Bud Light & Apple Roll-outs: Mainstream Crypto Adoption Is Coming
2021 was the year that cryptocurrencies and NFTs became mainstream — but 2022 is going to see some big mainstream adoption among the biggest players in the market. Some of the richest folks in the world from Elon Musk to Tim Cook to Mark Cuban have backed digital assets, while celebrities like Eminem and Jimmy Fallon have invested millions into NFTs.
But, this year we are witnessing a larger rollout — as some of the biggest companies, brands and organisations from around the world are focusing on digital assets. With a minor reversal in the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum, can this be the beginning of a world of mainstream adoption? Let’s take a look.
Bud Light offers NFT holders physical glasses
It isn’t a surprise that even such a popular Beer brand is going hard into the NFT space, after all their brand ambassador, Post Malone himself is a big advocate of NFTs.
Bud Light has created and launched more than 12,000 NFTs as part of their new beer brand, N3XT, which have been sold for a reasonable $400 a piece. But in an effort to gain more traction from the digital asset community, the popular beer company has recently announced that they are going to be sending every N3XT NFT holder a physical pair of Bud Light inspired glasses.
The company made the announcement via Twitter on February 12.
Bud Light also attached a picture to the newly designed pair of glasses that every one of their N3XT HODLers would be receiving.
This news is a huge boost for existing holders of such NFT drops since it gives investors more incentives to participate in obtaining such assets. Bud Light has been involved in the NFT space for a while, after they also bought a beer rocket design NFT for 8 ETH, and registered it under the domain — beer.eth for a total cost of 30 ETH — which is equivalent to about $84,000 today.
The idea for a physical sunglasses NFT came after Bud Light had been gifted a ‘Nouns NFT’ by the Nouns Foundation, which was worth 127 ETH or almost $400,000. The proposal was part of a deal that involved the possibility of Bud Light featuring an NFT commercial of their glasses during the super bowl — which is exactly what took place over the weekend.
Apple ‘Tap to Pay’ will make crypto payments possible among merchants
Since 2021, we have noticed a transition from Web2 to Web3.0, as the future of digitization. But some of the biggest players from the Web 2 industry are entering the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies as well. Apple’s new feature may introduce a way for any user to send cryptocurrencies from one person to another.
In February, Apple announced plans to launch their feature, ‘Tap to Pay’ on the iPhone. This allows any iPhone-owning merchant to receive or give contactless payments as long as two different mobile devices are in close proximity to each other. This device is going to be functioning within Apple Pay, and will be an extension on contactless debit cards and other digital wallets.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple confirmed the update via his Twitter account.
https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1491229230558236674?s=20&t=WhOXg_R4uFulutGB_IB2Kg
“We just introduced Tap to Pay on iPhone, a great way for millions of small businesses to accept contactless payments right from their iPhone. It’s easy, secure and will be coming out later this year”.
Since tap to pay basically allows any contactless card to transfer payments between vendor to vendor, this will allow customers to use Coinbase, Crypto.com and Visa cards for crypto transactions as well, unless there is a direct ban on it.
But there is a good chance that cryptocurrency contactless cards will be able to use this function since Apple announced Stripe, a fintech firm, as the first-ever platform to offer this feature.
A platform like Coinbase and their contactless card has the capability to transfer any user’s crypto holdings into fiat in real-time, meaning that everything is in place for this update. This also comes just months after Tim Cook revealed that he himself holds cryptocurrencies and has been looking into this sector. With the number of use cases that cryptocurrencies are coming up with, surely a platform like Apple, which has sold billions of iPhones around the world will make cryptos much easier to trade.
For two individuals who both use the company’s device, sending cryptocurrencies will become even easier than before. Apple plans on rolling out this feature later in 2022, but expect a huge increase in the cryptocurrency markets if this update manages to go live.
