This is MrBeast, But With NFTs

GM. Happy Thursday! There's a pretty interesting project that's come onto our radar today that we're excited to get into. So without further ado...

Today we cover:

• NFT lenders are pretty damn smart

• This is MrBeast...but with NFTs?

• Today's Most Interesting Tweets

NFT Lenders Are Pretty Damn Smart

NFT lending has been taking off, with a growing number of people using their NFTs as collateral to take out a loan on-chain. The above chart shows the most profitable collections for lenders on NFTfi, a peer-to-peer lending protocol.

You might ask: Who are the people lending tens of thousands of dollars to these NFT collectors? The answer: they're pretty damn smart people.

Lending has been a profitable strategy, especially for BAYC, Cryptopunks, and Doodles. Almost all of the lenders for these collections made money, either from the interest payments or received a defaulted NFT that could be sold for more than the loan principal.

(h/t @wardaddycapital for the chart and insight)

This Is MrBeast, But With NFTs...?

💲 What to know: BasedHeads is an NFT project launched by SuperMassive (aka Robin Schmidt) this new year. His studio, BasedAF, is building the native entertainment brand of the metaverse.

Previously, Robin was the head of Video at The Defiant, a crypto-native media and news company.

☘️ In the weeds: BasedAF will be using jaw-dropping stunts and challenges to bring out the story of the Metaverse. And they have built a studio to create the content they want, using live-action and game engines. They dropped their first YouTube video last week, and it's pretty sick. Their aim? Get to 1 million YouTube subscribers in a year.

And for the next video, he's going to be running a marathon in the VR metaverse on Jan 21 to raise $100,000 for a children's hospital. How sweet. However, there will be a couple of stunts and plot twists along the way.

Ultimately, the playbook is clear. This is MrBeast (127M subscribers) with NFTs: take a wild content creator, build an audience around him and then monetize it through merch, licensing, and other adjacent brands.

FYI we got their publicly-shared investor pitch deck right here (investors include money, Sfermion, Collab+Currency):

🤑 Why it matters: BasedAF is a wild experiment in Web3 content creation. Its success truly depends on its fans, and it is leveraging its recently-launched NFTs to build an audience and share the spoils with them. It's the promise of Web3: fans are co-creator and are part owners of the brand.

Will this co-creation and co-ownership model work in real-life? We shall see. It's easy to track its success with hard metrics: just watch the number of YouTube channel subscribers.

And more importantly: high-quality, entertaining content with mainstream appeal will get more people curious about web3, NFTs, and the metaverse. That's something we sorely need right now.

Today's Most Interesting Tweets

🐥 Just don't rug pull please

🐥 BAYC's new mint launches 18 Jan

🐥 There is still goodness in this world

🐥 A TL;dr on Forgotten Runes, a lore-focused OG NFT

🐥 Midnight Breeze is getting an art upgrade

🐥 Smart wallet labelling for better tracking/trading

🐥 The Web3 Growth Stack

That's it for today folks, see you tomorrow. If you want more, follow us on Twitter (@the_metadata). And if you aren't already a subscriber, join us now to get all the daily alpha you need.

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Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational purposes only. None of this is financial or investment advice. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell any assets. Please do your own research