Hello everyone!

Welcome to another episode of crypto weekly, where you get updated on the significant events shaking the cryptoverse over the past few days.

In today’s episode of crypto stories and happenings, we bring you the following:

• Soccer Superstar Cristiano Ronaldo partners with Binance to Launch Exclusive NFT Collection

• Afropolitan Raises $2.1 Million to Bring Web3 to the African Diaspora

• Meta(Facebook) set to Begin Testing NFTs on Instagram Stories with SparkAR

Let’s jump right in;

1. Soccer Legend Cristiano Ronaldo Partners with Binance to Launch Exclusive NFT collection

One of the best football players in history and 5-time Balon d’or winner, Cristiano Ronaldo has entered an exclusive multi-year NFT joint marketing agreement with crypto company Binance.

The company announced that multiple Ronaldo NFT collections will be produced each year of the deal and released exclusively on the Binance NFT marketplace as part of the deal.

In an announcement posted on Twitter, Ronaldo wrote,

He also said, “My relationship with the fans is very important to me, so the idea of bringing unprecedented experiences and access through this NFT platform is something that I wanted to be a part of.”

His first NFTs for Binance is expected to go on sale later this year.

According to Partnerships analytics firm Zoomph, Ronaldo’s Twitter and Instagram posts announcing the Binance news saw over 48 million impressions in one hour!

Although fan response to the news was largely positive, a few naysayers responded to the news by calling NFTs “scammy” and “worthless crap.”

2. DappRadar: “GameFi Continues to Grow Despite Crypto Winter”

DappRadar x BGA Games Report #5, published on 21st June, featured Blockchain games as it’s latest subject.

It looked at healthy ecosystems and investments coming into the GameFi and Metaverse markets.

The report covered several projects in detail, outlining their continued success and growth.

Splinterlands, Illuvium, Galaverse, and STEPN have continued to bring new players to their platforms, gain financial interest, and expand their businesses.

According to Dappradar, a common theme between many of these popular projects was the underlying utility provided by the gaming aspect itself.

Utillization of NFT’s and crypto tokens by GameFi and Metaverse projects have begun in ways other than pure speculation.

While Bitcoin was declining in early June, the blockchain game Illuvium sold 20,000 land plots, generating 4,018 ETH for its developers, worth $72 million USD at the time the sale took place.

The report also provides that Splinterlands has held 350,000 daily unique active wallets (UAW) since May, showing a slight 4% decline from April.

3. Afropolitan Raises $2.1 Million to Bring Web3 to the African Diaspora

In an attempt to right historical wrongs and build a global digital community with real-world impact, the Web3 collective Afropolitan has announced that it has raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding to advance its vision of a digital nation for the African Diaspora.

Afropolitan was created by Eche Emole and Chika Uwazie in 2016.

This year, the group has moved into Web3, becoming a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and digital nation based on Balaji Srinivasan’s concept of the Network State and Afrofuturism.

According to Uwazie, Afropolitan will function as a DAO, where the community will have governance rights and vote on proposals.

Uwazie says that Afropolitan will also include smaller “sub-DAOs” for different projects that contribute to the larger collective.

For Emole, a new digital country is the best way to deal with years of systemic racism around the globe.

“We’ve tried everything else—we’ve tried negotiating, we’ve tried protests, we’ve tried war, we’ve tried revolution.

It’s not working, no one is listening to us,” he says.

Uwazie explained that Afropolitan will use a collection of NFTs minted on Ethereum to act as a passport to the new digital nation and also give members access to events and future services.

The NFTs will be revealed during an event at NFT NYC, now underway.

He further explained that the Afropolitan NFT collection of 10,000 NFTs is based on an Afrofuturism aesthetic.

“We are working with an artist known in the NFT space, and he has been drawing on Afrofuturism, a style of art no different than anime that needs to be brought into the forefront of the NFT space and creative space in general.”

4. Japanese Film Studio Announces the Production of a Series Based on Crypto

Japanese film studio Noma, has announced that it is producing three feature films based on the world of cryptocurrencies.

The first film, titled The Rhetoric Star, is already in production and will be released in 2024.

