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A collection of five NFTs by the 18-year-old artist FEWOCiOUS, whose real name is Victor Langlois, has sold for $2.16 million USD at an auction hosted by Christie’s . “Hello, i’M Victor (FEWOCiOUS) and This Is My Life” is based on the artist’s experience of growing up in an abusive household as a transgender man, with each of the NFTs chronicling a different year in his life beginning at age 14. “Christie’s is thrilled to collaborate with FEWOCiOUS on the sale of this inspiring series—a collection that is at its core about the realization of a dream,” said Noah Davis, Head of Digital Sales at Christie’s, in a press release . “The artist’s passion shines through, and depicts the path he took to becoming his true self—making it exceptionally powerful.” When the sale first went live on June 23, the Christie’s site crashed as it was inundated with traffic potential buyers, making FEWOCiOUS the youngest artist to do so. Rescheduled for two days later, the auction wrapped up yesterday, June 30, receiving bids from over 20 collectors, who had the option to pay in either bitcoin or ether. Along with the NFT of the artwork, buyers will receive the physical painting and will also have the opportunity to meet FEWOCiOUS in-person. After the successful auction, FEWOCiOUS posted an emotional video to Twitter thanking his fans. Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

Five Saudi artists were recently chosen as winners of the first Misk Art Grant, claiming prizes worth more than $25,000 each. The new grants come as artists are gaining new visibility and recognition in a kingdom experiencing social and cultural changes, and they signal significant new support for the creative arts. The grants are a project of the Misk Art Institute , which is supported by the foundation of the kingdom’s crown prince, and which plans to award the grants annually. Works by the artists who received the first grants went on display in early December during Misk Art Week, the institute’s flagship event. The exhibition is called “ Mukooth , ” meaning to stay, dwell and sojourn—a theme chosen in reference to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which put many artists’ work and careers on hold. Reem AlSultan, chief executive of the Misk Art Institute, explained: “The Covid-19 pandemic affected art production with the closure of studios due to limited resources and funding; research towards creative projects and the development of new ideas was also disrupted. Very simply, Misk Art Week felt compelled to support and continue the conversation.” The winners of the inaugural prizes are Hmoud AlAttawi, Alaa AlGhufaili, Saad AlHowede, Muhannad Shono and Ayman Zedani, chosen from a field of more than 60 applicants. The grant is one part of a critical turning point for the cultural scene in Saudi Arabia, Zedani said, ensuring artists are recognized for their role in a cultural revolution that’s an extension of the social changes being seen across the kingdom, including the 2018 decision that allowed women to drive—a freedom that sits uneasily alongside a continuing intolerance of political dissent . Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

Leonardo da Vinci‘s Head of a Bear , which is approximately the size of a postage stamp, sold for a record £8.9 million GBP ($12.2 million USD) at Christie’s London . According to Artnet , the silver point drawing measures at only two-and-three-quarters inches square and is believed to be part of a series of animal studies da Vinci created in the early 1480s. The piece, drawn on pink-beige prepared paper, was privately acquired in 2008 via London dealer Johnny van Haeften, who called it “a very charming drawing.” The Leiden Collection director of exhibitions added, “It’s a huge rarity in itself.” The provenance of Head of a Bear is quite admirable, as it previously belonged to 18th century British painter and Old Masters drawings collector Thomas Lawrence, as well as British captain Norman Robert Colville. It was also exhibited at several institutions such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the National Gallery in London. The work fronted Christie’s £19.5 million GBP ($27 million USD) “Exceptional Sale,” which also included a manuscript signed by Isaac Newton and a 17th century Charles I silver inkstand, which went for £1.7 million GBP ($2.3 million USD) and £1.9 million GBP ($2.7 million USD) respectively. Stijn Alsteens, head of Christie’s Old Master drawings department, told CNN that Head of a Bear “will undoubtedly be one of the last drawings by Leonardo to ever come to the market.” Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

