NFT Marketplace Bitski Levels Up With $19 Million Investment From Serena Williams And Jay-Z

CBx Vibe:God Is An Art Collector” Kalebh

By CultureBanx Team

  • Jay-Z and Serena Williams just invested in Bitski’s $19M Series A funding round
  • NFT sales up are up 55% since 2020, from $250M to $389M

Sports, hip-hop and digital art have collided with Jay-Z and Serena Williams investing in Bitski, an NFT marketplace that aims to simplify creating, buying, and selling non-fungible tokens. Bitski, refers to itself as the “Shopify for NFTs just closed its $19 million Series A funding round led by Andreesen Horowitz. With NFT sales up 55% since 2020 from $250 million to $389 million, the NFT market fancies a kinda digital gold rush for creators in the hip hop  and sports industry alike.  

Why This Matters: Quick background on NFTs: the non-fungible token is one-of-a-kind and is being used as a digital collectible. Digital currency like Bitcoin or Litecoin is fungible, so if it’s traded for another, the end result is exactly the same thing. Not with NFTs though; once traded, an NFT is unique to its buyer. Bitski offers a free trial, until you publish an NFT and three tiers of plans after that, which range from $99 to $1,499 per month.

These digital collectibles have become big business in the music industry this year, with tens of millions of dollars being generated by the sale of these collectible digital assets. The roughly $6 billion hip hop industry is going all in on the NFT arena. For example, during this year’s NBA All Star Weekend Quavo, Lil Baby, 2 Chainz and Jack Harlow teamed up with Bleacher Report to release an NFT collection. The collection featured “four custom-designed basketballs that mix music, culture and sport with innovation.” They each received their own individual gold NFTs that sold for more than $591,000 with 2 Chainz’s No. 1 of 10 selling at the highest for 38 Ethereum or $68,030.

NFTs boomed in 2020, though some warn that a bubble is forming and ready to burst, particularly in the market for NFT art. Blockchain NFT trading has made the world of art collecting an open democratized and diverse market for the first time in history. In the first two months of the year there were $300 million in NFT sales, according to Cointelegraph. Blockchain platforms are now being used by artists to register the copyright data of digital art pieces, create proof of ownership, and be credited each time the artwork is traded digitally.

What’s Next: Bitski noted that this phase of investment will support its ambitions to “make the NFT economy more accessible for creators, brands and enterprises”. Collectors and artists alike are confident that the opportunities blockchain brings in terms of authenticity, equity, and return on investment will allow it to endure.

CBx Vibe:God Is An Art Collector” Kalebh

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