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Two Major US Companies Are Investing in The Metaverse. Can You Guess Them?
Austin Miller & John Meyer
September 30, 2022
GM! Welcome to The Mint, the best five minutes of every Friday!
Today's Agenda
Disney Job Posting Indicates Aggressive Focus on NFTs đź”®
Walmart is in the Metaverse? 🎮
256-Year-Old Auction House Adds NFT Division 🤑
PGA Tour Partners with Tom Brady's NFT company ⛳
New NFT Project Gives Buyers Unprecedented Creative Access 🎨
NFTs Coming To The Wonderful World Of Disney
When someone says, "Disney," what do you think about?
Disney owns ESPN, ABC, Lifetime, History, A&E, FX, Marvel Studios, and Lucasfilm. It also holds a 60% share of Hulu! So these days, the answers to that question are incredibly diverse. Unless your favorite show is The Sopranos or something, your favorite show or movie is probably a Disney production without you knowing it.
Disney's gigantic pool of IP, maybe even your favorite movie or show character, could be used in NFTs soon.
Last weekend, a few LinkedIn users noticed that Disney published a job post looking for a Principal Counsel for corporate transactions, emerging technologies & NFTs. Of course, that news trickled into all the NFT news outlets and brought tons of speculation, including some from us!
Last year, Disney partnered with VeVe to release NFTS featuring popular characters from the Marvel Universe, Star Wars galaxy, and others. But it seems like that was only the beginning.
Don't be surprised if you see Disney NFTs that give you new ways to experience Disney shows and movies, theme parks, or even ways to get exclusive access to new projects. Major moves are coming from Disney.
Even Walmart is Investing in The Metaverse
Most Walmarts are typically on Austin's list of places to avoid. He can't explain why, but he just doesn't like going there.
But enough about him, let's talk about the fact that people can now go to a virtual Walmart and avoid the real-life Walmart altogether!
Walmart recently partnered with Roblox, a virtual playground with over 40 million users to release "Walmart Land," a virtual Walmart where players can play games and earn rewards.
“Roblox is one of the fastest growing and largest platforms in the metaverse, and we know our customers are spending loads of time there... So, we’re focusing on creating new and innovative experiences that excite them, something we’re already doing in the communities where they live, and now, the virtual worlds where they play,”
Walmart Land already has over 1 million visits by players globally. Walmart is making it worthwhile to visit the virtual world with events like "Electric Fest," a virtual concert festival with appearances from artists like Kane Brown and Madison Beer.
Christie's Opens Up NFT Division
If you're a tenured Mint reader, you may remember us mentioning Christie's in one of our first issues when we did an artist spotlight on Beeple, one of the biggest names in the NFT world. But to refresh you, Christie's held an auction for Beeple and sold one of his projects for $69 million.
Now, Christie's is fully embracing NFT art by launching an NFT marketplace called "Christie's 3.0."
"Bringing the highest level of curation to the NFT and Digital Art market, Christie’s continues to be the venue for collectors to discover the best artworks of this emerging category. I am delighted to be able to work with such inspiring digital artists – as well as a remarkable Christie’s team – to offer the public the opportunity to collect exceptional NFTs in the way they are meant to be transacted, on-chain."
Christie's 3.0 will be curation-only, so people won't be able to post or publish their own NFTs on the site. It seems like Christie's 3.0 will truly be the next way to purchase curated collections from the prestigious artists of the future.
PGA and Autograph.io Partner Up
Tom Brady's NFT company Autograph.io just landed a BIG client — The PGA Tour.
The PGA Tour was one of the last remaining major sports leagues in the U.S. without an NFT partnership, but no more.
You may remember our sports issue where we mentioned Tom Brady's signature collection that gave buyers of the NFT unprecedented access to his life including watch parties, game tickets, interviews with his best friends, and a party at the end of the NFL season with Tom Brady himself.
“Over the last year, we have defined the future of fandom by leveraging NFT technology to bring fans closer to the icons they love across sports, music, and entertainment and each other. We look forward to unlocking new potential and offering our community exclusive access to the PGA TOUR team through this partnership.”
According to their press release, the PGA TOUR "will work with Autograph to create a digital collectibles platform that pulls from TOUR competition video, data, imagery, and other competition-related components" and will give fans the "opportunity to own and collect NFTs featuring the best PGA TOUR golfers in the world as well as some of their favorite moments from the archives and the current FedExCup Season."
If you're a golf fan, this will certainly be something to keep an eye on. Autograph.io is known for partnering with the superstars of the sports world and often includes fan experiences that you can't find anywhere else.
QQL Project Bourgeons Impressive New Feature
One of the most enjoyable parts of the NFT world is that we're writing the rules as we go. Best practices have been established, but projects continue to innovate on how they drop their NFTs. This is exactly what QQL did, a collaborative generative art experiment between Tyler Hobbs (the creator of the Fidenza - aka one of John's holy grails that he wants to collect someday) and Dandelion Wist, the co-founder of a generative art platform Archipelago.
QQL allows anyone to tinker and play with the platform to generate art samples. It basically puts you as a co-creator of the art.
Imagine getting ready to buy a Picasso painting, but Pablo first says, "Hey, why don't you come over and paint it with me?"
Crazy huh!?!
The project sold out all of its 900 mint passes on Wednesday, raising $17 million in the middle of a big bear market. The art is really fun and it's certainly innovative to let the mint holder create their own art piece and ultimately choose the one they like best. This industry continues to rewrite the rules!
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