Welcome to the 18th 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

• Big CryptoPunks trades this week: Punk 4513 sold for 60 ETH, Punk 2964 sold for 15.5 ETH, and Punk 344 sold for 15 ETH.

• Collector Moderats purchased Hackatao’s “I’ve got the power” on SuperRare’s secondary market for 45 ETH 🥂

• XCOPY has a new piece, “Back to School,” out. The artist’s other new piece, “N,” sold for 5.5 ETH earlier this week.

  XCOPY 🏴 @XCOPYART

  🌈 Back to School! 🌈 @SuperRare_co superrare.co/artwork-v2/bac… #cryptoart $ETH #art #schools

  May 16th 2020

  22 Retweets64 Likes

• Avastars Series 1 sold out, and Series 2 is coming soon …

  j1mmy.eth @j1mmyeth

  5,000 Series 1 Avastars SOLD! that's a wrap. @AvaStarsNFT Congrats @Barthazian on minting the last one! opensea.io/assets/0xf3e77…

  May 13th 2020

  7 Retweets54 Likes

• Collector WhaleShark’s social currency $WHALE goes live on May 18th. Also, the specialists at NonFungible.com just completed their audit of the ~3,000 NFT assets in WhaleShark’s “Vault.”

• Artist Momo Wang’s 1-of-1, CryptoKitties-inspired “Koshkat” NFT sold for $10,500 on Nifty Gateway. The 100 editions of Wang’s “Catterina” sold out in 3 minutes as well.

• Art platform Known Origin added its latest wave of artists.

• Today MakersPlace held a virtual showing, “The Prelude,” in Cryptovoxels for this year’s jam-packed Virtual Rare Art Festival, which ran from May 14th to May 17th.

• Decentralized fashion label MetaFactory launched a series of custom facemasks designed by cryptoartists. For every mask sold, another will be donated to the Mask Match organization.

🕹️ Blockchain Games

• The Gods Unchained team introduced some major changes to the game’s “Ranked Weekends” format. Read all about them here.

• Season 5 of Axie Infinity began, and the project also unveiled the first phase of the Mavis Hub launcher, a consolidated suite for app updates, news, and more. Moreover, Land in the game’s Quadrant 1 sold out this week.

• DeFi lending giant MakerDAO partnered with Decentral Games, which will now support Maker’s Dai stablecoin in its gaming ecosystem.

♦️♦️ DeFi News

• 2020, Year of the Stablecoin: the total market cap of stablecoins is now over $10 billion, an unprecedented milestone.

• Financial services powerhouse Visa filed a patent application for a digital fiat currency that could have an embodiment on Ethereum.

• Rising crypto derivatives platform ErisX launched the first CFTC-regulated ETH futures products.

• Top 20 website Reddit rolled out a beta Community Points system in two subreddits, r/Cryptocurrency and r/FortNiteBR, that relies on Ethereum tokens.

• DeFi on-chain liquidity aggregator Kyber Network crossed its first $1 billion in trades. 

• Ethereum privacy tool Tornado Cash completed its Trusted Setup Ceremony. Next stop: complete decentralization.

• New bitcoin token project tBTC is now live on the Ethereum mainnet …

  Matt Luongo @mhluongo

  I'm proud to share the first TBTC minted on mainnet 😎

  May 15th 2020

  38 Retweets162 Likes

📰Fresh Content

• “Known Origin Featured Artworks #2” — Guest editor Jason Bailey

• “[Spotlight] Peeking Into the Process of Bryan Brinkman” - matthew.cent.eth

• “NFT Data Dump Sundays - April 2020” - Andrew Steinwold

• “$WHALE Launch and Renewed Tokenomics” - WhaleShark

🖌️Extra, Extra

• I sold Bryan Brinkman’s “Immolation” on SuperRare this week for 1.2 ETH. Amazing to see him automatically get a royalty from the secondary sale! Thanks Ethereum 🎉

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

Keep an 👁️ out for the 19th 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, and these are my opinions. Always take care to seriously consider the various layers of risk you face in participating in the still-maturing cryptoeconomy.

If you have a DeFi 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.

If you enjoy this newsletter and want to support it, feel free to subscribe or have a like-minded friend subscribe as well. I have NFT pieces available on OpenSea, too. Thanks kindly!

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