The Emergence of Europe’s Leading NFT Hubs Points to a Continent Readying up for Web3

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Opin­ions expressed by Entre­pre­neur con­trib­u­tors are their own. 

You’re read­ing Entre­pre­neur Europe, an inter­na­tion­al fran­chise of Entre­pre­neur Media.

Despite mixed mar­ket sen­ti­ment toward NFTs around the world, Europe has posi­tioned itself as a con­ti­nent that’s ready to embrace the emerg­ing blockchain-based tech­nol­o­gy and become a glob­al leader in devel­op­ing suc­cess­ful projects that func­tion through the use of dis­tri­b­u­tion of non-fun­gi­ble tokens.



Anto­nioSolano | Get­ty Images

The appetite for NTFs is per­haps no more pro­nounced than in Paris, with the French cap­i­tal play­ing host to the devel­op­ment of the NFT Fac­to­ry — a tech hub that’s set to show­case the very best of Web3.

The NFT Fac­to­ry is due to open in Sep­tem­ber 2022, and will host events, art sales, and train­ing pro­grams that are geared towards tokens, blockchain tech­nol­o­gy, and the metaverse.

At the heart of the project is a col­lec­tive of 50 lead­ing fig­ures from the world of tech and cryp­to, as well as artists, entre­pre­neurs, con­sul­tants, and investors alike. The NFT Fac­to­ry will span a 400-square metre plot of land in cen­tral Paris, and will be a hybrid space that spans tech, busi­ness, and art.

“The NFT Fac­to­ry is a bit of an odd­i­ty,” explained John Karp, co-founder and pres­i­dent of the NFT Fac­to­ry. “No spe­cial­ists in this emerg­ing indus­try have come togeth­er to cre­ate a project in any oth­er coun­try so far.”

The tech hub has already been busy boost­ing NFT accep­tance in Europe through the intro­duc­tion of an inno­v­a­tive mem­ber­ship pro­gram, where­by users pur­chase a non-fun­gi­ble token to con­firm their access to the project.

France is no stranger to the world of NFTs, and in Sep­tem­ber 2021, Parisian start­up, Sorare, announced a €579.7 mil­lion Series B fund­ing round to posi­tion the com­pa­ny as one of Europe’s lead­ing uni­corns focus­ing on non-fun­gi­ble tokens.

Sorare utilis­es NFT own­er­ship to cre­ate a col­lectible fan­ta­sy foot­ball game where­by users can buy the cards of their favourite foot­ballers and enter them into a five-a-side team to win prizes based on each play­er’s respec­tive real world per­for­mances. Recent­ly the com­pa­ny expand­ed into the world of Major League Base­ball in a land­mark deal.

At this stage, it’s worth not­ing that France isn’t the only nation that’s pio­neer­ing a future built on NFTs and blockchain tech­nol­o­gy. Thanks to rel­a­tive­ly relaxed tax­a­tion laws for NFT own­er­ship, Aus­tria is quick­ly devel­op­ing into a bustling hub for non-fun­gi­ble collectibles.

In ear­ly 2022, Aus­tri­a’s world renowned Belvedere Gallery sold its own NFTs that focused on the work of Gus­tav Klimt with the project regard­ed as a suc­cess among commentators.

Contending with ‘Crypto Winter.’

Despite the growth of NFTs through­out Euro­pean nations like France and Aus­tria among many oth­ers, the non-fun­gi­ble token mar­ket has strug­gled to build on the momen­tum it built in 2021 as the wider world of cryp­tocur­ren­cies suf­fer from a down­turn this year.

The emer­gence of a ‘cryp­to win­ter’ owing to the cycli­cal nature of bit­coin’s ral­lies has been long fore­cast­ed for 2022, and although the long-term out­look for the indus­try remains some­what more opti­mistic, the total mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion for NFTs has fall­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent months.

Cryp­to win­ter refers to a long-term peri­od of flat or neg­a­tive price move­ments through­out the cryp­tocur­ren­cy indus­try, with the last ‘win­ter’ occur­ring between mid-2018 and early-2020.

As data from Alt­coin­Buzz shows, trad­ing vol­umes for NFTs have fall­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly in mid-2022. Com­pound­ed by the emer­gence of reces­sions and cost-of-liv­ing crises as a result of the glob­al Covid-19 recov­ery and war in Ukraine, investors appear to be less will­ing to trade their tokens today than in Q4 2021 and Q1 2022.

Despite this, we can see that the indus­try’s mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion remains rel­a­tive­ly strong in com­par­i­son to its 2021 num­bers — rang­ing between $21 and $23 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing an increase of almost 1,000% in com­par­i­son to ear­ly August 2021.

This indi­cates that despite wide­spread cryp­tocur­ren­cy sell-offs among investors, indi­vid­u­als are alto­geth­er more con­tent with hold­ing their NFTs. This trend may be down to the improved func­tion­al­i­ty of NFTs. Whilst art-based col­lectibles like the pop­u­lar Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cryp­toP­unks serve as a state­ment of wealth in a sim­i­lar way to high fash­ion among hold­ers, the afore­men­tioned Sorare and oth­er plat­forms like Axie Infin­i­ty have incor­po­rat­ed NFTs into games where­by play­ers are reward­ed for hold­ing and util­is­ing their tokens.

The future may be even brighter for the ecosys­tem, with the emer­gence of sus­tain­abil­i­ty-focused NFT games like Aló­ki, which acts as a ‘play-to-earn’ plat­form that enables users to own patch­es of land with­in the Cos­ta Rican jun­gle — help­ing to con­serve the envi­ron­ment by plant­i­ng trees and earn­ing rewards along the way. The Cos­ta Rican land was pur­pose­ly bought by founders Mau­rycy Krza­stek and Bartek Lechows­ki with the inten­tion of lever­ag­ing a com­pre­hen­sive gam­i­fied meta­verse con­ser­va­tion project.

It may be this push towards sus­tain­abil­i­ty and eth­i­cal mat­ters that can help to improve investor sen­ti­ment towards NFTs and thus pro­mote accep­tance. Should the non-fun­gi­ble token mar­ket win over investors in the midst of a cryp­to win­ter, the mar­ket recov­ery of cryp­tocur­ren­cies may lead to expo­nen­tial growth among tokens.

With lead­ing Euro­pean fin­tech firms like Rev­o­lut recent­ly gain­ing approval to offer cryp­to ser­vices through­out the con­ti­nent, we’re like­ly to see a sig­nif­i­cant rise in NFT adop­tion among Europeans.

This points to a bright future for the non-fun­gi­ble land­scape with­in the EU and UK, and with new spe­cial­ist tech hubs crop­ping up through­out major cities, it’s like­ly that Paris and Vien­na will only be the begin­ning of a con­ti­nen­tal push towards the adop­tion of NFTs.

Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *