Visa joins NFT craze, spending $150,000 on rare CryptoPunk

NFTs are building the foundation for the metaverse, a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of physical reality and physically persistent virtual space. Payments giants and institutions like Visa are warming up to decentralized finance, buying into the NFT craze. 

Visa steps into "NFT Commerce" with the acquisition of a CryptoPunk 

Visa, an American multinational financial services corporation, has purchased its first non-fungible token, CryptoPunk 7610. The CryptoPunk NFT collection is one of the earliest, and it features 10,000 pixelated faces. The faces include humans, zombies, apes, and aliens. 

The firm announced its NFT purchase on Twitter

Visa's head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, shared his thoughts on the latest purchase on Twitter. According to Sheffield, Visa believes NFTs will play an important role in the future of commerce and can help individual content creators and small and medium-sized businesses in new ways. 

CryptoPunk 7610 is one of the 3840 female punks for nearly $150,000 on August 8. 

Visa is known to collect vintage pieces related to commerce for its art collection. The purchase of the non-fungible token was facilitated by Anchorage using fiat currency. The U.S. bank custodied the NFT for Visa. 

In an official blog post on Visa's website, the payments giant shared Sheffield's plans for NFT buyers and sellers and the role that Visa intends to play. 

In the near term, we want to help brands and businesses better understand NFTs and how they might be harnessed for customer and fan engagement...Looking ahead, we're working on some new concepts and partnerships that support NFT buyers, sellers, and creators. We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead.

NFTs are exploding since the beginning of 2021, and with Visa entering the ecosystem, it strengthens the grip of non-fungible tokens on crypto commerce. 

OpenSea, the leading peer-to-peer marketplace for NFTs, has clocked $1.5 billion in sales volume based on data from dappradar.com. Marking approximately a 542% increase over the last month, OpenSea has captured nearly half of the total transaction volume in the NFT industry. 

News of Visa’s interest in decentralized finance and NFTs comes at a time when digital art and collectibles are at the peak of their popularity on marketplaces like OpenSea. Therefore, further rise in NFT popularity and its stronghold on the metaverse is possible in the near term.

Crypto analysts have witnessed a surge in the mentions of NFTs in their crypto Twitter timelines and media headlines. Lark Davis, independent crypto analyst and YouTube content creator, tweeted