Mickey Mouse NFTs Stir Buzz and Legal Concerns; Experts Forecast Web3's 2024 Challenges; Trump Cashes Out NFT Profits
Summary:
The newsletter highlights the surge in popularity of NFTs featuring 1928 Mickey Mouse depiction after its copyright expiration. Despite the excitement, legal warnings caution the use of the character to avoid infringing usage rights. The article also provides insights by Web3 experts on potential trends and challenges of NFTs in 2024. The commentary concludes with a discussion of former President Donald Trump's cashing out of his NFT earnings and controversies in the Bitcoin community regarding the Ordinals protocol.
Our latest newsletter focuses on the buzz created by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) featuring the 1928 portrayal of Mickey Mouse on OpenSea. This trend has sparked off legal warnings about possible infringement of the character's usage rights, which recently expired. Additionally, we delve into the thoughts of Web3 industry insiders about anticipated NFT challenges coming up in 2024 – one of the special topics aired by Cointelegraph as we welcomed the New Year. To wrap things up, dig into this week’s Nifty News to discover how ex-President Donald Trump monetized his NFT proceeds.
The 1928 iteration of Mickey Mouse has become the biggest NFT draw on OpenSea after his representation went off copyright. On January 1, this vintage version of Mickey Mouse from the short film Steamboat Willie, was made accessible to the public. A day later, an array of NFT collections tied to Steamboat Willie hit the top of OpenSea's daily trending list. The "Steamboat Willie Public Domain 2024" collection raked in a 24-hour trading volume of roughly $1.2 million, making it a top-runner on OpenSea, alongside famed collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and Pudgy Penguins.
An attorney has told the crypto sector to tread carefully with Mickey Mouse NFTs, adding, "you can't just start making your own Mickey products". As the copyright on Steamboat Willie waned, Oscar Franklin Tan, a legal expert, cautioned the crypto community on the limits of exploiting the Mickey Mouse character. Talking to Cointelegraph, Tan clarified that the 1928 Mickey likeness cannot be used to imply any association with Disney, maintaining that "Mickey Mouse, as a trademark and brand outside the character, is still private." He further revealed that the 1928 version of Mickey is still privately owned in countries with differing legal timelines.
Turning to NFT predictions for 2024, potential upcoming trends and challenges loom on the horizon. Perspectives from several Web3 professionals were gathered by Cointelegraph on what could likely be in the pipeline for the coming year. Predictions ranged from tokenizing material world assets to possible regulatory interventions. One such conjecture, put forward by Jason Lau, the Chief Innovation Officer at OKX, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, suggested that a surge of Web3-driven games might expose a wider player base to innovative NFT uses.
In a first, former US President Donald Trump has liquidated his NFT profits, while a row regarding the Ordinals protocol takes a turn for the worse. On December 8, a crypto wallet linked to Trump moved about $2.4 million in Ether (ETH) to the Coinbase crypto exchange. The transferred amount was the earnings from his NFT collections, one of which was his mugshot taken during his surrender to Georgian authorities in August 2023. Notably, the debate among Bitcoin enthusiasts relating to the Ordinals protocol has become more heated, with critics using strong language to describe Bitcoin NFTs, proclaiming they are detrimental to the network.
Do return next week for prominent updates in the fast-paced NFT arena, courtesy of COINTELEGRAPH's NFT STEEZ PODCAST. You can also get bite-sized digest of this week's landmark NFT developments.
Published At
1/3/2024 11:00:00 PM
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