Longtime Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who has helmed the company since its founding in 1994, has officially handed over his title to former Amazon Web Services head Andy Jassy. Bezos remains linked to the company as its Executive Chair . Jassy, 53, first joined Amazon in 1997 and led Amazon Web Services since its inception in 2003. He was named CEO of the division in 2016, which research indicates c ontrols about a third of the cloud computing market. Bezos said in May that he decided to step down on July 5, as it holds special meaning. “We chose that date, because it’s a sentimental one for me. It’s the date that Amazon was incorporated in 1994, exactly 27 years ago,” he said at Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting. Bezos first announced h is departure in February, after helping build the company over 27 years into one of the largest and most successful e-commerce platforms in the world. “In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives,” he wrote in a letter to Amazon employees. “Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.” Bezos explained that the role of being Amazon’s CEO is “consuming,” and that he intends to devote more time to his other business ventures. “Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming,” he said. “When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else. As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.” Bezos is currently the richest person in the world and has a net worth of $197 billion USD. The 57-year-old’s next role will be passenger aboard Blue Origin‘s first commercial spaceflight on July 20. Bezos will fly alongside his brother Mark, a mystery auction winner who bought a seat for $28 million USD, and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old who has spent the past six decades trying to get to space. Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

Twitter has been heating up over a recent rumor that Apple will soon announce that the global tech company has gotten back into the bitcoin pool with a recent $2.5 billion USD purchase of the cryptocurrency. Amongst the Twitter accounts pushing this rumor is GalaxyTrading . Joshuwa Roomsburg, CEO of ChainLeak has chimed in on the potential rumor, stating that he will purchase the new iPhone to commemorate Apple’s bitcoin purchase. He tweets , “I won’t use it, I’ll just keep it as a souvenir for when #BTC started its climb to $100k. ⏳ Imagine what alts will do!” Though the news excites some fans, some are also skeptical, pointing out Apple’s recent history with bitcoin. When Tesla announced its bitcoin purchase in February, the currency immediately spiked up by 20 percent on the same day. Some are speculating that a similar trend will follow if Apple makes its announcement. Rumors were first ignited in late May when people noticed Apple’s job postings lean towards the company’s potential interest in bitcoin. However, with the exception of the recent hiring, Apple has not made any affirmative moves towards cryptocurrency so far. Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

We've seen bootleg fashion NFTs, we've even seen NFTs from luxury giants, we've seen sneaker NFTs, but we haven't seen any of the big sportswear players wade into the field until now. ASICS is poised become the first company of its ilk to issue official NFTs with its "Sunrise Red" NFT collection — thankfully, it's no mere cash grab but what the company describes as an effort to support the next generation of sneaker designers. 189 individual NFTs are being offered by the sportswear company, comprising various editions of nine digital versions of ASICS shoes like the GEL-LYTE III, Metaracer, and even ol' reliable flip-flops. Each NFT will be offered for sale via auction in a limited edition of 20, bolstered by a single unique gold edition. Winning bidders receive the NFTs, digital textures and 3D models of their prize and — if they snagged a gold edition — they'll also receive a complimentary future ASICS NFT. Normally we'd be relatively unimpressed by a giant corporation utilizing a timely trend (NFTs are still hot, right?) to enrich itself, but ASICS' intentions here are actually pretty thoughtful. All proceeds from the NFT sales will fund the new ASICS Digital Goods Artist-In-Residence Program, a platform for new and established digital artists alike to envision ASICS' ongoing NFT drops. It'd be interesting if ASICS also utilized these conceptual shoes as a springboard to create imaginative real-world sneakers (giving the original designers a cut of the credit and cash, of course) but the initiative is currently focused on the digital design angle alone. "At ASICS we strive to be at the forefront of innovation in the sporting goods sector," Joe Pace, Head of Business Development, ASICS Running Apps, said in a statement. "So, while we are excited to drop the world’s first digital shoe release from a major sporting goods company, this is only the beginning. In coming together with some of the most creative and forward-thinking digital artists in the world through our new Artist-in-Residence program, our long-term vision is to push the boundaries of digital goods to inspire physical activity." Bidding on the ASICS NFTs begins on OpenSea J uly 15 and ends July 19. Digital designers looking to enter ASICS' new program should head over to the dedicated ASICS NFT site for more information. Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is offering citizens $30 USD worth of bitcoin when they sign up to the government’s new crypto wallet called Chivo . Earlier this month, the country made history by becoming the first nation in the world to recognize bitcoin as legal tender. Bukele’s proposal to bring cryptocurrency to the Salvadorian mainstream, dubbed the Bitcoin Law, was approved by congress with a supermajority of 62 votes. The law is slated to kick in on September 7. In a press conference on Friday , the 39-year-old leader expanded on the law and offered new incentives for signing on to the government scheme. He introduced the government’s new cryptocurrency wallet, Chivo, which is available for download on iOS and Android, and assured the public that the necessary training and mechanisms will be provided in order to get everyone up to speed. “What is intended is to connect the country with the world and economic development,” Bukele said, stressing that bitcoin will never replace the U.S. dollar and its implementation will remain optional. He added that by installing Chivo and registering with their phone number and ID, users will receive $30 USD worth of cryptocurrency. “These will be free and may be used for consumption,” he explained. However, bank accounts with dollars will remain in dollars, along with pensions and salary deposits. “This is a law that is made for the benefit of the population,” he concluded. “It is a law that puts us in the eyes of the world and in the end everyone will see the benefits of bitcoin from September 7.” Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

