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  • #54 | Porsche & BMW Speed Into NFTs With Latest Web3 Announcements

#54 | Porsche & BMW Speed Into NFTs With Latest Web3 Announcements

The latest in NFT developments from Porsche new NFT collection and Web3 strategy, BMWs NFT and metaverse trademarks, and OpenSea supporting BNB coin

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BuckyGang 💫 & subvert 😸
December 05, 2022

Estimated Read Time: 7 mins

Hey friends,

Lovely to have you back! This edition, we'll take a look at two of the world's biggest car manufacturers who are looking to NFTs and drive Web3 adoption, as well as a big OpenSea update. Let's jump into it!

Porsche To Embrace NFTs And Web3

As one of the world's top ten luxury car manufacturers with one of the most iconic sports car designs in history, the nearly century-old German car company known as Porsche needs no introduction — but we do need to introduce them to Web3.

In an announcement earlier this week during Art Basel in Miami, Porsche unveiled it will be substantially ramping up its transition to Web3 with a brand new digital experience including its first collection of NFTs. The first Porsche NFT collection of 7,500 customizable tokenized vehicles is set for launch in January 2023, based on the famous Porsche 911 model. These virtual assets will be based on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, suggesting future gaming integrations amongst other potential uses for realistic digital cars.

Holders of the Porsche NFT will be able to personalize and shape their car through different “routes” of Performance, Lifestyle, or Heritage that will reflect different characteristics, uniquely customizing their digital tokens. Not only will these fans be able to obtain unique personal digital art collectibles of the car, but also exclusive access to virtual and real-world experiences.

“If a project wants to be successful, it needs to bring people together… Web3 is exactly in the same spirit. Porsche isn’t going into the space for some economic reason. We’re going there because we want to engage with you to build something.”

Deniz Keskin, Director of Brand Management at Porsche

This collection is only one aspect of Porsche's announced Web3 strategy.

As Lutz Meschke, a member of Porsche's Executive Board puts it: “This project is an additional element of our digitalization strategy. We’ve made our commitment for the long haul and our Web3 team has the autonomy to develop innovations in this dimension as well”.

These innovations mention the integration of blockchain technology into existing and future processes, mentioning potential in the purchasing experience, supply chain, as well as vehicle and sustainability issues. This news of a brand as recognizable as Porsche creating a Web3 strategy that is not for “some economic reason” is a true testament to the real-world benefits that NFTs are enabling for both brand and community building; we can't wait to see other companies adopt a similar outlook.

BMW About To Go Virtual

We opened up with Porsche, but further up the ranks as the world's second-largest luxury car manufacturer is BMW — who has just applied for multiple trademarks that point towards pedal to the metal for its Web3-ification. Highlighted by USPTO licensed trademark attorney Mike Knodoudis, who has recently given us gems like Rolex NFT metaverse watches, VISAs virtual NFT goods, and Formula 1’s Web3 ecosystem, we now have some exciting news for BMW’s plan in the metaverse.

The German 106-year-old company has revealed trademarks that cover NFT-authenticated media and files, but also a flurry of plans for virtual goods including virtual vehicles, clothing, footwear, retail stores, and environments; all of which will be “authenticated by non-fungible tokens”. In the last edition, we covered Home Depot's plans for virtual stores, and it seems like BMW is on the same wavelength, with long-term plans for online retail store services relating to the aforementioned virtual goods. This adoption of virtual stores powered by NFTs is a common theme we are likely to continue seeing as static webpages evolve into their Web3 counterparts.

This isn't even BMW’s first foray into Web3. Back in Feburary, they launched the BMW Museum of Sound preserving the noise of its iconic engine sounds in a gallery collection of 19 NFTs. These recent trademarks prove BMW is looking to dive deeper into Web3, potentially due to pressure from other car brands where we have seen Ford's NFT plans, Chevrolet's Corvette NFTS, Lamborghini's multiple projects, and Hyundai's NFT trademarks to name a few.

Automobile companies are some of the biggest brands in the world and have an incredible reach where everyday people own or interact with these cars on a daily basis. These top manufacturers like BMW and Porsche revealing Web3 plans that utilize NFTs in creative ways like virtual cars and stores show yet another example of the rapid industry adoption of this emerging technology.

OpenSea Continues Multi-Chain Support With BNB

In a recent Morning NFTea edition, we talked about the partnership of the world's largest crypto exchange Binance with the world's largest NFT marketplace OpenSea. Unsurprisingly, OpenSea has just announced support for Binance's BNB coin — a little back-scratching from two crypto behemoths.

If you're unfamiliar with BNB, it is actually the world's third largest cryptocurrency (ignoring stablecoin Tether), right behind Ethereum and well above other popular NFT chains like Solana and Cardano. Effective immediately, users can now interact with BNB NFTs through OpenSea, marking another critical step in the platform's continued expansion into multi-chain interoperability that has recently seen added support for Solana, Polygon, and Avalanche amongst others.

"The integration will bring a large number of creators into the wider ecosystem, as well as empower the creators and NFT initiatives inside the BNB Chain ecosystem.”

Gwendolyn Regina, Investment Director at Binance

This BNB ecosystem in question supports over 1,300 decentralized applications (dApps) across peripherals such as decentralized finance (DeFi), metaverse, Web3 gaming, and NFTs. BNB's supported use cases have seen OpenSea flooded with a vast repository of high-grade gaming assets and various collectibles. The BNB chain has already processed over 3 billion transactions from over 163 million unique addresses, so this latest news will likely see NFT adoption continue to grow and become an even more prominent technology in the crypto space.

Big thanks for joining us on this edition, we hope you have a great couple of days while we round up the next news but until then, take care!

What's the NFTea?

Last week, we asked you "How do you evaluate the OwangeNFT team's response?". The predominant answer that came up was: None of the above.

This week, a lot of the NFT sphere has headed down to the 305 — Miami, home to Yuga Labs and also the annual Art Basel. Many projects are throwing parties/events over the course of the past couple of days, most notably the BAYC party and also Doodles Putt (a minigolf course). With a lot of the NFT community in the area but capacity issues for a lot of venues, situations like this happened:

Even Franklin, who has 60+ Bored Apes, couldn't get into the BAYC party. Best captured by this picture:

Which prompted this discussion on Twitter:

What do you think? Should whales and well-known holders get some sort of preferential treatment, or should everyone just receive the same level of treatment so things stay fair?

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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.