When it comes to technology and who people will listen to, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is high up on that list of influential thought leaders. He recently broached the subject of NFTs during a climate change event hosted by Tech Crunch noting his dislike of them due to his view that they’re “100 percent based on greater fool theory”.
Greater fool theory is a well-known financial concept whereby overpriced assets can still be sold at a profit if the seller can find someone (the fool) willing to pay a higher price, even in a market bubble. “Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world immensely,” he remarked, in reference to Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), one of the most well-known NFT collections.
Gates went on to discuss what he preferred to invest in, saying: I’m used to asset classes, like a farm where they have output, or like a company where they make products.” Referencing both crypto and NFTs, he added: “I’m not involved in that, I’m not long or short any of those things.”
This isn’t the first time Gates has voiced his scepticism on the world of cryptocurrencies, noting the volatile nature of the industry. And that’s not unreasonable in the current climate. Whilst Bitcoin has hit highs of $64k in 2021, that’s now tanked alongside the rest of the industry, currently sitting around $21k.
Bored Ape Yacht Club. Image credit Shutterstock
That’s seen prices of NFTs fall including those of BAYC and CryptoPunks in what’s termed a bear market. Prior to the overall market decline, cashes like Terra’s stablecoin UST and its native token LUNA have only added to cryptos’ woes of late.
NFTs aren’t going away anytime soon though, more and more keep cropping up. Some are tied to celebrities whilst platforms including Instagram have been experimenting with integration. Bill Gates isn’t going to be buying NFTs at any rate, but if you are then check out gmw3’sNFT Spotlight.
After reading this title, you might be wondering: since we can’t actually eat in the metaverse, what use will restaurants truly have inside a virtual world? Or what use could possibly come out of an NFT “food” item?
Over the years, restaurants have seen growth by adopting more purpose-driven brand models. McDonald’s, for example, isn’t just known for its cheap and delicious food items — but also for its ability to raise funds for charity efforts and give back to communities in need. The Taco Bell Foundation has also spent years gathering millions of dollars in funds, which it regularly allocates towards grants and scholarships to help young leaders access easier paths to education and career-building.
Web3 technology is slowly presenting a range of use cases for the restaurant industry — including opportunities to crowdfund using NFTs, create innovative metaverse experiences, build deeper brand loyalty and serve as access passes for greater experiences and perks. In this article, we’ll take a look at 5 notable brands that are adopting Web3 and metaverse technology.
McDonald’s
The fast-food industry’s reigning champion has already shown significant interest in utilising Web3 technology to create new experiences for its customer base. So far, the restaurant’s initiatives include plans for metaverse experiences and commemorative NFTs.
While this may be a new turn in the company’s marketing roadmap, it isn’t necessarily an uncharacteristic move for McDonald’s. The fast-food restaurant has been long-regarded as an innovator in the fast-food industry, with frequent changes to its branding and model over the course of several decades. Out of all fast-food restaurants, Mcdonald’s is also highly regarded as a leader in digital technology — with a digital innovation team that counts 130 people globally.
In February 2022, it was announced that McDonald’s tendered an application for 10 trademarks in the metaverse. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), this trademark registration is meant to cover the support of both physical and virtual goods, as well as a virtual restaurant that also offers home delivery services.
Taco Bell
Last year, popular fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that they would be releasing a series of “limited” NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Sold on the Rarible marketplace, the 25 pieces of digital art sold within a half hour. With the highest recorded bid, the restaurant’s “Ever-Crunching” tacos piece received the highest of all bids — coming in at 3.9 ETH, or the equivalent of $9,406 USD.
Venture capitalist David Pakman commended Taco Bell for their early adoption of NFT technology: “Right now, we are in the experimentation phase of the market, so I would expect to see lots of different experiments from musical and visual artists, brands, tech companies, media companies and creators of all stripes. Sometimes brands can be rewarded for embracing emerging consumer trends earlier than their peer group, so kudos to Taco Bell.”
Taco Bell’s NFT drop ended up being a great case for tokenised crowdfunding, with all funds from the restaurant’s project being allocated to charity. According to the listing, 100% of the profits earned from the sale were donated to Taco Bell Foundation, Inc. “to empower youth to discover and pursue their career and educational pathways.”
Starbucks
This month, Starbucks announced that they would be launching their own digital community Web3 platform, including a release of loyalty-based NFTs. On the company’s fiscal Q2 2022 earnings call, Starbucks presented their new plan to investors — arguing in favour of NFT technology as a way for the popular coffee chain to extend its brand’s concept of the “third place” — a term they used to describe a place where people can feel a sense of belonging over coffee between the home and the workplace.
“Emerging technologies associated with Web3, and specifically NFTs, now enable this aspiration and allow us to extend who Starbucks has always been at our core,” says Brady Brewer, Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer. “We are creating the digital third place. To achieve this, we will broaden our framework of what it means for people to be a member of the Starbucks community, adding new concepts such as ownership and community-based membership models that we see developing in the Web3 space.”
Starbucks has not yet revealed specific details on what their first set of NFTs will look like or which sorts of utilities will come attached. However, the company has detailed in an official blog post that it believes there is potential for the company to provide customers with additional experiences and perks through greater utilities.
Starbucks, which is also well-known for promoting artists and musicians, plans to continue this streak with its first NFT launch. According to the post, the company plans to start its first “collection, membership and community later this year, based on coffee art and storytelling. It will come with a host of unique experiences and benefits.”
