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Starbucks Goes Web3 With Odyssey NFT Collectibles Program

The ETH Merge is right around the corner

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Exit Liquidity
September 13, 2022

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Welcome to the Exit Liquidity newsletter, the place to stay up to date on the ridiculous things that happen in the Crypto, NFTs & Web3. If you are looking to join the community check out the AlphaMint Discord where all the degens gather to chat in the dojo.

The Merge is finally here. This is an event many said would never come after the countless delays and missed deadlines since it was originally announced. For those that haven’t followed the Merge at all, the TLDR is that Ethereum (ETH) is going from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) which means no more mining, no more energy waste and less gas fees. Now the normies, climate change advocates and regulators can no longer claim ETH is ruining the environment by causing global warming and draining power grids around the globe. I’m sure they will pivot to something else, but the Merge removes one of the largest criticisms about ETH and Crypto in general. 

There is still some uncertainty on what will happen price wise. Some think that once the Merge is complete that ETH will insta-moon and anyone who holds will be Elon Musk rich. Others think that there will be network issues and people will lose ETH in the shuffle. There are also some sticking to their guns, mainly their huge investments into mining equipment, and hard forking the Ethereum chain to create EthereumPoW (ETHW) to continue mining. We honestly have no idea what’s going to happen, but if we had to bet all of our ETH on any outcome it's probably that there’s some price action euphoria day of the Merge and then immediately after it comes back down to where it is currently if not a little lower. We’ll see what happens, but we don’t think the Merge is causing the majority of this bearish sentiment.

Starbucks coffee officially announced their new 'Starbucks Odyssey' Web3 customer loyalty program by partnering with Polygon to make it happen yesterday. We can’t say we’re too surprised by the internet rage from the normies, but we are excited for this. It’s exciting for many reasons, but, first and foremost, it’s the fact that a global company is diving into the NFT/Web3 space and providing real world utility for their NFTs. Starbucks has over 33,000 stores in 80 countries and there are ~15,000 Starbucks in the United States alone. They’ll probably be rolling the program out slowly and with participating stores, but if they can manage to get the snowball rolling that’s a lot of opportunity and awareness for the NFT and Web3 space.

The most important thing is how user friendly the experience will be for customers to start collecting NFTs to gain utility. Starbucks has a large demographic and they made a great app that was easy to stack loyalty points. If they can recreate a similar experience without the need to jump through Ethereum to Polygon hoops to use it, it will be a slam dunk. Soon enough people will be getting free coffee, free merch and free whatever else because of their NFTs. This is what is going to push NFTs forward.

Once people outside of Crypto start getting rewarded for holding NFTs the mindset about them will change. The other thing that would have helped Starbucks in this launch would have been avoiding the word 'NFT" completely. Once normies read NFT they either think scam, ponzi scheme or have no idea what you’re talking about. In any of those scenarios you’ve already lost them. NFTs will be driven forward when people don’t even realize they are collecting, staking or gaining utility from them. Until then, they will more than likely be seen as another get rich scam or pyramid scheme. Regardless, it’s a win for the Web3 space and NFTs when global companies like this utilize NFTs and bridge into the Web2 world aka the real world. We are excited to see more companies take the leap.

As far as NFT action over the weekend, ENS domains continued to see lots of volume. Grumpls from goblin town did a stealth reveal after making holders wait for a month. These did some decent volume immediately after reveal before settling around .5 ETH where they currently sit. DigiDaigaku Spirits were revealed on Friday with the floor currently sitting around 2.6 ETH. Monday was all Renga and Renga Black Boxes. These were getting a lot of traction and seeing some solid volume while the floor sits around .7 ETH for Renga and 1.25 ETH for the Black Boxes as of writing.

Crypto

NFTs

Web3

Disclaimer: The Exit Liquidity Newsletter is meant to be an informational and entertaining way to share interesting things found in and around the Crypto, NFT and Web3 space. Nothing in this newsletter should be taken as the contributor's, Exit Liquidity's or AlphaMint's personal opinion or views. Nothing in this newsletter constitutes as professional and/or financial advice. Cryptocurrencies and crypto-related assets can be extremely risky investments, invest at your own risk.

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