Starbucks Serves Up Its First Premium NFTs at $100 a Pop

Espresso large Starbucks is taking vital steps into Web3 with its Starbucks Odyssey rewards program on Ethereum sidechain community Polygon, which is at present open in beta to restricted customers. And after dropping just a few free reward NFTs to early adopters, it’s set to launch its very first paid collectible this afternoon.

Starbucks Odyssey will launch the restricted version Siren Assortment right this moment at 3 p.m. ET for beta customers of the platform, providing up 2,000 NFTs that might be offered for $100 apiece. Every distinctive piece of paintings is impressed by the model’s iconic brand—a “tremendous mermaid,” as the corporate as soon as described it.

“As Starbucks has grown over time, the Siren has been proper there with us, adapting and evolving to replicate the model and the tradition,” the corporate mentioned of the NFT drop. The two,000 items will collectively be based mostly on 5 completely different Siren “expressions” that observe her “journey from native Seattle celeb to revered world icon.”

Every person might buy as much as two of the premium NFT stamps, and every comes with 1,500 bonus factors that can be utilized to “stage up” a person’s Odyssey account to earn future rewards.

Starbucks launched the Odyssey closed beta in December, with a consultant telling Decrypt quickly after that the corporate had seen “unprecedented curiosity” from customers wishing to affix what’s been billed as a next-generation evolution of the present Starbucks Rewards program.

Since then, Starbucks has given away 4 free Polygon-based NFTs to customers for finishing sure in-app challenges. The NFTs have been rewarded for doing issues like finishing trivia challenges concerning the firm, or ordering Starbucks meals and drinks or present playing cards.

Regardless of being a free giveaway, the primary Starbucks NFT—the Vacation Cheer Version 1 stamp—has since commanded appreciable worth on the secondary market. Dozens of editions have offered for greater than $1,000 apiece, with the highest sale at $1,900. Total, the Nifty Gateway-powered market has dealt with some $222,000 price of secondary gross sales.

Starbucks has mentioned that its NFT-based rewards program will finally supply customers a big selection of potential advantages, together with the flexibility to entry unique digital content material and dwell occasions in shops, in addition to potential journeys—reminiscent of a go to to Starbucks’ espresso farm in Costa Rica.

The NFT market took a beating within the latter half of 2022, together with the remainder of the crypto area, however seems now to be selecting up steam: general gross sales surged above $2 billion in February, the very best complete since earlier than the market crash final Could.