​Starbucks sells 2000 NFTs in 20 minutes

What’s new? On March 9, a new batch of 2000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from the global coffee chain Starbucks was sold out in 20 minutes at $100 apiece. Because of the influx of users, the shopping site was inactive for some time. The company itself calls the tokens “stamps” and they are credited to users’ Starbucks Rewards accounts and allow them to receive various bonuses. Some tokens are not available for purchase and can be earned by completing tasks or purchasing Starbucks products. The assets are part of the Starbucks Odyssey program, launched in December 2022. The company called the initiative a “revolutionary Web3 experience,” and “a new, next-generation loyalty program model.”

News on the Time website

Details about the project. Already at the beta stage of the launch, tokens worth $200 000 were sold, with those NFTs whose price did not exceed the cost of a few cups of coffee later resold on the secondary market for $1900. Analysts at Bank of America praised the program, calling it “more holistic than the industry’s prior NFT forays.”

Time stresses that the value of most NFTs comes from their scarcity and their utility. And Starbucks is using both of these factors to add value. For example, the company only issued 5000 tokens in its Holiday Cheer collection. The benefits of owning these assets have yet to be announced, but the company has hinted that they will give owners exclusive benefits, from martini-making classes to trips to Costa Rica coffee farms.

Starbucks has also tried to make the sign-up process as easy as possible, using the NFT marketplace’s Nifty Gateway interface, which does not require creating a crypto wallet or remembering a seed phrase for security. However, such a system could potentially result in the loss of assets if the program is shut down, similar to how NFTs from the FTX exchange disappeared after the company went bankrupt.

In October 2022, actor Anthony Hopkins’ first NFT collection, The Eternal Collection, was sold out in less than seven minutes on the OpenSea marketplace. However, high demand caused technical problems that delayed the launch by more than 45 minutes.

For what is going on in the NFT market and how crypto winter affected its development, read GetBlock Magazine’s special feature.