Porsche NFT controversy: luxury brand identity vs web3?
Crypto Twitter’s reaction to the recent Porsche NFT mint has made us wonder whether we all agree on what NFT’s purpose is.
To us, an NFT is a vehicle of value that its issuer assigns to it. Any value. At any price.
However, it looks like many crypto enthusiasts have a much more precise idea of what an NFT should be, and this idea is surprisingly rigid 😬
🚘 What happened to Porsche NFTs?
This week Porsche announced a drop of 7’500 NFTs dedicated to its iconic 911 model, each mintable at 0.911 ETH ($1’475).
The NFTs would grant their owners “eye-level conversations” with key people in the company, right to co-create, exclusive physical items and other experiences.
🤬 Crypto Twitter exploded with indignation.
Why? The NFTs were judged as “too expensive” 🤨
Porsche stopped the mint underway, and there are now 2’363 NFTs listed on Opensea.
While the idea of reducing the size of the mint might actually be a good one, the community’s reaction showed it was not ready to accept the NFTs as a vehicle of value. Accustomed to 0.08 ETH mints, many have just assumed that Porsche’s NFT utility should cost the same as any other no-name NFT collection. Why?.. 🤷♀️
Porsche is a luxury car brand, and if it decides that the utility it puts into its NFT is worth 0.911 ETH, the only judges to that will be Porsche fans. Isn’t it how the market works ?
Last year, Tiffany too received a considerable amount of hate because of its CryptoPunk NFTs price ($50k for an NFT allowing the creation of a physical pendant embedded with precious stones).
Still, noone comes to a Porsche dealership or a Tiffany store and says: “make it 0.0911 ETH and we good”.
Luxury brands must stay luxury, be it in physical or crypto space, and we believe that “letting web3 natives take the wheel”, as some media have suggested, won’t be a good thing for their brand image.
P.S. Porsche 911 NFT collection already has a 2’216 ETH trading volume and a 2.03 ETH floor on Opensea.
