Hey, it’s Marc. ✌️

This week, Adidas, Margiela, and Coachella launched Web3 activations, while Bitcoin broke its all-time high with record ETF inflows. We’re now in a phase of the innovation cycle with a lot of emerging narratives and euphoria. Keep cool, keep building.

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Be inspired✨

“Culture drives everything.” – Nelly Mensah, VP of Digital Innovation at LVMH

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📚 Top 5 Reads

• Culture, Commerce and Code. With Nelly Mensah. Link
• Building consumer at Internet speed. By Katie Chiou. Link
• Notes on consumer crypto. By Josh Cornelius. Link
• Starbucks Odyssey’s community lead expects NFT brand building to expand this year. With Steve Kaczynski. Link
• Roblox’s Record 2023: What Does it Mean for Brands? By Link

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Partner with us

⚡️ Get in front of thousands of Web3 industry leaders 👀

Partner with Dematerialzd to get your brand in front of thousands of b2b Web3 industry leaders & access the Dematerialzd network to grow your business. Get in touch today or reply to this email.

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✨ Web3 & Brands

It’s all a game 🕹️

• adidas opens its first stand-alone store on Roblox. Link
• The store features 800+ articles; adidas aims to expand its presence on Roblox. 
• Adidas launched its first Roblox pop-up stores in Dec 2023. Link

Be smart: Roblox is the most successful social gaming platform with over 200M monthly active users. 50% of them are Gen Z. Its daily engagement is about 3-5x larger than most other social apps. 

Why it matters: Brands need to meet consumers where they are. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are more engaged in gaming than any other media. 

Digital fashion is poised to become a huge market: 52% of Gen Z users would spend at least $10 per month, that’s $1BN per month or more.1

By the numbers: 

• In the U.S., 38% of Gen Z spend over four hours a day on social media, and even more time consuming content or gaming — more than any other generation.
• In the latest Roblox study, 56% of Gen Z users now say styling their avatar is more important to them than styling themselves in the physical world. 
• 50% are “very” or “extremely likely” to consider a brand in the physical world after wearing or trying a brand’s item virtually.
• 84% of Gen Z users said their physical style has been inspired by their avatar’s style. 
• Roblox exited Q4 2023 with 71.5 daily active users – a new record.

Devil’s advocate: Roblox doesn’t use blockchain, which means digital assets are locked into the platform. “Doesn’t matter”, say brands, earning billions with in-game items. 

Yes, but: Web3 is a new era for consumer and brand engagement. Social gaming, and spatial commerce is part of that. 

The big picture: We’re moving from transactional to relational, participative and community-driven brand relationships.

Punchline:  This move is as much about gaming as it’s about social. Immersive, social commerce and digital fashion is one of the major opportunities for consumer brands.

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Bitcoin NFTs 🖼️

• Bitcoin-based NFTs have surpassed Ethereum in weekly sales, driven by collections like Bitcoin Ordinals and NodeMonkes. Link

Why it matters: Bitcoin NFTs (aka Ordinals) are still in their early stages. However, they might well become a cultural phenomenon that brands can capitalize on, similar to the NFT boom in the summer of 2021. 

Read the full deep dive on ordinals.

The big picture The best brands are cultural. Wherever culture is made, brands should watch closely. 

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More on Web3:

• A rare alien CryptoPunk NFT sold for $16M in Ethereum. Link
• Coachella and OpenSea launch NFTs with music festival utility and keepsakes. Link
• Maison Margiela’s sells signature shoe as a limited-edition phygital NFT wearable. Link

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Token2049 in Dubai is where top crypto and Web3 developers, investors, founders, brands, policymakers and an estimated 7,500+ attendees from across the globe get together on April 18th-19th 2024. I’ll be there too!

👉 Get a 10% discount on Token 2049 in Dubai with the code “MARC10”. ✨

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🌎 Crypto & Macro

Going Mainstream

• Digital asset investment products saw the second largest weekly inflows on record totalling US$1.84BN; 94% of the inflows were into Bitcoin. Link
• BlackRock files to add Bitcoin ETF to its $36BN strategic income opportunities fund. Link
• BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF added $778M in BTC amid all-time high. Link
• Coinbase hit the top 100 in the Apple App Store for the first time in two years.
• Bloomberg mentioned $WIF and $PEPE meme coins on live tv. Link

Zooming out: We’re officially in the bull market now. New narratives are forming almost daily, mainstream media is all over it, and institutional investors continue entering the market.

The big picture: Even though institutional investors focus on Bitcoin, other Web3 infrastructure assets booming as well.

More on Crypto:

• Coinbase-backed Wormhole airdropping 617 million tokens to ecosystem users. Link
• Deutsche Boerse launches regulated spot platform for crypto assets. Link
• SEC delays decision on BlackRock's spot Ethereum ETF proposal, seeks public feedback. Link

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🧠AI

• Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman. Link
• Anthropic just announced the release of its next-generation Claude 3 model family. Link

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🏗️ Start-ups & Tools to watch

• LimeChain: A leading blockchain consulting & development agency with 120+ chain-agnostic devs. Link*

*partner of Dematerialzd.

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💰 Money Moves

• Stack: Onchain points startup raises $3M seed round led by Archetype. Link
• Baanx: Crypto payments firm raises $20M Series A round led by Tezos, Chiron, and British Business Bank. Link
• Utila: Crypto wallet provider raises $11.5M in effort to facilitate tokenization boom. Link
• IO Research: Solana-based DePIN developer raises $30M Series A with a token valuation of $1B. Link
• Taiko: Ethereum L2 raises $15M Series A, bringing total investment to $37M. Link

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That’s all for now, folks. Thank you for being part of the journey.
Talk soon,

– Marc

PS: Follow me on LinkedIn and X for shorter insights.

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📈 Top 3 Charts to Share with Friends

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Partner with us

⚡️ Get in front of thousands of Web3 industry leaders 👀

Partner with Dematerialzd to get your brand in front of thousands of b2b Web3 industry leaders & access the Dematerialzd network to grow your business. Get in touch today or reply to this email.

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👩‍💻 Top Web3 Marketing Jobs:

• Web3 Innovation Lead, Louis Vuitton
• Creative Director, Marketing & Partnerships, Yuga Labs
• Director of Growth Marketing, Polygon Labs
• Growth Marketing Manager, Magic Eden
• Product Marketing Manager, Optimism
• Principal Brand Marketing, Gemini
• Head of Product Marketing, OKX
• Web3 Public Relations Director, Serotonin
• Internal Communications Manager, Ripple
• Head of Marketing, Matter Labs
• Creative Director, Matter Labs
• Head of Marketing, Serotonin
• Web3 Public Relations Manager APAC, Serotonin
• Head of Marketing, Near

… more.

Are you hiring? Get listed here →

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