• Massive interest in Starbucks’ Polygon NFTs has pushed their resale price into the thousands of dollars. (NiftyGateway)
• Azra Games, founded by veteran EA game developer, raises $10M for NFT-themed Legions & Legends. (Fortune)
• YouTube’s new CEO embraces Web3 for the platform giant. (Wishu)
• London-based Blockchain.com is reportedly selling off assets in a "scramble for capital." (Decrypt)
• The SEC imposed a $1.4M fine on retired NBA great Paul Pierce for failing to disclose he was paid to shill EthereumMax tokens. (Fortune)
• ‘Less interest than anticipated’ — PROOF cancels NFT event. (Twitter)
• Artist paid $150K for Bitcoin wizard meme on Ordinals. (NFT News Pro)
• The Sydney-based cocktail bar, Bar Lulu, launched on Feb. 21, along with an NFT members club bar named Cryptolulu. (NFT News Pro)
• Former Amazon exec launches Yelp-like platform to review NFTs. (TechCrunch)

A phrase commonly used in the NFT space is “the art is the utility,” which refers to the fact that these digital collectibles don’t need to power anything other than their own existence to be sought after. What is clear from many exhibits on AI and web3 is that stunning art, viewing it, and being inspired and moved still matters draws crowds. NFTs unfortunately don’t possess this same power yet. This bears the question, where art is its own utility, does it need NFTs?

Oftentimes, exhibitions that showcase NFTs in the form of QR codes are too much of a fuss and don’t tend to attract the same attention the art itself does. Often, trying to simply scan a QR code to claim a free NFT comes with needing to download a complex app and set up a MetaMask crypto wallet. It just feels too techy and overwhelming for the average consumer...

Read on Wishu

Mastodon and Nostr, more decentralized alternatives to Twitter or Facebook are emerging and providing users with greater control over their posts and personal data. 

Recently, Nostr in particular has become popular among Bitcoin users and has drawn support from prominent individuals including Twitter co-founder and longtime CEO Jack Dorsey and Edward Snowden.

So, what makes Nostr so special? “For me, it’s the simplicity, openness, and speed of development,” Dorsey told Fortune via Nostr direct messaging. “It’s not just about building a social media service, but rather to add resilience and resistance to a multitude of use cases and services. The focus now is on client and social, but the real power is going to be the microapps people build on this and how they seamlessly work together. I don’t see similar projects going after that goal.”

Instead of having separate login details for the likes of Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, Nostr users are able to log into decentralized alternatives of these sorts of applications with a single set of credentials and not have to worry about their account getting banned or content being censored.

Many of Nostr’s most prominent users were also early adopters of Bitcoin, including Martti Malmi, who was the second developer to work on Bitcoin after the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Malmi recently integrated Nostr into his own social media app, Iris, which has led to a massive increase in the number of users for the platform.

According to Malmi, the level of enthusiasm around Nostr is very similar to the early days of Bitcoin with perhaps an even faster speed of development.

While for years NFTs have mostly been shunned by the traditional art world, that may be starting to change—in a big way. 

This week, the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA) received 22 NFT pieces of art from major artists like Dmitri Cherniak, Cai Guo-Quiang, Matt DesLauriers, and Monica Rizzoli. The pieces, donated by pseudonymous NFT collector Cozomo de’ Medici, will be placed in the museum’s permanent collection.

The LACMA NFT donation is the latest effort to bring more blockchain-based art to notable museums. Last week, the Paris-based Centre Pompidou acquired 18 NFT works by 13 international and French artists for its collection.