Are Tiffany and FC Barcelona fools or geniuses?

GB Market Commentary 02/08/2022

by Marcus Sotiriou

Bitcoin remains above $20,000 whilst institutional interest for NFT and cryptocurrency integration rises. Luxury retailer Tiffany & Co. and FC Barcelona are the latest giants to announce Web 3 plans.

Tiffany is planning to sell 250 NFTs called “Nftiff”. These are only allowed to be bought by Cryptopunks holders and one can buy a maximum of 3 Nftiffs. These NFTs will be sold for 30 ETH, which equates to around $50K at current prices, and allow holders to receive a custom-designed pendant and NFT that resembles the jewellery, and have the item shipped.

Tiffany’s blog detailed, “Tiffany & Co. designers will interpret each Cryptopunk into custom-designed pendants – converting the 87 attributes and 159 colors that appear across the collection of 10,000 Cryptopunk NFTs to the most similar gemstone or enamel colour.”

“Depending on which Cryptopunk owners purchase pendants, each piece will use at least 30 gemstones and/or diamonds to create the custom designs with the highest fidelity to the original NFT art. Examples of gemstones include but are not limited to Sapphires, Amethyst, and Spinel.”

Yesterday, Barcelona revealed their multi-million euro partnership with Socios.com, which provides tokenisation solutions to sports clubs for fan engagement.

Socios.com will invest €100 million to acquire 24.5% Barça Studios, which manages the club’s audiovisual productions and digital business offerings. Socios.com started collaborating with FC Barcelona in February 2020 with the launch of FC Barcelona’s fan token called BAR. With this investment FC Barcelona aim to implement better NFT and metaverse products.

These integrations from Tiffany and FC Barcelona show household brands are recognising how Web 3 can significantly increase fan engagement through digital assets. I think these moves are smart as it will allow these companies to grab the attention of the rapidly growing army of web 3 enthusiasts, and the first companies to do so successfully will be in a prime position.

However, these integrations do not even touch the surface of how blockchain technology can enhance companies. Tiffany, for example, can use blockchains to authenticate products in their supply chains or sell NFT gated physical experiences for physical buyers.

NFT collections are certainly an easier project to implement at this stage, but they are just the start, in my opinion.