AFL wants to cash in on last year’s NFT craze

The AFL has hooked up with Hong Kong-based game software and venture capital company Animoca Brands – who were kicked off the Australian Stock Exchange in March 2020 – to sell gamblers sucky JPEGs or something like that.

Here’s a hastily-thrown-together opinion blog post about it.

We’re going off a press release and web site, and haven’t gotten any comment from the AFL (I emailed this arvo but no reply) or Animoca. Do your own research!

Watch the linked videos for in-depth information.

It’s fascinating.

Talk about Crypto and NFTs on the BigFooty forum ->

Discuss the AFL’s NFT project here ->

Who are Animoca Brands?

The AFL’s partner, Animoca Brands, was apparently banished from the ASX for swapping stock for crypto tokens. The company spun this as a “blessing” as Australian exchange rules were too “restrictive” for their activities.

The AFL doesn’t seem to care about this.

Animoca Brands are worth, like, $7 billion now I think. I haven’t checked the exact figure. Is that $7b fake or real dollars?

It’s Web 3 – who knows?

Why NFTs?

After taking sponsorship money from trading platform Crypto.com, the AFL seems to want to get in on the NEXT BIG THING – which they think is NFT’s.

Right when NFTs are in decline.

Gillon McLachlan: “by partnering with Animoca, we will be playing in a digital space that is only getting bigger.”

Gill doesn’t say what metric he is using when he says “bigger”. Maybe he didn’t mean in sales volume or value. Maybe he meant the number of NFTs flooding a saturated market?

After continuous growth, the trade volume of NFT collectibles decreased by 40 per cent in February (2022) compared with the previous month.

– Entrepreneur.com

More supply. Low demand.

But guys, Animoca have done NFTs for the NBA! And for the UFC! Those are huge markets! The AFL brand is the edge we get over all those little artists who can’t sell their wares!

Animoca Brand’s NBA TopShots NFT sales tanked pretty quickly after release early last year, and are at almost their lowest level ever:

Who will buy the AFL stuff? Younger people who can’t afford to invest in housing like their olds? Rich boomer idiots?

BigFooty member Brend81 was ecstatic at the AFL’s news:

“I got in on NBA Topshots at the beginning and made thousands of $$ can’t wait for this.

No idea [how much Topshots are worth now] I cashed in while they were hot, will do the same with this.”

So is it just going to be a lot of one footy fan ripping off another?

Great.

What… ?

NFT’s are actually just the rights to a spot in one of a number of publicly-recorded, publicly visible databases. You can anonymously buy and sell the rights to that spot with crypto currency via an online exchange service. And that’s about it.

That spot in the database can only contain a very small amount of data – not even enough space to contain a digital photograph. That data is completely public. Anyone can read it.

As an aside, the crypto that changes hands anonymously when NFTs are bought and sold can be sent off to another service to be further anonymised. There’s plenty of scope for money laundering and tax evasion.

You can also sell to yourself anonymously, making it look like your NFT is in demand with higher and higher sale prices, before passing it off to some rube who thinks it’s worth something.

Need to shift drug money from one country to another? Sell NFTs to yourself.

Just want to shift income to a tax haven? Sell NFTs to yourself.

Where were we?

With so little space available, NFT database entries usually contain just a URL linking to an image (or other document) sitting on a server hard drive somewhere.

Just a link to an image. An image which anyone can copy to their hard drive or phone.

Like we did with this one:

And this one.

If the server hosting your image goes down, you’ve lost your image.

If the owner of the server changes the file, your NFT image changes. Legit!

Are Animoca making their own AFL NFT database or using a third party? Which cryptocurrency will people buy them with?

We don’t know. They haven’t said – we can’t find a statement on that anyway.

You can’t contain your excitement, can you? Well we’ve got…

Virtual steak knives!

Like every other NFT scheme, the AFL claim to add value to your NFT with experiences.

It’s a community! It’s access! It’s a trip to the moooooooon!

Your ALF NFT will apparently give you access to “immersive metaverse experiences in areas such as virtual reality, digital art and gaming”.

Gaming? Why do 70% of gaming studios have no plans to use NFTs or cryptocurrency?

Or does the AFL mean “gambling”?

From their press release: “AFL Mint products will expand to deliver rewards and real-world experiences via exclusive events and even reward fans for game days, including ticket upgrades, hospitality, experiential zones and exclusive merchandise.”

What these rewards actually are seems to be a mystery. Does anyone know?

Why not just sell tickets or memberships?

What do NFTs add apart from expense and waste? Anyone?

Experiential zones… are they bouncy castles at games you can access with your magic NFT beans?

When’s the first AFL Mint virtual rave?

Will Jordan De Goey be there?

The AFL seems to only “commit to building meaningful fan relationships and will be guided by our AFL Mint community.”

So you buy first, and the all buyers collectively invent the benefits later?

The AFL also strive!

“We strive to innovate, to ensure our fans can share in the moments that matter and reap the rewards of investing in our great game.”

Will anybody be buying for “virtual gaming” or “experiential zones”? Nah.

