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GM, it has been a while, last week Monday was a holiday here in the USA and Canada so I took the week off. Lets get to it.
This week on Thursday I will be dropping another artist piece this time with one of my favorite artists in the space, Yungwknd. So make sure to subscribe so you can get that delivered to your inbox day of.
Overall, I have a couple of other interviews lined up but people have been a little slower to respond. My guess is with summer ending and since we are in a bear market, we can take it nice and slow as Usher would say.
Some other things I am working on are getting some of my longer podcast episodes into 10 minute videos to hook people to listen to them. Getting a POAP made for the 100th issue as well as finding an artist to collab on this 100th edition. The idea being the POAP will be for anyone subscribed and the limited edition NFT will be for those on my premium subscription and a couple to raffle off. At the current rate, I have about 4 months or so of content before having to worry about this but artist do be taking their time sometimes.
I have also had a bunch of new premium subs so I am going to thank every single one of them below.
Seattledog.eth
Macvynls.eth
OG.eth
Lucrece.eth
thebluffer.eth
Nonlinear.eth
Brennen.eth
Pi-chi.eth
Inceptionally.eth
T0p0s.eth
Tani.eth
Discodancin
mbranson
Although this may not appear to be crypto related, with so many artist and web3 people still using crypto heavily, this impacted a ton of artists. Make sure to check out the thread below of artist impacted and I am sure there are more. I know that having a decentralized social media protocol can seem overkill for many and that doomsday scenario of being blocked or worse, your country blocking a certain site therefore your audience may seem far fetched but we really are seeing it happen infront of our eyes. Keep in mind that Brazil is not some small ass country either. And you might be thinking well that won't happen to me, or I am smart enough to use a VPN but even that sometimes might not be enough. This is why I started spending more time on Farcaster, it sucks to get started all over again but the overall gain for me incase some shit like this ever happens outweighs the unpleasantness of being small fish (even though I was never big on Twitter following wise). Just something to think about.
SuperRare for all the flack they can receive sometimes really does seem to try and help our artist as much as they can with their platform. Facilitating private sales can be tough and with this new release they are hoping to make it a bit easier while also getting a piece of the action.
MagicEden appears to be trying to separate its risk and functionality based on region, specifically if you are based in the USA. With an election year this year, I really do hope we can turn it around on our end with our crypto stance. The USA has really not been doing a great job at guiding innovation in our sector by going after Uniswap, Opensea, developers and more.
Although not fully crypto related, Shopify is partnering up with Roblox to offer a more immersive shopping experience inside of Roblox. Hearing this announcement, all I can help think of is NFTs. My hope is that Shopify already integrating NFTs into their platform this is a sneaky way of getting brands to sell immersive shopping experiences and in the end they won't even know there are NFTs on the back end especially with those linked to physical goods.
On the heels of Gnosis announcing 5% back on their crypto debit card, Metamask also offering their card as well. Mastercard comes swinging with their customer base and brand name to also take a crack at this space. It makes a ton of sense to get in on this space for many people you will have more data available to you as a brand in web3 than web2 with peoples spending habits. It is going to be hard to break the grip that rewards points have on the USA but for the rest of the world some of these cards are the only means of having access to larger institutions. The debit card space is something that needs to be made "more sexy" and I am hoping crypto can step in and fill that void.
Mastercard launches crypto debit card in Europe, allowing users to spend from self-custodial wallets at 100 million merchants.
We can now set a preferred wallet on Warpcast and I have never been so excited. I really disliked having to send funds to my coinbase wallet to be able to buy hypersub time, pokemon cards etc. Now with this roll out, spending my ETH is as easy pressing a button which is great but also dangerous.
🚨 Rainbow now supports Warpcast mobile transactions 🚨 you all know that there's endless actions you can make onchain when scrolling Warpcast: ⚡️ opening Pokemon cards 💸 paying your friends ❤️ minting whatever so go have fun exploring with Rainbow 🌈 (yes this means we added MWP my nerd friends)
To no ones surprise, XCOPY continues remaining a popular artist to collect from during this bear market. In the last couple of weeks, we have seen sales for 50ETH, 30ETH, 15.65ETH and more. Favorite one being this States of Us piece.
This thread by Chrisroc which may have driven the sale of the latest SIMULACRUM for 11.5ETH. Is definitely worth the read. As a fully onchain art appreciator, I cannot wait for the next piece to come out in the FRESH HELL contract.
Kanbas has been collecting heavily this bear market. Including one of my own pieces (thank you)! But this purchase by Kanbas definitely takes the cake, one of best ACK pfps you have can have.
MendezMendez is a favorite of mine in the space, for the dailies he is working on (235+), his recent clickcreate drop. This piece sold to OSF for 1.5ETH.
Speaking of MarketInsights. Polymarket has been on a tear recently with their partnerships and overall strategy of being infront of as many people in as many places as possible. Now they have made their way to the famous Bloomberg terminal, unifying all shitheads around the globe.
Some of you may know that Jarritos SB Dunks are some of my favorite shoes. Mostly for the sheer fact I grew up on Jarritos anytime we had a carne asada or tacos. The Jarritos team is back with 6 1/1 custom shoes and these are banging.
Weiss Watch Company is one of my favorite watch makers in the game. America used to have a thriving watch scene since we had a huge train industry 100 years ago and we needed watches to stay on time. Slowly but surely we lost this part of our identity and now swiss watches are all the rage. Weiss is trying to change that and I am all for that. They recently did a collab with imogene and willie and these watches are stunning.
This week I have my eyes on this piece by ol1y. I am a huge fan of fully onchain art and most definitely will be partaking in this auction.
⊡ AUCTION UPDATE ⊡ 
I swear I have been talking about these mini plushies for a hot minute now, but I think we are closer now to getting smaller monster plushies by Des
I think we need a poor people edition for me as I don't have an expensive PFP but I found this pretty funny.
Have a great rest of your week!
CIAHOAD-Rick James
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GM ☕ You've Got A New Issue In Your 📥 Web3 faced a major setback as Brazil banned its citizens from using X. This reinforces my belief in decentralized social platforms. MagicEden is now dividing its userbase between the USA & the rest of the world, reducing risk and exposure. Shopify teams up with Roblox, nudging us closer to a metaverse shopping NFT experience. The crypto debit card market is on fire with fierce competition; here's why you should keep it on your radar. @xcopy.eth remain hot this market, did @chrisroc.eth manifest a sale with his thread? Why I am bullish on fully onchain art. Kanbas continues not only supporting smaller artists but also does a massive purchase for an ACK piece. Lastly, I got my eyes on this ol1y_art SR auction. https://paragraph.xyz/@0xgramajo/84
A huge setback indeed, especially for us Brazilian artists. Promoting our work has been a huge challenge.
100% Brazil is not a small country for ppl to brush it aside as not big news. I know things arent perfect here either but harder to pull the plug on your audience here on FC
Yes my friend, I've been focusing a lot here
gm, reading it today! 1000 $DEGEN 🎩🫡
New issue. 200 $degen