RTFKT — the digital fashion powerhouse that made history this February selling $3.1 million worth of NFT sneakers in just seven minutes — has just scored $8 million in funding “to create the future of fashion for the metaverse.” The NFT startup secured the funds in a recent seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. With the sizeable new investment, RTFKT Studios plans to scale its team of three by hiring creators and artists, build an NFT marketplace, and invest in personnel to build a new virtual world. It's a promising prospect given the impact RTFKT has already achieved with a skeleton team. “RTFKT" is leading the way in building the bridge between digital and physical fashion ... As we spend more time in virtual worlds, I believe that we will care just as much about our digital sneakers and handbags as we do our physical ones,” explained Jonathan Lai of Andreessen Horowitz in a statement.“Over the past decade, games have evolved from entertainment into social networks — for many folks today, games are the new mall and sports bar.” Taking to Twitter yesterday, Lai teased RTFKT's ambitions to build “Digital Supreme” — starting with sneakers. The studio has been dominating the digital sneaker space recently, dropping a new sneaker collaboration with Atari back in March and joining forces with 18-year-old artist Fewocious in a sale that fetched over $3 million in under 7 minutes. According to WWD , the business has already racked up $4.5 million in revenue this year alone, far exceeding the $600,000 it pulled in 2020. Now, an $8 million could supercharge the start-up's ascent. Speaking on the investment, RTFKT's founder Benoit Pagotto said, “It’s our culture, and [we] are doing things differently. We’re super exclusive, yet have an open source approach to our content. We work with creators and empower them and give them revenue share.” He continued, “NFT allows us to combine all our expertise and community to create the future without having to worry about legacy or how things are done today.” Pagotto describes his company as “a fashion company born from gaming,” and that's likely to prove incredibly lucrative as the NFT market matures. When Highsnobiety recently surveyed their readers on gaming culture, they found that 60 percent had already purchased digital clothing/ skins for their avatars. Right now there aren't many options for NFT sneakers and digital couture, but RTFKT is at the forefront of gamified luxury and they're well-positioned to bridging the gap between those who are investing in NFTs and their digital avatars. Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

The McLaren Group received a £550m equity investment with much of it coming from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and global investment firm Ares Management. McLaren Group includes the British supercar make,r as well as McLaren Racing, which competes in Formula One and IndyCar in the US and is also entering the Extreme E off-road electric series next year. McLaren said Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Ares were providing £400m of new capital, in the form of preference shares and equity warrants. The rest will come from existing shareholders as convertible preference shares, allowing for repayment of a loan received in June last year from the National Bank of Bahrain. Bahrain’s Mumtalakat sovereign investment fund is McLaren’s majority shareholder with a 62.55% stake according to its website. “Following the strategic investment into Racing that we secured last year, this successful equity raise is a key element of our comprehensive financial strategy to support the group’s sustainable growth plans,” said McLaren Group executive chair Paul Walsh. McLaren had a £300m equity injection from existing shareholders in March 2020 and last April completed a £170m sale and leaseback deal on its Woking headquarters. US-based investment group MSP Sports Capital also acquired a minority stake in McLaren Racing last December in a deal that brought in £185m and eased pressure from the Covid-19 pandemic. McLaren has been hard hit by the pandemic and last year cut 1,200 jobs, a quarter of its workforce. Sales of McLaren’s sports cars have rebounded strongly in recent months, and its racing fortunes have recovered with its driver Lando Norris lying third in the Formula One championship. Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the social network will pay out more than $1 billion USD to content creators on both Facebook and Instagram through the end of 2022. Zuckerberg revealed the initiative in a Facebook post , saying, “We want to build the best platforms for millions of creators to make a living, so we’re creating new programs to invest over $1 billion to reward creators for great content they create on Facebook and Instagram through 2022. Investing in creators isn’t new for us, but I’m excited to expand this work over time.” In tandem with the initiative, Facebook plans to release bonus programs throughout the rest of the year that will reward creators for hitting given targets, according to the release . The platform’s first pay-out activation, Reels Summer Bonus, will launch in the U.S. in the coming weeks and pay “creators for creating great Reels content on Instagram.” The bonuses are currently available to creators on an invitation-only basis, though the company indicated it would expand the platform to include more creators later this year with the launch of a dedicated landing page for bonuses. There, creators will be able to learn about bonus opportunities, which will be integrated on Instagram’s app this summer and on Facebook’s app this fall. Last month, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will not take a cut of revenue from creators who use its profit-generating features until 2023. “To help more creators make a living on our platforms, we’re going to keep paid online events, fan subscriptions, badges, and our upcoming independent news products free for creators until 2023,” he wrote. “And when we do introduce a revenue share, it will be less than the 30% that Apple and others take.” Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

