YoloYolo, a new platform that connects non-fungible token (NFT) owners with brands to sell merchandise, has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round from backers that included crypto-focused investment firm ParaFi Capital, Mirana Ventures and Morningstar Ventures.
The capital will be used to help hire more employees and bring new brands onboard, YoloYolo co-founder and CEO Jason Hu told CoinDesk in an interview.
Other participants in the funding round were Avalanche Ventures, UOB Venture, Signum Capital, Genblock Capital, Yolo Investments. Individual investors included Neil Cunha-Gomes of SoftBank's Vision Fund, Nicole Zhang, a former partner at crypto exchange Binance and Mike Dudas, founder and former CEO of The Block.
NFTs are digital assets such as images or songs that have underlying code verifying the uniqueness of the asset. Large brands have formed partnerships with well-known NFT collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks to sell merchandise despite the crypto bear market hitting NFTs particularly hard. Gucci partnered with vinyl toy brand Superplastic in January to launch 10 NFTs that each came with a handmade ceramic sculpture, and jewelry retailer Tiffany unveiled a $50,000 CryptoPunk necklace in July.
“One of the biggest problems in the NFT space, that’s also an opportunity for us, is there’s not enough utility,” Hu said. “People spend a lot of money on their Ape NFTs, and especially during this winter, prices drop a lot. We’re just trying to help them generate some revenue from all of the merchandise.”
The YoloYolo app, which is expected to launch in March, will connect top NFT intellectual-property holders to brands and creators in the fashion and lifestyle industries. YoloYolo will sell the merchandise and take a cut of the sales.
Read more: NFTs and Intellectual Property: What Do You Actually Own?
YoloYolo has an existing partnership with DEKE, a leading streetwear brand in Asia, according to a pitch deck shared with CoinDesk. Partnerships in progress include charging accessory brand Anker, frisbee maker Europa and cooler brand YETI.
“We frequently see brands, content producers and IP owners looking for ways to plug into the NFT space. We believe YoloYolo is building the critical technology stack to allow brands to launch and distribute their NFTs in a seamless manner,” ParaFi Capital Vice President Anjan Vinod said in a press release.
UPDATE (Oct. 17, 16:21 UTC): Replaced lead image and corrected spelling of company to YoloYolo.
Apollo Head of Digital Asset Strategy Christine Moy, Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Sheila Warren, and Yahoo Finance's David Hollerith speak at the 2022 Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit.Disclosure: Apollo owns Yahoo, the parent company of Yahoo Finance.
The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for Oct. 17, 2022. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.
For Minuteman Press franchise owners Larry and Tami Jacobs, the printing industry is not new. “Our background prior to franchising with Minuteman Press was … wait for it … printing and graphics. Ta…
While the auto manufacturer has mainly produced battery electric vehicles, it has also produced several alpha prototypes of its fuel cell electric vehicles, which run on hydrogen.
Not many hedge managers have ignited as much controversy as Cathie Wood. The founder of Ark Invest has built her brand on running against the crowd. From her early embrace of tech stocks to her outspoken political conservatism, Cathie Wood has always been something of a lightning rod. Wood is staking her reputation and fortune on a belief that new technologies, and especially the way that new technologies will interact with each other, are going to completely transform our world. In her view, se
Shares of Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: INO) rose 17.31% on Monday. The clinical-stage biotech company specializes in developing and commercializing DNA medicines to help treat and prevent infectious diseases, cancer, and diseases associated with HPV (human papillomavirus), the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Inovio has a 52-week low of $1.38 and a 52-week high of $7.77, and is down more than 63% this year.
Shares of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) are rising today, up by 4.9% as of 11:41 a.m. ET. The gains came despite a report from The Wall Street Journal that claimed Meta is falling short of internal company projections for user growth in its metaverse platform, Horizon Worlds. Meta's share price does look a bit oversold after falling 60% year to date.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) shareholders had a rough day Friday with the stock dropping 7.5%. Last week's plunge dropped Tesla to about 50% of its early January high, and some investors may have decided that was the time to buy. Tesla has already reported that it produced almost 366,000 vehicles in the third quarter, including a record 83,135 from its newly upgraded plant in Shanghai, China.
Growth stocks including MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI), Etsy (NASDAQ: ETSY), and Wayfair (NYSE: W) were flying higher Monday morning as investors reacted to new fiscal policy announcements out of the U.K. and a strong earnings report from Bank of America. Investors were also looking forward to third-quarter earnings reports, which ramp up this week.
Today's Research Daily features the Q3 earnings season scorecard and new research reports on Apple (AAPL), Abbott (ABT) and IBM (IBM) and others.
The 86-year-old investing legend has spoken. You may want to pay attention.
Think price levels will be back to normal soon? Think again.
In a perfect investment world, all real estate investment trust (REIT) stocks would never lose 30% or more of their value, would pay safe and stable high-yielding dividends with no cuts and their funds from operations would easily cover the dividends each quarter. But 2020 is far from the perfect investment world, and REIT stocks are among the worst-performing stocks this year. Inflation, followed by multiple interest rate hikes and fears of a deep recession, has slashed the prices of almost all
Ken Laudan of Buffalo Funds believes Wall Street analysts are wrong about 2023, but that an earnings decline for the S&P 500 will set up a rebound for stocks.
Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) investors are having a brutal 2022. Shopify has endured more than a year of quickly decelerating growth rates. Through late 2021, Wall Street was predicting that these boom times would never end and that a permanently elevated level of e-commerce activity would sustain Shopify's high valuation.
Shares of Roblox (NYSE: RBLX) soared on Monday after the popular video game development company reported encouraging growth metrics for September. As of 1:35 p.m. ET, Roblox's stock price was up more than 22%. Roblox's daily active users (DAUs) jumped 23% year over year to 57.8 million.
FuboTV Inc. shares rallied in the extended session Monday after the streaming TV platform hiked its sales forecast for the third quarter, said it was dropping its sports-betting businesses, and reaffirmed its outlook of positive cash flow four years from now.
With a price-earnings ratio of 7 and a 7% dividend, the stock looks compelling
To get a sense of who is truly in control of QUALCOMM Incorporated ( NASDAQ:QCOM ), it is important to understand the…
Shares of enterprise software companies Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG), and MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB) bounced back strong today, up 9.1%, 7%, and 7.2%, respectively, as of 1:35 p.m. ET. Overall, the macroeconomic picture seemed to improve slightly today, as the United Kingdom's new government announced it would be reversing its prior tax cut plan, which caused chaos in the currency and government bond markets. Long-term U.S. bond yields also retreated slightly, perhaps helping sentiment for high-growth software stocks.