Chipotle
Last month, in honour of National Burrito Day (which was April 7th, in case you weren’t aware), Chipotle set up shop in the metaverse by launching its very own virtual “burrito builder” — hosted by Roblox. The game was apparently inspired by “Chipotle fans on social media who have compared the complexities of rolling burritos to playing a video game,” the brand announced in an official statement.
While Chipotle didn’t necessarily make use of a Web3 platform (such as Decentraland or The Sandbox), the famous Mexican chain did tap into the popular ‘play-to-earn’ model found in several blockchain games. In this case, users who were able to complete gamified tasks were rewarded with burritos.
Chris Brandt, Chipotle’s chief marketer, made a statement on the model: “We’ve tapped into play-to-earn, an emerging engagement model in the metaverse, to launch our newest experience on Roblox that celebrates the iconic Chipotle burrito. We’re blending the metaverse and real-world elements of our brand to take the Chipotle fan experience to a whole new level.”
Bored & Hungry
Based in Long Beach, California, Bored & Hungry was inspired by — you guessed it — the imagery from the now infamous Bored Ape NFTs, which are indisputably the most popular and successful of all NFT projects. Andy Nguyen, owner and founder of the new popup establishment, purchased four NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Club and two NFTs from Mutant Ape Yacht Club to fund the initiative. Each image now appears across the restaurant’s food packaging and branding.
“The main bored ape, which is our logo, we spent a little over $267,000 on — and on the Mutant Apes we spent around $65,000 to $75,000 for each one,” Nguyen has detailed, revealing how much money was spent on each lucrative crypto asset to kick things off.
In all, it appears that Bored & Hungry isn’t just a flashy new burger joint adorned with popular cartoons as its logo. Its interesting model has actually revealed several insights into how NFT technology can translate into the real world, as the company has also announced that it will accept both Ethereum and ApeCoin (BAYC’s token) as a form of payment.
“The goal is to give back to the growing [Web3] community and open the doors to those who want to learn more about this new Web3/NFT world,” Nguyen has commented. When detailing his greater mission, he says: “Our job is to educate the public about this new future world. And show people that you can create a brand/business out of this IP. Taking away the stigma of, ‘it’s just a jpeg.’”
Over the past week, numerous announcements, partnerships, and developments have been announced that have the potential to impact the metaverse space. The market cap of the metaverse cryptocurrency sector ends the week hovering around ~$29 billion USD. Most of the sector was down in price over the past week, though recently released ApeCoin (APE) ended the week up on a 15% gain.
Price action of APE over past seven days. Image credit: CoinMarketCap
Among top mentions in the metaverse market this week include these key players:
Avalanche NFTs & DeFi Kingdoms
Meta
Fidelity
Coinbase
Chikn NFTs Arrive in DeFi Kingdoms
The popular gamified DEX DeFi Kingdoms (DFK) recently made a major expansionary move to the Avalanche network. On Avalanche, DFK is utilizing the Synapse bridge to create a brand new realm called Crystalvale. This new realm will come along with a new power token in CRYSTAL.
This expansion to Avalanche has opened up DFK to an additional partnership with Chikn, the young NFT project featuring chickens (and soon roosters) as yield-generating NFT mints.
We’re excited to cement our partnership with @DefiKingdoms
The most active players in the Chikn ecosystem will be rewarded accordingly within Crystalvale
— chikn //Roostr MINT TODAY// (@chikn_nft) April 13, 2022
Chikn has a unique economic structure, deploying three separate tokens to power its ecosystem.
Those three tokens are:
Chikn – an upgradeable chicken-inspired NFT that lays $EGG
EGG – the governance and utility token for the ecosystem
FEED – harvested via the chikn.farm app, FEED is eaten by chikn to entice upgrades and higher yields.
These three tokens provide functionality and a self-sustaining economic system. Now, with an added utility to Chikn NFTs with the coming integration to DFK, both projects can cross-pollinate their user bases to facilitate new growth in the metaverse sector.
Chikn NFTs
Facebook-Rebrand Meta Reveals Hefty NFT Costs
The parent company of Facebook, Meta, recently announced an eye-opening 47.5% cut on NFT sales stemming from its virtual reality platform called Horizon Worlds. This cut makes Meta the most expensive in the entire industry and it isn’t even close.
The fee can be broken down into two different parts. The first part is an immediate 30% hardware platform fee which covers Meta Quest store sales while the remaining 17.5% fee comes from the Horizon Worlds platform.
The massive platforms of Looksrare, Rarible, and OpenSea have substantially lower fees of only 2-2.5%, laughable in comparison to the massive cost pressure Meta is putting on its own creators.
Investment Giant Fidelity to Launch New Metaverse ETF
Assets that can be expected to receive consideration for the fund include the following stocks & cryptocurrencies:
Meta
Nvidia
Unity Software
Microsoft
Decentraland
Axie Infinity
The Sandbox
This opportunity provides a brand new on-ramp for metaverse projects to receive liquidity and investment assistance. With new buyers stemming from the Fidelity channel, growth can be more readily achieved moving forward.
This announcement also further solidifies the broader interest in metaverse applications from external investors.
Users have the opportunity to participate in the project. The call for the community to participate is essentially a casting call. Those holding BAYC NFTs can deposit them to a Coinbase Wallet and connect them to the degentrilogy.com website to participate, bringing any ideas for characters and storylines.
The very first instalment of this new trilogy is said to premiere in June 2022.
(@chikn_nft) 
DEFINITELY SOMETHING