nft: Want to buy and sell NFTs? Bliv.Club’s derivatives platform may be the answer
Art collectibles previously reserved for the upper crust can also exist on decentralized, community-driven networks, allowing the average user to own a piece of art that makes the acquisition instantly appealing to the new generation. Million dollar NFT sales like Beeple’s artwork or Jack Dorsey’s “twttr” tweet are well known and fuel the appetite for NFT ownership. Analysts at Jefferies, an investment bank, expect the value of NFTs to double next year and approach $80 billion by 2025. This has led to the creation of a new class of valuable assets. And where there is a flood of assets and pounding market/s, can investors and speculators be far behind? Like any other commodity market, there is a segment of investors who follow the NFT market closely and want to predict (and profit from) the tides of the market. Moreover, not everyone can afford to invest and block their resources in NFT assets, but still want to be a part of the booming NFT segment. Where do such investors find an outlet?
Bliv.Club, a Web3 and NFT fintech company, is trying to find some answers. The company develops solutions in the form of compelling products and a fintech platform where average investors interested in the NFT market will be able to participate. The brainchild of three serial entrepreneurs, Mohammed Sirajuddin, Abhishek Kumar Gupta and Vikas Singh. “Users will not have direct access to an NFT. By using our product, they will get indirect or ‘synthetic’ access to an NFT pool that they want to go long or short,” says Singh.
The idea for the platform arose when the co-founders identified some serious roadblocks in the NFT market. “There is no doubt that the NFT market is in an explosive growth stage, but there are some major roadblocks. The current cases of economic use of NFTs are limited. Lack of liquidity is a serious problem in the market. In addition, there are many entry barriers to identifying NFT projects. There is also no possibility of hedging the downside risk with NFT, says Gupta.
Industry watcher and investor in Bliv Club, Mohit Madan, CEO and co-founder of Unifarm agrees: “Over the past few years, NFT technology has gained tremendous momentum and now there is a need to help the masses participate in this space and make money. . Bliv.Club expands the NFT ecosystem by democratizing access to NFTs for the masses. With greater adoption will come natural scaling of the entire ecosystem.”
Bliv.Club is building a platform that will reduce this entry barrier via various new-age instruments and will facilitate liquidity in the NFT ecosystem via derivatives. “Our product provides users with a derivative, a financial contract whose value is determined by an underlying asset (NFTs in our case) and whose price fluctuates depending on the underlying NFT collection’s bottom price,” says Singh.
Gupta says we need NFT derivatives as they attract liquidity by allowing participation even by those who do not directly own NFTs. It creates monetization options on NFT assets, as opposed to buy and hold. “It provides efficient price discovery, which is transparent, fair and convenient for all types of investors and collectors. In addition, it maximizes profit opportunities while hedging risk and increasing exposure,” says Gupta.
On the one hand, barriers to market entry are high for the average investor, and even those who invest in NFTs cannot do much with their asset other than the two-component buy-sell cycle. To take care of the lack of options to keep floating one’s precious NFTs, benchmarks and tradable products driven by the indices are created. This will drive further liquidity and visibility for the assets as it will increase opportunities for non-holders to participate in the NFT marketplace after the platform launches next month. Bliv.Club aims to become the gauge on the NFT market and will provide access to exploit it.
The co-founders claim that through Bliv.Club the way we buy and sell NFTs will change. With the launch of their first product, Bliv Perps, an NFT-based decentralized perpetual exchange, users will gain exposure to Blue-Chip NFTs for as little as $1.
“There is a need to help the masses participate and earn in this area. Bliv.Club will
the masses to invest in the broader NFT market, to hedge against a single NFT risk using an algorithm that protects users from significant price swings in either direction,” says Singh.
The company’s soon-to-be-launched first product is an order book-based NFT Perpetual. NFT perpetual will allow users to buy or sell the non-fungible token derivative at a future price point. “Bliv has built the product from the ground up to be completely free of storage. This should ensure that the product does not keep any unnecessary information/data/funds with itself. The aggregation is done of the most sustainable blue chip floor prices from the NFT market to ensure that users are not exposed to anything unsustainable.”
He adds that given the excitement and curiosity of millennials and Gen Z to create, own and partake in the NFT revolution, the opportunity in India for such a product will be close to $15 billion by 2030.”
Despite the opportunity, India will be a challenging market due to the lack of adequate education and awareness about cryptocurrencies, NFTs and the Web3 world. The company tries to bridge the knowledge gap with blogs, posts and knowledge threads on social media. It plans to have on its website a section dedicated solely to crypto education.
The company has identified multiple revenue streams such as transaction fees, user churn and AAVE interest (if they choose to put collateral on it).
Singh says globally similar companies like DyDx and Perpetual.com exist, but they are only in crypto. “In the NFT market, we have yet to see any alternative,” he says. The company started in 2021 and has already built a 10,000 strong community of NFT leaders, creators, discoverers and creators. Next month, it will launch the product’s Litepaper and beta versions. The company has raised an undisclosed round of pre-funding from Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder, Polygon, Alpha Wave Ventures and other prominent investors. The founders have indicated that the company is in the process of closing a new significant financing round.
Anshul Dhir, an investor in Bliv.Club and also COO and co-founder EasyFi says, “Recently they partnered with Shikhar Dhawan to build a sports city in Metaverse. This sports city will be a game changer for Web3 lovers. Today, the NFT landscape has reached new heights. However, NFTs lie idle in owners’ wallets. The reason is that owners do not have access to uncomplicated ways to make money. This complex market is difficult to navigate with limited technical knowledge. Bliv.Club is building a platform that will reduce this entry barrier via various new-age instruments, as well as facilitating liquidity into the NFT ecosystem via derivatives.”
