Trail Blazers Launch First-Of-Its-Kind Non-Fungible Tokens With Gameday Poster Collection

Trail Blazers Launch First-Of-Its-Kind Non-Fungible Tokens With Gameday Poster Collection

PORTLAND, Ore. (July 19, 2021) – The Portland Trail Blazers are launching their first limited-edition Non-Fungible Tokens to the public July 19, in partnership with StormX whose experience in the NFT Space helped inform this initiative. Collaborating with seven local artists, the Trail Blazers will re-release seven digitally enhanced NFT pieces of art from the popular Gameday Poster Collection, recreating the most popular poster designs, matchups and historic moments. Honoring the organization’s 1977 NBA Championship, seventy-seven editions of the posters will be available as NFTs to fans via OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, with the help of Wasserman Media Group.

NFTs are digital assets stored on a blockchain that are unique to the purchaser, cannot be replicated and can consist of anything digital, such as photos, drawings, videos and audio.

“I am honored to launch our organization’s first Non-Fungible Tokens alongside our new partner and crypto expert, StormX,” said Chris McGowan, President & CEO, Trail Blazers & Rose Quarter. “The Gameday Poster Collection is a pivotal part of the Trail Blazers gameday experience, and I look forward to making these accessible to Rip City fans across the world.”

Each poster will feature an exclusive one-of-one “Rip City Gold” limited-edition version. All seventy-seven NFTs in the collection will be sold to the highest bidder, and the auction will be live on OpenSea from July 19 - 22 at 5:00 p.m. PST.

Net proceeds from each sale will benefit the Trail Blazers Foundation, which is dedicated to positively impacting the lives of individuals from communities that have been historically underserved or marginalized with a focus on where youth live, learn and play.

To offset the unavoidable emissions associated with NFTs, the Trail Blazers are committed to purchasing carbon offsets through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation based on the total quantity of posters minted. These offsets will help fund projects focused on energy resilience and independence, workforce development and STEM education across the United States.

A Brief Introduction to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

As the world of cryptocurrency continues to expand its reach into new territories, new and innovative use cases for the technology have started coming to the fore. While up until recently, Blockchain technology was primarily used for cryptocurrency trading, non-fungible tokens have changed all that.

For those who have primarily stuck with crypto trading for the last few years, the idea and purpose behind non-fungible tokens can be slightly confusing. This article will serve as an introduction to NFTs, outlining what they are, how they work, and why they have become so popular in recent years.

What is an NFT?

Unlike the other commonly known cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, NFTs do not function as a type of currency. Rather, NFTs represent what is known as an alternative use case of Blockchain technology.

As with most crypto projects, NFTs started slowly in 2017 and gradually picked up pace over time. It wasn’t until the year 2021 that the scope and prominence of NFTs shot up to unprecedented heights.

When one Bitcoin is traded on a cryptocurrency exchange, you will receive a value equal to one Bitcoin in return. This is because no single cryptocurrency has a unique identifier making cryptocurrencies ideal for interchange.

Conversely, every single NFT has a unique identifier. This is where NFTs get their name since, like two physical paintings, no two NFTs are alike and are hence non-fungible.

NFTs can be thought of as digital tokens that use Blockchain to secure the authenticity and ownership of a one-of-a-kind asset. The asset’s ownership history can be verified through the public ledger known as Blockchain, and hence its authenticity is confirmed.

What Are NFTs Used For?

Even after understanding what an NFT is, it is natural to wonder what the purpose of all this is. Today, NFTs represent songs, digital artworks, and games that can be sold on NFT marketplaces. Given that the NFT game is still very much in its childhood stages, many continue to discover more innovative ways in which these digital assets can be put to use.

The NBA recently began using NFTs to transpose sports card trading onto the digital sphere. Today, these digital trading cards make up an entire trading digital trading ecosystem. A project in a different vein, known as Decentraland, uses NFTs to create whole augmented realities with which users can interact.

While many NFTs are simply unique and authentic static images, many other NFTs have actual in-game uses. An example of this is the NFT based game CryptoKitties, released on the Ethereum network in 2017 but has skyrocketed in popularity over the last two years.

In Cryptokitties, a unique NFT represents a digital kitty, each with a unique genetic makeup. These kitties can be bred to produce more kitties that are equally unique. In this way, kitties can be traded on the Ethereum network to build a collection. While it may not sound like much, at its peak popularity CryptoKitties congested approximately 10% of the entire Ethereum network, which brought everyone’s attention to NFTs in the first place.

Conclusion

Today, NFTs are very easy to create for yourself. As the decentralized finance sphere expands its reach to more users, the quality and quantity of NFTs will continue rising. To conclude, NFTs represents a highly innovative use-case of the powerful Blockchain technology that is currently uprooting the worlds of computation and finance.

There is no shortage of NFT marketplaces where you can buy, sell, and even create your own unique NFTs. To learn more about how you can trade NFTs sign up with 1K Daily Profit and start trading.

