Big league websites, sports, and institutions all join in on this week’s affirming crypto news roundup.
The Latest NFT News: Premier League, Reddit & Azuki Skateboards
One of the world's largest soccer organizations, Premier League, is reportedly in talks to sign a multi-year contract with Sorare, an NFT marketplace, to create static images of its players in the form of NFTs.
If the deal goes through, it would be worth approximately $34.7 million annually, replacing the Premier League's initial deal with ConsenSys. ConsenSys is speculated to have attempted to renegotiate the contract for a lower price after NFT valuations decreased in 2021.
The Premier League is also reportedly meeting with Dapper Labs, another digital collectibles company valued at over $4 billion. Dapper Labs started the NBA Top Shots platform and recently raised $680 million.
Reddit has also proven to be a hotbed of NFT activity. Last week, an executive announced that users created more than 3 million Polygon wallets to collect NFTs and there are almost three million NFT avatars currently in circulation. Collectors see Reddit's NFTs as a major trading opportunity, and sales are booming.
Secondary market sales of Reddit's Collectible Avatars NFTs—minted on Polygon, an Ethereum scaling network—totalled a whopping $1.88 million on October 24th alone. That was a 799% increase from the previous Sunday. That data comes from public blockchain data collected by Dune user polygon_analytics. According to the dashboard, the sales volumes of NFTs on the platform have increased for five consecutive days.
Not all NFTs are flat images however. Chiru Labs, creators of the Azuki NFT collection, recently auctioned off eight “real life” gold-plated skateboards as NFTs, which saw fierce bidding wars. Chiru Labs told Decrypt that there were 145 total bids, with the highest bidder paying a little more than $400,000 for one of the skateboards and the lowest winner paying approximately $260,000. Bids were placed in Ethereum, and Chiru Labs collected a total of $2.5 million in ETH. The authenticity of the physical skateboards is assured using a physical chip embedded inside them, which a smartphone can scan to certify ownership.
SEBA Bank & Western Union
Institutions are continuing to up their NFT game. Switzerland-based SEBA, a crypto-friendly bank, has added an NFT custody solution allowing clients to hold well-known NFTs without the need to manage the private keys. SEBA targets the "blue-chip" portion of the market, such as popular collections like Bored Apes and CryptoPunks. Clients can store these Ethereum-based NFTs in their SEBA wallets.
A spokesperson for the bank explained that "SEBA Bank is proud to be the first regulated bank to offer NFT custody, and we believe that in the coming years, digital assets, including NFTs, will gain adoption and will be increasingly accepted even by traditional finance operators."
Western Union has also filed crypto-related trademark applications at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, according to trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis. Western Union's applications are based on launching a proprietary virtual currency exchange and cryptocurrency token.
FTX Reportedly Working on New Stablecoin
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX’s CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has revealed the platform is looking at creating its own stablecoin.
In an interview Bankman-Fried said, "it is very likely" that FTX will create a stablecoin, a crypto token whose value is linked to another asset. Bankman-Fried later tweeted, "we are figuring out what we're doing on stablecoins; it could be anything or nothing, and could *or could not* involve partnerships, issuance, hula hoops, etc. (One of those is less likely than the others.)”
Decentralized Uber Rival Coming to Solana
The Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC) recently announced that it raised $9 million in seed funding to produce The Rideshare Protocol, known as TRIP. It's designed to power different companies' ridesharing apps. They'll all share the same core technology to connect drivers with riders.
This isn’t a new idea. Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum, theorized centralized driving services years ago and other startups have tried to build out decentralized ridesharing services. However, DEC believes it now has the right model and will use the funds to bring it to life on Solana. DEC will begin by building Teleport as the first application to prove the framework.
Meta Partners with L'Oreal on a New Web3 Accelerator
Meta, Facebook's parent company, has partnered with L'Oréal and HEC Paris, a French business school, on a new startup acceleration program aimed at creativity in the metaverse. The goal is to help businesses specializing in 3D production, AR, VR, mixed reality, avatar creation, user experience portability, token economy, and other related topics to the metaverse and web3, as per a report by Vogue Business.
At least five businesses will be taking part in the accelerator. The project will be hosted at Station F — a startup campus in Paris, running from January 2023 to June 2023. Successful applicants will have access to mentors and experts for their businesses.
Our team at Marfire aggregates relevant news on a weekly basis that illustrates the ways in which crypto is manifesting in our daily lives. For fund or crypto projects, we provide top-tier, high-touch service at an affordable rate and complete cost transparency. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like to chat and connect with us on LinkedIn.