- In 2021, the NFT market generated more than US$25 billion in trading volume, and 2022 appears to generate more figures than the previous year
- NFTs are digital assets in the form of a digital file, an image, video or audio that a seller uploads to a cryptocurrency exchange platform for people to buy through cryptos
- The KuCoin cryptocurrency trading platform announced on April 19 that it will launch a US$100 million Creators Fund to support early-stage NFT projects
Recently, Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the largest exchange platform, binance, argued that the NFT business is “bonkers”, expressing his disbelief about how successful the NFT market has become.
Changpeng quotes how almost a year ago, an NFT file sold at US$69 million, something the buyers will never even be able to touch physically!
“People may have lost their mind,” Mr Zhao told fortune.
Despite referring to the growing NFT obsession as crazy, Zhao is optimistic that the NFT market had come to rescue artists by marketing their art worldwide.
Read: Understanding NFTs and the new opportunities to monetise art
The NFT market is becoming undeniably significant when the larger population in Africa and the world fails to understand what, where, and how to trade NFTs.
NFTs are digital assets in the form of a digital file, an image, video or audio that a seller uploads to a cryptocurrency exchange platform for people to buy through cryptos.
Crypto exchange platforms have realized the growing buzz around NFTs, and they are offering incentives, giveaways, and transaction fees-free holidays to attract NFT traders to sell and buy NFTs on their platform.
Kucoin offers a US$100 million Creators Fund to support NFTs.
According to a press release by CoinDesk, The KuCoin cryptocurrency trading platform announced on April 19 that it will launch a US$100 million Creators Fund to support early-stage NFT projects.
The Seychelles-based firm wants to encourage crypto traders to venture into non-fungible tokens to appreciate talent and creativity’s visual impression and audio.
The Creators fund comes in handy to complement the newly launched KuCoin Windvane NFT Marketplace, which offers creators the opportunity to access the heavy exchange traffic and the community’s support for building initial non-fungible tokens (NFT) offerings.
Read: African governments postponing an inevitable crypto world
The fund is a joint venture between Windvane and Kucoin Ventures (KuCoin exchange venture capital arm).
The KuCoin exchange platform was launched in 2017 and had over ten million registered users in 2021. As per CoinGecko, Kucoin has a normalized 24-hour trading volume of about US$1.99 billion, with over 642 coins available on the platform.
The NFT categories of interest to the exchange platform qualifying for the fund include art, sports, profile pictures, the Asian culture, celebrities and GameFi (discovery gaming hub for games, guilds, and metaverses).
The Creators fund will also invite ninety-nine NFT creators to join the Windvane NFT marketplace, which will offer standard features like minting (converting the digital file into a digital asset), trading and storage. The Windvane marketplace supports some of the most popular NFT blockchains, including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Flow.
Coinbase has also made a similar step to attract NFT traders to the exchange platforms.
Coinbase NFT transaction fee-free holiday
The cryptocurrency exchange platform, Coinbase announced on April 20 that Coinbase NFT was officially live in beta.
The platform further announced that there would be no Coinbase transaction fees for a limited time. The company, however, plans to add on fees, but they say they will announce beforehand when that time comes.
Coinbase describes Coinbase NFT as a “Web3 marketplace for NFTs”. The over 89 million verified users of Coinbase based in 100 countries can now experience the vast collection of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
“We’re building a social marketplace powered by web3,” Coinbase added. “You won’t need a username and password. Instead, you’ll use a self-custody crypto wallet as your digital passport to log in. You’ll also use it to pay for stuff and store NFTs.”
The Coinbase NFT feature will only facilitate NFTs in the form of digital illustrations, videos and photos.
African artists ranging from musicians, painters, drawers, actors, sculptors and writers can now sell their art pieces as NFTs on cryptocurrency exchange platforms.
Non-fungible tokens are booming steadily and significantly, and are giving life to the bearish crypto space, with NFT artworks consistently going for millions of dollars at auctions. In 2021, the NFT market generated more than US$25 billion in trading volume, and 2022 appears to generate more figures than the previous year.
The most expensive, NFT to ever be sold was EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS artwork, which went for a whopping US$69.3 million!
The African continent is well endowed with great culture and talent that can create value in the world’s NFT market. NFT tokens are traded similarly to traditional art, but payment is now in cryptocurrency. But most of these artists do not know how to get into the market. Here is a brief guide. Here is a brief description on how to trade NFTs.
Read: Africa is cryptocurrency-friendlier than you think
