TL;DR
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The biggest potential benefactors of the ‘crypto gold rush’ largely exist outside of the crypto industry.
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Established legacy brands have the potential to capture massive value from the crypto market, simply by adding ‘pay-with-crypto’ as a checkout option.
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Eg: When ApeCoin first launched, 150M tokens ($3B worth!) were gifted to Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT holders. Gucci then started accepting ApeCoin in-store to capture that value.
Full Story
Premium/luxury brands are doing something kinda genius…
While the rest of the retail industry is sleeping on crypto, they’re scooping up profits from all of the newly-rich crypto degens out there.
Let’s break this thing into three parts: value capture, premium/luxury brands, and the metaverse.
Value capture
The global retail market pulls in $7.9 Trillion (with a T) dollars per year!
Companies around the world then try to capture some of that value by offering products/services to the retail industry.
Facebook does it via ad space, Shopify does it with its e-commerce platform, Apple does it by selling iPhones.
But few established/legacy businesses have tried their hands at capturing value from the $1T+ crypto market…few except for:
Premium/Luxury Brands
It might be strange to hear stories about Tiffany making Crypto Punks earrings, or Gucci accepting ApeCoin – but when you consider the opportunity these brands to capture value, it all just clicks.
Let’s look at the Gucci example:
When ApeCoin first launched, 150M tokens ($3B worth!) were gifted to Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT holders. So when Gucci started accepting ApeCoin, its message was simple:
“Hey, you wanna come spend some of that free money you just got at our stores?”
It’s an approach mimicked by other premium/luxury brands – and the playbook is always the same. Target crypto users that are:
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Flush with cash.
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Ready to spend.
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Yet-to-be directly targeted by the broader retail industry.
Then, make it easy for them to hand over their money using crypto payment integrations.
The metaverse
Today, we’re seeing another example of this from the premium streetwear brand ‘The Hundreds,’ which just announced its next flagship store – in the metaverse .
The idea is simple:
Customers visit the virtual store → they get access to exclusive drops.
Is it gimmicky? Kinda. Are they going to move a ton of merch? Nope. Are most people going to care? Doubt it.
But the genius of it is: none of that matters.
The Hundreds team are creating an environment where a select few die-hard fans with high disposable incomes, can happily part with their crypto.
The takeaway
The biggest potential benefactors of the ‘crypto gold rush’ largely exist outside of the crypto industry.
Established legacy brands have the potential to capture massive value from the crypto market, simply by adding ‘pay-with-crypto’ as a checkout option.
Wild!
