Niko Hosn on tokenizing sports memorabilia at RareMint

0:01i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investment pitch media in the crypto coin show and today on blockchain interviews we have nico haasen cto of rare mint nico welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time yesterday thank you for having me on really excited to be here you're very welcome let's dive into the world of nfts minting going on in all different

0:22industries a lot not related to finance and it's interesting to see what kind of assets in the real world can be tokenized and turned into nfts uh let's kick off the conversation with uh just a high level overview from you and what your team rare mint is working on uh in the space and then we'll dive into the details yeah great um so we at airmen are all

0:45focused around asset-backed nfts so we have access to about 350 million worth of rails rare sports collectibles um when we pull collectibles out of the physical collection we bring them into our in-house studio we shoot every asset anywhere from 300 to 2000 times in 12k um once that process is done we create a 3d model then the assets get vaulted insured and submitted to our auditing

1:11firm and so uh end to end focused on the asset backed bringing the physical to digital very very cool and uh now what kind of assets are you guys starting with uh to bring into the digital world uh yeah so we're starting with sports um we have had uh four drops so far um we currently have a fifth drop on going on ebay for a pair of steph curry shoes

1:39we're focusing on high-end sports collectibles pieces that are culturally um significant and historically significant um and uh easily identifiable with the uh what we believe the current nft uh buyers to to to be interesting and you know for the most part people in nfts are hearing about board apes or most things that are mostly just digital uh and not physical

2:05i'm guessing that you've done a little bit of research on the potential for real world assets to become digital and you know have both that physical and digital aspect to them where do you see this market that you're heading in in the niche of nfts uh growing from here into the years to come uh yes so i think there's a generation of collectors that existed prior to nfts

2:29being a thing right and if you think about collecting over the years sports assets have been something that have gone down from generation to generation sports cards getting handed down from throughout the family tickets type 1 photographs balls jerseys anything that you can think of and we believe that the new generation of collectors will still appreciate the

2:52value of physical assets and having things backed by having things backed by the hard asset themselves i don't think digital only is going anywhere but i do think what we're doing is a very nice complement to digital only products and approaches very interesting and are you seeing those same families that are you know passing down these uh old versions of collectibles

3:17into this same new nft version or are you also just seeing like nft collectors or institutional investors or large companies somewhere like nike buying board apes yeah so we see it as as kind of all of the above right um so we have a a large part of our business is focused around education right there as i said there is a large group of collectors that

3:44have been in the hobby prior to nfts being a thing especially prior to them exploding last year and what we found is that these collectors they want to get into the space they want to enjoy digital versions of of the assets that they have or assets that they can't get um and there's a huge educational component that we have to kind of guide them through hey this is

4:05the journey of what traditional collecting looks like in the web 3 era so so that addresses nato folks um they get it they understand hey okay i have this nft i can go and and do what i normally do with my digital only right i can go take a loan i can go fractionalize it uh you name it right and they appreciate that it is backed by the actual asset and

4:32lenders like that as well because at the end of the day if somebody defaults on a loan they can exchange the nft for the physical asset funds are looking at this as a as a really interesting approach to entering alternative um alternative asset classes for their actual fund and diversifying a bit um and we've seen that already uh in the short while we've been live

4:55very interesting and i feel like if you're working on you know sports memorabilia in the olden days there's so many different baseball cards and often you can get them at garage sales or you know they're fairly cheap to start accumulating but there's also of course the rare ones and ones that are quite expensive i'm guessing and with nfts how you guys are starting you're really

5:16starting with you know more rare or more expensive nfts um what does that look like from the drops that you guys have done so far yeah so our lowest price drop so far has been about fourteen thousand dollars and it was for a 1930 uh jules remain uh fifa world cup captains trophy it was actually the first captain's trophy given out at the first fifa sponsored

5:39world cup um our assets range anywhere from a thousand dollars to a seven figures plus we're experimenting because we are so new we launched back in march in the middle of march and so we've been out for a little under a month now and so the subsequent drops that we have coming are going to be priced at a little bit more reasonable entry point but the assets are still very very

6:06special um definitely and now just speaking of like the utility of nfts and tokenization smart contracts and the ability to program code into that you know beyond just having a physical baseball card is there anything special about the nft uh that rare mint is building of these physical i know i know you mentioned you know like uh photographing them in 12k and making

6:32sure you're getting an exact replica of the physical but are there any other benefits to the nft part portion of it yeah so we are experimenting with this concept of dynamic nfts and where this is really interesting and and almost a little difficult for us is that um a lot of our assets are are from athletes that who unfortunately are no longer with us

6:55um we do have us assets from current day athletes think you're patrick mahomes you're tom brady um and so the deals that we're trying to structure involve okay if tom brady throws uh 10 touchdowns over two games how does the nft evolve right how does the nft grow into something that has a different a media layer or it unlocks a different piece of content that's stored on our

7:18weave there's a number of different additional layers of value that we want to add to the physical or sorry to the nft and we're really kind of in the exploratory phase of how do we add those layers and how does the community respond to those layers very cool and i like that and you know you mentioned about the education uh bringing old collectors in to sort of

7:39getting them to understand uh this additional value how do you do that for especially you know i i can imagine the baseball collectors that have been collecting for 50 years uh some of them not technical savvy how do you convince them that this is the future of collectibles yeah uh so because we are so new um it's been very much a live kind of hey email