They are like the burgers in a Happy Meal, chucked out while the collectible toy goes straight onto eBay.

Too late.

NFTs have been around for a number of years, gaining serious sales in the past year or so.

Since their invention, every type of scam has been tried with NFTs as the gimmick. Multiple times. Sometimes by the same scammers, on the same people.

Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars stolen.

It’s wild.

NFTs are an extension of cryptocurrency itself. Originally pumped up with fake trading to lure new money into the Ethereum cryptocurrency so existing whales can sell up their Eth holdings to latecomers, take their profits and run. They have no utility. You can’t do anything with them.

We make no assertion that the AFL or Animoca Brands are scamming or money-laundering or selling slaves, only that we believe NFTs are probably a bad thing to spend your money on.

Specially when you don’t know specifically what you get with your purchase.

Who’s minting it?

As a money-making avenue for artists, there have been mixed results. The vast majority of artists have lost money in fees paid to exchanges for “minting” their own NFTs.

YouTube influencers have raked in (sometimes undeclared) sponsorship money and free access to lucrative NFT drops by flogging mass-produced JPEG images to their fans.

Here’s very rich YouTuber Mr Beast laughing about getting exclusive information on these unregulated financial products with fellow YouTuber, Logan Paul:

Some gamblers and artists have made decent money getting in early – 18 months ago – on the NFT ponzi scheme. So there was money there. Lots of it.

This Gary Vaynerchuck guy made $90 million off of his “Veefriends” scribbles. Last year.

But those Veefriends NFTs have tanked. Obviously.

I mean. Obviously.

As mentioned, some big holders of cryptocurrencies have used NFTs as a way to lure more people into the space and get their own money out of crypto as it declines. It’s a closed system: you can only get your money out if more, new money comes in.

Exactly like a ponzi scheme.

Many buyers who held onto their NFTs instead of selling them at their peak are now realizing they paid way too much.

Like the guy who paid $US2.9 million for the NFT link to the first message sent through Twitter. Now he wants to sell it.

Highest bid so far is $6,800.

I want in!

Still thirsty for NFTs?

First you need to get a crypto wallet and the cryptocurrency used by the NFT seller, paying high fees at every point along the way.

Huffing Ether

Ethereum is the most popular cryptocurrency system used to trade NFTs, being the first cab off the rank when this kicked off. The Ethereum blockchain is where your NFT – the unique database record you buy the rights to – sits.

Ether is the actual coin of the Ethereum realm, used to buy and sell slaves, drugs, NFTs, whatever.

Other systems include Solana, which uses the SOL cryptocurrency.

Ethereum is a very congested transaction processing system, so transaction fees – commonly called “gas fees” – have in the past hit the equivalent of hundreds of US dollars.

On April 18 2022, the average Ether token gas fee was $US40.28, or about $54 Aussie dollarydoos. That’s the average. This fee can swing wildly during the day.

Still whinging about a $2 ATM fee?

The AFL hasn’t said which cryptocoin they will be using, or which chain (de-centralised database) the NFTs will be stored and tracked on. Animoca Brands seem to create their own. Animoca seem to list their tokens for internal trading on, among other platforms, Crypto.com.

Crypto.com. The guys with their company name all over sports stadiums around the world. Who charge for transactions on their trading platform.

Get it?

Cryptocurrency as a whole is in a trading volume slump from highs a year ago, so you should be able to get some crypto pretty easily. Heaps of people want to offload them onto newbies.

ALL OF IT!

Before you get into this mire, you should know the huge environmental costs of processing the cryptocurrency transactions needed to trade this dross.

Remember those high “gas” fees? Where do they go?

Part goes to your trading platform. Part goes to the person lucky enough to have processed the transaction.

To complete your crypto trade, huge banks of computer graphics cards burn power in a maths-problem-solving race against each other to process the transaction and win the transaction fee.

When the race ends, all the computational work done by all of the losers – on hundreds of racks of power-hungry graphics cards – is thrown away. Wasted.

If all of the Visa card transactions in the world were processed as cryptocurrency transactions, the processing would suck up ALL of the world’s electricity supply.

ALL OF IT.

The end.

Gillon McLachlan will be nowhere to be seen when, we predict, this rubbish scheme dies in the arse and new “investors” realise they have bought some rapidly devaluing nothingness.

If you still think this is great, knock yourself out. Go hard.

You might make money if this turns out to be niche enough, or if the price spikes and you sell out to the next sucker, or if the undisclosed rewards are big enough to attract higher and higher prices.

Who knows?

The AFL will certainly be pumping the market up with “cool” new “drops” and advertising during games. They’ve got a five year deal with Animoca.

https://twitter.com/0xHustler/status/1497444332604833797?s=20&t=EryyFbBIba8Ett3AAnhpig

Buy one as a souvenir for your own enjoyment. Maybe it will give you the chance to be virtually felt up by a player in a virtual rave, or get you a nicer seat at the footy or something.

We haven’t seen any specifics.

Nobody understands this stuff.

Be happy. Buy BeanCoin.

 

Talk about Crypto and NFTs on the BigFooty forum ->

Discuss the AFL’s NFT project here ->