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Intro Notes, Plugs & Amendments 🔌🔧

ICYMI - Last week I had some personal news to share in that last week was my last as a full-time employee at COPA90, as their head of Cryptomedia. I will continue to work with their amazing team in a consulting capacity as their head of Web3! You can read more about it here on LinkedIn.

So Sporting Crypto has a makeover just as crypto enters capitulation mode…brilliantly ironic.

This has been in the works for a few weeks and a huge shout out to Luis for creating something I really love. If you’re in need of some good design work, definitely hit him up.

Hello from NYC!

I’m here for NFT NYC, the largest NFT conference in the weird world. 

The conference is 15,000 people large, and the number of people actually in NYC because of the conference and fringe events is likely double that size. 

All this whilst we enter true capitulation in markets generally, but mostly so in crypto. Funds and retail investors are being margin called left right and centre.

4 weeks ago I wrote:

It looks like we were at that short pause before plummeting another 50% or so.

I had a feeling that’s exactly what it was, unfortunately.

And we could go lower, from here, of course.

I thought it’d be a good idea to pen further thoughts that have been brewing in my brain about the state of the market, but also the potential opportunities a huge dip brings for people who are serious about building something here.

🔌 If you're interested in sponsoring the newsletter - feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn, or email me back at this address!

🔌 If you would like me to come to an event and speak about Sports & Crypto / NFTs, please reach out on the above platforms.

🔌 I’m currently in NYC until the 25th of June so if you’d like to grab a coffee, just hit me up via email :)

🔌 I’ll be in Orlando from the 25th-27th of June if any subscribers want to connect!

This Week’s Deep Dive: Building in the Bear Market

The things that are important in the next crypto cycle will be created when the price is low and attention is fleeting. 

That’s no different for sports.

Sorare for example is a project that was built during the last time crypto dipped this hard between 2017 and early 2020. 

Through this newsletter, and outside of it, I’m lucky enough that many people reach out with their projects very early on. Some for advice, some to evangelise. 

Like most things in crypto, it’s mostly not up to scratch and won’t move the needle. 

But recently, over the last month; I’ve 1) had more inbound for the newsletter from a partnership and sponsorship perspective than the previous 8 months and 2) had inbound pitches that are actually really interesting. 

On 1), of course, if this interests you - feel free to reach out ;)

But 2), that’s more important for this conversation. 

A bull market and bubble in crypto generate attention. More and more people become part of the space, specific communities and general movement in a variety of different guises.

Developers, marketers, community managers, speculators, traders and more. Those who remain, alongside the previous cohorts that decide to stick around, build the future in this industry.  

Many of the people who have reached out recently have gotten involved in crypto in this recent bull market.

Unlike many, the goal wasn’t something rapid, with little thought and primarily to generate a bit of cash before the market cools down. The goal was to build something that sports fans actually love. 

I can’t go into details for obvious reasons, otherwise…people would stop sharing their projects with me!

The fact remains that what crypto is now isn’t what it’ll be tomorrow.

In 2017 when I started working in crypto, there really wasn’t much around. It was still largely speculative. The first real ‘MVP’ for NFTs came about in 2018 with crypto kitties, but the token form didn’t hit the mainstream until three years later.

A lot of what we see today, similarly, is still in the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage.

DAOs, NFTs and decentralised finance (or DeFi) are still very young. The MVPs have been shipped and iterations are being rapidly deployed, but it’ll still be years until millions of people are onboarded properly with solid use cases 

With sports, the opportunity remains clear. 

There are millions of sports fans world-wide who engage in a variety of ways to show loyalty and support to a club or athlete. Right now, we mainly see that in experiential, merchandise and digital forms. This new digital revolution we’re seeing with ‘Web3’, feels like the next frontier for many, whilst for some, it remains smoke & mirrors. 

In the same way that Crypto Kitties was a random experiment that eventually became the precursor to Dapper Labs in its present state, NBA Top Shots and everything that’s come with it - some of the weird experiments we’ve seen so far this cycle can inspire what happens in sports tomorrow.

Socios have become very successful as a business commercially so far, but their model will be difficult to maintain in a bear market. Fan tokens 2.0 will definitely look a lot different to what they do now.

We’ve seen a number of DAOs speculatively try and buy soccer teams, NBA teams and many more. They were mostly wildly unprepared for the actual feat they were attempting, and some were doing it for the wrong reasons. But Sport DAOs 2.0 could spur people to create white label solutions that actually put the onus on sports fans rather than a group or consortia leading a DAO. DAOs need leaders, and they have to be leader-full, but they should be the sporting fan natives who deserve to be part of a franchises’ governance and ownership structure.

But someone always has to go first. 

I remember speaking on a panel in NFT London last summer, where a fellow contributor interrupted me on my rant about how DAOs were far too primitive to run sports teams.

He said “They will happen, and they’ll end badly. But when it comes to innovation, someone always has to come first”

Many people feel that crypto is more mature now than it was in 2017, and that’s absolutely true.

But this is the first real cycle we’ve seen crypto native apps being used by a reasonably large number of people.

Forget about crypto portfolio tools and such - I’m talking about actual useable applications. And I do feel we’ve only just about peered behind the curtain.

What comes in the next couple of cycles I think defines exactly what this ‘Web3’ thing does to the world.

It will be impactful…but the rest of the decade will dictate just how impactful it will be.

More sports crypto stories & things to put your radar

• I’m not sure this deal would constitute ‘good’ for either party. But a fairly interesting link nonetheless.

• USDC is a monster that will be a massive disruptor to payments worldwide.

• Lucy is launching a project that I think is super interesting. Check out her thread!

Great reads, great tweeting and more general ‘stuff’ that could impact you

• Gaming is unstoppable. Blockchain gaming could cause the next crypto bull run.

• There are now nearly 2 million unique wallets on OpenSea. If you take into account duplicates, we’re probably looking at 250-750k unique users. For the volumes they generate, that is crazy.

• Only in crypto

Thanks!

Thanks for reading the latest edition of the Sporting Crypto newsletter. I’m really happy to see so many people enjoying it and sharing it with their networks. If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends who might be interested - and share it on social :)This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice. These are my thoughts & opinions and do not represent the opinions of any other business or entity.