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The Value of Uniqueness: Non-Fungible Tokens in the Age of Name, Image and Likeness

An NFT is a “unique digital asset whose ownership is tracked on a blockchain” according to Linda Xie, co-founder of Scalar Capital and former Coinbase product manager.4 Blockchains are immutable, decentralized databases supported by computer servers – the most famous one being the Bitcoin network. NFTs differ from other fungible blockchain assets such as Bitcoin or Ether because no two NFTs are the same, whereas by definition any one Bitcoin is exchangeable for any other Bitcoin without any loss of value. Even if multiple copies of the same NFT are made, each would likely be numbered or otherwise uniquely identified from the others, enhancing its status as a singular collectible.

This enduring uniqueness by design is coupled with the other advantages of blockchain assets, such as the ability to control, transfer and issue ongoing royalties or other payments streams to the creator or other third parties from such digital assets such as Berkeley’s ongoing right to receive proceeds from the resale of its NFTs. The ability to create an asset or property with such characteristics, and have such characteristics regulated by computer code, is unprecedented and indeed the use cases for blockchain are still evolving. Digital collectibles, artwork, and tokenized real estate are only a few of the many potential use cases. Ethereum, the blockchain on which most NFTs are currently hosted, is a fully-functional programming language and has been described as a decentralized world computer.

On Ethereum, NFTs are frequentlycreated using the ERC-721 standard, which is an open standard that describes how to build non-fungible tokens. Conversely, fungible tokens are created using the ERC-20 standard, which is an open standard that describes how to build fungible tokens. These two tokens could be used together – for example, Luke Garza could create a new NFT of a video of his first dunk as a professional player and sell that as an ERC-721 non-fungible token or he could sell ownership interests in the NFT, through sale of ERC-20 tokens representing an ownership interest in such NFT.

One key challenge in the NFT space is “linking” or “binding” of off-chain non-fungible assets (such as a Honus Wagner card or a painting by Picasso) to the equivalent on-chain blockchain asset (the NFT itself). This challenge also presents itself in trying to put real property title records on a digital blockchain registry. Governmental registries such as the title system have historically provided the legal “technology” and authority that binds parcels of real property to abstract notations signifying ownership, such as written entries in the land registry. There does not yet exist a non-contractual means for ensuring that ownership of an NFT is equivalent to ownership of the real-world asset itself.

What are the Legal Implications of NFTs?

While NFTs can create valuable revenue opportunities for universities and athletes, those opportunities involve legal concerns that need to be understood and addressed. We focus below on two of these concerns, securities laws and intellectual property.

Securities Laws

The legal framework around blockchain and cryptocurrencies assets in general, and NFTs in particular, is still evolving as governments around the world decide on how best to regulate this emerging asset class.

In the U.S., under the legal test articulated in SEC v. Howey, a 1946 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court concerning how to define a security for purposes of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act, NFTs could be deemed to be securities if they are deemed to represent an investment in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits derived from the efforts of others. The rule from this case is sometimes referred to as the “Howey test”. Thus, depending on how an NFT is created, structured, marketed and sold or distributed, such NFTs could be deemed securities. Any sale of securities in the U.S. would be subject to the existing securities law framework requiring registration before the sale of securities to the public, unless there is an applicable exemption from such registration. Accordingly, though it may be possible to mint and sell NFTs from one’s dorm room, it is certainly not advisable without legal counsel.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) has not enacted express regulations regarding NFTs. The SEC has, however, has provided some guidance around cryptocurrencies and blockchains over the years. In it’s 2019 Framework for “Investment Contract” Analysis of Digital Assets (the “Framework”), the SEC provided details on how it applied the Howey test in analyzing whether digital assets constituted one type of security – the “investment contract.” And while whether a particular digital asset at the time of offer or sale satisfies the Howey test depends on the specific facts and circumstances, one key area of analysis is usually whether a purchaser of an NFT has a reasonable expectation of profit (or other financial returns) derived from the efforts of others. The SEC noted in the Framework that “[p]rice appreciation resulting solely from external market forces (such as general inflationary trends or the economy) impacting the supply and demand for an underlying asset is generally not considered “profit” under the Howey test. Another relevant consideration is that, unlike the many initial coin offerings launched in 2017, in the case of NFTs the network and digital asset are typically fully developed and operational. Therefore, an NFT collectible sold on an established network whose value is derived from its own scarcity and uniqueness (and not from promotion or other efforts of others) would seem less likely to qualify as an “investment contract” under the Framework. The sale of baseball cards or other collectibles is typically not deemed to be a sale of securities.

Clearer laws and regulations around NFTs and cryptocurrencies would help the industry better grow and develop. The blockchain and cryptocurrency community is hopeful that the new Chairman, Gary Gensler, will provide greater clarity and certainty to the law as he is rejoining government after a stint as a fintech professor at M.I.T.

