New World, the newly acquired subsidiary of Graph Blockchain (GBLC.C) launched their non-fungible token (NFT) augmented reality platform in Miami earlier this month, according to a press release.
The event brought in 75 high profile guests, including celebrity artist Diogo Snow and luxury artist Max Jamali, and sold seven of its eight NFT pieces, making $38,000 for the company. That’s really not a lot of money for this space, but it’s a start.
New World is essentially an augmented reality company dealing in art-focused non-fungible tokens. They allow creators, musicians and celebrities to get access to an NFT distribution service so they can create and sell their digital art. There are some benefits to digital art, such as the ability to reach a broader market both geographically and demographically, and courtesy of the blockchain, get continuous and passive revenue through future sales.
Here’s what we wrote about NFT’s, if you’re in need of a refresher:
As a reminder, NFT are unique, blockchain crypto-assets used to verify ownership of a work of digital art. At least in this case. Non-fungible tokens can technically be used to verify ownership of anything they point at, but the markets haven’t figured that part out yet. Right now, they’re focused on art. It gives buyers limited rights to display said artwork, but they’re also buying the rights to a digital asset they could re-sell.
An artist can easily track ownership of his intellectual property by noting its position on the blockchain. New World built the platform and signed notable artists like Diogo Snow, who has produced pieces for celebrity clients like Drake, Fetty Wap and others.
The event marked a collaboration with Brandon Gil, the founder of Miami-based Gil Ventures, an event management agency for corporate, digital marketing and celebrities, such as billboard artist Jencarlos Canela. Girl will be involved in the planning for New World’s formal launch as well as on hand to handle and sign additional celebs and artists to use the platform
“We were very excited to have the New World NFT platform in operation,” said Paul Haber, chief executive officer of Graph Blockchain. “We look forward to continuing working with Brandon Gil and have more thrilling news to share as we get closer to the full launch of our platform.”
If anything, what this means for Graph Blockchain is that they’ve finally cemented themselves and their place and a product they can adequately work with instead of doing odd-jobs for companies for meager pay, which was their lot in life until the NFT market opened for them.
It didn’t help that they came about as a company during the earliest stages of the crypto-winter of 2018 when companies were dropping blockchain from their name to avoid the negative market sentiment. Now they’re acting as the bridge between shareholders and the worlds of decentralized finance, altcoin investing and non-fungible tokens.
The chart might look scary, but this is honestly par for the course for companies correlated with Bitcoin. But given that Bitcoin’s fortunes are starting to shift, the little lift in Graph’s price, itself representing a 13% jump to close at $0.065 could be something worth watching in the future.
—Joseph Morton
