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Businesses The Almighty Buck

Walmart Appears to Be Planning Its Own Cryptocurrency and NFTs (cnbc.com) 36

Posted by EditorDavid from the big-box-meets-blockchain dept.
"Walmart appears to be venturing into the metaverse with plans to create its own cryptocurrency and collection of NFTs," reports CNBC.

"The big-box retailer filed several new trademarks late last month that indicate its intent to make and sell virtual goods. In a separate filing, the company said it would offer users a virtual currency, as well as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs." According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Walmart filed the applications on Dec. 30. In total, seven separate applications have been submitted.... "They're super intense," said Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney. "There's a lot of language in these, which shows that there's a lot of planning going on behind the scenes about how they're going to address cryptocurrency, how they're going to address the metaverse and the virtual world that appears to be coming or that's already here...."

[B]oth Under Armour's and Adidas' NFT debuts sold out last month. They're now fetching sky-high prices on the NFT marketplace OpenSea. Gerben said that apparel retailers Urban Outfitters, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch have also filed trademarks in recent weeks detailing their intent to open some sort of virtual store.... According to Frank Chaparro, director at crypto information services firm The Block, many retailers are still reeling from being late to e-commerce, so they don't want to miss out on any opportunities in the metaverse. "I think it's a win-win for any company in retail," Chaparro said. "And even if it just turns out to be a fad there's not a lot of reputation damage in just trying something weird out like giving some customers an NFT in a sweepstake, for instance."
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Walmart Appears to Be Planning Its Own Cryptocurrency and NFTs More

Walmart Appears to Be Planning Its Own Cryptocurrency and NFTs

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  • Damn supply chain ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday January 16, 2022 @05:59PM (#62178359)

    Under Armour's and Adidas' NFT debuts sold out last month.

    They're waiting for new shipments of 1s and 0s so they can create more NFTs ... (sigh)

    [Walmart] filed several new trademarks late last month that indicate its intent to make and sell virtual goods.

    Meanwhile, many parts of the World raise their hands to ask about getting *actual* goods -- like food, etc...

    • Pretty soon the 1s and 0s will have NFTs of their own [smbc-comics.com].

    • Amazon gift cards are a great crypto currency and don't use any energy. They are just as secure as any privately controlled crypto currency. And their value is tethered to the dollar. They are fungible and you can transfer them to anyone else so you don't have to use them for your own purchases on amazon. There isn't the slightest distinction between ANY privately validated transaction media and a gift card

      • > There isn't the slightest distinction between ANY privately validated transaction media and a gift card

        Oh, there most definitely is: FOMO.

    • On the one hand, there doesn't seem to be anything overtly evil about selling people an in-demand product that you can produce, especially if the product isn't something harmfully addictive or dangerous....

      On the other hand, what they are selling is nothing, which they are delighted to do because they can produce it at near-zero cost and just rake in the profits.

      Even the artificial scarcity, that being the only thing that gives NFTs an illusion of value, is double-artificial in this case. Even though there

  • We really need to nip this in the bud (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday January 16, 2022 @06:12PM (#62178397)
    Simply put there isn't enough electricity to power every country on Earth trying to cash in on this stupidity. I'm aware there are cryptocurrencies and blockchains that don't draw as much power but I'm also aware that they are very easy to attack. Proof of stake is not a solution since that means any large player or group of players can manipulate the market with ease.

    Ask yourself if you like having electricity or not. Ask yourself if a large company like Walmart was making millions of dollars off of nfts would they care whether you have electricity or not? Ask yourself what multiple large companies using massive amounts of electricity would do to the price of electricity and your power bill? That would be a good time like I said to nip this in the bud. Before we have $700 a month power bills

    • Ask yourself if you like having electricity or not.

      Miners go to where electricity is cheap.

      That means either where it is plentiful or where it is subsidized.

      Where electricity is plentiful, such as Iceland, miners provide load leveling demand.

      Where electricity is subsidized, such as Iran and Kosovo, the real problem is bad government.

      • Miners get kicked out of anywhere that electricity is cheap. Nobody wants load level demand that much. If they did you'd be reading about articles of minors all moving to Iceland. Instead you're reading articles about them getting kicked out of China.

        Miners go where the electricity is heavily subsidized. Then eventually the government and the people notice and kick them out. The problem is in America our government is for sale cheap. So there's a high probability those minors won't buy off of politician

      • "Where electricity is subsidized, such as Iran and Kosovo, the real problem is bad government"

        Where did you study economic and social policy? Ayn Rand books? How is a government providing cheap power for the average citizen bad? The crypto bros taking advantage of pricing intended for citizens with excessive power consumption are the ones at fault here.

    • My understanding is that Walmart generates most of it's own power so I will assume everyone bitching about power in this thread does too.