8:02thread get on a call with us we'll walk you through this a very much like a curated experience right we want we want the people that are supporting us early to feel very special about the purchase that they're making and feel comfortable by with trusting us with these assets now that approach isn't scalable so we have our ux and our product team working

8:20on a really really thorough onboarding guide that serves as kind of an educational cookbook of sorts um that will help people that don't understand the space don't understand crypto i mean it's going to be like an eli 5 cookbook of nftes and collectibles so very cool and i'm sure you know as it continues to expand out into the more of the mainstream you will need a

8:46large educational center and just keeping people up to date on on how you guys are making these things unique and how to access them trade them buy and sell and all of those things so i'm sure that's just one part of how you guys are going to continue to grow maybe you can talk about you know moving forward you guys are really new and there's so much to do you know what is

9:10sort of in the immediate road map of the next few months on how you're going to expand yeah uh so we have a couple things um we're working with a and this kind of ties into the educational component so a lot of um a lot of traditional collectors don't have the desire what we found is they don't have the desire to manage to want to manage their own crypto keys and so

9:32as we go through our ux and our product process we've identified partners that we can work with that can offer them a custodial solution where we can tap in that can be basically be plugged into our marketplace where user only has to sign up with their email and password and they can go and trade and transact and and not have any responsibility for managing their keys um that is an opt-in

9:54option if they so choose we will still allow anybody to come into our marketplace and participate in any way additionally we're working on fractionalization um it's if you look at a piece that's a hundred thousand dollar michael jordan jersey um it it is your market to the the potential buyer's market for that shrinks substantially at that price point and so

10:19we are currently in talks with figuring out how do we tap into existing um two existing projects and existing protocols and leverage what they've built to offer fractionalization to our users um we're a very crypto native company and we we very much believe in composability and we try to put that first um and so looking at things like fractionalization

10:42uh lending how do we leverage existing protocols there is those are things that will be coming in q2 in addition to that we have this concept of collect to earn we will create nfts that are a lower price point that we call limited editions and they're more of a collector series collector piece um at a price point that's anywhere from 10 to 20 to 50 so everybody can participate the modern

11:07fan um but for us that's that feature is very very special because if you look at the current prices for an nba or an nfl game four tickets parking for a family of four food drinks almost everyone is out priced and so you have to create additional ways and additional experiences that allow fans to connect with their athletes because unfortunately for the

11:30modern family they can't afford to go to the game anymore um and so that 10 to 20 dollar price point whether it be a sliver of a jersey or if it is a 10 second interview clip 30 second you name it um if we can provide value to the everyday fan in that type of way we we want to we want to launch that in q2 and and offer that so so those are a couple of the immediate

11:56short term we have some more on our long-term roadmap i won't get in that it's posted on our medium um so if viewers want to want to check it out feel free to head over there amazing niko and yeah i i think uh that divisibility and fractionalized nfts will be some of the most important not just to get access uh you know for retailers to be able to own a piece of

12:18history and own something that's really expensive a little portion of it also just in in the uh you know in the market itself bringing liquidity to those assets and opening up the market for people on the seller's side too to be able to get a little bit of liquidity or um have pieces that normally nobody could own have everybody be able to own it so

12:39i know that there are protocols working on that and i'm excited to see how you integrate that into rare mint so very cool and you mentioned uh there's more drops coming and also that they'll likely also be some that are lower price point to get people involved how often uh are you guys doing drops and is it something where uh it the demand is so high that you know a drop

13:01is announced and then within two minutes it's sold out um and how can people learn about those uh yes so our twitter is the best place to go for any and all uh information related to drops um the sort of mechanics for how drops work are best explained on our discord so i if if you're not on twitter i would go check out our discord and vice versa um so we

13:24have uh we're very quickly scaling out to additional collectible verticals right we have pokemon coming up we have movie props we we have anything that's that's collectible relevant um we we have some amount in our inventory so right now we're at a point because we just launched we're experimenting with different types of assets right and seeing what the market dictates will be

13:47our our primary vertical moving forward um we currently have a drop on ebay which with probescene123 who is the largest um ebay retailer of sports memorabilia um and so that drop is live it's the first video nft drop on ebay and if you go to the listing you can see the actual nft in action um that ends on saturday of this week and so after that drop we'll we will

14:14have a cadence of one to two assets per week we will announce them prior to the assets going live and once they go live they'll be available for primary purchase on our marketplace which is rarement.com secondary trading we don't restrict can happen on looks rare open c anywhere you choose very cool niko i'm looking forward to that and uh to seeing you know pokemon

14:37and the other verticals on there as well and opening it up to others for uh collecting and trading these nfts so very exciting thank you so much for taking the time to come on and explain this all um it's really exciting to see how these other industries are becoming tokenized and just getting more people involved in uh taking advantage of the benefits of blockchain technology and uh

14:59and bringing more financial inclusion uh to people that you know couldn't use to buy a hundred thousand dollar piece of an investment fractionalized uh and re-own and then resell it on a marketplace uh to anyone around the world that's incredible technology um all the best to you and your team moving forward i'm looking forward to these launches that you mentioned in q2 and

15:19let's follow up in the near future yeah definitely i appreciate you having us on you