These are some of the ways the new Lionel Messi NFTs portray the soccer megastar.
Think of NFTs – or non-fungible tokens – as the crypto version of sports trading cards.
The Messi NFTs feature the legendary Argentine captain in various heroic guises. And they have titles such as Man From the Future, Worth the Weight, and The King Piece.
Messi’s NFT The Golden One. Source: Ethernity
Together they form something Messi and his collaborators at NFT marketplace Ethernity call the “Messiverse.”
According to Ethernity Chain, it’s a series of NFTs “as big as the legend of Lionel Messi himself.”
Don’t worry. You’re not alone…
To many of us – especially those over the age of 40, like your editor (Chris Lowe) – this may all sound a little strange, to say the least.
But as someone whose job it is to track market megatrends, I’m taking note. And you should, too.
Messi is the LeBron James of soccer. He made a staggering $126 million last year (versus LeBron’s $92 million haul).
That Messi is getting involved in NFTs shows how much momentum there is behind these digital collectibles.
And Messiverse NFTs are selling for more than $1 million each.
You’ll hear a lot of folks in the mainstream denouncing NFTs as a fad. But as our tech and digital assets expert, Jeff Brown, says, they’re here to stay.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the prices NFTs are fetching don’t last.
But Jeff says the underlying technology will. And it’s a game changer for the art and collectibles market.
As you’ll see today, he believes this makes NFTs one of the most profitable focus areas for us as blockchain and crypto investors.
Simply put, NFTs are unique digital assets that track ownership of digital artwork and collectibles using a blockchain.
That’s the distributed ledger technology that underpins bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptos.
But instead of representing a unit of a currency, like bitcoin, an NFT represents rights to digital artworks and collectibles.
And the entire NFT market has been going ballistic lately.
In March, an NFT by an artist from South Carolina called Beeple sold at auction at Christie’s for $69 million.
Also in March, an NFT of Twitter (TWTR) founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold for $2.9 million.
Even Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web, has created an NFT.
He made one of the World Wide Web’s original source code… autographed it… and sold it through Sotheby’s. It fetched $5.4 million at auction.
The NBA is also involved via its NBA Top Shots NFTs.
In partnership with a company called Dapper Labs, it converts moments in basketball history into NFTs. Then it sells them to collectors.
Already this year, the NBA Top Shot marketplace has done more than $700 million in sales.
OpenSea is the world’s largest NFT marketplace. It allows you to buy NFTs directly on its platform. It also allows you to bid for them in auctions.
It makes money by taking a commission of 2.5% on every NFT sold on its platform.
OpenSea is still in private hands. But it’s already valued at about $1.6 billion. That’s a head-spinning valuation for a company that was virtually unknown 18 months ago.
And so far this month, OpenSea has racked up sales of more than $1 billion.
For comparison, sales on OpenSea for all of 2020 reached $250 million. So sales for this month alone are four times the sales during all of last year.
Andreessen Horowitz is one of the most successful venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.
It backed Twitter, Facebook (FB), and Airbnb (ABNB) in private funding rounds… along with the sixth-largest crypto by market value, Ripple (XRP).
In April, Andreessen Horowitz invested $23 million in OpenSea in a Series A – or first stage – funding round.
Other VCs backing OpenSea’s Series A round include billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban… the founder of venture investing site AngelList, Naval Ravikant… former chief technology officer of Coinbase (COIN) Balaji Srinivasan… and Tim Ferriss, the lifestyle guru, tech investor, and serial entrepreneur.
Here’s Jeff with more on what this all means…
OpenSea is the Amazon of the NFT market. It allows collectors to find virtually any NFT they want – from digital art, trading cards, and comic books… to real estate and digital items in computer games.
That Andreessen Horowitz, Mark Cuban, and Naval Ravikant were all willing to back OpenSea speaks volumes about how they view the NFT market. These guys are usually early on a trend. But they’re also usually right.
In short, these are some of the savviest investors in the blockchain space. And they’re betting that NFTs are here to stay.
In April, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) launched an NFT series to memorialize the first trades of six popular tech listings.
Its “First Trade” NFT series includes Spotify (SPOT), Snowflake (SNOW), Unity (U), DoorDash (DASH), Roblox (RBLX), and Coupang (CPNG).
The NFTs include unique trade data from each company’s first day of trading to commemorate their debuts.
Why would the NYSE – a stock exchange – get involved with NFTs?
We can’t say for sure. But Jeff has an idea… The company that owns it, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), sees NFTs as a gateway into the crypto exchange space.
ICE’s mission, like every other publicly traded company, is to grow. And crypto exchanges are where the growth is right now.
ICE owns and operates 12 stock exchanges and six clearing houses across the globe.
It went public in 2005. And it’s reached a market cap (the sum value of its outstanding shares) of $66.5 billion.
Coinbase (COIN), on the other hand, operates one online crypto exchange.
The company went public this April. Yet it already has a market cap of $54 billion.
You can bet that hasn’t gone unnoticed in the C-suite at ICE. These guys and gals must be green with envy at Coinbase’s lightning-fast growth.
And not only is Coinbase already more valuable than ICE… it also creates that value with a fraction of the employees.
ICE requires nearly 9,000 employees to operate. Coinbase has just 1,249 people on its payroll.
Most folks know Jeff as a tech stock guy.
And he is. But he’s also been a private investor in blockchain-related projects.
He backed Coinbase before it went public… along with Ripple, the sixth-largest crypto in the world.
And in July 2019, as part of his work with the Chamber of Digital Commerce, he was on Capitol Hill to discuss blockchain technology with members of Congress and other policymakers.
This has given Jeff unique insights into where blockchain tech is headed and the opportunities springing up around it.
Back to Jeff…
NFTs are a new topic for many of us. And it can all seem strange at first. But it’s important we don’t dismiss this trend. We shouldn’t write off NFTs or assume they’re a fad. They represent the birth of an entirely new asset class – digital collectibles – and as serious technology investors, it’s in our best interests to pay attention.
In 2018, the value of all transactions for NFTs was close to $41 million. By the end of 2020, that figure grew to $338 million. And as of July 2021, NFT sales surpassed $2.5 billion for the year. It won’t be long before this industry’s valuation is in the tens of billions of dollars.
First and foremost, keep an open mind about NFTs. They may sound wacky. But the growth of this brand-new market speaks for itself.
So you want to keep a close eye on it.
Second, clear time in your schedule for Jeff’s crypto livestream event on Wednesday.
At 8 p.m. sharp, he’ll take a deeper dive into the opportunity ahead in blockchain in his Click for Crypto event.
This is the first crypto livestream Jeff has done… and it’s the start of many exciting things to come from him in the blockchain and digital assets space.
So if you’re interested in more on what blockchains can do… and how you can profit… make sure to sign up for Jeff’s free event right now.
Once you do, Jeff will give you access to a crypto quick-start course.
Here’s that link again to secure your spot.
Regards,
Chris Lowe
August 23, 2021
Dublin, Ireland