Over its long history, LG has never been shy about jumping on some unusual bandwagons. So it should come as no surprise that the South Korean electronics giant is getting into NFTs. Starting today, if you live in the US and own a webOS 5.0 or later TV, you’ll have access to the company’s new LG Art Lab platform. It’s a marketplace for buying and selling non-fungible tokens available directly through your TV’s home screen. It’s based on the Hedera network and uses LG’s new Wallypto mobile wallet for storing digital assets. There’s even a countdown feature that will remind you when NFT drops are about to occur.
The timing of the addition is curious, to say the least. Judging by daily trading volume on OpenSea, the public has lost interest in non-fungible tokens. On August 28th, the marketplace processed $ 5 million worth of NFT transactions, a 99 percent drop from the record high of $ 405.75 million it saw just a few months earlier on May 1st, 2022. Over that same timeframe, the floor price of some of the most highly sought-after NFT collections has also declined. At the start of May, a Bored Ape Yacht Club token would have set you back at least 153.7 Eth (or about $ 434,000 with the value of Ethereum at the time). By August 28th, you could buy one for as little as 73 Eth or a little over $ 105,000.
Of course, this is LG we’re talking about. It’s the same company that gave us phones like the Wing and V10 and stayed in the mobile market for far longer than any analyst would have said was a smart idea. How long it plans to pursue NFTs is hard to say, but there’s probably a C2 owner somewhere out there excited to show off their Bored Apes and fancy OLED TV at the same time.
