It is the “jewel in the crown”, Golden State Warriors wrote last month.A true one-piece” paired with priceless utilities and once-in-a-lifetime benefits… sure to smash [bidding] record” due to the expected “high demand”.
The Dubs didn’t sell Wilt Chamberlain’s autographed jerseys or even get a chance to meet any of the team’s stars in person. No: their April 2022 press release refers to NFTs.
As it turns out, there wasn’t much interest in the hyped “crown jewel.” Only a few weeks later, the value of the unique NFT has plummeted.The rest of the Warriors’ NFT deployment doesn’t seem to get any better — a far cry from the team’s first foray into the crypto world, and the latest example of how the nearly $2 trillion crypto market crash can lead to digital currencies falling or losing their respective the value of obviouslyor almost completely.
The Warriors first entered crypto a full year ago in April 2021. They issued a series of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), which are essentially receipts for ownership of digital items. The items celebrate famous periods in the franchise’s history with digital tickets, digital championship rings and digital banners from various eras. Die-hard fans can purchase digital artifacts from the 1956 championship team, the 2007 We Believe Warriors, or any tournament from the Steve Kerr era.
Pro sports and NFTs already clash as Warriors dabble in cryptocurrency; high-profile athletes are already changing their social media avatars to colorful ape, Eight planes and other strange, apparently xenophobic, Cartoon Digital Artwork. NBA turns player highlights into Collectible NFTs Too.
But the Golden State Warriors are the first American professional sports team to launch an NFT series, Breathtaking articles are several times more than press releases reiterated. The Dubs series is celebrated as a well-timed event: Ethereum (the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency) is heading towards its all-time high valuation, and interest in cryptocurrencies is on the rise. Brandon Schneider, chief revenue officer of the Warriors, is bullish on the future of the NFT market.
“This is just the beginning, NFTs are not a flash in the pan. … We think in terms of what we’re going to do, you’re going to see more applications moving forward,” he said. Tell Forbes.com 2021.
The rarest item of 2021, the “1-of-1 World Championship Ring NFT”, combines All six franchise titles With a single design, it reportedly sold for 285.1111 ETH or $967,727.78 soon Ether Scanof Ethereum’s calculated value on the day of the sale.
Ethereum value drops in June 2021 – due to combination Extremely online billionaire Elon Musk says Tesla will no longer accept bitcoin (he later withdraw his decision) and stricter Chinese regulations Against cryptocurrencies – did not really dampen enthusiasm or expectations for the NFT market.It doesn’t seem endless headline News show The unregulated market behind NFTs is riddled with scams and crime This hurts unsuspecting investors/hobbyists.
“Cryptocurrencies and NFTs in general are a get-rich-quick scheme, and I’m not saying that in a derogatory sense. In some cases, people have seen astronomical gains,” is writing a book on cryptocurrencies and Fraud Book reporter Jacob Silverman told SFGATE. “The appeal to sellers, companies or sports teams is that it seems like an easy revenue stream.”
Fans walk out of the Chase Center before Game 3 of the second-round NBA basketball playoff series between the Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies in San Francisco on Saturday, May 7, 2022.
Jeff Chiu/Associated PressSo in April 2022, the Warriors are back The second round of NFT decline. The focus of this series is on the future, not the past. The value of the new NFT should be partly related to how the Warriors performed in the playoffs. NFT buyers receive “additional utility and benefits” each round the team progresses. This includes coveted fan prizes such as autographed jerseys and seats on the Champions Parade float (and many more NFTs).
The second drop had an additional twist: buyers didn’t have to put money into the cryptocurrency to buy nearly any of the 2,999 minted NFTs, each with an initial value of $499.99. The only exception to this rule is the precious gemstones in the aforementioned collections, a type ofGold Bar Pass,” can only be obtained through an Ethereum bid. In addition to the NFT, the winning bidder should also receive a physical gold bar (we estimate it is worth about $9,800) and two tickets to the Warriors playoffs.
