Last month, the JWS column explained why Big3’s plan to decentralize ownership of different sports teams — and frankly, more variety — than any previous attempts hatch. The league offers premium seats that have Fire-tier tokens for each game, options to monetize team IPs, voting rights and the opportunity to participate in the financial upside if / when the club is sold.
In the weeks since, the 3-on-3 basketball league, co-founded with rapper Ice Cube, has announced DeGods (Solana’s largest block NFT community), Gary Vaynerchuk (creator, VeeFriends), Kevin Rose (founder, Proof Collective, the group behind Moonbirds) and Bill Lee (co-founder, Craft Ventures) all bought the team. Rose worked with tech entrepreneurs Sunny Deep and Vinny Lingham. Snoop Dogg and Ken Howery (co-founder, PayPal) also bought the team. While it seems curious whether the groups and individuals who make successful Web3 bets buy NFTs for access and assets in the real world, Lee explains that “NFTs by utility [actually] next boundary. What Ice Cube really has brought the power of Web3 to Large3. [He] making sure that developers, team owners, sponsors, or even fans can create unique experiences and gifts for NFT owners.
More from Sportico.com
JWS ‘Take: Lee has long been an advocate for NFT. But last week’s crypto sell-off could only strengthen the belief that “people like speculation, and crypto can work again,” they don’t think it can be “sustainable unless it includes utilities.”
He was an early investor in OpenSea and beyond RTFKT, A virtual sneaker manufacturer purchased by Nike, and they own a stake in NFT’s artwork. But he sees “most NFT .jpeg [projects] as speculation, “And said people eventually will” figures out instead of buying these monkeys and owls [kind of utility] as the real potential of Web3. Unfortunate shows a picture associated with the Bosen Ape Yacht Club, and an owl is pictured in the Moonbirds project.
There is room for digital art collections and price speculation. But venture capitalists believe that the crypto industry, in general, needs to evolve into more than just gambling and staking to support the massive valuation of cryptocurrencies. “You’re not going to support a multi-billion dollar valuation of things like BAYC / Apecoin just in day trading, farm returns and speculation. I’m just [cannot] see these valuations sustain unless they are [begin to] offers real use cases such as Big3 [doing]. ”
Many of the conversations related to the NFT utility in sports have games or everyday fantasy tilt it. While Lee agrees there’s likely room for such an application, “It’s still like crypto v.1,” he said. “When I think about Web3, I think more about real utility. It’s like [Big3] where you get access to the game and [are able] to help influence what the team will do. ”That includes voting on the buyout offer.
New club owners may be betting on the success of Web3. But as Lee notes, “There’s no betting here.” The beauty of Big3’s offering is that the league can offer the benefits it offers with token ownership to token holders with current technology (think: the ability to scan the NFT to get into the board). “A lot of people know that NFT is a programmable membership benefit.”
That’s different from many of the metaverse -related projects that investors provide. Lee doesn’t want to call those investments – including in The Sandbox – a gamble because he believes in them Ready Player One the vision of people having a metaverse will come in time. But he admits it’s still “years away.”
“If you look at DAU, daily active users in the metaverse, it’s miniscule, nothing,” he said.
Lee bought the Big3 Fire-tier NFT for access and the assets they came with. (“I’m investing in my passion. At the end of the day, I want to go to the game,” he said.) But he said he wouldn’t be upset if investing in another club helped to create a use case for Dogecoin and leads to further adoption of cryptocurrency. Lee-co-founder of MyDoge, a “self-custodial wallet” that facilitates Doge transactions — believes Dogecoin can evolve into a digital currency and can imagine team supporters “giving Doge” to players and coaches as a reward for performance. . High gas fees (think: blockchain transaction fees) prevent Bitcoin and Etherium from being used in tipping.
There is reason to believe the “Doge army” will support Aliens and Big3. “Billy Marcus, the founder of Doge, has been tweeting about it [the tie-up] … and people have been throwing tips — Dogecoin — at Big3 and [Ice] The cube. This all started to happen [when Lee sent Ice Cube the tweet]. There is no coordination, ”Lee said.
And if the Doge’s army embraces the Aliens, it’s enough to move the needle to the league. “Last year, 60% of Robinhood’s quarterly profits, a quarterly revenue from cryptocurrency trading, was Dogecoin. [related] … So, you have a brutal Doge army there. We want to give it what it takes except speculation about the price, ”Lee said.
Utilities seem to be more important because of the recent crypto crash. The Dogecoin price fell more than 26% last week (it was at $ 0.09 in the evening).
Best of Sportico.com