      • What is your definition of "generates most of it's own power"? The power of stupidity? I'd grant you that one.

        What power sources do they own? I've read things about their partnerships to source power from renewables, etc... But they don't actual run/own any power producing sources...

        They are a consumer. Not a producer. Unless you have other evidence...

    • Proof of stake is not a solution since that means any large player or group of players can manipulate the market with ease.

      Proof-of-work is just proof-of-stake where your "stake" is the mining hardware and electricity you're wasting. Yes, with proof-of-work there are some real-world constraints on how much mining hardware someone can realistically accumulate in a certain amount of time, and how much electricity they can waste, but it's still essentially just real money = participation in mining on the blockchain network.

      A decentralized, deregulated market is going to be manipulated by the largest players. You're not going to

  • I'm not sure how well Walmart will do with NFT sales, it's hard to comprehend what they would even sell as an NFT.

    However there is a Walmart-adjacent NFT that would do very well I think - the People Of Walmart [peopleofwalmart.com] NFT! They should get right on that.

    • I'm not sure how well Walmart will do with NFT sales, it's hard to comprehend what they would even sell as an NFT.

      And to make acceptable profits, Walmart will probably just sell cheap NFTs from China ... :-)

      • I'm not sure how well Walmart will do with NFT sales, it's hard to comprehend what they would even sell as an NFT.

        And to make acceptable profits, Walmart will probably just sell cheap NFTs from China ... :-)

        Or just sell someone else's art [imgur.com] even though the person can't take possession [imgur.com] of what they purchased. Last person holding the bag [imgur.com] is the sucker.

    • I'm not sure how well Walmart will do with NFT sales, it's hard to comprehend what they would even sell as an NFT.

      Walmart shoppers will buy NFTs when there's a Renoir hanging in an NFL locker room.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      This is what I was thinking. Many years ago Walmart made a push to be the supplier for the 1% second homes. This was serious. Write ups in the WSJ, stores opening in Vermont. My recollection is the effort failed. Walmart is the store for poor people. It given them an aspirational shot at overconsumption. It almost invented the idea of a store brand as a name brand. It did not sell Oreos. No one can afford them

      As mentioned in the summary, all the luxury brands have NFT. Athletic shoes like Nike, who train

  • ... what exactly? Crimeny, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the people running these companies have lost their minds:

    "Oooh! Shiny object! Let's jump on that bandwagon!"

    Am I going to wear my Walmart T-shirt NFT, Gap hoodie NFT, or Adidas NFT to go for a run? Or do I just sit back and admire them? They are about as useful as some crap you buy in a video game.

    Meanwhile, the planet burns to a crisp as these idiots buy up abandoned fossil fuel-powered generation facilities to grab cryptocurrency as

  • ... let them consume digital crap.

    • ... let them consume digital crap.

      It'll probably come wrapped in plastic -- but it'll be the easy-open kind ... :-)

  • Two years ago "blockchain" was the solution to everything.
    Now when in doubt, NFT it.

    This is what happens when summer interns are allowed into upper management meetings.

  • There are a lot of idiots with shit for brains and a lot of companies looking to exploit them. Buy our magic beans!

  • the "blockchain". Get on the NFT train before it departs!

  • I went to the marketplace site mentioned in the summary. I sorted by price from high to low. It turns out they've just launched a new series of 'title' NFTs. So you can spend 5,000 eth (a bit north of $3,300 at the moment) to buy an NFT that represents the letters 'POTUS'.

    For several thousand dollars, you can own one particular, otherwise unremarkable, instantiation of the word 'POTUS'. What can you do with it after you own it? You can prove that you own it, or you can transfer/sell it to someone else. Thos

    • So you can spend 5,000 eth (a bit north of $3,300 at the moment) to buy an NFT

      And that's the whole point. NFTs are nothing more than a glorified scheme to pump Etherium, since every other shitcoin is essentially just Bitcoin with a few tweaked parameters.

      It doesn't really matter if people who buy NFTs are ever able to resell them, because that's not the point. The point is to create demand for Etherium, because stonks go moon.

  • I have no question about Wal-mart being willing to sell NFTs under one or more private labels. Given that they often have exclusivity deals with artists, they might even have meaningful stuff to sell, such as tracks by recording artists. Given that artists are likely to sell NFTs on some other market if Wal-mart doesn't provide the opportunity, that seems completely reasonable.

    Cryptocurrency? Well, if they guarantee a certain minimum value (say, one Martcoin will always be exchangeable for $50 worth of groc

  • Climate change (Score:3)

    by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @05:22AM (#62179995)
    Digital art and currency is going to be what finishes the human race? How are we going to look our grandkids in the eye and tell them that we melted the ice caps in order to exchange pictures of cartoon monkeys?

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