To The Moon

The r/WallStreetBets hero made a move! $GameStop(GME)$ shares rose more than 22% in extended trading Thursday after The Wall Street Journal reported the retailer plans to create a marketplace for non-fungible tokens, often called NFTs. GameStop plans to establish cryptocurrency partnerships to create games and items for the marketplace, which cited people familiar with the matter. GameStop’s marketplace will focus on virtual video game goods such as character outfits and weapons. What is an NFT? An NFT is a kind of technology that allows proof of ownership of digital goods to be stored on a blockchain, often Etherium. NFT prices have risen in recent months driven by enthusiasm from cryptocurrency holders about the potential for the technology. To be more specific, it is a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, in-game items and videos. They are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency, and they are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos. Who is in NFT Club? $Twitter(TWTR)$ Twitter, Inc. owns and operates a microblogging platform. It has a market cap of $31.66 billion and posted more than $3.7 billion in revenue last year. In March 2021, Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of the firm, sold his first tweet as an NFT for over $2.9 million. In late June 2021, technology news platform Tech Crunch reported that the company was now making NFTs. While Instagram may be working on the development of a new NFT display option, Twitter has already come up with an idea to display digital assets as profile images. It does so in a way that allows users to authenticate rightful ownership, and highlight the original artist for the work. $Cloudflare, Inc.(NET)$ Cloudflare, Inc. operates a cloud platform that offers enterprise solutions. It has a market cap of over $33.47 billion and posted more than $430 million in revenue. This fast-growing cloud computing focuses on providing security solutions and a plethora of business solution tools, including packages for content delivery, software development kits, website development and analytics tools. In April 2021, Cloudflare announced that its Cloudflare Stream, the company’s video streaming service, is supporting NFTs. This means that creators and developers can embed NFTs in their videos, which affirms ownership rights and reduces the chances of piracy. $Mattel(MAT)$ This toy-maker giant has launched NFTs featuring one of the hottest brands – Hot Wheels. In June 2021, Mattel launched Hot Wheels NFT Garage series that featured three vehicles from “The First Editions” vehicle collection. Mattel’s popular product portfolio that includes iconic toys like Barbie, American Girl and UNO presents significant growth opportunities in the NFT space. This stock announced a collaboration for the NFT community and cryptocurrency holders from Mattel Creations and VeeFriends with a reimagined UNO deck featuring Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeFriends NFT signature characters. The new deck offers UNO fans and NFT collectors the opportunity to own a VeeFriends collectible in the physical form of a UNO deck. $Funko Inc.(FNKO)$ Funko, Inc. is a Washington-based firm that makes and sells pop culture consumer products. The firm was founded in 2017 and has a market cap of $933.79 million. The company has been praised by Bank of America for pressing forward into the NFTs and other revenue sources like toys, expanding beyond pop products. Funko acquired a majority stake in TokenWave, developer of TokenHead, a mobile app and website for showcasing and tracking NFT holdings, in April this year. Funko launched its NFT offerings on the WAX platform, the leading decentralized wallet on the blockchain, which provides verifiable authenticity for purchases of Funko NFTs. $PLBY Group, Inc.(PLBY)$ PLBY stock is also in the spotlight for its efforts in NFT (e.g. Rabbitars) and metaverse (e.g. Playboy Mansion). The former are digital art pieces of cartoon bunnies stored on the Ethereum blockchain. $DraftKings Inc.(DKNG)$ DraftKings has launched an NFT marketplace, primarily for athlete-related NFTs. The company has become a top name in sports gambling, so transitioning to NFTs could be a natural fit. Sports cards have long been a way to buy sports-related collectibles and DraftKings seems to be viewing NFTs in the same way. Current NFT drops look a lot like sports cards with a little more exclusivity and greater ease of trading. DraftKings' system will run on Ethereum Layer 2, which is a scaling solution to handle the increased transition load on the Ethereum network, and by the end of the year the company expects its NFTs to be transferrable to external digital wallets. If sports NFTs take off, DraftKings could be a winner in the market. $eBay(EBAY)$ One of the original internet marketplaces, eBay, is also taking its crack at NFTs. The company allows the sale of some NFTs on its traditional online platform but that may just be the start if it opens up to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. EBay is taking a bit of a different approach to NFTs from some of its rivals. The company is still focused on dollar sales right now, rather than relyng on a cryptocurrency, which is used in most NFT transactions on OpenSea. Accepting standard currency could make an eBay NFT more accessible to the masses than a cryptocurrency-focused NFT platform. Metaverse Still a relatively new blockchain phenomenon, NFT technology establishes ownership of digital assets and has most famously (or infamously) been applied to digital art. But this year’s conference had a new spin: There was a palpable emphasis on the future of NFTs, which many believe lies in their use as building blocks in the next iteration of the internet, referred to as Web 3.0 or “Web3.” Ultimately, the convergence of this platform with NFTs is expected to give rise to a massive, decentralized virtual world called the “metaverse.” SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS Are you interested in investing in NFT? List Other NFT Stocks You are Bullish on! Do you agree that NFT is Metaverse Economy?