eCommerce giant eBay has jumped into the non-fungible token (NFT) business with a line of collectibles featuring hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, generally acknowledged as the greatest and most dominant player ever to grace the ice.
Gretzky’s unrivaled 20-season career is the subject of the first NFT collection on eBay’s new marketplace, launched on May 23 in collaboration with NFT producer OneOf.
“NFTs and blockchain technology are revolutionizing the collectibles space, and are increasingly viewed as an investment opportunity for enthusiasts,” said Dawn Block, eBay V.P. of collectibles, electronics and home in the announcement. “Through our partnership with OneOf, eBay is now making coveted NFTs more accessible to a new generation of collectors everywhere.”
Read more: eBay, OneOf Partner on NFT Development and Sales
That accessibility is likely to be a key in expanding the NFT marketplace beyond crypto enthusiasts — a key to the industry’s hopes of breaking out as a collectable medium for the wider public.
Unlike most crypto industry NFT marketplaces, which require payment in the ether (ETH) cryptocurrency, eBay’s digital collectables are priced in dollars and can be paid for via credit card and PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay. And they can be purchased without a crypto digital wallet and the need to provide know-your-customer (KYC) proof of identity information. Instead, the purchased NFT is emailed to the buyer.
“You don’t have to be a crypto expert to buy, sell, and collect NFTs,” said OneOf CEO Lin Dai. “OneOf and eBay are bringing [NFTs] to the next 100 million non-crypto-native mass consumers.”
Another unusual aspect of the NFT line is that it is not minted directly on ethereum — where the vast majority of such projects live — but on polygon, one of the so-called ethereum killer blockchains.
See also: PYMNTS Blockchain Basics Series: What is Polygon? An Ethereum Killer Hedges Its Bets
Like most ethereum killers, polygon is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain that is far more environmentally friendly that ethereum — which, like bitcoin, requires so much power that is comparable to the needs of whole countries.
That was clearly a priority for eBay, which noted that OneOf is a “green” NFT platform in both the headline and the first sentence of the announcement. It also referred to “OneOf eco-conscious Web3 technology,” wrapping in the trendy but still largely theoretical next-generation internet to be built on a blockchain foundation.
For OneOf, the eBay marketplace collaboration is a continuation of its partnership with Sports Illustrated, which has also released NFT collections for football greats Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice, and Dick Butkus, with future releases of including tennis great Billie Jean King — Sports Illustrated’s first female Sportsperson of the Year — as well as Muhammad Ali, basketball’s Shaquille O’Neal, soccer’s Mia Hamm, and NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt Jr.
The Gretzky collection is part of eBay’s new Genesis collection, features “3D and animated interpretations” of his many magazine covers.
Meanwhile, GameStop jumped into NFTs this week with the launch of an ethereum-based digital asset wallet that will allow gamers to “to store, send, receive and use cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens … without having to leave their web browsers,” as well as buy and sell on the crypto-friendly game seller’s forthcoming NFT marketplace.
Read also: GameStop Jumps Into Crypto, NFTs With Digital Asset Wallet Launch
NBA Tops in on Magic
NFTs first broke into the mainstream consciousness with the 2019 release of professional basketball’s NBA Top Shots collection, which has racked up more than $1 billion in sales and resales.
Now it’s moving beyond video clips of plays and players from current seasons to NBA Top Shots Anthologies, featuring “iconic plays from NBA legends.”
I’m really excited to partner with @nbatopshot to release my first NFTs and bring some of my favorite Moments from my career to fans everywhere. Fans get to see just a few of my favorite plays from my career! https://t.co/5hGKT6BwiJ pic.twitter.com/7egr3xBZsv
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) May 23, 2022
The first collection will feature Earvin “Magic” Johnson, a brilliant and highly respected basketball legend with five championship rings and a 12-time All-Star.
Dropping on June 7, the Magic Johnson line will be priced at $399 — as opposed to eBay’s Gretzky collection, which stared at $10.
And like an increasing number of crypto collector-focused NFT collections will feature a lottery of sorts, with buyers receiving one of four of Magic’s greatest replay moments of varying rarity — two will represent about 5% each of the 1,600-piece NFT “drop” while a third will be 30% and the fourth 60%. As rarity generally has a big impact on value — and individual NBA Top Shots NFTs have sold for as much as $230,000 — the lottery aspect can be. A big draw.
In addition, three-quarters will be limited to past buyers with a significant number of purchases, with just 400 available to anyone.
However, like the eBay/OneOf NFT line, it is not on ethereum. While Top Shots started there, developer Dapper Labs quickly built its own environmentally friendly proof-of-stake blockchain, flow, for its NFT lines.
NF-Tea Party
The crypto industry is fighting a new proposal by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to require the reporting of NFT sales and decentralized finance (DeFi) transactions to tax authorities as part of a move to prevent crypto owners from keeping their holdings secret.
Coinbase vice president for tax Lawrence Zlatkin told the organization that the NFT plans are “overly broad” as they rope in crypto tokens that are not necessarily used for payments or investment and require owners to price NFTs that have a value that is difficult at best to establish without actually selling them, CoinDesk reported.
Most NFT marketplaces offer auction-style bidding as well as click-and-buy pricing, and the industry — which only grew from a crypto niche in 2021 — is too new to have much in the way of a pricing history.
The industry’s comments “suggest to me that the commenters don’t believe that there are additional risks to tax compliance from the digital nature of the type of assets that we are talking about,” said Erika Nijenhuis, senior counsel at the U.S. Treasury Department. “Why is that the right answer?”
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