The Past Week in Crypto (Jan. 5th): Hyundai's Future and More

South Korean automotive company Hyundai has announced its vision for the future. This vision involves robots from Boston Dynamics, the company Hyundai acquired last year at a valuation of $1 billion. Their products will be based on the concept of  “metamobility”, a word used by the company to describe opportunities to invent things such as remotely controlling a manufacturing robot or being able to feel an object that is not physically in your surrounding area.

The metaverse is becoming more important, and the number of companies who are looking at opportunities in the space is growing too. Retail giant H&M was presented a metaverse concept by CEEK, a blockchain-based streaming platform. A similar concept by Walmart has been floating on social media. While Walmart and H&M have yet to confirm interest in the metaverse, these demos are a sign that huge corporations are aware of the evolution and are open to these concepts going forward.

The NFT space is growing more than ever, and Bored Ape Yacht Club seems to be leading the way at the moment. During the last few days, Dave Chapelle, Eminem, and Casey Neistat have all bought Bored Ape Yacht Clubs. Chapelle bought Ape #8343, Eminem bought Ape #9055, and Neistat bought Ape #1658. Collectively they spent over $1 million for the pieces. NFTs are increasingly being adopted by celebrities, and have been catapulted to the mainstream conversation.

Kosovo, a country of 1.8 million people in Southeastern Europe has forbidden the mining of all cryptocurrencies. This comes as a result of the energy shortage the country is facing due to the European energy crisis. In a country where 50% of the population is under 35, mining has become an increasingly important economic activity. This decision was made by the government due to the excessive amount of electricity miners consume. The issue of energy consumption highlights a larger problem for the crypto industry that has been spoken about in the past and that has caused debate regarding its energy efficiency. 

Stan Lee’s digital estate announced that it will release an NFT of Stan Lee’s first Indian superhero, Chakra The Invincible. Stan Lee was the comic-book creator that became synonymous with the Marvel brand, a company in which he grew to a world-leading comic book and entertainment juggernaut. The fact that Marvel and his estate acknowledge NFTs as a technology that is useful serves as validation for NFTs as a use-case in the entertainment/intellectual property fields.