Welcome to the inaugural issue of the DeFi Arts Intelligencer, your weekly source for key happenings around blockchain art, collectibles, and games. Subscribe here.

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For this dispatch:

🎨 Digital Art & Collectibles

• Pseudonymous digital art collector CuriousNFTs bought “AI Generated Nude Portrait 1” by artist Robbie Barrat for 75 ETH from art writer Jason Bailey. The work is notable for being the first tokenized piece made available through the SuperRare marketplace.

• In an ensuing follow-up, Jason Bailey confirmed he also received another two pieces of non-fungible token (NFT) art as part of the aforementioned deal.

  Jason Bailey @artnome

  @SuperRare_co @DrBeef_ @curiousnfts I should also add I received these two works by @travisleroy and @Prince_Jacon in addition to the $13K as a key part of the trade with @curiousnfts I'd wanted those two works and regretted not having them - really happy to have them in my collection!

  January 18th 2020

  2 Retweets8 Likes

• Decentraland is “opening the gates” to the first metropolis of its Metaverse, Genesis City, on Feb. 20th, 2020.

• Splinterlands cards started trading on the OpenSea marketplace.

• The Binance “Exchange the World” crypto-collectible just sold for 29.8 ETH.

🕹️ Blockchain Games

• DeFi giant MakerDAO sponsored an Axie Infinity tournament that was streamed on popular streaming platform Twitch — is it the first of many such campaigns to come?

• Ethereum social coordination game MetaGame has racked up some 10,000 Dai in matched donations amid the current Gitcoin open-source fundraising round.

♦️♦️ DeFi News

• Rocket Bank has launched, a new decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) effort that will offer under-collateralized DeFi loans backed by NFT collectibles, e.g. CryptoKitties.

• The first DeFi flash loan has occurred, courtesy of the new Aave lending protocol.

• Liquidity on the Uniswap DEX is acutely booming.

• Social currencies are starting to explode as services like Roll are on the rise.

• The economic bandwidth of Ethereum is currently around $32 billion USD.

• NBA player Spencer Dinwiddie is tokenizing his contract on Ethereum.

• The Sacramento Kings are auctioning one of their star’s jerseys through Ethereum.

📰 Fresh Reads

• “Who is the Creator” by Trevor Jones

• “2019 Year in Review” by Jason Bailey

• “The trillion dollar case for ETH” by 0xLucas.eth

Thanks for reading, and stay creative on- and off-chain!

Keep an 👁️ out for the 2nd issue of the DeFi Arts Intelligencer this time next week, too. Cheers ✌️

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About DeFi Arts Intelligencer

The DeFi Arts Intelligencer is curated by me, William M. Peaster, a professional writer and editor who’s been tracking the Ethereum and Dai beats in recent years.

I’m passionate about art and a DeFi optimist, so putting together this newsletter is both fun and informative for me. I hope others may find the content helpful, too. But be mindful, the information herein should not be construed as investment advice. I’m not a financial adviser. Always take care to seriously consider the various layers of risk you face in participating in the still-maturing cryptoeconomy.

If you have a news tip or lead, questions or comments, or would be interested in commissioning me for a writing gig, you can ping me at wmpeaster@gmail.com or on Telegram at @wmpeaster.

This particular newsletter is a labor of love, but if you enjoy the work and want to support it, feel free to subscribe, have a like-minded friend subscribe as well, or buy some of my crypto art on OpenSea. Thanks kindly!

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