Despite the fact that NFTs have slowed this week, there is still plenty of activity in the market. New music properties are making waves, the SEC is looking into some aspects of the NFT market, and there’s a lot of talk in the NFT community about OpenSea’s centralized decision-making regarding some geo-restricted access for users.

The SEC Examines the Non-Fungible Token Market This Week

According to reports released earlier this week, the SEC is focusing on the NFT market. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating NFT marketplaces and creators to see if they are in violation of securities regulations. “The regulator’s main goal is to investigate if particular NFT tokens are being used to raise money in the same way that traditional securities are,” our team reported recently.

Although the NFT has slowed in recent months, there has been a lot of criticism about rising NFT scams and rugpulls, including celebrity involvement, which is likely catching the SEC’s attention and fueling this week’s story. While some regulation in the space is undoubtedly necessary, an outcome similar to what we saw with ICOs in 2017/2018 would be a significant burden for the NFT market to bear in the short term.

Universal Music Group and Billboard For New NFTs Billboard and Universal Music Group (UMG) have teamed up to form ChartStars, a Flow blockchain-based NFT project that will honor Billboard’s triumphs and milestones over decades of charting hot new hits with artist-focused digital art.

According to Billboard, the ChartStars NFTs will feature “officially licensed art and creative, including short visual clips from music videos and album photography.” Through the ownership of ChartStars NFTs, the project is expected to include gamification elements such as challenges, leaderboards, and exclusive access to Billboard live events.

Users of OpenSea in Venezuela and Iran have been blocked.

OpenSea’s recent attempt to block access to customers with IP addresses residing in Iran and Venezuela was one of the hot topics in this week’s NFT conversation.

The platform “prohibits individuals and areas on the United States’ sanctions list from accessing our services – including purchasing, selling, or transferring NFTs on OpenSea,” according to an OpenSea representative.

The platform’s degree of centralization has been a source of criticism from crypto-native users since day one, and while the leading NFT marketplace hasn’t implemented KYC for its users, it has shown a higher degree of centralization – as evidenced by this most recent maneuver – than many other NFT marketplaces. It’s yet another example of OpenSea being caught between a rock and a hard place, given the size of the market in the grand scheme of things for all things NFTs, as well as the aforementioned regulatory pressure from bodies like the SEC – which could very well be putting OpenSea on the back foot in an effort to work with US regulators as much as possible.

The ‘Meme Of The Week’ is Pixelmon.

We can confidently select this week’s leader if the NFT community had a “meme of the week” award winner. Pixelmon was a gamified NFT project with a $70 million funding round for its open world RPG idea. That kind of funding put Pixelmon on par with some of today’s top video game development teams – but the initial reveal was hilariously disappointing, spawning a slew of ‘Kevin’ memes (which have already spun off into their own NFT derivatives) and plenty of warnings about the project’s potential rug or scam.

Shiba Inu Examines NFTs for the First Time

The Shiba Inu isn’t interested in being the most famous meme token, pump-machine, or anything like that. Shiba teamed up with John Richmond, an Italian-based fashion designer, for a physical fashion collaboration as well as a 10K mint NFT release this week. On the penultimate day of Italy’s fashion week, the two revealed their collaboration.

Unusual collaborations and partnerships continue to make headlines for the unconventional cryptocurrency. Shiba fans have been disappointed by the crypto’s recent partnership with Italian restaurant Welly’s, dubbed the first and only SHIB-themed restaurant. In late 2021, SHIB also started a gaming branch.