But it’s safe to say that Warriors fans aren’t eager for the team’s 2022 one-on-one NFTs. The highest bid for the project ended up being 10 ETH, which was worth $30,287.70 at the time of the bid and is now worth $19,638.80 after the recent cryptocurrency drop. That’s 3.5% of the price of a single item in 2021 (285.1111 ETH, or $967,727.78, now worth $559,356.62). It’s not even close to the price the Warriors set for 25 ETH to buy now, and it’s hardly “record breaking” as the team predicted. As far as we know, the physical bullion contained in the NFT itself is worth about half of the total value of the one-to-one package.
Interestingly, now a special one-to-one NFT belong to wallet Users with 115 NFTs, 113 of which are part of the FTX US NFT collection. These include multiple FTX US hoodies, FTX US socks, Forbes Virtual Billionaire and an NFT that allows its owners to have a face-to-face lunch or a 30-minute Zoom call with FTX’s CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried.
As for the remaining nearly 3,000 NFTs initially worth $499.99/piece? The situation is not much better. A glance at the low-end sales offers on the team’s 2022 playoff NFT collection page reveals that at least 49 NFTs have been resold at “buy it now” prices that are lower than the purchase price a month ago. Thousands of other NFTs on the page are already available for bidding without a “buy it now” option, but only two have received actual bids, and neither is serious. For example, after selling for $499.99 on April 15, The highest bid for the GSW 2015 Championship Ring #18 NFT is $21.00, placed on May 11.
SFGATE contacted a Warriors spokesperson for various clarifications about the NFT drop, but the Warriors responded via email that they “do not disclose financial information.” They also declined to confirm our best estimate of the value of the physical bullion in the one-to-one package. Here’s what they have to offer: “Our April NFT Drop was the second-largest total revenue drop in North American team sports history, and our 2021 Legacy Drop was the first, by the way.”
Comparing the success of the Dubs’ line of 2021 NFTs to a seemingly less successful line this year is like comparing the Golden State Warriors to the Sacramento Kings. To be fair, the Warriors aren’t the only sports entity that has seen a significant drop in interest in NFTs.Manchester United midfielder and French football star Paul Pogba formed a partnership with an NFT called Cryptodragons, which sold for a whopping 35 ETH or $160,000 in November, but recent sales have Appear Its value plummeted 99.9%. The Warriors don’t seem to have That That sucks, but one obvious question remains: how long are they going to pose as if their crypto efforts are still unblocked?
“A lot of irrational enthusiasm has exited the industry,” Silverman told SFGATE. “I think more and more companies will see that NFT projects start to generate some excitement or raise some initial funding, and then the next time they try to go back to their customers or their fans and sell to them again, there will be less interest More. I think that’s what’s happening with the Warriors.”
Silverman pointed to macroeconomic deterrents such as the large number of ordinary people leaving the cryptocurrency space due to being burned, and the rising interest in cryptocurrencies as they decline. In his view, a long-term rebound is unlikely, and there simply isn’t enough interest to sustain the price that made headlines a year ago.
The Warriors may be trying to dress up this NFT drop with bells and whistles like a fan experience and perks. But the reality is that much of its utility, like any other NFT, is speculative. In this case, it relies on crypto markets, and those markets are in the toilet, and its value falls accordingly.
Nicholas Weaver, a senior fellow at the International Computer Science Institute and a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at UC Berkeley, who has studied cryptocurrencies for many years, shares a similar view to Silverman.
“Essentially, the entire space is a self-assembling Ponzi scheme with $0 real-world value,” he wrote via email. “Every dollar ‘earned’ comes at someone else’s expense, and then some aspect of the system turns it into a serious negative. I don’t think there’s going to be more recovery in the end because it needs a new batch of A sucker, not a sucker for renewable resources.”
Weaver was equally pessimistic about the Warriors’ attempt to offer a friendly NFT alternative by buying in dollars rather than cryptocurrencies.
“NFTs are digital baseball cards at best,” Weaver said. “The only reason they are so hyped is the overall cryptocurrency hype right now. When that goes away, so does the NFT ‘market’.”
