🎙️The Lawsuit on DraftKings NFTs
Plus a new podcast, featuring the latest TS drop, Baseball NFT Updates, Doodles fallout, and how Phil D deals with celebrity life
What’s up everybody, it’s LG Doucet here.
I honestly completely missed this news: DraftKings is being sued, very similarly to NBA Top Shot, for potentially selling NFTs as securities.
But thanks to fellow writer Malcolm Lemmons I was able to catch up on the news.
Apparently, the person behind the lawsuit “has encountered losses upwards of $14,000 due to the decline in the value of the NFTs he purchased.”
As per Lemmons, the complaint alleges:
The NFTs were securities for which DraftKings unlawfully failed to file a registration statement.
DraftKings ensured that money invested by class members stayed on DraftKings' private and exclusively controlled marketplace, propping up the market for an overall valuation of DraftKings' NFTs.
Investors have suffered significant damages and losses.
Sound familiar?
You can read the full story here in Malcolm’s newsletter (a great weekly read).
Obviously, this is bad for the space, as legal action against the web3 sports companies further endangers the longevity of the space (and value of our holdings).
It also does something potentially much worse: prevents new projects from launching, as their legal teams will back away from the perceived risk.
Although sports are a generally progressive industry on the tech front, leagues are incredibly averse to legal risk. Even projects like Top Shot likely spent years working on the right legal framework to launch - and they still got sued!
Anyway. We’ll keep track of the situation as it unfolds.
And we actually completely forgot to touch on the issue for this week’s pod, which spiralled off topic within seconds of recording…
🎙️204 - New Top Shot Drop, Baseball NFTs Arrive, Doodles Floors Itself, Phil Deals With Celeb Life
Listen.
We’re just two bros and we’re having a good time. And we actually use this time together every week to catch up on life - hence the entire first hour of today’s show isn’t about NFTs at all.
But don’t worry, we do eventually get to them, and focus on how Top Shot will pull in over $1.2M on drops alone this month, before dovetailing into Baseball NFTs and Sorare’s latest star-studded promo video.
And yes, Phil brings up totally random topics throughout, including WWE Betting and Hasbullah fighting Mickey Mouse (yes it actually happened).
In today’s pod:
03:30 - March Madness Fallout
23:00 - Phil’s Hockey Coaching Stories
35:00 - Why Phil Hates Refs
42:00 - Phil Meets Collectors
53:00 - How it feels to be “known”
1:07:00 - Latest Drop on Top Shot
1:30:30 - Baseball NFTs Finally Arrive
1:46:00 - WWE Betting Coming
1:48:00 - Doodles Floors Its Own Project
2:06:00 - Hasbullah vs Mickey Mouse
2:11:30 - The Alpha on New Projects
Every week we gather the data on licensed NFT sports collections, and track their volume and unique buyers. This covers Monday to Sunday.
The overall volume on licensed sports NFTs was down 8% this week (although we do not yet track Draft Kings), with a few brights spots like Sorare MLB.
As for users, man - I can’t wait for the day when these numbers boom again.
If they boom again.
MLB Opening Day is next week and that means its time to age ourselves with video game references:
With Doodles taking a big tumble last week, we needed to know which valuable FLOW NFT you would prefer:
And yes, we will continue to post video game memes and questions until you ask us to stop (please don’t):
Catchup on everything you might have missed in the world of sports x web3!
**This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter, podcast, or publication should be considered financial or trading advice of any kind. Please do your own thorough research and make your own trading decisions. This is not advice.”
About The First Mint
A web3 sports community. collectibles, nfts, and metaverse.
Tweets and Newsletters are not endorsements.