Renowned credit card company Visa has made a noticeable mark on its emergence into the NFT (or nonfungible token) space via an acquisition worth 150K USD of CryptoPunk, which happens to be a digital artwork collective that innovated the mainstream culture of the space a few years ago in 2017.
In a blog post statement posted this Monday, head of cryptocurrency at Visa and NFT proponent Cuy Sheffield stated his opinions on the value of buying into NFT assets in the age of digital economy, the enormous growth of the market in the previous years, and Visa’s own commercial motivations regarding this recent investment.
Sheffield stated that in order to help their customers and partners participate, they need a direct comprehension of the infrastructural requirements for an international brand to store, purchase, and benefit from a nonfungible token.
He added that the ability to track as well as leverage a virtual asset in numerous different environments could lead to new opportunities in gaming music, ticketing, art, and more.
Visa acquired CryptoPunk 7610, which is a female figure with a blonde mohawk hairstyle, green eyes, and red lipstick. It was initially claimed back in 2017 on the 23rd of June and initially sold a month after for a mere 0.6 Ether, which was worth 114 USD at the time.
Using blockchain’s local feature of an open ledger, it can be seen that Visa’s newly bought asset was purchased on Wednesday for 49.50 Ether, equal to 149,939 USD.
This significant investment in the NFT market comes out of Visa’s interests in the crypto market. Its cryptocurrency-friendly credit and credit cards recently processed a whopping 1 billion USD in the first half of this year.
The NFT industry experienced parabolical growth throughout last year, and that led to the historic sale of “Everyday: The First 5000 Days,”, an artwork by Beeple which amassed over 69 million USD at Christie’s auction.
Legendary heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson has also released a series of tokenized collectable items on OpenSea, which goes to show that the momentum of the NFT space is once again growing.
According to recently obtained figures, OpenSea has processed upwards of 1.18 million transactions worth 1.06 billion USD in the past thirty days. This is up by a remarkable 12,000 percent this year.
Sheffield concluded his statement by stating that besides this CryptoPunk purchase, they plan to do more in the future for the NFT industry.
