After receiving feedback from the community regarding a lack of diversity, Sotheby’s auction house has made significant changes to its latest art sale. Meanwhile, a player new to Illivium: Beyond has made an incredible profit of 140,525% by discovering the game’s most elusive character.
Sotheby’s Reboots Glitch Digital Art Sale After Addressing Diversity Concerns
Sotheby’s has announced that bidding for its upcoming digital art sale, “Glitch: Beyond Binary,” will begin on April 19. This sale is a relaunch of last month’s “Natively Digital: Glitch-ism” auction, which was put on hold due to criticism over its lack of diversity.
In an April 13 tweet, Sotheby’s stated that this art sale “will highlight the diverse artist communities that make up Glitch Art.”
Join us in welcoming the curators of «Glitch: Beyond Binary», @letsglitchit and @thedinachang, as they highlight the diverse artist communities that make up Glitch Art.
Sale opens 19 April at Sotheby’s. Introduction written by @_menkman. Discover more: pic.twitter.com/SYgMkPdlyk
— Sotheby’s Metaverse (@Sothebysverse) April 12, 2023
On the same day, Sotheby’s released a statement that emphasized the sale would represent people of all gender identities and expressions, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, languages, neurotypes, sizes, abilities, classes, religions, cultures, subcultures, political opinions, ages, skill levels, occupations and backgrounds:
“These communities do not just identify as male or female but consist of people from every gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, language, neuro-type, size, ability, class, religion, culture, subculture, political opinion, age, skill level, occupation and background.”
Sotheby’s initially paused the sale on March 27 after NFT artist Patrick Amadon announced to his 142,400 followers that he would withdraw his work from Sotheby’s upcoming “Natively Digital: Glitch-ism” art sale in protest of the lack of female representation.
Illuvium Newbie Uncovers $49,000 NFT
On April 12, Illivium announced that a newcomer to its online game had discovered the rarest Illuvitar yet, the coveted “Holo Blazing Rhamphyre,” and has sold it for an astonishing $49,128.85. The lucky player found the rare Illuvitar inside a “D1SK,” a type of digital loot box containing random illiviators and accessories available for only $32, netting the player a profit of approximately 140,525%.
Have you been watching the #illuvidex ?
Largest single Illuvitar Sale to date!
• T5 Rhamphyre ✅
• Holo ✅
• T3 Background — Yellow Drones ✅
• Rare Expression — Blazing✅
• Power — 3620 ✅Sold for 25.9875 ETH! (~$49,128.85)
Have you got your D1SKs yet anon? pic.twitter.com/hlR3ahtGMv
— Illuvium (@illuviumio) April 10, 2023
Ukraine President Signs First NFT Supporting Military
On April 9, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the country’s first non-fungible token (NFT) in a collection called “UACatsDivision,” which features cats of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. All funds donated to the Ukraine military services. At the time of writing, 3,026 NFT cats had already been purchased out of the 10,000 available.
Unique NFT from the @uacatsdivision
collection has been signed by the President of Ukraine @ZelenskyyUa !Mint your NFT at and support Ukraine! 100% of funds goes to the Armed Forces of Ukraine#NFTCollection #NFTs #NFTCommunity #OpenSeaNFT #CryptoNews pic.twitter.com/OyXDxi3Fas
— UACatsDivision (@uacatsdivision) April 8, 2023
Other Nifty News
Bitcoin (BTC) miners have made over $5 million from creating NFT inscriptions using the Ordinals protocol. According to Dune Analytics data, transaction fees for Ordinals transactions increased 240% from $1.5 million on March 10 to $5.2 million on April 12. Almost 1.1 million Ordinals have been inscribed on the Bitcoin network, mostly consisting of JPEG images and text but also PDFs, video, and audio formats.
Additionally, an NFT collector made a costly mistake by bidding 100 Ether (ETH), worth around $192,000 at the time of writing, for an NFT from the Gemesis NFT Collection that was supposed to be free to celebrate the launch of OpenSea Pro. While some community members believe the transaction was a wash trade, others argued the trader simply made a mistake bidding 100 ETH instead of $100.
Another community member argued against theories that it was a wash trade since it was too risky.
