Despite The Crypto Bear Market, Moonpay Continues To Expand Into NFTs
MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said the company is betting that NFTs will eventually become a mainstream way for people to buy, sell and trade digital assets. “We’re enabling the sale of these things in a completely new way,” he said in an interview.
Soto-Wright said MoonPay would take a cut of each transaction, though he declined to say how much. The company plans to announce more partnerships with entertainment and media companies in the coming weeks.
MoonPay’s expansion into the NFT market comes as major corporations are beginning to experiment with the technology. Last week, Twitter Inc. announced plans to allow users to purchase, sell and tweet NFTs on its social media platform.
And earlier this month, NBA Top Shot, a site where people can buy and sell digital clips of basketball highlights, became one of the hottest properties in the burgeoning NFT market when it sold a rare clip for $200,000.
The move comes as NFTs, which are digital assets with unique codes that certify ownership, have become a source of funding for artists and celebrities. Musician Grimes sold an NFT collection for $5.8 million in February, while Jack Dorsey, chief executive officer of Twitter Inc., auctioned off his first tweet as an NFT for more than $2 million last month.
MoonPay’s HyperMint will allow Thefox Corp., Universal Pictures, Creative Artists Agency and Death Row Records to create their own NFT collections. The platform is designed to be user-friendly and help brands mint their digital assets quickly and easily.
MoonPay CEO Ivan Liljeqvist said in an interview that the company is seeing strong interest from major brands in using NFTs as a way to connect with fans and generate revenue.
We’re really at the beginning of this market. There’s a lot of excitement around what can be done with NFTs, and we think it has a lot of potentials to revolutionize how brands interact with their fans.
MoonPay CEO, Ivan Liljeqvist
NFTs have the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with digital content. With the ability to uniquely identify and track each individual item, NFTs could provide a new level of authenticity and accountability that is currently lacking in many industries.
For brands, this could mean creating unique, one-of-a-kind items that can be easily tracked and authenticated. In the sports world, for example, NFTs could be used to create game-worn jerseys or balls that could be automatically verified as authentic. In the music industry, NFTs could be used to create limited edition tracks or albums that can’t be duplicated or pirated.
MoonPay’s co-founder and the chief executive officer said the company is eyeing sports, film, music, fashion, and gaming as areas that could benefit from the technology.
It’s clear that there are endless possibilities for how NFTs can be used to enhance existing products and services. And with MoonPay’s backing, it seems likely that we’ll start seeing more brands experiment with this exciting new technology in the near future.
Barry Pene is a stern blockchain research/copywriter. Barry has been trading cryptos since 2017 and has been invested in issues that would put the blockchain industry on the right pedestal. Barry's research expertise cuts across blockchain as a disruptive technology, DeFis, NFTs, Web3, and reduction of energy consumption levels of cryptocurrency mining.
