Starting Monday at 9am, the Spurs will auction non-fungible tokens, acknowledging that Gregg Popovich has won 1,336 regular season wins. This is the most director in NBA history.
The 1336 Coach Pop NFT Collection is a digital reproduction of five Popovich hand-painted playing cards against the backdrop of the five coat designs Spurs had throughout his career.
All proceeds from the auction will benefit San Antonio Food Bank, an important charity near Popovich.
Undoubtedly, many Spurs fans want to own one of these digital collectibles, but they aren’t completely familiar with tokens.
NFTs are image, audio and video files certified by the blockchain, a digital ledger that records transactions on myriad computers on the Internet. NFTs are created by a unique computer code recorded on the blockchain. They are in a digital wallet owned by the owner.
Painters, musicians, and even tattoo artists are looking to NFTs to sell and promote their work.
Professional sports leagues are also making a big entry into NFT. The NBA pioneered the issuance of blockchain goods with the NBA Top Shot Moment. Digital video clips are like playing cards online.
NFT, a video clip of the 2020 NBA Finals featuring the Dunk Shoot of Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, won the NBA Top Shot NFT Marketplace record of $ 230,000 in August.
According to many reports, this month the NFT with a photo of the 1952 Topps rookie card of baseball legend Mickey Mantle sold for $ 471,000. (The card itself sold for $ 5.2 million last year, which is the highest price ever for a baseball card.)
No one knows what Popovich’s digital playing cards will bring at auction.
Playcards are just a digital version of the index card Popovich used to draft play. The Spurs assistant once described the index card as a coach’s “magic bean” to a San Antonio Express-News columnist.
“To date, I’ve been writing cards and stuff on the cards I have. Now in my pants, it was your sports court,” Popovich said in a YouTube video promoting the auction. “I couldn’t live without them.”
Popovich said he came up with the idea of using cards from Hall of Fame coach Don Nelson. Popovich worked with Nelson’s coach staff at the Golden State Warriors before joining the Spurs. Nelson held a record of regular season victories before being defeated by his one understudy on Friday.
The auction lasts 4 days. In conclusion, each of the 1,336 NFTs will be sent to the highest bidder. You can bid across multiple editions. There is no limit to the number of NFTs you can purchase from your collection.
The collection contains five “different 1-of-1 NFTs” featuring unique play and court combinations. The winners of these NFTs will also be provided with Popovich-signed physical playcards and four courtside seats for next season’s game.
Participating in an auction is a bit more complicated than charging an NFT on your credit card. Indeed, the auction does not accept credit cards.
Playcards will be auctioned on NFT’s OpenSea website, which claims to be the “world’s first and largest digital marketplace.” These are called “eBay of NFTs”.
Expected bidders will need to use MetaMask to create an OpenSea account and digital wallet. They need to use the cryptocurrency Ethereum.
According to the Spurs website, NFTs can be resold immediately after an auction on the NFT Marketplace.
Based on the terms of use of the auction, Spurs warns that there are various risks in purchasing NFTs. The first of these: NFT markets and prices are “extremely volatile, and fluctuations in the prices of other digital assets can have a significant and negative impact on the value of digital assets.”
The document also warns that the value of NFTs can be “significantly reduced” as a result of athletes’ field activities, such as substance use, domestic violence, and other criminal acts.
Express-News financial columnist Michael Taylor wrote last year that NFTs create great art, great technology, and a great way to express your values. But they are not suitable for investment, he said.
“Burn money only in NFTs that focus on collecting for uneconomical reasons,” Taylor advised. “Don’t devote money to this in the hope of a quick flip.”
This month, Bloomberg reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing the creators of NFTs and the cryptocurrency exchanges they trade to determine if some assets violate agency rules. ..
Bloomberg cites people familiar with the matter and reports that the focus of the investigation is on whether a particular NFT is being used to raise money like traditional securities.
“The SEC states that many tokens fall under that authority, but some crypto enthusiasts argue that regulations aimed at monitoring the stock market should not apply to cryptocurrencies as well. “The article states.
A possible class proceeding was filed in a federal court in New York last year over the NBA OpShot platform built on the Vancouver-based Dapper Labs Flow blockchain.
The two plaintiffs who purchased the token allege that the token was an unregistered security and was sold in violation of federal law.
They claim that they and other private investors “lack the technical and financial sophistication needed to assess the risks associated with their investment” and that the amount of “serious damage” proved in court. He added that he suffered.
Dapper Labs replied that the claim should be dismissed, claiming that “basketball cards (including digital cards) are not securities”.
The proceedings are pending.
Staff writer Eric Killerea contributed to this report.
pdanner@express-news.net
