NFT-Powered Luxury Goods Marketplace 4K.Com Secures $3 Million in Seed Round

NFT-Powered Luxury Goods Marketplace 4K.Com Secures $3 Million in Seed Round

Peer-to-peer trading platform for collectibles and luxury goods enters public testnet following raise from prominent investors

4K, a breakthrough peer-to-peer marketplace for collectibles and luxury goods powered by NFTs, announced a seed raise of $3 million led by Electric Capital, Crosscut Ventures, Collab+Currency, ConsenSys, and IDEO CoLab. The funding enables 4K to create the next generation of StockX by leveraging the transparent and immutable power of blockchain technology. This initial round coincides with the launch of 4K.com’s provably fair drops and closed beta marketplace.

4K’s mission is to empower users to transact with more trust, more transparency, more speed, and a significant reduction in fees.

Recommended AI News: ‘Tear Down Inequalities’ To End COVID pandemic: UNAIDS

4K’s concept is as elegant as it is simple: customers send 4K a physical item, such as a Rolex watch, to be authenticated and stored in an ultra-secure storage facility. Once stored, the customer receives an NFT, which can be thought of as a digital version of the physical good. Redemption of the item is just as easy: upon returning the NFT to 4K, the physical good is sent to the address provided by the redeemer.

4K uses the benefits of decentralized finance (DeFi) to turn physical goods into NFTs. DeFi is a new set of payment rails and protocols that enable people to coordinate financial activity without intermediary institutions charging fees along the way. Through decentralization, users can transact with low fees, make collateralized loans, and earn a yield on their assets. By providing the service layer that bridges physical and digital worlds, 4K enables previously unproductive physical assets, such as watch or sneaker collections, to participate in this financial innovation that has previously only been accessible to digital assets.

By hiring world-class authenticators, fully insuring every item, and investing heavily in both technological and physical security, 4K allows customers to trust the authenticity and redeemability of its NFTs, and therefore trust the authenticity and redeemability of goods sold on the 4K marketplace.

Recommended AI News: Google Cloud Region Goes Live in Delhi NCR in India

“4K adds completely new dimensions to the market for collectibles and luxury items. For example, we give brands skin-in-the-game in secondary-market trading,” said Richard Li, CEO of 4K. “It also adds a completely new dimension to NFTs. The NFTs most people have heard about are for digital assets. We’re enabling NFTs for physical assets. As we spend a larger portion of our lives online, bridging the physical and digital worlds becomes increasingly important.”

For individuals seeking a community of like-minded sneakerheads, watch aficionados, wine connoisseurs, trading card experts, or collectors of any other investment-grade physical goods, the 4K community has an open waitlist to become a member of its distributed autonomous organization (DAO). The DAO will reward community members for curating and acquiring high-quality goods, growing the community, and other peer-to-peer activity that helps their ecosystem thrive.

Recommended AI News: Deeplite Names Arun Oberoi to Board Of Directors

Photo Report 45 Watches That Stole The Street-Style Show At Pitti Uomo

Street style is equal parts envy and inspiration. You see someone doing something you probably do – walking – looking how you would probably like to look – exceedingly cool – with such ease. There is no greater moment for off-the-cuff men’s fashion photography than Pitti Uomo, the annual menswear trade show in Florence. We sent photographer Robert Spangle to capture the best watch moments, and the stylish folks pounding the strada did not disappoint.

Defying conventions, Chinese millennials turn to watches

However, for years the luxury watch consensus was that pre-owned fine watches would never sell in China. “Second-hand watches are rapidly gaining popularity in Europe and North America, but they have not yet reached China, where watches have a role in differentiating social classes,” said Serge Maillard, co-director of watch magazine Europa Star, as recently as 2019.

Certainly, in the early 2000s, when China’s luxury watch consumers were mostly ultra-rich businessmen, it made sense for luxe brands in Europe to assume that the nouveau riches in an emerging economy would prefer a Rolex or two as shiny and new as possible.

That attitude is beginning to change. A new generation of young watch enthusiasts is ready to defy conventional assumptions and fuel a new market for preowned timepieces – but it will take time to build momentum.

For consumers, navigating the pre-owned market is no easy task. It requires both considerable wealth and a deep knowledge of the industry. A preowned watch buyer not only needs to assess the reputation of a brand, but also its authenticity and resale value.

Indeed, a nuanced language system to determine every stratum of the watch universe has evolved within China’s preowned watch community. For example, while the word “pre-owned” refers to all watches previously owned by someone else, the term “vintage watches” (中古表) has a different meaning to “antique watches” (古董表). As watch blogger Miki Lin explains: “Used watches are not necessarily antique. For a watch to be categorised as antique, it has to have a certain kind of heritage and belong to an out-of-production model.”

For some watch hunters, the attraction is the idea of a bargain. “The majority of people searching for second-hand watches are attracted by the pricing advantage and the great variety of brands in the secondary market,” says Lin. “Those who like antique watches, on the other hand, often fall for the specific storytelling and aesthetic.”

The pre-owned concept is attracting a broader range of consumers. According to Watcheco, a major Chinese preowned watch platform, total transactions on the site rose six-fold in 2020, while the average value of a watch sold fell to $3,800 (RMB 24,709) – a 14.7 per cent year-on-year decrease. “The data shows that our platform is [attracting] a bigger mass of users. Our typical users [have progressed] from mostly hunting for vintage, exclusive watches to more popular, entry-level models,” says Yanice Guo, spokesperson for Watcheco.

China’s pre-owned watches scene, explained