Kraken to Place NFTs on Formula 1 Team’s Cars at the Grand Prix

Crain's deal with Williams racing is going to include six NFTS that will be put on the cars, the two cars and they will, you know, be racing alongside the cars. Uh joining us to discuss, this is Crain's Chief marketing Officer May Gupta, welcome Mayo. Thank you. Thanks guys for having us here. Yeah, so just tell me how this works because you're gonna have six of these NFTS on two cars, three on three, I guess. Uh the cars, you know, they, they, they speed across quite fast. How are you going to choose the NFTS? And, and is it a great marketing strategy given? You know, people can hardly see what's written on the cars. Yes. Yes. Um Well, first of all, you know, we are as you know, we are one of the oldest and the largest exchanges in the world. We launched our NFT marketplace late last year. Very excited about it. We announced our partnership with uh Williams earlier this year in March and very proud of it. But the focus, you know, for this partnership is less about placing our logo on the car and, and just driving blind reach. Uh you know, our focus has been primarily on driving education for this incredible technology uh crypto broadly. But NFT is a core component, you know, core part of that ecosystem. So for us, uh the contest actually runs in two phases, phase one. every NFT collection holder on Cracks NFT marketplace uh is able to submit their NFTS. Um you know, for, from August 1st to August 18th. Um and out of that, uh a combined team of crack and Williams racing is going to select the top 20 finalists based on a lot of different criterias. Um And uh those 20 will actually then be um placed. Um And we will open it up to the community to vote starting August 28th on social. Um And we will select the top four and then the, the other two winners are actually going to be handpicked by Alex Albon and uh Logan Sarge and the two drivers. So it's very, very exciting. And what we are most excited about honestly is it actually puts this technology, it puts um nfts um as, as a, as a core part of that ecosystem on the world's map. One has a massive reach is one of the fastest growing global sports and this level of reach and awareness has never existed before. Yeah, it's, it's kind of fascinating. Uh one has to say and, and, you know, one of the big questions that arises is particularly in the US, I'd say more than perhaps the rest of the world. Uh there's been a pullback from, you know, any sporting product or entity or let's World Cup Cricket, World Cup, whatever you want to talk about that they are, you know, not wanting to associate with crypto in any form, web three in any form. And yet you continue to do that. Uh This is at a time when even celebrity endorsements have, have seen, you know, court cases, uh and settlements, et cetera. So what's the thinking behind that? Yeah, that's a great question because if you think about if you look back during the bull run, um until mid last year or so, you actually would not find crack among some of the other brands, whether those are exchanges or actual blockchains. Uh You won't find us investing in any of these partnerships because our intent from a marketing and our mission standpoint has never been to be the loudest word. We were never in that race. Um We felt that this year when, uh you know, we are in the Bay Run, we are in the, in the so called Crypto Winter. This in fact is, is the right time, the most appropriate time to drive the education and awareness on the potential of crypto. Absolutely. Moving away from the formal and in Williams, we found a partner who brings a very similar values and mindset as crack, you know, being one of the most loved formula one brands in the world. They are the second on the Formula one championships ladder. If you look at the last 50 years and uh you know, their values of innovation, integrity and uh building fantastic user experiences match what we believe in. So we are leveraging the formula one platform, the Williams brand and the reach to drive education amongst the Williams fans and overall all the users and clients um to find opportunity and understand how crypto truly brings the potential to change people's lives. So may uh you know, we're, we're, we're a little bit short on time. But I have to ask, of course, we had this uh uh hack that happened in over the weekend. Uh And uh one of the things that interestingly that happened was that chain links oracles helped save the day if you will. And it relied on centralized exchanges for some of that data. Do it has uh you know, crack in. Do you see crack in trying to, I don't wanna say exploit this latest uh uh bout of uh hacking with D five. But do you think that it at least um can benefit or will benefit with uh some uncertainty that now happens in D I, you know, uh centralized exchanges also had their, their share of problems. But do you think that they're able to capitalize on this? Yeah, that's a, that's a uh pretty awesome question, Lawrence. I would love to answer it but maybe order a drink because you know, being a chief marketing officer, I won't be, I won't claim to be an expert on neither our security nor the policy. So, um, but we would love to, would love to invite my, uh, chief product officer. Our chief legal officer. Uh, security is a massive focus at crack. And in fact, that's one of our flagship pillars for the last 12 years. Uh, we are celebrating our 12th year anniversary this week. Uh So I can assure you there's a, there's a lot of focus on that, uh you know, for over a decade. All right, thanks so much for that. Uh I hope, uh you know, the NFT partnership goes off. Well, Williams has got a lot of catching up to do in the championship racing, uh right now in, they're in the middle somewhere. Uh But thank you for joining us. I see you have a new favorite formula one team now. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Thank you so much.