Mastercard Embracing NFTs

Author

BuckyGang 💫
June 13, 2022

Thanks for joining us readers, we're excited to bring you another recap on the latest news from the NFT world. In today's edition, we have some big players making some even bigger moves.

Mastercard Embracing NFTs

Mastercard, one of the largest payment methods in the world with 2.9 billion cards, has announced it will 'bring its payment to Web3.0' by allowing NFTs to be bought with their very own Debit and Credit cards. The Executive Vice President of Digital Asset Blockchain Products & Partnerships, Raj Dhamodharan, has said 'we’re working to enable NFT commerce with Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay'. These steps from Mastercard to embrace NFTs could have a major impact on this landscape as it is a very important step in making NFTs more accessible and convenient, in turn helping the NFT ecosystem to continue growing with the inclusion of new people.

Budweiser NFT Horse Racing

According to YouGov research, Budweiser is the 5th most popular beer in America. They recently dove into NFTs by buying the beer.eth ENS name, releasing a 1,936 collection as the 'key to the Budverse', and putting NFT references in their Superbowl ad. Now they are adding their famous Clydesdale horses to the Etherium-based NFT game Zed Run. Zed Run is a digital horse racing platform, which allows people to own digital horses as NFTs, and enter them into events with prize money where the winner is determined through a random algorithm and breeding of the horse's bloodlines. Zed Run is pretty popular with more than $300 million in sales on the secondary market according to CryptoSlam, and now Budweiser is releasing Clydesdale mascot horse skins, and committing $185,000 in total prize money. It is great to see another traditional company further extending its reach into NFTs, especially in new industries such as digitalizing horse racing. Nobody knows who will get involved next, but it is clear that the possibilities are infinite.

The Barbie-Verse

Continuing on the theme of absoultely huge brands dipping their toes into NFTs, major toy brand Mattel has signed a multi-year partnership with toy focused NFT marketplace Cryptoys. The Cryptoys Metaverse which plans to include Play-To-Earn games will now have exclusive rights to the Mattel intelectual property, which includes the likes of Barbie, Thomas The Tank Engine, and Hotwheels. Mattel Cheif Operating Officier Richard Dickson has said they are the "first toy company to launch NFTs" and that they see "incredible opportunity in the Metaverse for our cherished brands and iconic IP". Cryptoys is set to launch late summer 2022 on the Flow blockchain, which was built to support NFTs and large-scale crypto games with extensive scaling. The Cryptoys marketplace will be age-restricted to 18+ users, but will reportedly offer parent-controlled wallets for younger users down the line. Once again, it's great to see another legacy brand looking to experiment with their intellectual property on the blockchain.

"The 90s Called"

It's hard to find a young adult these days who doesn't know about Nickelodeon, Spongebob, Teenage Mutant Turtles, or Avatar. Now through Nickelodeon's Twitter page, they have teased NickelodeonNFT with a 90s vintage-themed ad that states “The following program is rated Web3", with NickelodeonNFT hashtags. The collaboration will be with the Recur platform, which builds end-to-end bespoke experiences for large brands and IP. This is particularly interesting because Recur is blockchain-agnostic, but is still allowing the buying and reselling of digital assets with a royalty standard. Not much is known yet of the initial NickelodeonNFT release, but it's great to see another brand with such iconic characters looking into the Web3.0 future.

That's it for today's edition of Morning NFTea. In recap, it's great to see more and more traditional brands embracing the NFT future. Take care and we will catch you on Thursday with some more Morning NFTea!

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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.