Budweiser Buys $25,000 NFT Rocket: What You Should Know About Tom Sachs Rocket Factory

Another large publicly traded company is joining the rise of non-fungible tokens with Anheuser-Busch InBev BUD buying a NFT rocket ship and changing its profile picture on Twitter Inc TWTR.

What Happened: Budweiser changed its profile picture to a Tom Sachs: Rocket Factory assembled rocket featuring three components with the Budweiser name and logo.

The company changed its Twitter profile to share the picture with 225,000 followers and posted a simple tweet with three rocket emojis Tuesday night to highlight the change.

The custom named “Life of the Party” fully assembled NFT rocket was purchased for 8 Ethereum ETH/USD, or around $25,000 based on a price of $3,156 at the time of writing. The same account that purchased the rocket on OpenSea also acquired beer.eth for 30 ETH.

Related Link: How Warren Buffett, Known Hater Of Cryptocurrency Owns CryptoPunk Stake 

What is Tom Sachs: Rocket Factory?: Launched in early August, the Tom Sachs: Rocket Factory NFT project released 3,000 branded components for rockets that could be assembled.

“The Rocket Factory, and all of the NFTs it generates are artworks. These artworks draw on the foundation of sculpture and painting Tom has made for over thirty years. We are proud to announce Tom Sachs’ Genesis NFT collection,” a post on Medium read in July.

The NFT collection is a partnership with Tom Sachs, a well-known sculptor and contemporary artist from New York.

An assembled rocket needs three components, a nose cone, body and tail assembly. Each component was sold at a mint price of 0.15 ETH plus gas.

Components featured popular brands like the USPS, NASA, Skippy Peanut Butter, 7-Eleven, Trojan condoms, Sweet ‘N Low, Yoda and Brian from Family Guy.

There are 344 perfect rockets for sale on OpenSea with a floor price of 14.8 ETH. The cheapest individual component is for sale at 4.25 ETH. A total of 45 “Frankenrockets” that feature three components with different logos are for sale with a floor price of 20 ETH.

The company recently shared a rarity chart, showing how many components of each brand were made in the NFT drop. There were 90 of each Budweiser rocket component, meaning 90 fully assembled Budweiser rockets could be assembled if someone bought up the components.

Other featured brands like Coca-Cola KO and Apple Inc AAPL were scarcer, with only one of each component released, making only one hypothetical fully assembled rocket for each company possible.

Brands like McDonalds Inc MCD and NASA had 25 and 31 of each component respectively, making more chances for fully assembled rockets.

Ten physical versions of constructed rockets will fly over New York City on Saturday, Aug. 28. Additional rockets will fly on additionally selected dates.

If the physical rocket is recovered, it will be shipped to its owner or put in a museum display. A video documenting the launch is linked to the NFT.

Why It’s Important: The purchase by Budweiser and subsequent profile picture change led to an increase in the valuation of fully assembled Tom Sachs: Rocket Factory NFT rockets.

Multiple purchases of 10 ETH or more were made after Budweiser bought in.

Budweiser changing its profile picture follows the move by Visa Inc V changing its Twitter profile picture for its Visa News account, which has over 118,000 followers, after purchasing a CryptoPunk. 

Two major companies like Visa and Budweiser buying NFTs could bring validation to the NFT market, the lasting power of which has been questioned amid talk of a “bubble.”

BUD Price Action: BUD shares were up 0.56% at $60.83 on Wednesday.

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