Elon Musk and Tesla Accept Bitcoin ‘Opened Door’ for Adidas’ Web3 Plans
by James · March 2, 2023
When Elon Musk announced that Tesla would accept Bitcoin as payment for their cars, it turned out to be a short-lived initiative. But the EV company’s move opened a door for Adidas’ plans to use blockchain, the sportswear company’s Web3 executive said Erika Wykes-Sneyd.
“Elon Musk helped open that door for us, just a little bit, so we could capture people’s imagination internally,” Wykes-Sneyd said Decrypt at the NFT Paris conference. “We used it as a slipstream,” she added — one that allowed Web3 advocates within the company to “start the conversation” about what Adidas could do with blockchain technology.
One thing Adidas was keen to avoid was simply offering crypto payment options for its products. “I think those of us who knew were like, ‘Well, I don’t think just accepting crypto is what it means to get into this space,'” Wykes-Sneyd said.
Instead, the sportswear giant embarked on an ambitious program of Web3 initiatives that included buying its own Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, teaming up with NFT aggregator gmoney on a multimillion-dollar NFT drop and partnering with crypto exchanges Coin base and metaverse platform The sandbox. The company even featured its Bored Ape avatar, Indigo Herz, in the World Cup trailer.
Building Adidas’ Web3 strategy
From day one, Wykes-Sneyd said, the goal was to “make sure we supercharge and use Web3 to track what Adidas says the company’s goals are.” It involved a lot of planning; her team spent nine months “laying the strategy, building the foundation, a lot of relationship building” before putting the Web3 plans into action. “When we went to market, everybody was pretty much like, ‘Wow, Adidas is early,'” she said. “And we were, but we actually thought about this and planned it for 10 months before.”
The company’s future plans include token-gated sneaker drops and – potentially – payments in Apecoin, Bored Ape Yacht Club– theme token.
As for Tesla, the EV company abandoned its plans to use Bitcoin as a payment method just months after Elon Musk’s much-hyped announcement, citing the cryptocurrency’s environmental impact.
Adidas, on the other hand, is more committed to cryptocurrency and Web3. “We’ve completely indoctrinated everyone at this point,” Wykes-Sneyd said. “That’s been part of the journey for the last year and a half, is getting people across a huge global organization to drink the Kool-Aid.”
