French super sports car manufacturer Bugatti has teamed up with London jewelry-maker Asprey to create a gold sculpture and accompanying NFT of the La Voiture Noire hypercar. There will be just a single edition of the gold sculpture and NFT, though the two companies plan to release 261 silver editions, each with a corresponding NFT.
The team chose 261 because it is the fastest speed the real-life La Voiture Noire car has reached.
Each sculpture owner will be able to access their NFT through a QR code. Every sculpture will also have a unique identifier, though it is uncertain whether those identifiers will be off-chain or on the blockchain.
Although the release of the sculptures is set for March, there is no word on each’s cost. Given the limited edition nature of the collection and that they will be made out of precious metals silver and gold, they will likely fetch quite the price.
According to the Asprey-Bugatti website, art has played an integral part of Bugatti history. The founder of Bugatti himself was born into a family full of artists and sculptors. These new limited edition art pieces celebrate both the handiwork of the La Voiture Noire hypercar and the artistry in the brand’s history.
Luxury Brands Ape into Web 3.0 and the Metaverse
Luxury brands have always been at slight odds with previous iterations of the Internet because files, images, videos, and more are highly replicable, and people can share them with abandon. However, in a Web 3.0 world where non-fungible tokens make goods scarce, luxury brands have been some of the earliest mainstream adopters. These include:
- Gucci buying land in the metaverse to create experiences
- Dolce & Gabbana launching multiple NFT collections
- Lamborghini creating a space-themed NFT collection
As Kevin O’Leary once noted, blockchain technology provides a service that is difficult to find even with off-chain luxury goods: the proving of provenance. Because the blockchains (kinds of digital ledgers) store information about who has owned a particular digital good, it’s also easy to determine authenticity.
And people who are interested in buying a digital good can do so within seconds.
This proving of provenance makes it much easier to spot frauds and fakes. While there’s no telling in what direction the metaverse, Web 3.0, and luxury brands move from here, it will certainly be interesting to watch for any innovations on this front.