Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & more!

Dear Bankless Nation,

It was a crazy week in the world of crypto.

Gary Gensler and the SEC are on a warpath. They dropped lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase on Monday and Tuesday, alleging that a host of tokens are securities including some NFT giants like FLOW, SAND, and AXS.

Where these suits move next is anyone’s guess, but one thing is clear…

The fight is on.

We’ll see how these suits play out, but Gary may have bitten off more than he can chew — he’s managed to mobilize and unify the entire crypto community against him.

– Bankless Team

🦊 Thanks to MetaMask Portfolio 🦊

👉 Your web3 assets in one place, and much more ✨

📊 The big picture

The NFT market experienced a light sell-off over the past week. The total ETH denominated market cap of NFTs based on floor prices fell 0.9% from 7.72M ETH to 7.65M ETH. Prices fell further against the dollar due to a decline in the value of ETH, dropping 4.2% from 14.7B to 14.1B.

🔝 7D top collections by volume

📰 General news

• Kraken launches its NFT marketplace with support for collections on Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon

• Binance announces support for Bitcoin NFTs in its marketplace

• GameStop fires the CEO that led their NFT initiatives

🏆 Digital collectibles

• Louis Vuitton reveals their digi-physical $41,000 NFT collection titled “Treasure Trunks”

• Illuvium announces a partnership with GameStop to issue 20,000 limited edition NFTs

🎨 Cryptoart & music

• Music NFT marketplace Spinamp raises a $1.2M funding round

• Fewocious reveals the art for a new collection titled Fewos

🎮 Decentralized gaming

• The Beacon launches its Harvester Event on Arbitrum in collaboration with Bridgeworld 

• Argus Labs raises $10M to build the World Engine, an SDK optimized for on-chain games

• HyperPlay raises a $12M Series A to build their multichain Web3 game launcher

🌐 Virtual worlds

• Apple reveals its Vision Pro headset

🪙 NFTfi

• SudoSwap launches their V2

• Insrt Finance Season 1 deposits go live

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🎆 Mint spotlight: Illuvium x GameStop D1SK

GameStop and the Web3 game Illuvium are teaming up to launch D1SK’s, a collection of 20,000 NFTs. Each D1SK comes with a playable Illuvitar NFT and also provides early access to Illuvium Overworld (a creature collector game) and Illuvium Arena (an auto-battler). The mint goes live on June 12 at 10:00 pm UTC and will last 72 hours. I’ve gotten the chance to try out the Illuvium beta, and it’s a ton of fun.

🙇 New insightful threads to level up your web3 knowledge!

1. Taiko on its alpha-3 testnet launch.

2. Immutable on their product roadmap.

3. 6529 on governments and public blockchains.

✨ My NFT tool of the week: NFT Inspect

NFT Inspect’s browser extension is a useful tool for analysts and community members alike. The extension will automatically detect NFT profile pictures on Twitter. Once it identifies one, you can click on it to be provided with information about the NFT like its traits, rarity, and sale history. The extension will also provide a list of other accounts with PFPs from the same collection so you can easily follow and connect with your fellow community members!

Action steps

• 🆕 Read The SEC Endgame, Vitalik’s Warning and EigenLayer’s Promise and 8 Strategies to Balance Your Crypto Bets in Bankless

• 🙇 Catch up on our other NFT write-ups from this week: 

  • ✧ Web3’s Mobile Gaming Moment

  • ✧ Kraken NFT Emerges

A Bankless Citizen ⚑ turned $264 into $6,077 last year. A 22x ROI 🚀 in a bear market!

Level up

🙏 Together with 🦊 MetaMask Portfolio 🦊

The web3 ecosystem is an expansive world, full of endless opportunities for those curious enough to explore them! Head over to MetaMask Portfolio to get started, where you can view your assets in one place and discover other features such as Buy, Swap, Bridge, and Stake.

Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.