NEST Roundtable 14: How fan tokens develop in the World Cup fever?

Participants

Host:

Anna: BD Manager of NEST

Cohost: Woody & Nicole

Guests:

Buster: Ambassador of Near

Rose: Investment director at Kernel Ventures

Blue Clarity: Marketing lead of Trader Joe

Eito: CMO of Hyakki

Elliott: CM of Hyakki

Ohmann: Senior trader & Web3 Investor

Crypto Squirtle: The founder of meta-mate

CadilBlock: Head of Operations of Shilling Space

Conference recording

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1jMJgLMXNzgxL?s=20

Part 1 — Questions

Which fan token do you want to invest？ And do you think fan tokens are worth investing in the long term？

Buster: There’s a lot of potential in the fan tokens. It’s like the fan could govern the real team. With it, you can join a team as a manager, which is very useful. Also, as a kind of token, you can buy NFT to show your likeness to the influencers. You can make money and produce good content at the same time. The whole purpose of a fan token is obviously to a supporter of the club. I think it is a speculative investment. And it’s gonna be volatile since people just buying these tokens outright without the proper information and sort of education around potential risks. I think it’s quite dangerous as well and something which the club should be considered.

Rose: My colleague has done quite a lot of research on it, and he came up with a list of like top 10 fan tokens. Actually, all ten of them are football teams. The holder’s account is quite large from the numbers I see. Most of them have like 17 K to like 20–30 K. I think it’s a great way to bring on board users who are non-crypto users into the crypto space. And I think I need to look into it more like whether the actual utilities support these fan tokens. But dilution obviously is a big problem if the fan token doesn’t really have healthy tokenomics

Elliott: It’s like the voting power if the team wants to change the style of their clothes or change the place for training, they can just host their voting and the members can vote for their design or something. For the investment, I think it’s quite volatile, just like a gamble. If you catch that team is going to win, that token is going to punk like hundreds of thousands.

Ohmann: If I need to choose to invest in a fan token, I will choose the leader in this football game field to invest. Actually, the market value and the artist numbers in this area are small, which has a large potential.

CadilBlock: I bought a BAR token, which is a token of FC Barcelona at 3.7 dollars. This price is appropriate since I am a fan of it. And I think fan tokens are worth investing in. Let’s make one thing clear. Bitcoin is actually a piece of code, but why so many people and even governments are buying it? The reason is that there is consensus. It was a very small percentage of people who had such a consensus and more and more people joined in and the price naturally went up. Let’s use FC Barcelona as an example. They have more than 40 million Twitter followers, and 95 million Instagram followers. As the industry grows, more and more people have realized that blockchain and cryptocurrencies are the future. But there are still people who do not accept crypto. They are the potential customers and there’s a huge opportunity. I think if you are a big fan and you love the game, you will be involved deeply. And I think it is promising.

Part 2 — Free discussion

What do you see as potential patterns for fan tokens, such as in connection with the NFT or DAO?

Buster: Near has launched DAO for fans on selling club. And I’d like to talk to Gen.G, an e-sport club, to see if they are going to launch DAO. With NFT, there are a lot of things that can be done.

Eito: I have invested in some fan tokens. The first one is our Hyakki NFT because actually, we are sort of a fan token for famous artists. There are also some NFTs that are launched by pop stars. I think whether this kind of project would be successful depends on whether the pop star really put a lot of effort and a lot of time into that.

Why could match results influence the token price?

Rose: It seems like the natural thing for holders to dump, they were betting.

Elliott: I think it’s more like a community case. Whenever you’re talking about a coin, you should see the team behind the project. I think it’s more about the members there and how they think about this coin or token, and how they think about this team. Also, the small liquidity leads to many speculators.

Woody: I believe the majority of the drop in the token price is caused by speculators.

Elliott: Agree. When you’re losing one game, are they going to drop it? I don’t think so. But that may make people feel like lose confidence, and that pushes them away. But ultimately, that depends on the whole market.

Do you think the world cup is a good time to invest in fan tokens?

Rose: Actually I think this moment is too hot, a little overvalued.

Blue: There are probably a lot of eyes on these fan tokens at the moment, which I think is good for the sporting industry.

Do you think the NFTs or web3 projects are worth buying?

Elliott: Whenever I am going to invest in an NFT project, I always see their community, to see how interactive they are and how much they talk about their project. Also, I see their roadmap, and what they have done or achieved. You could follow your emotion. Like God tells you when to buy or not. But don’t just follow trends. You shall have your own judgment. You know where to tell and where to do your research, where to gain your financial knowledge, and to decide your final decision.

Rose: I don’t necessarily like WorldCup-related projects, but I think like NFT projects if the team behind it is solid, we are also going to launch a FIFA version. But if a project only relies on FIFA, I don’t think it could run in the long term.

Part 3 — Q&A Session

Kernel Ventures: @AnkurAiran asked: Can you tell how kernel ventures decide which project to invest in with this bearish market and decentralized transparency needed with people starting to lose faith in a centralized system?

Rose: Right now, as a fund, we are doing a lot of research into different verticals, and obviously we’re focusing more on the base layer and infra-layer projects. And I think maybe next year or the next bull market is definitely the reimagining defi.

Trader Joe: @VaniSrinivasan asked: What Are the Futures of TraderJoe？

Blue: Obviously the main future of trader joe is on sharding decentralized and I guess we will also reinject faith back into centralized aspects of the industry. But trader joe is very much positioning for a decentralized future in this industry. We will also develop the app to make a fully integrated experience onboarding directly through an app. In the long term, we will move on to its own chain, bring all the products together and offer users a super simple experience that lets them explore what defi could offer.

Shilling Space: @AnkurAiran asked: Shilling space where influencers recommend real-time crypto tips, how accurate has been the success rate in this bearish market so that people come to your platform confidently?

CadilBlock: Shilling Space is a platform that connects influencers with traders. If you are new to the crypto market, you could find the best influencers and quality investors to see their advice without spending a lot of time researching online. Shilling Space solves the current situation of non-transparent and recommends tokens. The influencers can show their real trading ability to attract followers and enjoy tons of traffic exposure.