#52 | The Inevitable Everyday Integration of NFTs

Estimated Read Time: 7 minutes

Hey friends,

We hope you had a wonderful weekend recovering from the Thanksgiving food festival and shopping for Black Friday deals afterward!

Today we've got a great round-up featuring well-known brands such as Prada, Bamboozle Festival, The Australian Open and Mattel; as well as the debut of a new section of our newsletter at the very end. Let's get to it!

Prada Launching NFT Timecapsule

Maybe it's because Christmas is just around the corner, but fashion has been a hot topic these last couple of editions with Adidas launching virtual clothing and Nike opening a digital apparel store.

Despite these stories potentially playing into the misconception that NFTs are just for a digital metaverse, Prada is utilizing NFTs for their real-world fashion through their new festive Timecapsule collection.

If you are unfamiliar with Prada, the Italian high-end fashion house is one of the top 10 most valuable luxury brands in the world, and recently stepped into Web3 by setting up their new Prada Crypted NFT division. The Timecapsule collection in question is an exclusive festive holiday-themed drop of gender-neutral sweaters made from Merino wool and Norwegian jacquard stitching.

The kicker here is each garment is accompanied by an NFT that not only combats counterfeiting by being a verifiable way to authenticate ownership, but also lets Prada create new connections with its customers. Holders receive access to exclusive global events and experiences, with everything from fashion shows and private tours of collections to Michelin-starred dining.

This new initiative from Prada exemplifies how NFTs can be used to level up current patterns of consumerism, joining an ever-increasing list of legacy brands showcasing the power of fusing both digital and physical worlds through Web3.

Bamboozle Festival Turns To 100% NFT Ticketing

Ticketing has always been a great real-world application of NFTs — its nature encompasses both authentication and collectible; with the utility of proving ownership in order to access an event or utility. The problem was this concept of “digital verification” wasn't achievable at scale prior to NFTs, causing problems like France claiming the Champions League final had up to 70% counterfeit tickets.

To set the scene, Bamboozle is a decade-old New Jersey music festival that attracts the likes of Bon Jovi, Skrillex, and the Foo Fighters; these A-list musicians attracted a crazy 90,000 in attendance last time the festival was run in 2012. Almost a decade later, the iconic event is being revived by the original founder for a 2023 debut marking its 20th anniversary.

What's worth noting is that Bamboozle will forgo traditional ticketing for provably unique digital NFT tickets. Utilizing the power of smart contracts, attendees will not only forever own a digital collectible of their event experience, but be able to unlock several valuable holder perks such as special event access, digital artwork, mystery bonus content and new ways to interact with the daily lineups.

If you are an active reader of Morning NFTea, this story may not come as a surprise after recent news like Ticketmaster hiring for “NFT ticketing” or France announcing NFT ticketing for the 2024 Olympics. Through steps like these, Bamboozle may instantly be onboarding thousands of people to Web3 through their first NFT. Events like Bamboozle being an early pioneer for fully adopting and embracing this technology shows the real-world use cases that NFTs have and their ability to revolutionize existing industries.

Australian Open Surprises NFT Holders With Free Tickets

When it comes to tennis, few events hold a torch to the Australian Open (AO) — the first of four Grand Slam events marking the peak of professional tennis tournaments. Attracting over 340,000 fans last year, the AO is a prestigious sporting event that, earlier this year, revolutionized the idea of sports NFTs through 6,776 generative AO ArtBall NFTs.

These ArtBall NFTs are each linked to an individual plot on the official AO court. Using real match data, match points are assigned to the ArtBall NFTs with updated traits and metadata. During every match of the AO, match-winning points on the NFTs' portion of floor space can then win holder-exclusive items such as game balls — true collectibles that every tennis fan would wish for. That's not all though, because the AO just surprised holders through announcing free seven-day Final Week ground passes to ArtBall NFT holders.

Moreover, to further develop the AO's Web3 experience, they have also released an extensive new rewards program to interact with its community in partnership with Tennis Australia and Web3 studio “Run It Wild”. While this legacy brand elevates its positioning, the biggest beneficiaries is undoubtedly tennis fans around the world, who will be able to access new rewards and utility that get them closer to the action of their favorite sport.

Toy Brand Mattel Launches NFT Marketplace

While you may know American multinational toy company Mattel for its classic line of brands like Barbie and Hot Wheels, it is adapting to the younger generation and an ever-increasing digital world by launching a new NFT marketplace.

The important note Ron mentions is translating Mattel's intellectual property (IP) into digital art. NFT projects like BAYC have proven the success of brand intellectual property in Web3, so it figures that Mattel wants to hop aboard and leverage their historic IP for new digital collectibles and experiences.

Built on the Flow blockchain which also powers NBA Top Shot, the Mattel Creations Digital Collectibles Marketplace is targeting “mainstream consumers” and “will not require users to own cryptocurrency”, as per a recent press release. The marketplace will launch with a Hot Wheels NFT Garage collection priced at $25 each for seven Hot Wheels of varying rarity levels, with the highest tiers offering redeemability for physical die-cast replicas.

Mattel is first-hand showing the evolution of physical collectible companies expanding into digital collectibles through this new NFT technology, what an exciting time to see it happen in real-time.

What's the NFTea?

Welcome to the inaugural edition of "What's the NFTea?", where each issue we'll bring up a hot topic of NFT discussion on the interwebs and leave it up to you, our beloved readers, to decide how you feel about these subjects.

This week, we'll be talking about how the post-mint, pre-reveal secondary market of highly anticipated mint Valhalla played out. While when it was first announced, its 0.5 ETH public mint price incited some backlash, Valhalla still minted out pretty quickly and saw immediate spikes up to 1.7 ETH shortly after. However, as hype quickly died down, we saw that number plummet back down to roughly 0.55 ETH, hovering around mint price.

The point of discussion is in the fact that one of the questions on Valhalla’s application form was “how long do you intend to hold this project?” - to which most accepted applicants replied “1-2 months”, if not more.

This has created a conflict & discussion between holders, flippers and the NFT community at large — some holders are grumbling about how many lied on their applications, whereas others point out that we should not be sell-shaming and that the question itself was flawed execution on the project’s part.

Now, it’s up to you to decide:

The results of this poll will be included in the next edition of our newsletter. Stay tuned!

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Morning NFTea, another great showcase of how NFTs are impacting almost every aspect of our life from fashion to music to sports to collectibles. Have a great couple of days and we will be back with the latest round-up!

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DISCLAIMER:

None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.