Taichi Ito, the founder of Noma and a producer of the series, in an announcement sent to Cointelegraph on Tuesday, said that the trilogy aims to impart knowledge about the crypto industry through creative storytelling.

He also shared proudly that their team is working with Bitcoin (BTC) experts and the award-winning sound designer Sefi Carmel.

The film series is also produced by Mai Fujimoto, the CEO of Tokyo-based blockchain firm Gracone, and Ryo Nakatsuji, an executive at Japanese publisher CoinPost.

Also, Japanese animator Haruna Gohzu, who has worked in popular anime like Pokémon, Fairy Tail and Demon Slayer will be taking the lead in the films’ animations.

According to Sefi Carmel, the team wants to create a series that shows insights from the world’s crypto experts to the masses in a “creative and accessible” way.

He said that he’s honored to join the team and excited as the world steers towards “a virtual future dependent on blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs and the like.”

5. eBay Buys Uk-Based NFT Marketplace KnownOrigin

In a bid to become one of the leaders in digital collectibles, global e-commerce giant eBay has acquired non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace KnownOrigin.

This was announced in a press release on Wednesday (June 22, 2022).

eBay CEO Jamie Iannone, in a statement said : “eBay is the first stop for people across the globe who are searching for that perfect, hard-to-find,

or unique addition to their collection, and with this acquisition,

we will remain a leading site as our community is increasingly adding digital collectibles.”

KnownOrigin’s Co-founder David Moore said it was the perfect time to partner with a major company like eBay.

He added that: “This is the start of a new chapter in the KnownOrigin story and we couldn’t choose a better time to focus on building and innovating with the team at eBay. This partnership will help us attract a new wave of NFT creators and collectors.”

Earlier on, eBay partnered with Web 3 company OneOf, to launch a hockey-themed NFT collection. Back in 2021, the e-commerce marketplace enabled the sale of NFTs on its platform.

6. Meta set to Begin Testing NFTs on Instagram Stories with SparkAR

Meta, Instagram’s parent company announced on Wednesday that it will begin testing Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT’s) on Instagram Stories using its augmented reality platform SparkAR.

The CEO Mark Zuckerberg concerning the announcement said, “We’re expanding our test so more creators around the world can display their NFTs on Instagram.”

Meta in a recent article mentioned that “Creators and collectors will be able to share their digital collectibles across Facebook and Instagram after we begin rolling out the feature on Facebook with select US creators at a later date.”

He also confirmed that Facebook is set to support NFTs in the future: “We’ll bring this feature to Facebook soon too, starting with a small group of US creators so people can cross-post on Instagram and Facebook.

We’ll also test NFTs in Instagram Stories with SparkAR soon.”

Also, Meta announced earlier this week that it would join with other tech companies to create a metaverse standards body.

The group intends to build the next version of the web and develop a shared ethos for Web3 and the metaverse.

Companies who joined the initiative includes: Adobe, Epic Games, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Qualcomm; however, Apple was noticeably missing from the pack.

7. Coinbase to Shut Down Coinbase Pro to Merge Trading Services

The United States-based crypto trading firm Coinbase, has announced officially its intention to shut down its professional trading platform Coinbase Pro on Wednesday.

The crypto exchange is currently restructuring services to bring them all into one platform and plans to migrate all advanced trading services into one unified Coinbase account.

Coinbase Pro’s services will migrate to Advanced Trade, Coinbase’s new trading section available on the exchange’s main website, Coinbase.com.

This upcoming migration of Coinbase Pro to Advanced Trade will take place gradually over the next several months as the exchange will continue to launch new upgrades to Advanced Trade.

Coinbase has explained that it will notify its customers about exact dates for sunsetting Coinbase Pro, adding: “For customers holding funds on Coinbase Pro, there is no action to take funds will remain safe on Coinbase.

Meanwhile, customers are welcome to begin using Advanced Trade on the Coinbase mobile app and Coinbase.com.”

According to the announcement, the migration aims to simplify the trading process on Coinbase by allowing professional traders to access advanced trading tools and use general Coinbase features in one place, using one balance.

“In the past, advanced traders have used Coinbase Pro for more in-depth trades and analysis.

But in order to use other Coinbase features, you had to transfer funds to your primary Coinbase account,” the firm said.

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