Feisty Doge – a fractionalised non-fungible token – has become one of the highest-valued NFTs in the short history of the asset class. Meanwhile, Visa bought a CryptoPunk and Bitcoin pushed briefly above US$50K.

Dog-meme investors had been piling into Feisty Doge (NFD) over the past few days, causing a 721 per cent surge in price, according to a Crypto Briefing report.

The Feisty Doge image is part of a shoot with the now immortalised Shiba Inu named Kabosu, who rose to meme-culture fame as the dog that inspired DOGE, Elon Musk’s favourite crypto. It fetched US$42,935 in June, selling as one whole, non-fractionalised, NFT. 

A few days ago, the NFT’s owner, who goes by the Twitter handle @Cryptopathic, announced they were fractionalising the project into 100 billion tokens. The token can be bought and sold on SushiSwap.

NFD is up 2,199% across three days of trading and has an “implied value” of more than US$62 million at the time of writing. For a while in the past 24 hours, this valuation was above US$85 million.

In theory at least, it makes this photo of a “feisty” dog on a couch almost as valuable as the Beeple digital art that sold for US$69.3 million earlier this year.

 

Visa apes in to CryptoPunks, wallet spammed with dick pics

In other eye-opening crypto news today, it’s not just degenerates in hoodies, dog-meme fans and FOMOing crypto journos who are currently trying to catch the NFT wave.

Visa… yes, VISA – the world’s second-largest card payments company – has bought “jpeg” CryptoPunk #7610 for roughly US$150,000.

What next? Mastercard buying up generative koala cartoons? US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen using a pixelated llama as her Twitter avatar? Stranger things have happ… actually, maybe they haven’t.

Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, said in a blog post that the thought process behind the purchase was to learn more about this booming sector of crypto.

“We think NFTs will play an important role in the future of retail, social media, entertainment, and commerce,” Sheffield wrote. “To help our clients and partners participate, we need a firsthand understanding of the infrastructure requirements for a global brand to purchase, store, and leverage an NFT.”

Not missing an opportunity to take the piss, some in the crypto world with too much time on their hands have responded by spamming the wallet that holds the CryptoPunk – sending it an array of unsolicited NFTs.

So far, these include pixelated boobs, dicks, animals, turds and other eclectic images – all free for the payments giant to flip on the open market. Wonder if they’re already regretting jumping in the sandpit and mixing it with the untamed world of crypto…

 

BTC cracks half century, fails to push on

Bitcoin (BTC) today played a sublime late cut past third slip to move through its psychological resistance level of US$50K. However, it couldn’t push much further into the second session, dismissed not long after.

The Donald Bradman of crypto is currently trading at US$49,800 and up about 2.38% since stumps yesterday.

The entire state of play for crypto right now indicates we’ve got a pretty entertaining match on our hands, with the overall market up 3.9% and keeping the scoreboard ticking along nicely at $US2.24 trillion.

Source: Coin360.com

At press time, Ethereum (ETH) was also looking in excellent touch, up 5.86% and keeping the run rate flowing at US$3,356.

Firmly established at no.3 on market cap charts meanwhile, Cardano (ADA) is still in the form of its life, having hit another personal top score this session, with US$2.95 (+13%).

Three dollars doesn’t look too far away for the high-profile Charles Hoskinson-founded project, especially with its mainnet smart contracts all set to go live on September 12.

There are the usual murmerings already floating around about that being a “buy-the-rumour, sell-the-news” event. While traders are eyeing it off, HODLers might be best served to zoom out and remember it’s a five-Test series, not a T2o.

Elsewhere in the market today, Binance Coin (BNB) is up 10% in the past 24 hours. It might have something to do with an interesting new signing… or maybe it’s simply its time to pump after relentless regulatory scrutiny on the prominent exchange.

One of the biggest notable mooners today is the gaming and NFT ecosystem project WAX (WAXP), which has just received a Binance listing in the past few hours. Exchange pumps are alive and well – another indicator of bull season. It’s up an impressive 123.4% in the past 24 hours.

Others clearing the boundaries include: Cardano DeFi project DeFire (CWAP) +43.1%; Benqi (BENQI) +42%; and Polkadot DEX Polkaswap (PSWAP) +42%, which has been getting a bit of YouTbe influencer love from the likes of EllioTrades.

Tiring a bit in the field, on the other hand, has been: Paid Network (PAID) -17.9%; Yield Guild Games (YGG) -11%; and ArcherDAO (ARCH) -16.5%.

 

Also in the news: NBA, Binance and Blackrock

• Top NBA pick Cade Cunningham has signed a multi-year sponsorship deal with crypto lender BlockFi including a Bitcoin signing bonus with the Detroit Pistons.

• Binance has introduced KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements for all existing and news users, effective as of August 20. Keeping it real with the regulators.

• Major US asset manager Blackrock holds US$384 million worth of shares in Bitcoin mining firms, wrapped up in its ETFs. That’s one way to get BTC ETF exposure.

 

Read MoreBitcoinCryptocurrencyDogecoin

You might be interested in