#72 | The EU's Launch Of "Tokenise Europe 2025"

Estimated Read Time: 9 minutes

Hey friends,

A big welcome back to this edition on Super Bowl Monday, it's great to have you with us! Today we have some big blockchain news out of Europe, along with some recent boundary-pushing use cases of NFTs lined up for you. Let's jump into it!

The Blockchain Brew Up ☕

Its been a pretty good start to the year for crypto with signs of recovery amongst plenty of weeks in green across the whole market, but there's been a pull back where this week saw both Bitcoin and Ethereum falling 7% and 6% respectively. The upcoming days will be an important test to see if we can keep up the momentum that's had the likes of Bitcoin up 40% since the start of 2023.

The Europeon Union has just launched "Tokenise Europe 2025" which is a new initiative to drive adoption of blockchain tokenization within Europe. Specifically, the blockchain offers new infrastructure reducing the need of intermediaries and provides enormous efficiency benefits and the potential for new business models. The motivation for this comes as quoted: “While some awareness has been created, tokenization is still widely held to be a medium- to long-term development. Currently, we see no stakeholders standing up to become first movers in taking Europe’s token economy to the next evolutionary phase”.

Founded by the European Commission, this scheme is in partnership with the Association of German Banks and the Roland Berger consultancy, with Germany, Spain and Liechtenstein leading the charge. So far the association has had 20 firms join the cause including four major banks BBVA, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and Santander amongst other large industry leaders. With the vast potential that blockchain technology provides, its moves like this from industry and govermental leaders that pushes us ever forward to the mainstream adoption of Web3.

Steaming Headlines ♨️

Alo Yoga Announces Free “Digital Twin” NFTs

We love covering unique use cases for NFTs that exemplify the potential utility of this new technology, and the latest comes from top athleisure clothing brand Alo Yoga which has just made its debut in the NFT space. We have seen a growing trend in the fashion industry and the Web3 connection of digital and physical goods, now being dubbed “phygitals”, and Alo Yoga has embraced this with FREE “Digital Twins” NFTs available for buyers of the 2022 Aspen collection.

The digital twin collectible NFTs are a spinning 3D render digital copy for the real-world units that launched last Autumn. Not only are these just a tacky freebie, the brand aims to for one integrate and Web3-ify its loyalty program, also unlock IRL perks including real-life experiences such as fashion week access or personal training sessions, but furthermore give holders access to a private client manager for shopping and styling.

The Aspen collection sold out at the 2022 New York Fashion Week as Alo’s most expensive clothing line to date, so buyers will also be happy to receive the digital certificate of authenticity that tags along with the NFT. Alo Yoga’s CMO Angelic Vendette took an interesting approach to onboard these customers into Web3, saying “All of this is exclusive, invite-only to our community… We’re not using [NFT] language. We’re using ‘digital certificate of authenticity’ so it feels natural to our community... It enables a mass onboarding of consumers to start to enter the space in ways that aren’t confusing”. This highlights how the term NFTs may have been mixed up with negative connotations, but rewording this as a digital certificate with invite-only access to a community better exemplifies the potential.

Whether or not you’ve heard of Alo Yoga, these Digital Twins are an textbook showcase of NFTs with the intersection of authentication, collectible, community, and brand building, all without financial incentive as its release came over 5 months after the collection and completely for free, we cant wait for more brands to take a similar approach.

Rihanna Releases NFT With Streaming Royalties

In case you didn't catch the latest Super Bowl halftime performance, Rihanna is a multi-Grammy award-winning global super celebrity with 14 number-one songs and multi-billions of streams, and now with a recent partnership through superproducer Deputy, they have teamed up for a pioneering use of NFTs. Facilitated through NFT royalty platform Anotherblock, Rihannas triple-platinum record “B**ch Better Have My Money” has dropped as 300 NFTs that gives holders access to 0.0033% of the songs streaming royalties, which has already amassed over a billion streams across all platforms.

Producer Deputy marked the occasion saying "As a fan, you get a certain attachment to an artist or a song. When you get an opportunity to own a part of a song, it’s a game changer. It creates a whole different realm of being connected, outside of streaming or concerts… anotherblock creates another platform for fans to engage in and be a part of my career”.

This highlights one of the key advantages NFTs have been able to deliver, despite Anotherblock's forecasted 6-7% annual return obviously there's more to this NFT then just a lucrative investment on a popular song, the $210 NFTs have opened up a new avenue for fans to literally own a part of a song they are attached too while also having a new connection to their artist.

It's actions like this from pioneering first adopters who will set forth a world where community-driven crowd-sourced music controlled by an artist will become commonplace.

When looking at the trend, this is all definitely already in motion with last year our reporting on multi-grammy awarding DJ duo The Chainsmokers giving free NFTs to their community with 1% streaming royalties, and additional actions from the world's most influential record labels with Universal Music Group’s Web3 label and Warner Brothers NFT music platform, marking a pretty interesting disruption to this goliath industry.

What's the NFTea? 🍵

It's a tough market. While on one hand some projects are spending $7 million on Super Bowl ads to drive viewers to follow the project founder's Twitter account, other projects with struggling financials are being acquired into new ownership.

The first of these is feetpix, one of the breakout projects of 2023 that was a free mint that rose up the charts based off meme value alone (the other breakout free mint meme community is Chungos). We'll see in a few hours what plans its new ownership has for the project.

A much higher profile acquisition is that of Solana Monkey Business (SMB), a 2021 project well-regarded as one of Solana's top blue chips. Though the main project hasn't been active for quite some time, it has given birth to MonkeDAO which is an extremely active and influential group of SMB holders.

Reactions to the acquisition point out how even though the deal is for the SMB brand, MonkeDAO (and its members) is where the true value lies.

There have been discussions and community member-driven petitions for acquisitions around many projects recently, few actually work out like Pudgy Penguins or Pixelmon. Either way, some interesting moves to keep an eye on!

Connect with us on socials for a more personal experience! 👇

Twitter: @MorningNFTeaOur Team: @BuckyGang | @Wickyy.eth | @subvertDiscord: Morning NFTea

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.