Welcome to the 44th issue of the DeFi Arts Intelligencer, your weekly source for key happenings around Ethereum art, collectibles, games, finance, and more. Subscribe here.

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The DeFi Arts Intelligencer has its next sponsor! It’s Async Art. Ethereum’s premier programmable art movement and platform, Async Art centers around artists’ Master tokens and Layer tokens, the latter of which can be used by collectors to collaboratively affect the appearance of the former. This weekend alone Async Art artists collectively fetched ~300 ETH at auctions — it’s a major platform to watch going forward accordingly!

For this dispatch:

🎨 Digital Art & Collectibles

• Async Art saw its USD sales record broken with “Eth Boy,” a collaboration between acclaimed artists Trevor Jones and Alotta Money. The charming and programmable piece sold for a whopping 260 ETH, or ~$140,000 at current prices …

  

  Async Art @AsyncArt

  🔥New sales record🔥 "EthBoy" by @trevorjonesart & @money_alotta sold for 260ETH ($140K+) to @MaxStealth5! This is the highest USD value for a single #AsyncArt we've seen! Artists made over 297 ETH ($165K+) at this past weekend's auctions 🥳. #ProgrammableArt #NFTs

  

  9:48 PM ∙ Nov 21, 2020

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• I helped the artist Bård Ionson create an advocacy campaign around his latest Async Art masterpiece, “The Gate.” The piece sold for 8.2 ETH at auction today 🥂 …

  

  𝙱å𝚛𝚍 𝙸𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚘𝚗 @BardIonson

  Sold for 8.2 Eth ~ $4,400 async.art/art/master/0xb… @AsyncArt

  

  async.artThe Gate by Bård Ionson | async artWelcome to “The Gate,” an entrance to solitude, relief, and peace. Throughout the day the work’s form changes, and as time flows on you may discover its origin and purpose. The piece is created from hand-selected images of eastern and western toilets that were used to train an AI machine learning mo…

  7:18 PM ∙ Nov 21, 2020

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• Secondary sales on leading Ethereum art platform SuperRare eclipsed the $1 million mark this week. Notably, royalties from SR secondary sales are automatically distributed to artists via smart contracts, a feature that has no analogue in the mainstream art world.

• Illustrator José Delbo’s comic DEATH sold out of its 250 editions on art platform MakersPlace.

• NFT loans platform NFTfi has facilitated $120,000 in loans to date …

  

  Mason Nystrom @masonnystrom

  NFT loans continue to grow on platforms like @nftfi. The platform has facilitated over $120,000 in loans to date with ~$8,000 in paid interest. NFT liquidity grows day by day!

  

  

  Gabby Dizon @gabusch

  Just borrowed 10 ETH from @nftfi using @trevorjonesart "Cubist Satoshi" as collateral - i bought this for 4.3 ETH 4 months ago, and would rather take out a loan for liquidity rather than sell it. Pretty sure it will be worth a lot more by the time my loan is done! https://t.co/X5XuEjmHjD

  6:33 PM ∙ Nov 19, 2020

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🕹️ Blockchain Games

• Ethereum’s darling blockchain game, Axie Infinity, saw its team raise another $860,000 through a strategic sale of the game’s new AXS governance tokens.

• Talented chess player and popular Twitch chess streamer Alexandra Botez is streaming a chess match with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin tomorrow, Nov. 21st.

• Global fantasy football game Sorare had $255,000 in volume over the last 7 days!

♦️♦️ DeFi News

• The trading protocol Uniswap ended its first round of UNI rewards.

• The total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi ecosystem is at an all-time high of $14.39 billion right now.

• An attacker swiped $20 million worth of crypto from Pickle Finance using an “evil jar” exploit.

📰Fresh Content

• 📰 “TokenSmart NFT Humpday Report #8: The Crypto Bulls Are Back 🐂🐂🐂” - me, for nft42

Thanks for reading, and stay creative on- and off-chain!

Keep an 👁️ out for the 45th issue of the DeFi Arts Intelligencer this time next week, too. Cheers ✌️

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About DeFi Arts Intelligencer

The DeFi Arts Intelligencer is curated by me, William M. Peaster, a professional writer and editor who’s been tracking the Ethereum and DeFi beats in recent years.

I’m passionate about art and a DeFi/NFT optimist, so putting together this newsletter is both fun and informative for me. I hope others may find the content helpful, too. But be mindful, the information herein should not be construed as investment advice. I’m not a financial adviser, and these are my opinions. Always take care to seriously consider the various layers of risk you face in participating in the still-maturing cryptoeconomy.

If you have a DeFi tip or lead, questions or comments, or would be interested in commissioning me for a writing gig, you can ping me at wmpeaster@gmail.com or on Telegram at @wmpeaster.

If you enjoy this newsletter and want to support it, feel free to subscribe or have a like-minded friend subscribe as well. I have collected NFTs open for offers, too, as well as my own art NFTs available. Tips also accepted at wmpeaster.eth. Thanks kindly!