The Whales of NBA Top Shot Made a Fortune Buying LeBron Highlights
The most popular and perhaps most confounding NFT market is NBA Top Shot. It has minted unlikely millionaires and left many scratching their heads as it processed more than $250 million in sales from 100,000 buyers over the last month alone.
The peculiar but lucrative subculture of Top Shot reminds others of a similar hit from the same company, Dapper Labs, in which people collected virtual cats instead of NBA highlights. CryptoKitties was a fad that was mostly forgotten after a few crazy weeks in 2017.
Now the idea is roaring back in part because Top Shot is built for a different audience: the average NBA fan. Dapper Labs cut deals to give the league and its players a slice of every transaction—the company takes a 5% fee—with the goal of reaching casual basketball consumers and not just blockchain evangelists. It’s working. Instead of swapping jerseys after games, NBA players are exchanging Top Shot moments.
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nba-top-shot-nft-crypto-digital-collectibles-11615266042