Founded by Bahia El Sharkawy and Eman El Koshairy in 2015, Al Makinah aims to immerse young students to the art of Computing and computer programming language and fight against gender biases. El Sharkawy, a Computer Science graduate and Koshairy a Digital Media graduate ,met while studying at the German University in Cairo, and later joined forces to launch the first coding bootcamp in Egypt. After launching the startup, they were incubated by AUC V-labs, the startup had its first pitch at the RiseUp Summit 2016 - the largest startup event in the region - and won a trip to Silicon Valley. They continued to break new ground ever since, as they partnered with Udacity to bring their Web Development Udacity Connect Nanodegree to Egypt. “I attended one of those coding bootcamps in the US and decided to come back and creating something like that,” says Bahia el Sharkawy, who ran into her former classmate el Koshairy at a UX training course. “I remember it was Ramadan and I saw the post on Facebook. ‘This is something I want to add to Al Makinah. I just contacted her at 2 in the morning, and she immediately said, ‘I am interested,’” she recalls. While a coding bootcamp in countries like USA can cost up to $50,000, one of Al Makinah’s Gear Up programmes for women to become a front-end developer costs EGP 5,000 (a little more than $280), and the three-month full-stack web development programme, EGP 25,000. “We are trying to bring people the opportunity to know more about this field,” Koshairy says. “Usually when people graduate from school in this region, their grades determine whether they get into college, and if someone wants to study something else or work in another field, they have to do that on their own.” “The coding bootcamp fits really nicely in our culture because if someone wants to shift his career, they can kind of bootstrap into it so they don't have to do that on their own,” adds Sharkawy. “The bootcamp does exactly that; it is really intense, so if they want to make this change in their life, they can just go in, they give it their all and actually do this huge shift in their knowledge and their skills to actually be able to work in that field not just know something about that and that's it.” AlMakinah partners with Udacity as well to bring Udacity's web development Nanodegree to Egypt. AlMakinah offers Egypts first technical bootcamp and offers credible technical training on coding and web development. Its last class of graduates all found jobs after completing the course. If you are in Egypt, or you are interested in more information, make sure to visit AlMakinah's website at: https://www.almakinah.com Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!

Hiroshi Fujiwara has continued to push the boundaries of design for over three decades. Still eager to take on new challenges, the designer has teamed up with Maserati for an exclusive collaborative collection through his fragment design label. Fragment is a streetwear subculture project founded by the arbiter of cool: Hiroshi Fujiwara. Since the early ’90s, Fujiwara has been sharing his designs with the world, collaborating with the most renowned global maisons. Hiroshi Fujiwara’s unparalleled sensibility of contemporary street culture and the audacious spirit of an Italian car icon that has just heralded a new era. Hiroshi Fujiwara and the Maserati design team, together, deconstruct the essence of Maserati, and in the process, reconstruct a new reality. It is a partnership that brings the fearlessness of its creators to the forefront. Maserati and Hiroshi Fujiwara: two bold souls always ready to shatter existing cultural conventions. We call it itanji ( いたんじ ) . A Japanese concept that perfectly brings together Fujiwara’s rebellious style and Maserati’s audacious spirit. We are original. We have no fear of being different. We are nonconformist, relentlessly driven to challenge the status quo. We are devoted to innovation and creativity. In Fragment Design x Maserati, piece by piece, a body of art is unveiled in a collaboration that celebrates their brave new vision for the future. Follow us on: Instagram Facebook YouTube Make sure to share this post and subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications on our latest posts, as well as exclusive content and much more!