ago.

Am bullish on @artblocks_io for this very reason. I'm not a subscriber to the NFT thesis that it's all just flexing. There's a real search for transcendental aesthetics and generative art looms large as autonomously created beauty. This will hang in modern art museums globally. https://t.co/fWdcRqN1yB

— Zhu Su 🔺 (@zhusu) August 24, 2021

However, an NFT avatar named Sirxn 0 – Biobluminescent Sirxn from the GHxSTs collection sold for more than $2 million. But that was before late on Monday, Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza 313 called “The Tulip” was the first one to be sold for 4-digits, 1,000 ETH worth $3.3 mln.

According to Dapp Radar, while NFTs from the Axie Infinity series generate the most trading volume over the past week, the generative artworks form Art Blocks is closing in as it dominates the top 10 NFT collections.

This top list also consists of CryptoPunks with $47 million in sales and Cyberkongz VX and Cyberkongz, Pudgy Penguins, Generative Masks, and the Gutter Cat Gang collection. Cool Cats, MeeBits, World of Women, and Bored Ape Kennel Club are outside the top 10.

Cat floor 2.4 ETH 👀 @coolcatsnft

— John Knopf (@JohnKnopfPhotos) August 24, 2021

Money Stack, with only 150 unique collectibles on the Ethereum blockchain available, is also capturing the attention this week as they see their floor price slowly rising to 6.5 ETH, a new record.