Binance (BNB-USD) faithful, rejoice! Well, some of you. The crypto company has just unveiled its new take on bridging artificial intelligence (AI) and the blockchain via non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The good news is that the product is very intriguing and has already proven wildly successful. It’s one of the biggest success stories yet of a company adding AI products to its business model since ChatGPT’s surge in popularity. However, the bad news is that U.S. customers will have to wait to create AI-powered NFTs — and they’ll probably be waiting a while.
Earlier this week, crypto exchange monolith Binance announced it would be adding AI to its NFT marketplace. Whereas before the marketplace existed mainly as a venue for minting and selling NFTs, the new tool would allow anybody to create their own unique art. This effectively makes the marketplace a one-stop-shop for ideating, creating, minting and selling tokenized art.
How is it doing this? Well, the increasing public interest in generative art projects like Jasper and OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 have helped a great deal. Binance has incorporated its own generative art platform, aptly called “Bicasso.” Through the platform, users can create unique images with prompts. After giving the AI a prompt and generating images, they can then simply save the image, drag and drop the file and mint it as an NFT.
Listing the token on Binance’s NFT marketplace is simple enough from there. As a result, this likely the most simple and painless method one can use to get into the market now — one that’s lining itself with money once again after a downturn in 2022.
AI-Powered NFTs Are Taking Off, but U.S. Customers Must Wait
AI-powered NFTs were a surefire bet by Binance. Blockchain fiends love new tech almost as much as they love discovering new ways to make money. Bridging both was a natural idea. What’s more, Binance’s status as the most-used exchange platform means millions can get immediate access to the product. Of course, Bicasso is now taking off wonderfully, although Americans will have to wait.
As Cointelegraph reports, since launching on Wednesday, the AI has been given little in the way of breathing room. Excited users minted a whopping 10,000 tokens in the first few hours of operation. The immediate traffic brought the service to full capacity for its limited beta. As of yet, the 9,909 users who generated NFTs are not able to sell them. This is due to the fact that the service isn’t fully, publicly available yet.
Much to the chagrin of U.S. users, though, Americans won’t be able to buy or sell any of these tokens for a while. The service is not available for U.S. customers because Binance doesn’t operate its NFT marketplace on Binance.US. This shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise; Binance and U.S. regulators have a fraught relationship, to put it simply.
Beyond Binance’s personal beef with regulators, however, the NFT craze has been confronted by regulators as well. An ongoing lawsuit against the makers of the NBA Top Shot NFT collection paints NFTs as securities. If the judge rules in favor of this, the decision will set a precedent enabling regulators to go after any NFT collection for illegally offering unregistered securities. Not wanting to test the waters further, Binance is right to keep this service away from the U.S. for the time being.
All told, it appears that American users could be left waiting for AI-powered NFTs for a while.
On the date of publication, Brenden Rearick did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
