irreplaceable popularity… Nike and Naver also loose money

The non-fungible token (NFT) wind is strong. Start-up ransom prices soared more than 200 times in less than a year, and entertainment, platform, and game companies are competing to introduce the service. Even specialized NFT exchanges are booming. As the perception that “NFT investment is money” spreads, the global NFT transaction amount exceeded 20 trillion won last month. That’s 183 times the total transaction last year.

A lot of money is also pouring into the startup industry. According to the venture capital (VC) industry on the 28th, Planetarium, a domestic game engine developer that developed the blockchain game ‘Nine Chronicle’, is about to attract about 50 billion won in Series B investment. Animocar Brands, a global blockchain company, participated as a lead investor, and three or four global investors, including Samsung Electronics’ corporate-led venture capital (CVC) Samsung Next, are in final negotiations.

Nine Chronicle is a game that allows users to freely trade items like other NFT games. If this investment is confirmed, Planetarium will be recognized for its corporate value of 350 billion won. In January of this year, it was around 100 billion won. In less than a year, the ransom had risen 35 times.

If the domestic NFT market is in its infancy, the overseas NFT market seems to have spread its wings. In the past three months, four NFT companies have become unicorn companies (startups valued at more than $1 billion). These include Mycical Games in the US, Sky Mavis in Vietnam, Animocar Brands in Hong Kong, and Sorare in France.

On the 4th, Mycical Games received an investment of 150 million dollars in recognition of its corporate value of 1.25 billion dollars. Skymavis attracted $150 million worth of $3 billion in October, Animocar Brands raised $65 million with $2.2 billion in October, and Sorare raised $680 million with $4.3 billion in September. Sorare’s enterprise value, which was $20 million in December last year, soared 215 times in 11 months.

NFTs give unique recognition and scarcity values ​​to digital content such as videos and game items so that they can be owned or traded. The market is growing explosively as it stimulates the desire to “transact digital contents safely” and creates synergy with the metaverse craze.

NFTs that Meta, Nike and Naver also jumped into… Transaction volume increased 183 times in one year
‘The only genuine article’ in the infinitely reproduced digital world… Global industry new trend

‘Word of the Year’ selected by British dictionary publisher Collins. Meta (formerly Facebook), Visa, Nike, Gucci, Amazon, Naver, and Kakao are new businesses. 180-fold increase in transaction volume in one year… .

These are words that describe non-fungible tokens (NFTs). NFT, which was regarded as a “secret buzzword among cryptocurrency investors” even earlier this year, is emerging as a keyword leading the global industry trend. Recently, as the perception that “NFT is the economic foundation of the digital world like the metaverse” is spreading, there are even evaluations that it has risen to the trend of the times.

NFT startup ransom ‘heavenly’

According to Dapp Radar, a global blockchain data company on the 28th, the global NFT transaction amount last year was about 95 million dollars. But this year the story is completely different. The transaction amount from 1.23 billion dollars in the first quarter of this year increased to 1.24 billion dollars in the second quarter, and in the third quarter it finally made a ‘quantum jump’ to 10.67 billion dollars. In October alone, $4.2 billion was traded. The accumulated amount from January to October was $17.34 billion. Our money exceeds 20 trillion won. This is 183 times the annual turnover of last year.

The place where money flows intensively is the startup industry. Promising NFT startups are exploding in ransom prices. Only this year alone, Dapper Labs, Sorare, Animocar Brands, Sky Mavis, and Mystical Games have attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, and quickly became a ‘unicorn company (startup with a corporate value of 1 trillion won or more)’. Except for Animocar Brands, all of them are young companies that were founded in 2018. This is why the venture capital (VC) industry has been evaluated as “an unprecedentedly fast growth rate”.

Global conglomerates are also showing their faces in the NFT market one after another. Meta announced its entry into the NFT business at the annual Connect Conference last month. Meta recently introduced ‘Nobi’, a virtual asset wallet that can store NFTs. The Horizon Marketplace, a platform that can trade digital goods including NFTs, is also planned to be launched soon.

Visa, a global payment service company, also officially announced its participation in the NFT market in August this year. “NFT is a huge innovation,” said Kai Sheffield, Vice President of Visa. In the fashion industry, many global brands such as Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Dolce & Gabbana have all started NFT businesses. Nike, the world’s No. 1 sports brand, also applied for a patent for shoes and clothing for the metaverse in October, heralding its entry into the NFT market.

AWS, a subsidiary of Amazon, signed a partnership with Origin Protocol, an NFT platform operator, in June this year to support NFT services. In addition, CEO Jensen Hwang, known as a ‘guru’ in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry, recently pointed out NFT as a key element in the metaverse era. In Korea, Naver, Kakao, Hive, SM Entertainment, NCsoft, Wemade, Hangul and Computer have also entered the NFT market.

“Opening effect… A lot of bubbles.”

It is analyzed that the desire to “trade digital contents” lies in the background of the growing popularity of NFTs. Digital contents such as video and picture files can be copied infinitely, making it difficult to give value. However, when the ‘original’ is designated by giving a unique recognition value to specific content with blockchain technology, a scarce value is created and transactions are possible. That’s NFT.

Cases of making digital artworks, illustrations, and sports videos into NFT products have started pouring in. Dapper Labs makes and sells famous scenes from the NBA as NFTs.

The expansion of the digital virtual world created by the metaverse craze has accelerated the growth of NFTs. The metaverse is a virtual world, and everything in the virtual world is digital content. It allowed NFTs to securely own and trade content in the Metaverse. Kim Min-su, CEO of NFT Bank, said, “The two are inseparable in that NFT is the economic foundation of the metaverse.

Concerns about the craze are growing at the same time. It is also not easy to point out that the current NFT craze has a ‘bubble’. It is an open secret that NFT prices are often raised by ‘inside trading’ within the NFT community. For example, the digital artist Bipple’s ‘Everyday: the first 5000 days’, which traded the highest amount in the history of NFTs of $69.3 million, was purchased by the industry’s largest hand, ‘Metacoban’. In order to warm up the market atmosphere, it is a kind of ‘bicycle transaction’ where industry stakeholders buy and sell works.

Min-Jun Seo / Min-Ki Gu