What do NFTs and Tom Brady have in common? 🏈

What do NFTs and Tom Brady have in common? They're both making a super bowl appearance....(although Tom Brady's might just be in an FTX commercial 🤣) 

In Today’s Email: 

• FTX raises a $2B Venture Fund
• Nouns Super Bowl Commercial
• Gemini goes after the wealth manager market

FTX Raises a $2B Fund

Here’s 3 reasons I find this interesting: 

• This is the 3rd biggest crypto fund ever (Paradigm raised a $2.5B one last year and a16z raised a $2.2B fund)
• Crypto Gaming is a big focus for them, because "it has the chance to onboard the next 100m to 1B+ users into web3"
• They bankrolled the whole thing themselves

If you aren’t familiar, FTX is a crypto trading platform (HQ is in the Bahamas) that was started 3 years ago and is already worth $25B+.

The founder, Sam Bankman-Fried is 8 years outta college and worth nearly ~$18B himself.

I’m calling our shot now, the Milk Road is gonna do an exclusive interview with him this year!

The First NFT In A Super Bowl Commercial

Check this out. Go to nouns.wtf/vote/33 

If you’re too busy to click, I’ll post a screenshot here. This is a voting proposal: 

75 people inside of NounsDAO voted FOR having their NFT included in a Super Bowl commercial this year. 

If you haven’t seen The Nouns (pictured above), they are an iconic project, where every day 1 NFT gets released and auctioned off (normally they sell for $125,000 - $200,000 each).

All the earnings go into the DAO treasury (you can see it here. It currently holds $58M in assets)

This is something we’re going to see more of in 2022 and beyond.

NFT art is going to make its way into movies, commercials, sneakers, t-shirts etc.. as the rights holders license the art and IP out.

Here’s a few things we’ve been watching:

• Bored Ape Yacht Club making a novel 
• United Talent Agency (a big agency) signed Cryptopunks
• World of Women signed with Madonna’s Agent

Gemini Goes After The Wealth Manager Market

Gemini has made a few key acquisitions in its history.  

• In 2018, they acquired Nifty Gateway, an NFT platform that did $100m+ of volume in 2021
• Now, they just acquired BitRIA, a startup that helps financial advisors manage crypto holdings for their clients.

P.S. this is amazing. Gemini was started by the Winklevoss Twins (the guys who sued Zuckerberg saying he stole their idea for Facebook).

And they acquired Nifty Gateway…which was also started by a pair of twins. 

Anyway - Gemini is making a smart move by getting close to financial advisors - who manage big pools of client money. 

Time to get my hands on some Gemini shares in the secondary market…(I already own Coinbase and Kraken shares..)

- Ben "completely non-fungible" Levy

P.S. if you wanna sign up for a walkthrough of how to play Defi Kingdoms, click here