NFTs Are Finding Traction in Business and the Arts

Recent Crypto Feats by the PGA Tour, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Travis Scott and Walmart

One of the most important economic, financial commercial innovations that are coming our way into your future are NFTs, non-fungible tokens. They're already here, but you ain't seen nothing yet. Just to give you an idea of how big this already is, back in 2020, hip hop star Travis Scott hosted a concert in the metaverse and it was attended live by 28 million people. He premiered a song during that concert and a week later it debuted at number one on Billboard. And now the video of that concert has accumulated over 200 million views on YouTube.

In 2020, somebody paid $71,000 for crypto punk number 2924. That's an NFT sold on the Ethereum blockchain. Cryptopunks NFT 2924 was just resold and somebody this time just paid $4.5 million for it. The fourth highest price ever for a crypto punk NFT. All told, there have been $2.4 billion in trades of NFTs year to date. You know there are 10,000 of these Cryptopunks NFTs. Number 2924 is considered the 38th rarest. So you have to wonder what the value is of the other 37 that are rarer than it. And all of these are just digital pieces of art. They only exist on the internet. All told, this year, NFT transaction volume is going to exceed $50 billion. There's no central authority, no banks, no Wall Street brokerage firms, no government or corporation. Payments are made 24/7. They're completed within seconds. Nobody needs a bank account.

The PGA Tour is launching a set of NFTs next year. Warner Music Group has just announced a collaboration with OpenSea, that's the world's largest marketplace for NFTs. Recording artists at Warner are going to be able to use OpenSea to create and sell NFTs. At Christie's, the big auction house, they're launching Christie's 3.0 - a platform dedicated to just auctioning NFTs. Facebook and Instagram are now adding NFTs to their platforms. Both of them are owned by Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently sold an NFT of his own childhood baseball card, sold it for $105,000 (as if he needed the money).

Walmart now has stores in the metaverse too - Walmart Land, that's going to sell merchandise and NFTs. There's an obstacle course filled with oversized samples of its skincare and makeup products. There's a virtual dressing room with apparel from its exclusive fashion lines. It hosted a virtual concert last month that featured top recording artists.

And then there's Walmart's Universe of Play, which has toys and games that are popular with gamers and the hottest toys for the holiday season. Walmart has filed for Metaverse trademarks and they're trying to connect the dots between the virtual world and the physical world. Walmart's Metaverse stores are on the Roblox platform, which has 52 million daily users, mostly kids and teenagers.

In New York, the Museum of Modern Art is selling their masterpieces by Picasso, Renoir and Rodin. They're going to raise $70 million. And what are they going to do with the money? They're going to buy digital art. You see, the museum typically gets about 3 million visitors a year. But last year, attendance was half that much, largely due to the pandemic. So what's the museum doing? Beefing up its online content. Although it had 3 million visitors to its museum last year, it had 35 million visitors to its website and its YouTube channel. So the museum is going to buy NFTs. They're selling their physical art to buy digital art.

And you know what Bob Dylan did? He sold his music catalog for $400 million. Bruce Springsteen sold his for over $500 million. Stevie Nicks got $100 million. Ryan Tedder, $200 million. Paul Simon sold his music for $250 million. Puerto Rican singer and composer Luis Fonsi got $100 million, so did Justin Timberlake. Sting and Phil Collins both sold their music catalogs for $300 million.

Who are they selling their music to? Some of the biggest institutional investors - Concord, Blackrock, Apollo, Providence Equity and Eldridge Industries. Spirit Music Group, Primary Wave Music and Sony and Universal all bought the music from these recording artists. What are those institutions going to do with the music they now own? They're going to convert them to NFTs. You're going to be able to buy a piece of the music. So every time you hear Blood On The Tracks, you're going to be an owner of that music. And every time you hear it played on Spotify, you'll get a piece of the royalty. You'll not only be a fan, you'll be an owner of the music. How cool is that? All of this an indication of the significance of NFTs and how it's growing in importance in our economy. You ain't seen nothing yet! If you aren't familiar with NFTs, if you're not engaging with NFTs, now is the time to get that knowledge. You'll learn a lot about it in my new book, The Truth About Crypto.