Zuck’s metaverse is a “decade” away, Trump NFTs going Ordinal, and more

Donald Trump is offering an extra-premium Ordinals NFT to users who purchase more than 100 NFTs from his most recent Mugshot collection.

Trump offers free Ordinals to sell more Mugshot NFTs.

Donald Trump is counting on Bitcoin Ordinals to boost sales of his controversial Mugshot Edition nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The corporation behind the former US president’s NFT collection has announced that everyone who buys 100 or more Mugshot Editions of the Trump Digital Trading Cards NFTs would now receive a “One-of-One” trading card as a Bitcoin Ordinal. According to a Jan. 18 post on X by CollectTrumpCards, only 200 unique Ordinals NFTs will ever be minted, and they will only be available to those who spend $99 each for at least 100 of his latest Mugshot NFTs requiring the user to spend at least $9,900 in total.

Trump’s Mugshot and Pudgy Penguins

December 2023 saw the launch of Trump’s Mugshot collection on the Polygon network. Credit cards or Wrapped Ether (WETH) might used to buy the Mugshot NFTs.Additionally, trading for Mugshot NFTs and Ordinals won’t be possible until December 2024. The project’s official X account stated that the new NFTs were for “individual enjoyment only” and that this was done to discourage their use as “investment vehicles.”

On January 17, the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection reached an incredible new all-time high, peaking at 19.05 ETH, or $47,000.
The Penguins were among the few NFT collections in the wider market to experience such a dramatic shift, rising from 10.78 ETH to 17.8 ETH in just seven days. It happens at a time when holders of other staple collections, including Bored Ape Yacht Club, are still reporting losses.

Luca Netz, the owner of the collection, who purchased the project in April 2022, is largely responsible for its ongoing success, even though it faced challenges throughout the majority of 2023. By generating additional revenue sources from the sale of plush toys and expanding the project’s Instagram page, which primarily raises awareness of mental health issues, Netz has chosen a novel approach to project development.

NFT trade volumes drop by over $15 billion by 2023, according to CoinGecko

According to a new CoinGecko research, NFTs on the top 10 blockchain networks generated a total trading volume of $11.3 billion in 2023—a staggering overall loss of $14.5 billion compared with 2022.

NFT trading volumes fluctuated throughout 2023, according to a Jan. 17 study from CoinGecko that examined overall activity in the cryptocurrency market.

Following a major increase in February, activity reached a yearly low in September before quickly rebounding in the last quarter, primarily as a result of increased interest in Bitcoin Ordinals.Although Ethereum continued to be the most popular network among NFT traders, accounting for 72.3% of annual volume, Bitcoin overtook Ethereum in December with $808 million in trading volume.

Zuckerberg’s metaverse remains a “decade” away.

According to a Meta official, Mark Zuckberg’s company has no intentions to stop investing in the metaverse, which may take more than ten years to develop.
Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s head of global business, stated at the World Economic Forum on January 17 that the company’s aim of an expanding metaverse could take a “good decade” to fully achieve.

“There was a lot of [metaverse] hype a couple of years ago, and we were always playing cautious here, telling people we still see that this is going to take a good decade to get to that full realized vision, and so we still see that we’re on that journey.”

Similar statements made by Mark Zuckerberg in April 2022, when he stated that it might take up to ten years for society as a whole to embrace his concept of the metaverse. According to data cited by Business Insider, Meta has spent more than $47 billion through Reality Labs—the subsidiary that manages the company’s virtual reality and metaverse operations—since 2019.