Nifty News: Total BAYC thefts crack $18.5 million, “Ape Now, Pay Later” loans come for NFTs and more

A Dune analytics platform user has found that more than $18.5 million worth of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been marked as stolen or flagged for suspicious activity on Opensea to date. 

According to data from Dune, a user known as “Beetle” discovered that 130 BAYC and 268 MAYC NFTs were reported for suspicious activity, alongside 153 Azuki’s, 202 CloneX and 70 Moonbirds.

The total market worth of stolen NFTs from these notable collections amounts to just over $25 million.

This dashboard looks into locked PFP NFTs on OpenSea which have been flagged as stolen/suspicious

Interesting work by Beetle https://t.co/gJsgaraoVL

— Dune (@DuneAnalytics) July 6, 2022

“Ape Now, Pay Later”

Decentralized finance lending platform, Teller Finance has launched a new feature that will grant its users access to a “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) feature to purchase NFTs.

The new feature, humorously titled “Ape Now, Pay Later” is built on the polygon network and allows users to own NFTs outright while paying off the total price tag over time, much like other BNPL services such as AfterPay.

At the time of writing Teller Finance’s BNPL feature applies to notable NFT collections including: Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Moonbirds, Doodles, Cool Cats, Azuki, Meebits and more.

Australia Launches First NFT Ticketed Music Festival

An all-ages, touring music festival named “The Grass is Greener” has become the first major Australian music festival to utilize NFT technology as part of its ticketing process.

We are SO excited to make our mark in history as Australia’s FIRST EVER NFT ticketed music festival.

With a limited supply of unique PFP NFTs...this is the FIRST EVER PFP NFT Ticketed Music Festival in the WORLD!

1/6 pic.twitter.com/2NzTxlFmMh

— The Grass is Greener Music Festival (@TGIGFestival_) May 17, 2022

According to the festival’s official Twitter, a collection of 1,111 limited edition NFTs will grant owners access to the event like a conventional ticket, but will also open up special features to the more Web3 savvy festival goers including life-time tickets, VIP experiences, backstage passes and more.

NFT technology has entered the festival ticketing arena globally — earlier this year, major American music festival Coachella, integrated NFT technology with their “Coachella Keys” collection, which allowed committed fans to mint NFTs that granted a range of ultra-exclusive benefits, including VIP experiences and life-time passes.

That’s not an NFT — This is an NFT.

New analysis from CashNetUSA has found that Australians are big fans of NFTs, ranking number 8 in the world in terms of monthly search volume on Google and Twitter.

When it came to sentiment, Australians were quick to express positive thoughts about NFT technology — for every 1,000 tweets, 539 were found to show “love” for NFTs compared to 79 that expressed “hate”. Axie Infinity, the Vietnamese play-to-earn sensation, was the overall Aussie favorite NFT project.

Singapore and Hong Kong took the top spots however, with more searches for NFTs than any other country with 18,717 and 15,213 monthly searches, respectively. 

Additionally, the study found that people from Eastern European countries were the most passionate about NFTs on both sides of the spectrum. People from Montenegro were most likely to post pro-NFT tweets, while Twitter users from Poland were much more likely to express an anti-NFT sentiment.

Another survey, released in March this year by NFT Club found that Aussies actually rank #2 in the world for interest when it comes to NFTs, beaten to the top spot by Taiwan.