Novogratz: Galaxy Digital Starts NFT Collection with CryptoPunk

Time Stamp: November 5, 2021 4:55 PM
Source Node: 1105172
  • The cryptocurrency firm manages roughly $3.1 billion in assets, according to a filing on Wednesday
  • Galaxy Interactive, an affiliate of Galaxy Digital, raised $325 million for a second fund to invest in non-fungible tokens and interactive gaming last month

Galaxy Digital Holdings now has a non-fungible token (NFT) collection, according to a tweet from CEO Mike Novogratz on Friday.  

“We started a $GLXY NFT collection,” Novogratz said, with an image attached of a recently purchased CryptoPunk.

The firm did not immediately get back to Blockworks’ request for comment. However, Richard Kim, a general partner at Galaxy Digital, confirmed the NFT collection in a subsequent tweet.

CryptoPunk #8466 was sold six days ago for roughly $439,651.80 worth of Ether, according to Etherscan.

Novogratz said that in 10 years NFTs will “completely [change] the way we interact,” adding that the assets “don’t necessarily only have to be art. It’s just a non-fungible token that can have personal data on it.” 

“It can be money like bitcoin. It can be Quentin Tarantino’s scripts, gorgeous art or even someone’s song. It’s something digital [that] you can’t counterfeit and you know it is unique because it’s on the blockchain,” he said at the NFT.NYC conference on Tuesday. 

However, this isn’t Galaxy’s first foray into digital collectibles.

Galaxy Interactive, an affiliate of Galaxy Digital, raised $325 million for a second venture fund, dedicated to NFTs and interactive gaming, Blockworks reported in October. 

Outside of Galaxy, Novogratz has been deploying capital into the NFT ecosystem for the past several months. In June, he was announced as co-founder of Candy Digital, a new NFT start-up. Following a $100 million Series A funding round in October, the digital collectibles company is now valued at $1.5 billion. 

“Our [digital] wallets are going to be like our bank accounts. They’re going to have our healthcare records, our Bitcoin, our NFTs and our opera tickets,” Novogratz said. “That’s the future we’re going towards and it’s happening faster than most of us can imagine.”

Galaxy Digital Asset Management, an affiliate of Galaxy Digital, reported preliminary assets under management (AUM) of $3.15 billion on Tuesday for the period ending on October 31. Their AUM was up from $2.22 billion from the month prior. 

Galaxy Digital (GLXY) is up 5.87%, trading at $32.07 per share by market close.

  • Morgan Chittum

    Morgan Chittum is a New York-based reporter covering markets, NFTs, the metaverse and digital assets. Before Blockworks she was a street reporter at New York Daily News, where she wrote about homicide, extremist groups, state politics and other critical topics in New York. She was a Media and Journalism Fellow at the Poynter Institute, where she dabbled in data and investigative journalism. She is published in American Banker, Yahoo News, Chicago Tribune and more.

Source: https://blockworks.co/novogratz-galaxy-digital-starts-nft-collection-with-cryptopunk/

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