Could Conor McGregor KO the NFT Economy?
Could Conor McGregor KO The Non-Fungible Token Economy?
by Brett C Banfe
Hello! My name is Brett Banfe. I’d like to share some ideas on the topic of Non-Fungible Tokens.
Non-Fungible Tokens are a term used to explain that the token cannot be broken down into partial assets. In a way, this is like a ground layer digital item. Those who keep an ear to the ground are looking for big things out of NFTs in 2021.
Josh Petty, the stylish maverick and debonair business magnate otherwise known by his online persona as @CoinYeezy and who operates as one of the founders of Twetch, indicated this when he tweeted out on the first day of this year,
“2021 is going to be a huge year for NFTs.”
A private wealth advisor I spoke to earlier this week with 30 years in the financial-instruments industry, who also just so happens to be my cousin, had one question for me when discussing digital assets: “Prior to speaking to you, Brett, I’d never even heard of the term ‘tokenization’ before.”
In some ways, this represents both the opportunity and the cost of entering a new market.
NFTs are poised to fuel the big-data economy which is slated to take much of the focus of the upcoming CoinGeek in Zurich in April of 2021. Interested persons, whether users or prospective business partners will have an opportunity to hear from experts in this field at this conference.
You can learn more about online registration opportunities at https://coingeekconference.com/
But I’d like to discuss a brief example of what can you do with NFT.
Consider this: Later tonight, on January 23rd, there will be a major UFC fight with the return of Conor McGregor. His boxing match against Floyd Mayweather Jr. drew 4.3 million Pay-Per-Views, the second highest PPV draw in history. McGregor’s last MMA fight drew 2.4 million PPVs, the most ever for MMA.
McGregor is a showman and a self-promoter, and his fights draw global media attention.
What if you could trade the outcome of this fight as a non-fungible token?
His opponent this evening is Dustin Poirier. How many “Poirier by KO in Rd 1s” are worth a “McGregor by KO in Rd 1?”
With NFTs, that’s not a question we have to wonder. It’s currently possible, for example to mint 20,000 tokens for each potential outcome to the fight:
Five tokens for each fighter winning in each of the five rounds by knock-out and two tokens which represent each fighter winning by decision. This would be a total of twelve separate unique tokens, and they could be distributed via a lottery system to beta-participants in an exchange.
It’s important to point out that these could have no monetary value, thus avoiding any regulation relating to gambling, and it would even be possible to make it so that they’re not exchangeable for any other asset other than another “McGregor vs. Poirier” token. In this way, the economy could remain a closed-circuit.
The only way you could get these tokens could be to enter into the lottery system, and these tokens would be assigned at random to entire range of users who volunteer to participate.
So what could we accomplish with this system? As the tokens become traded in this closed-circuit in the lead up to the fight, we end up building potentially important data about the expectations of the fans.
Once the fight is concluded, it could be possible to allow only the tokens which matched the result of the fight to remain in existence, while all other tokens would expire.
This could be a thrilling experiment.
The point wouldn’t be to give users a vehicle to bet on the outcome, but it’d be to showcase the power of the bitcoin protocol by creating engagement with the fans, enabling them to participate in the data economy for the purposes of placing themselves on the leaderboard for acquiring the most tokens related to their expected result.
This can accomplish two things. Because of the international media which these types of sporting events gather, a press release about the ability to trade these outcomes of the fights for fun could end up being picked up by various news services who would then be reaching out to the companies who’re creating, designing and supporting the platform on which this capability rests.
This could lead to outside investors like the UFC themselves or other major sports management firms to begin to consider the implicaitons of big data management, potentially seeing opportunities for their own business model to establish this feature at full-scale, allowing their legions of fans to log-in, trade NFTs for fun, without even understanding the underlying bitcoin protocol which allows these to be possible. All they know is that “it works.”
This could result in generating massive transactions on chain and could also serve as opportunities for stress tests since much of the trading would occur in the run-up to the actual event. As the date of the sporting event crept ever closer, the hype would build and the excitement to try to gather the most of the winning tokens would reach a fever pitch.
But also, this could lead to a more fulfilling user experience with the platform itself, suchas UFC.com or the WWE, allowing users who successfully predicted the outcomes of the matches correctly to redeem their winning tokens for exclusive web content, chances at drawings at limited-edition merchandise, upgrades to UX on the platform itself, such as dark mode or enabling of Direct Messaging, or meet-and-greets.
The tokens themselves could also become award icons which appear at the top of the dashboard when navigating the platform and which users could proudly display to highlight various accomplishments or thresholds met, similar to how major fantasy football websites allow for trophies to be digitally displayed within the user profile pages.
I see so much potential for the development of these NFTs.
Applying them to global media events like major sporting events and Olympics has the side benefit of piggy-backing off of the mainstream popularity of these pasttimes as opposed to the struggle to break-through with other crypto-enthusiasts who’re often simply looking for the next carcass to pick clean rather than the utility which the protocol enables.
The bitcoin protocol and NFTs allow us to innovate as far as our imaginations can take us.
The bitcoin protocol enables user engagement with traditional products or services that go beyond the products themselves but enable the built-in capability to create user engagement through the power of the token.
And ultimately, that’s a net-win for expanding the interactive, interoperable, globally, free-integrated and open solutions network of digital asset exchange which rests upon the foundational bedrock of contractual and lawful agreement.
Brett C. Banfe - Fabriik by Choice, Daniel Krawisz Dharma, 21e8 Explorer, Bitcoin, Disc Golf, Fatherhood, Chess, Magic: the Gathering, Aperspectival-Integral Theory, 4th Dimension, Love+ and the New Jersey Boardwalk.
Reach out to me on Twitter at @manifestable, or to my personal email, screwluse@gmail.com with comments, thoughts or suggestions. Thx.