The public is also watching the outcome of SEC v. Ripple Labs, Inc., Bradley Garlinghouse and Christian A. Larsen, one of the leading cases regarding whether the sale of digital currencies constituted the sale of unregistered securities. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Ripple raised over $1.3 billion in funds, beginning in 2013, through the sale of digital assets known as XRP in an unregistered securities offering to investors in the U.S. and worldwide. There have not yet been any decisions in this case.

Intellectual Property

NFTs are most often used with artwork or photographs that physically exist. For example, the most expensive sports-related NFT sold was an photo of LeBron James sold on Opensea for 10,000 Ether (currently worth approximately $25 million).

The manner in which this NFT was marketed and sold illustrates the current shortcomings around intellectual property ownership and NFTs – specifically that ownership of an NFT does not automatically grant ownership of the related underlying intellectual property rights in the work being reproduced in the NFT. Indeed, for the James photo, the intellectual property rights to the original work needed to be transferred to the NFT by use of contract law. The purchaser of this NFT was only granted the right to own the NFT for personal use and not commercialization purposes. The RAW digital photo file of James was included in the transaction as the NFT sale page stated “This is the only time this particular shot will ever be listed on any exchange”. The page contains a disclaimer clarifying that the user is “trading for the full non-commercial rights to this creation – anything past that, you’ll have to work with LeBron. Tell him Kimani says hi.”

Source: OpenSea

Application of existing intellectual property law suggests that creation of on-chain or digital-native assets would result in a stronger claim to the ownership of the intellectual property rights with respect to such assets – as compared to existing physical assets being linked to digital tokens. For example, in the e-sports realm, an artist may create a one-of-a-kind digital “skin” NFT that one player may purchase to use in an online game by wearing on his or her online avatar. This digital artist would likely hold the copyright over the skin. However, the intellectual property ownership claim has not yet been adjudicated. There are also complicated laws around derivative works which may also be relevant.

Thus, for NFTs of off-chain assets (or non-digital native NFTs), the attendant intellectual property rights such as copyright or design rights remain in effect in the underlying work and are not automatically inherent, and do not reside, in the NFTs themselves. The general rule is that an artist will own the copyright and design rights in any work that they produce.

However, it has yet to be determined whether an NFT is transformative and thus stands alone with its own new copyright or rather will be deemed a translation or other derivative work of the original copyright, which would significantly limit the commercialization of NFTs based on off-chain assets where the creator of the NFT does not own the intellectual property rights to the underlying work. In general, theNFT owner has no claim to underlying intellectual property rights in the original work.

Student-Athletes Have an Opportunity to Use NFTs To Profit from Their NIL Rights

Luke Garza has stated in interviews that he wants to be a trailblazer and set an example for his younger teammates:

“Now that I’m not a college athlete anymore, I’m not representing the University of Iowa as a basketball player,” he says. “I definitely am in favor, in the future, of college athletes being able to do this, and I see this as a potential way for college athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness. Hopefully I can help show people the way… I think in the future, people can look at NFTs as an opportunity for college athletes when Name, Image, and Likeness is passed, because I’m very confident it will be.” 5

There will be more athletes like Luke Garza who may want to monetize their NIL rights with more control over the use of those rights. The open source nature and composability of NFTs could be created in dorm rooms on existing platforms such as Opensea or Top Shot. The technology exists and NFTs are a topic of the moment.

The sale or licensing of NFTs by student-athletes has attendant legal issues. For student-athletes, these may include whether the NFTs are securities that must be registered and what intellectual property rights the student-athlete has and may convey. For universities, there also are concerns about their student-athletes including what liability may exist for the university if a student sells NFTs from, for example, her dorm room – potentially implicating elements of the Howey test. Another concern is how will the university monitor the sale or licensing by students of NFTs that include university trademarks. Luke Garza’s NFT shows him wearing the University of Iowa’s yellow and blue jersey. Presumably, he received permission or a license from the University of Iowa to include such branding in his NFT. And, universities need to understand what role they will take in educating and empowering their student-athletes and any consequent risk.

Colleges and Universities Have An Opportunity to Create New Revenue Channels, With Legal Implications

As shown by Berkeley, colleges and universities also recognize that the sale of NFTs can create significant new revenue sources. This is also true with university athletic departments with their iconic photo collections that may be converted into NFTs.

Depending on the precise facts and circumstances, the sale of NFTs, however, may be prohibited by federal securities laws restricting the sale of unregistered securities. Ongoing litigation and coming pronouncements from the SEC and other governmental bodies will shape an evolving regulatory landscape around NFTs. There are also are unique intellectual property issues surrounding NFTs: for example, ownership of an NFT does not grant ownership of the underlying intellectual property. Thus, the owner of the NFT sold by Berkeley does not have any claim to the underlying cancer immunotherapy patent.