So, the Nike World Headquarters is in Portland, Oregon, which is the city I live closest to. Intel is here as well, and honestly, it feels like 90% of the population here works for one of the two companies, and townlines have been drawn in a classic jocks versus nerds battle and most of my friends here are connected to either company.
As you might know, I'm pretty excited about blockchain technology, and can talk about it endlessly... so when news came out about Nike trademarking CryptoKickslast week I honestly couldn't be more excited.
To try and explain to my friends what cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is, I've often used Nike as an example. We've gone through scenarios of how Nike could use Steem to reward content creators for natively advertising for them. We've talked about how you could set up a Nike cryptocurrency that could be exchanged for perks... or use it as a reward system for activity and/or purchases.
The thing I'd be most excited about is if Nike used CryptoKicks as a legitimate global currency. Imagine what it would do for their brand if they were in the Top 20 of CoinMarketCap. I think it would have more success than a lot of other alt-coins because it would be backed by a reputable brand, the coin might have an easy-to-understand function (exchanged for perks, rewards, products) and it might reduce the messiness that Nike currently deals with as a mulit-national corporation that has buildings and retail outlets in a huge number of countries around the world.
Or it might make their business more complicated... who knows?
It could be a huge opportunity to raise capitial... they create the CryptoKicks tokens and then release them out into the world, to be purchased, traded and exchanged for their products. It means they could outsource transaction processing to miners, although I'm not sure how that would go with customer privacy data.
Nike not only trademarked CryptoKicks. Also included in the trademark application was:
“Cryptocurrency software wallets; cryptocurrency hardware wallets; downloadable computer software for use as a cryptocurrency wallet; downloadable computer software for managing cryptocurrency transactions using blockchain technology…”
“Downloadable mobile applications for providing access to crypto-collectibles, crypto-art and application tokens; downloadable software for use in electronically trading, storing, sending, receiving, accepting and transmitting digital currency, and managing digital currency payment and exchange transactions…"
Obviously the initial trademark application at least sounds like they're serious, and are intending to build out all the components to make a serious run at this. Could we see a world where the CryptoKicks coin or the CocacolaCoin is more stable than the USD?
It's all fascinating... how do you think this might play out?
Thanks for reading!
