NFTs Going Mainstream?: Issue #20 of web3🤝education
Hello educator and web3 frens,
Things in web3 seem to move towards more mainstream applications every week. Over the past couple of weeks three players in three separate industries–beverages, textbooks, and banks, made moves into NFTs. But this is a web3 AND education newsletter you say. Yes...AND this is important news for the young people that we design learning for every day.
As more and more businesses across a variety of industry sectors adopt NFTs, the more important it is that we are talking about them in our classrooms. If education is about creating conditions for young people to thrive in the world that they exist in, we need to be bringing that world into our instruction.
We don't know exactly what these tokens will look like for Starbucks, Pearson Publishing, or Sumitomo Mitsui Banking. I am not here to debate if this is good or bad for textbook consumers or the consumer of your mochaccino beverage. Each of these announcements is a signal to me that more and more companies are bringing token-based technology into their operations.
Let's use the internet analogy again. Point-and-click websites in 1995 weren't the dynamic visually exciting creations that they are today. But the companies and individuals that were testing the technology were already well ahead of the others. Not everyone stuck it out. Some of those websites created over 25 years ago haven't changed much since then.
However, go back and check out those early incarnations of the hyperlinked internet and you see a lot of the bones of websites of today. The Wayback Machine is a great way to do that. I see these early adopters of NFTs similarly to those early adopters of the internet. Trying new things, no clear destination in sight, but willing to try.
Here is a summary of the resources for this week:
☕️ Starbucks announcement takes us closer to paying for that next coffee with an NFT
📚 Major textbook company shares that it is making moves into NFTs
🏦 Japanese bank is bucking the trends and jumping into NFTs
Starbucks Rewards Program as NFTS? — www.foodandwine.com
Starbucks adopting NFTs seemed inevitable. As early adopters of gift cards, rewards programs, and its own app that operates like a monetary system, NFTs seem like the next logical step.
With this announcement, Starbucks is signaling that it is ready to embrace web3. Are NFTs collectibles? Access cards? Member rewards tokens? We will find out when large corporations like Starbucks join in. This is another instance of NFTs getting closer to being in the phones and digital wallets of everyday people, something will change the web3 landscape for sure.
NFT textbooks by Pearson — www.theverge.com
There have been a variety of opinions about the meaning of Pearson entering into NFTs. Some say it's further evidence of big corporate entities taking over emerging technologies. Some say it's a signal that they need to catch up with the changing times.
I don't have a definite opinion on this yet, I'm still trying to understand the implications of this move by such a big textbook publisher. Having major companies make the transition into web3 and NFTs has to have some impact on the broader industry though. So regardless of my opinions, it is major news and something to keep an eye on.
Japanese Bank Takes an NFT Step — www.forbes.com
This could be "non-news news" as details were scant in this announcement. There are a couple of elements that make it interesting though. First, having the banking sector enter into NFTs is new. And secondly, to have this coming from a traditional and conservative company out of Japan makes for an interesting story.
There doesn't seem to be much information about exactly what sort of NFTs SMBC Bank will be issuing. The article mentions another Japanese bank that is exploring NFTS: "the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Japan’s largest bank, partnered with Animoca Brands to 'support the development of the NFT market.'" Seeing new companies and new industries experimenting with NFTs might be the start of moving this technology closer to the mainstream.
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