Photo: Verve Times
eToro, a crypto trading platform, revealed it would buy NFTs worth $20 million as well as boost creators. On Thursday, the company broke the news at a contemporary art museum in Miami, The Bass.
The firm’s fund comes as part of a new gambit labeled as eToro.art, which aims to assist NFT creators and brands.
US managing director at eToro Guy Hirsch stated the new fund is the start of a comprehensive NFT blueprint for the firm, which will later provide a broad range of services to enable investors to take part in the young economy.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are digital assets that stand for real-world materials—including art, music, real estate, and more—and can’t be cloned.
“Before, with bitcoin and ether, you had only the likes of Goldman Sachs or similar traditional financial players participating or looking at expanding into crypto,” said Hirsch in an interview with CNBC. “NFTs are essentially making any and every potential brand a participant in this market.”
Among the aims of its new gambit, eToro displayed its digital art lineup, which counts notable projects such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, and World of Women. Moreover, eToro aims to allocate $10 million to back start-up creators and brands in launching their new NFT projects to market this year.
Digital art is among the one use cases for NFTs. But according to Hirsch, eToro wants to offer further capabilities to allow consumers to use cases past the digital art.
Giants from various industries such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Gucci, the National Football League, and more have jumped into NFTs for their promotional initiatives over the past few months.
“Any brand can hone in on this and create some sort of an NFT that represents an ownership stake in part of the brand,” Hirsch said.
Investors were challenged to find value in digital art and were puzzled by huge sales like Beeple’s piece, which amounted to $69 million at Christie’s.
