Every month, the Origin team publishes a monthly update to our token holders and broader community. Welcome to the May 2021 edition. We are eager to hear feedback and suggestions from our community.
Another exciting and productive month has passed for Origin. We broke records again with the highest value meme NFT ever sold with Charlie Bit My Finger for over $760,000. This sale generated headlines worldwide and we were featured on The New York Times, BBC, Good Morning America, USA Today, Time Magazine, CBS, CNBC, ABC, and Fox News among many others. The sale was especially big news in Korea, making the front page of Naver (the equivalent to Google) and being on Korean public broadcast TV on MBC, SBS, and YNA.
Millions of people around the world were exposed to the idea of NFTs and to Origin for the first time. Origin now holds the records for most successful music NFT sale ($11.7M with 3LAU) and most successful viral video/meme NFT sale. We also saw the landmark listing of OUSD on KuCoin and a dramatic increase in the OUSD supply, showing strong growth and adoption.
In addition to the record-breaking Charlie Bit My Finger sale, Origin also completed a successful NFT sale for Micro electric bikes. This sale paired NFTs with limited edition next generation mobility devices. Origin is committed to pushing the boundaries of NFTs beyond digital collectibles and into real world use cases. We also announced an upcoming drop for a collaboration between MonoNeon and Kii Arens, two world-renowned artists. MonoNeon won a grammy working with legendary rapper (and crypto investor) NAS and was one of the last people to work with the most important pop musicians ever, Prince. Kii Arens has created art for Dolly Parton, The Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Bernie Sanders, PIXIES, Coachella, and Elton John. Rounding out NFT news is our second drop with Mike Dean and Shepard Fairey. The legendary artists had a successful drop on Origin’s NFT Launchpad last month.
Origin Dollar (OUSD) was listed on a top-10 global exchange in KuCoin. KuCoin is a major hub of activity for altcoin trading and with users looking for exposure to new projects. So far, nearly $500k in OUSD has been staked and held to receive industry-leading yields without the complicated and expensive actions required by yield farming.
Being listed on centralized exchanges with large user bases is key to the long-term success of OUSD. Having to use MetaMask and pay transaction fees is a major blocker for many mainstream users who are curious about DeFi and yield farming but have never gotten started. We aim to make it easier and easier for mainstream users to participate in DeFi with continued advancements with OUSD. The supply of OUSD rose over $10 million in May alone, reaching $18 million. A third decentralized insurance provider, Bridge Mutual, has added coverage for OUSD alongside Nexus Mutual and Cover Protocol. We look forward to seeing OUSD and OGN integrated with more and more decentralized and centralized platforms.
This month we saw a modest increase in OGN staking numbers, from 79 million tokens staked to over 81 million tokens staked. Almost 110 million OGN have been removed from circulation, an amount equivalent to over 35% of the listed circulating supply or 52% of the true circulating supply.
Circulating supply is currently at 307M compared to a projected 341M tokens. The circulating supply number includes the 110M that is currently staked in our staking program, reducing the actual float further.
No OGN tokens have ever been sold by either Origin co-founder. They have no plans on selling any OGN any time soon.
This month our regional communities have experienced especially strong growth. We wanted to highlight our Spanish language community led by Moisés and our Turkish community led by Neshe. Moisés is based in Venezuela and has been a passionate crypto enthusiast for a long time. He volunteered for Origin before we hired him and he is a great example of someone being empowered by cryptocurrency in a country suffering from high inflation.
Neshe has helped our Turkish community reach record engagement and her efforts have attracted the attention of top influencers in Turkey. We are thankful to have them representing us on a global stage.
We are pleased to announce that famed musician and crypto influencer-investor 3LAU has joined the Origin team as an advisor. Origin has made a number of key hires in the past month or two and our pipeline for business development candidates is quite healthy. Moving forward, we are focusing most of our efforts to hire on the engineering and product side of the company. We are still looking for an experienced Senior Growth / Marketing Engineer and a Senior Solidity Engineer. Check out our job postings, and come join us or refer your friends!
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