4K.com just got a boost to further grow its first of its kind peer-to-peer NFT Marketplace. Its unique value proposition of issuing NFTs paired with luxury items held in storage just pulled in a $3 Million seed raise.
4K.com: NFT Marketplace for Vault-Stored Luxury Goods
Blockchain heavyweights rallied behind 4K.com including Electric Capital, Crosscut Ventures, Collab+Currency, ConsenSys, and IDEO CoLab. It’s been a busy week for the Marketplace because full testing kicked off 2 days ago in order to issue digital deeds to luxury items such as Rolex watches and rare sneakers. Then, the NFT deeds can be used to earn yield within the DeFi ecosystem.
Ultimately, 4K.com aims to be the main NFT Hub of sneakerheads, watch aficionados, wine connoisseurs, trading card experts or collectors of any other investment-grade physical goods.
The innovation
According to 4K CEO Richard Li, “NFTs come in three flavors – digital art, digital items from virtual reality platforms, known as “the metaverse,” and digital property rights, which is the part 4K is interested in.”
The innovation of the platform revolves around bringing physical assets into NFTs. Basically, customers need to send 4K.com a physical luxury item such as a Rolex or a luxury bag. Then, after authenticating it will be stored in an ultra-secure storage facility. If everything checks out, 4K.com will tokenize the items and send NFTs representing it. Inversely, the user needs to send back the NFT in order to retrieve the items.
Li assured the users that they “can NFT anything and bring it into the digital world. Imagine an NFT of a real-life horse and bringing it into [digital horse racing platform] ZED RUN, or if you NFT’d a Michael Jordan rookie card and brought it into NBA Top Shot.” He further asserts that this model “introduces an entirely new asset class and dynamic to the ecosystem,”
The platform assured its users that it would use independent auditors and US-based high-security vaults to manage risks. In addition, 4K.com will fully insure 100% of the products.
NFTs and DeFi
DeFi space continues its upward trajectory as it hit a new all-time of $50 billion in total value locked (TVL) back in April. The increased adoption is spurring pressure to innovate faster and deliver more value for DeFi users.
Bringing real-world assets into DeFi is a game-changer in crypto lending. The next piece of the puzzle is to determine where the customers can use the NFTs as collateral. Li admits that it is still “a little early for Uniswap. It’s going to be very interesting when you start getting yield on your digital NFTs and physical items. It will happen.”
In summary, 4K.com allows luxury goods owners to participate in the financial innovation of the DeFi space which has previously been exclusively accessible to digital assets. Li believes that this is a natural progression because “as we spend a larger portion of our lives online, bridging the physical and digital worlds becomes increasingly important.”
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