The metaverse is heating up yet again, making for an overwhelmingly exciting 2023. In this week’s biggest Web3 news, another prominent art museum jumped into the metaverse, Starbucks NFTs that were handed out for free are selling for thousands of dollars, and Blur beat OpenSea’s trading volume – yes, you read that right…. Blur, the new kid on the block is giving OpenSea a run for its money. 

Prominent Art Museum Embraces NFTs

Prominent art museums have been embracing NFTs one after another for some time now. The next in the chain of embrace is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). 

The museum will display 22 digital works of art donated to it by Cozomo de’ Medici, an NFT collector and supporter of on-chain art. The 22 works of art were created between 2017 and 2022 by artists from around the world. These works are going to be displayed next to some of the most legendary pieces known to man by artists like Picasso, Monet, and Rembrandt. 

If that’s not validation, I’m not sure what is. We’re talking about a CryptoPunk and its friends being displayed next to a Picasso piece!!!

Starbucks NFTs Sell for Thousands

Have you heard of Starbucks Odyssey? Yes, it’s the NFT rewards program. It’s an early program, but it’s being met with some significant success. 

Starbucks Odyssey is in closed beta – but early adopters are already selling their NFTs from the program – and making good money doing it. They’re selling for about $2,000 each. 

So far, only 360 have sold with total volume of around $143,000. That seems low, but it makes sense. There are only a limited number of users in the closed beta. When the program fully opens, I expect that volume to skyrocket. 

Blur Outshines OpenSea

Blur, what’s Blur? Well, Blur is the new kid on the block in the NFT marketplace industry, and it’s hitting the pool with a massive splash. According to a report from CoinDesk, at one point this week, Blur had higher trading volume than OpenSea. 

Although Blur is still well behind OpenSea in terms of weekly trading volume and number of trading wallets, it’s quickly catching up. We’ll keep watching to see if David takes over Goliath as this saga continues. 

We’ll See You Next Week

That’s it for this week. Come back next Friday for the top stories in the Metaverse.