Antic’s Blockchain approach to co-ownership draws interest from Reddit founder
Antic’s “Buy Together” product allows users to own digital assets and exclusive access.
Sharing can be caring, but crypto investor Alexis Ohanian believes it can also be profitable. The former Forbes The 30 Under 30 honoree, who co-founded Reddit and has recently developed a penchant for crypto-investing, is co-leading a $7 million seed investment in Antic, an Israeli startup focused on co-ownership, which means groups of people, rather than individuals, buy digital assets .
These can range from streaming videos to internet artwork, and Antic makes software that makes it easier to share ownership and access to exclusive content.
Ohanian is no stranger to co-ownership models in the conventional world. “It’s quite common for friends to pool money to buy something they couldn’t afford individually, but together they could,” he says. So when Antic approached him with the idea of building blockchain-based co-ownership infrastructure for digital holdings, he was sold.
“I keep coming back to looking for things that people are already doing in a hacky way,” he says.
“Antic is the co-owner of the new internet,” adds Tal Dadia, founder and CEO of the Tel Aviv-based company. Although built on the Ethereum blockchain, the company is also looking to partner with mainstream companies, such as Netflix
Ohanian has largely focused his crypto investments on digital collectibles. His Seven Seven Six (776) investment car has some major collectibles in its portfolio, including Yuga Labs of Bored Apes fame and Doodles.
Shared ownership is a popular concept in the world of digital collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), where prices for items in the most sought-after collections, including CryptoPunks and Bored Apes, are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (CryptoPunks sell for an average of $302,000 the last year). With high prices for precious real estate, crypto enthusiasts have turned to sharing options to be able to purchase items in the trendiest collections.
Approaches to shared ownership have largely remained within the decentralized world: decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have purchased NFTs with funds from their treasuries, and certain marketplaces allow users to purchase NFTs.
Both processes involve an additional layer of tokenization. To join a DAO, members typically have to purchase a membership NFT, and the proceeds from the sale go to the organization’s treasury. Fractionation of NFTs requires the tokenization of a portion of the original token, which opens up the possibility of multiple transaction fees when trading.
But according to Ohanian and Dadia, co-ownership eliminates the need for further tokenization of an asset.
“We don’t tokenize the actual ownership,” says Dadia. “We’re aiming for mainstream adoption.”
Dadia started the company in 2021 after GameStop
Inspired by Reddit, Dadia saw no better investor than the site’s co-inventor himself.
“It felt like there’s a mutual DNA between what we do,” Dadia says of Ohanian’s previous work and Antic. “This notion of community buying, group buying, [the] social aspects of it.”
For Ohanian, condominiums are as much a social proposition as they are financial. Not only do groups now own things together, but their holdings also act as a kind of virtue signaling – owning a Bored Ape or a CryptoPunk is more than just an investment, it’s also access to exclusive messaging groups and a sign to the world that you’re a part of a movement.
Antic’s co-ownership integrations are currently based on the Ethereum blockchain, but it plans to expand to Solana and Flow, as well as fund more research and development with this new funding round.
The the fundraising was led by 776 and Israeli venture capital firm Sheva. Pantera Capital, Sound Ventures, Rainfall, Shrug and Dapper Labs also participated.
