To make yacht purchasing more inclusive, Cloud Yachts is creating a series of yacht NFTs, and its first sale is a cool $12 million.
To those scratching their heads, know that the draw is not necessarily the non-fungible token. The NFT itself is a placeholder for a sale of an actual yacht — a soon-to-be-constructed 110-footer built over 36 months by Tactical Custom Boats in Canada.
The buyer, an unnamed Texas businessman, said he “likes pioneering new things” and that the final NFT that comes with the yacht (when construction is finished) will be like a “real adventure.” The second NFT will have all the yacht’s schematics embedded into the metadata.
This yacht NFT sale isn’t the first yacht NFT Cloud Yachts has created. In February 2022, Gregory C. Marshall, a naval architect, teamed up with Cloud Yachts to create a superyacht. Also represented as an NFT for sale, this superyacht has a price tag of $95 million.
It also appears that Cloud Yachts has started a trend. After news about the project spread, other companies have started to jump in and do the preliminary work to create yacht NFTs. These companies even promise potential buyers that more utility than just the yacht will be attached to the yacht NFTs. The continual utility of NFTs is part of an ongoing debate in the Web3 space.
Attaching Physical Objects to NFTs Emerging as a Use Case
As Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary noted back in January, the attachment of real-life collectibles to NFTs has its benefits. It is easy to prove provenance because all transactions are stored on transparent digital ledgers called blockchains. An ability to prove provenance gives collectors an advantage over scammers who may try to sell replicas of actual goods.
In the past couple of months, the NFT purchase process has also solved other issues. One group auctioned off a house in Florida, United States, as an NFT. The sale proponents said it cut down on a great deal of time and paperwork, a cumbersome process for home buyers and sellers.
Luxury goods sellers have another advantage involving the blockchain — conveying data about the good, similar to what Cloud Yachts is doing with the yacht’s metadata. Sharing the data in an easy-to-read place can make a luxury good buyer feel more attached to the good and confident about its authenticity.
Finally, luxury goods sellers can provide additional utility to NFT holders, such as private parties, memberships, or “airdrops” that create a stronger buyer and seller relationship. If the first three months of 2022 are any indication, attaching IRL objects to NFTs will be a new way to do business, one with its pros and cons.