🎯 Weekly Recap: Decentralized IRL Golf Course, SEC Threatens Coinbase

Happy Friday! Welcome to The Web3 Marketer, where I help brands and marketers stay ahead of the web3 curve. Every week, I bring you top stories on web3 & digital collectibles across consumer & loyalty.

Today's write-up is 1,201 words, a 5-minute read.

This week’s TL;DR:

1. ⛳ A decentralized golf community buys a real-world golf course

2. 📉 Blue-chip NFTs stay resilient against SVB crash

3. 👮 Coinbase asked SEC for crypto rules but got legal threats instead

📅 Upcoming events: Paris Blockchain Week (ongoing until Mar 24), NFT Melbourne (Mar 23), Miami NFT Week (Mar 31-Apr 2)

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The Big One

🔝 A decentralized golf community wins a bid to buy a real-world golf course in Scotland

LinksDAO, an online golf community, won a bid to buy a Scottish golf course following through with its original plan to buy a real-world site using decentralized and NFT memberships.

• Launched in 2021, it raised $11M by selling 9,000 NFT memberships in just 24 hours; later, it also raised outside funding.

Get smart: DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is an online group where control is spread across the community instead of centralizing power via a hierarchical structure.

There’s a (technical) catch. As a DAO member, you’re not an equity owner in the business. Instead, the NFT is just a membership pass and a voting right in an 'advisory' capacity.

• This means members have no claim on the actual asset, and honoring their vote (say, on which golf course to buy) is legally just investors’ goodwill.

Why it matters: This deal is one of the most substantial examples of a decentralized organization setting up real-world utility for NFT pass holders by purchasing a valuable physical asset.

• A big test of whether tokenized blockchain assets can be tied in a useful way to memberships, perks, or real-world items beyond JPEGs.

+ For deep dive, check out my thread here.

By the Numbers

📊 SVB crash and stablecoins volatility had less than expected impact on NFT markets

On the weekend of SVB crash, NFT trading volume decreased by 51% vs. the beginning of the month.

As turmoil started to spread to stablecoins, NFT traders became less active, with Saturday seeing:

• The least traders (12,000) since November 2021

• The lowest single-day trade count in 2023

Despite the slump in overall NFT trading activity, the ‘floor’ (lowest listed) prices of so-called ‘blue-chip’ collections like BAYC and CryptoPunks were hardly affected.

+ For deep dive & takeaways, check out my thread here.

Crypto Twitter Explained

🐦 SEC threatens to sue Coinbase over some crypto products… but won’t tell which ones exactly

Turning up the heat: The SEC has issued a Wells notice to Coinbase signaling it is planning to sue the crypto exchange, arguing some of its products, such as staking services, are unregistered securities.

• Get smart: Staking is a process in which cryptocurrency holders volunteer to take part in validating transactions on the blockchain, which is web3 community’s core argument against SEC classification.

Coinbase legal team claims SEC actions are absurd not exactly best intentioned:

Or, in NFL terms:

As a public company, Coinbase is the gold standard of crypto compliance in the US.

• Some point out that a regulator going after the most compliant company in the industry discourages everyone else from even trying to be US compliant.

Why it matters: The notice appears as an attempt by SEC to regulate by enforcement rather than legislation, setting an unconstructive precedent for the future of an entire industry.

• Unthoughtful regulation can drive most money crypto businesses outside the US jurisdiction stifling domestic innovation while not necessarily maximizing US consumer protection.

Top Headlines

Meme of the Week

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🔚 End Credits (AKA Also Made The News):

That’s all. See you next week!