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Hey Waivly Crew! 🌊 Warner Music Group is building a musical theme park within The Sandbox’s virtual world. In a new report this week, Ark Invest predicted Ethereum will hit a $20 trillion market cap by 2030.

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Warner Music Group partners with The Sandbox

Warner Music Group has partnered with The Sandbox to create a musical theme park and concert venue within the metaverse.

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According to a press release announcing the partnership, Warner Music Group’s virtual LAND in The Sandbox will feature shows and musical experiences from the label's roster of artists, including Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Jack Harlow, Dua Lipa, and many others.

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The partnership marks The Sandbox’s first deal with a major music company as well as Warner Music Group’s first step into the metaverse. The Sandbox is a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, which just last week announced a $358 million funding round, valuing the company at over $5 billion.

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Sebastien Borget, chief operations officer and co-founder of The Sandbox, said that the partnership “brings the open metaverse one step forward in the direction of fan-owned and community-driven initiatives.”

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“We’re shaping The Sandbox as a fun entertainment destination where creators, fans, and players can enjoy first-of-a-kind immersive experiences and be more closely connected to their favorite musical artists through NFTs,” he added.

Lamborghini announces “Space Time Memory” NFT drop

Lamborghini has been teasing its entry into the world of NFTs for over a month. But now, the automaker has officially announced its first NFT drop.

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Lamborghini will auction off a series of linked digital and physical NFTs that it produced in collaboration with Swiss artist Fabian Oefner, as well as NFT Pro and Sotheby’s.

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The digital component of the NFT is a photograph designed by Oefner that depicts a Lamborghini Aventador Ultimae lifting off toward the stars. Oefner created a total of five images, all within seconds from each other, showing the car's parts shooting away from the chassis like the exhaust flame of a rocket.

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With each NFT, the auction winners will get a set of carbon fibre “space keys” that the company sent to the International Space Station back in 2020 as a part of a joint research project. The space keys will come in a case engraved with a unique QR code that corresponds to the accompanying digital artwork.

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The auction for the first of the five NFTs will take place on Lamborghini’s NFT website on February 1st at 4 PM CET. Each auction will last 75 hours and 50 minutes – the time it took Apollo 11 to reach the moon.

The Waves

👀 Reddit is testing NFT profile pictures

👟 Nike is hiring for its metaverse plans with five positions

🚀 Nansen releases 2021 Crypto Industry report

💰 Social media scammers stole at least $770 million in 2021

Crypto Special

Ark Invest shares 2030 Bitcoin and Ethereum price prediction

American investment management firm, Ark Invest, is extremely bullish on crypto, specifically the two leading assets in the space.

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In a new report titled “Big Ideas 2022,” Ark Invest’s research team envisioned that by 2030, Bitcoin’s price could exceed $1M by 2030 as the cryptocurrency’s global usage is still only in a very early stage.

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“Bitcoin’s market capitalization still represents a fraction of global assets and is likely to scale as nation-states adopt it as legal tender. According to our estimates, the price of one Bitcoin could exceed $1 million by 2030,” ARK analyst Yassine Elmandjra wrote.

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Ark gave an exact price estimate of $1,360,000 BTC, which would be a market cap of $28.5 trillion. According to analysts, this price appreciation would be primarily fuelled by investors storing Bitcoin as digital gold, institutional investments, and corporations stocking their treasuries with BTC.

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Ark didn’t stop there, as the investment titan also shared a very optimistic prediction for Ethereum. ARK says that Ethereum will continue to benefit from the rise of DeFi and NFTs, being the main ecosystem for both industries.

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Because it is the “preferred collateral” in DeFi, ARK believes ETH could reach a market cap of $20 trillion in the next ten years, which suggests a price of around $170,000-$180,000.

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“According to our research, Ethereum could displace many traditional financial services, and its native token, ether, could compete as global money. As financial services move on-chain, decentralized networks are likely to take share from existing financial intermediaries.”

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Putin backs crypto mining despite Russian Central Bank’s call for ban

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not on board with the Central Bank of Russia's recent call to regulate the mining of cryptocurrencies, as well as its proposal to ban it completely.

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In a video conference on January 26th with members of the Russian government, Putin asked to hold talks on the subject of banning cryptocurrencies. While he acknowledged "certain risks, first and foremost to citizens of the country, given significant volatility," he reminded everyone not to neglect the advantages Russia has in crypto mining.

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"We also have here certain competitive advantages, especially in so-called crypto-mining. I mean the surplus of electricity and the well-trained personnel available in the country,” said Putin.

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Last week in a report, Russia’s central bank proposed to completely ban the use and mining of cryptocurrencies on Russian territory. The report stated that the financial stability risks of crypto are “much higher for emerging markets, including in Russia.”

Own and secure your crypto with Ledger

If you’re into cryptocurrency and own crypto assets, you need a secure place to store your coins and tokens. You probably already know that you shouldn’t store your crypto on an exchange due to potential hacks, not being solely in control of your crypto’s private keys, and for other reasons, and so a hardware wallet is the way to go and the best option to protect your private keys, therefore, you should make the move to a Ledger wallet.

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Ledger wallets are an extremely secure and premium way to secure, manage, and grow your crypto assets with their Bluetooth-enabled hardware wallets, and easy-to-use app which lets you manage your portfolio on the go. They let you manage multiple assets, buy, sell, grow, and exchange crypto, gain financial freedom by you being in full control and ownership of your private keys, and so much more.

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The wallets are really simple to setup, and to move your crypto over to, so there’s no reason not to secure your assets and take control of your cryptocurrency now and get yourself a Ledger device. You can manage 1800+ coins and tokens directly in the Ledger Live app once you’ve got your device up and running, so you’ll always have your entire portfolio covered.

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