New craze in NFT, Cricket and Bollywood

On August 30, Amitabh Bachchan became the first Bollywood star to join the craze for NFTs, which is short for irreplaceable tokens.

His NFTs, which include an autographed poster of Sholay and poems recited by him, will be hosted on a platform called Beyondlife.club in November this year.

He is not alone. According to Toshendra Sharma, founder of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) service for the NFT marketplace, there has been a growing interest in Bollywood since Bachchan’s participation.

While he did not name the people he was in talks with, Sharma said he is looking into the interest of musicians, screenwriters, directors, actors and others from the Indian film industry.

Cricketers have also shown interest. In the last two months, two NFT platforms dedicated to cricket in India have been announced. Last month, domestic digital collectibles platform Rario announced that it has partnered with cricketers Zaheer Khan and South Africa’s Faf du Plessis for the platform.

Singapore-based blockchain platform Cricket Foundation also announced an NFT platform dedicated to cricket earlier this month. It is supported by cricketers VVS Laxman, Parthiv Patel, Wasim Akram, RP Singh, Piyush Chawla, Deep Dasgupta, Pragyan Ojha, Lance Klusener and others. The platform uses the platform of indigenous blockchain firm Zebi to run its marketplace.

NFTs are digital tokens similar to cryptocurrencies, except that they are non-fungible, meaning that one NFT cannot replace another in the blockchain. As a result, the person buying the NFT can sell it to someone else or exchange it for another NFT, but the blockchain platform will always reveal the name of the creator and subsequent owners.

This process helps artists sell digital items once and earn commission for subsequent sales. For example, one can simply ‘copy paste’ digital art, but they will not replace its fingerprint on the blockchain, which clearly shows that it is not original.

While the technology has mostly been used to sell digital art, music and videos through auctions, Sharma said the participation of celebrities will open up new avenues. He added that most celebrities want to use NFTs to engage fans around one of their tasks. For example, a celebrity can make a ticket to their movie NFT and reward the highest bidder with not only the ticket but a personal meeting or poster. Only the bidding process helps in building fan engagement.

Vishakha Singh, Vice President of NFT Markets hosted by India’s top crypto exchange, WazirX, confirmed that the platform is working with renowned musicians like Ritviz and Nucleya. “In our experience, as of now, community engagement is key to driving sales. Bollywood and sports personalities rely heavily on their social media managers and teams to engage within their community. We work with well-known Bollywood entities. But not with celebrities in the traditional sense.”

“The entry of celebrities creates public awareness. “Social media influencers are interested in the NFT space from a purely public relations standpoint,” said WazirX’s Singh, adding that only a few understand the possibilities this technology offers right now. “The growing crypto community and use of crypto will help policymakers design regulations around crypto. The participation of celebrities may not ‘help’ in future regulations, but perhaps on the importance of expediting the regulations process.” emphasizes it.”

Sharma’s NFTically, which along with Zee Studios announced the NFT, said the fact that a publicly traded company is taking interest in the space is helping to convince celebrities.

Crypto experts agree that celebrities entering the space do not necessarily increase sales. However, this will help the market mature and bring in large investors. For example, the most expensive NFTs sold on WazirX’s market was approx. ₹5.3 million, while global NFT sales have reached millions of dollars.

According to an August 18 report by blockchain data platform Chainalysis, India ranks second only to Vietnam in terms of worldwide crypto adoption.