Holy S*@! Our Prediction Was Right!

GM!!! This is The Mint, your weekly fix of serotonin and NFT news.

Today's Agenda

1. Formula 1 Posts Two Trademark Filings Centered on NFTs & Crypto 🏎️

2. Ticketmaster Adding NFTs to it's Arsenal 🎫

3. Proof, Creators of Moonbirds, Secure $50 Million Funding Round 🤝

4. Quick Hits ⚡

5. ABCs of NFTs - I is for Immutable 🙇‍♀️

Formula 1 Continues Its Foray Into Web3

In our first issue of The Mint, we talked about Mercedes-Benz AMG Petronas' NFT collection, i.e., the first NFT collection released by an F1 team. Looking back at it, that collection wasn't anything special, but it clearly gave F1 as a whole a taste of what NFTs have to offer.

F1 is notorious for its absolutely absurd growth over the last few years because they have embraced tech and storytelling, two things NFTs are great for.

Let's look at the trademark application →

It covers NFTs, cryptocurrency, insurance and financial services, virtual goods, currency trading and services, and more.

There have been plenty of trademark battles between companies and NFT artists, so it's good to see that Formula 1 is prioritizing the establishment of a "legal backbone" for the future release of their NFTs.

What we think they're going to do with this →

If we had to guess, F1 may be looking into creating NFT tickets or NFT keepsakes for the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix. They could also establish their own digital currency that people could use for F1-related products. The possibilities are endless, so we're excited to see what transpires from these trademarks.

Ticketmaster and NFTs are Slowly Becoming Symbiotic

Before we get into this, may we just say, as humbly as we possibly can, that we told you so?

We've debated about how tickets may become NFTs in the near future, and that future may be nearer than we all thought. Three days ago, Ticketmaster announced a partnership with Dapper Labs, the creators of NBA Topshot, NFL All Day, and UFC Strike, the NFT counterparts of some of the largest sports leagues in the world.

The partnership allows event organizers who sell live events tickets on Ticketmaster to issue NFTs before, during, and after live events. Ticketmaster's new NFT integration uses Flow, a decentralized platform that is popular for scalable projects such as this one.

It's incredibly reassuring to see our expectations for this technology come to fruition. We love NFTs, and we can't wait for everyone else to love them too ♥️

Proof of Success

It was a big week for the Web3 media company, Proof, the Kevin Rose led team that has created the Proof Collective, Proof Podcast, Moonbirds, Oddities, and now more. Below is a long thread covering everything announced in their keynote on Tuesday.

Most notably, Rose and the Proof team raised $50M to execute on their vision of building a global, Web3 media brand.

We cover news on Proof often (1) because I am most involved (and most invested) in the Proof ecosystem, but (2) because I'm convinced Rose is building something different. Proof isn't an NFT project. Proof is a company. And I suspect it will be a big one.

You have a proven tech entrepreneur in Rose. You have the financial backing of some of the biggest players (a16z, True Ventures, Alexis Ohanian, and Gary Vaynerchuk), and you have an incredibly talented, growing team with big visions for what this space will look like. It will be fun to watch it unfold.

Quick Hits ⚡

Lots of quick hits this week.

• Head of Meta Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan's famous podcast and talked about the sorts of stuff that you'd expect the head of one of the most profitable companies on the planet to talk about. Although it wasn't really NFT-related, this bit was pretty interesting ⤵️

• One of Bill Murray's NFTs came with a cool utility - a beer with the legend himself. Bidding on the item ended up reaching $185,000, all of which was donated to charity.

• Global NFT sales are currently $19.4 billion through August. This amount is on track to surpass the $25.9 billion that music streaming brought globally in 2021. Down year or not, that's a lot of traffic.

ABCs of NFTs

I - Immutable

Immutable may be a word you’ve heard of but never really thought of what it means. 🤔

Immutability is a 🔑 component of Web3. Immutability in NFTs means that it is unable to be changed. What happens on the blockchain stays on the blockchain. This is what gets people excited about Web3 - it's open, decentralized, and available for all to see. 🎉

Watch the video below to learn more about immutability or read this article.

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That concludes this week's version of The Mint! Thanks for reading, and make sure to share your freshly-minted knowledge with your friends and coworkers.