The Robinhood of sports card trading

Non-fungible tokens have been receiving a lot of attention, like yesterday when the artist Beeple sold his compilation piece, ”The First 5,000 Days,” for over $69M.

Sports cards may sound old-school next to NFTs, but they're booming recently too. It’s all tied to a larger interest in alternative investments.

Yesterday, the sports card trading platform Alt launched on Product Hunt while announcing having raised $31 million. Founder Leore Avidar explained to the community that there hasn’t been a lot of infrastructure in this space.

“We want to make it as easy to invest in sports cards and other alts as it is with stocks.

On Alt, you can track the current market value of your assets with our proprietary Alt Value, buy and sell pre-authenticated cards on our exchange, and securely store your collection in our custody solution, Vault.”

He also compared Alt to Coinbase, which brought structure to buying and selling cryptocurrency. Others have compared Alt to Robinhood for making trading more accessible. Alt's transaction fees are 1.5% — a key part of the company's strategy since auction houses often start at 12.5%.

Alt plans to expand to other alternative investments eventually (watches, etc.), based on what its customers want next.

For those looking to diversify your portfolio with alternative assets, Alt can be a great place to start.

The Metaverse is coming. Maybe.

Roblox had a huge IPO this week, valuing the company at nearly $42 billion after its first day.

According to Roblox, over half of US kids and teens under 16 are on the platform. Since Roblox lets developers and users create their own games, its virtual world is constantly expanding. You might remember that last spring Stephen Phillips and team at Popgun, a music AI startup, launched Splash for Roblox. Splash lets you DJ in a virtual club in front of virtual crowds. You can earn “fame” and coins for your sets and buy gear for your avatar.

Roblox’s founder and CEO, David Baszucki, believes it’s all part of a transition to the Metaverse (note the capital "M"), or the virtual world. A key part of the concept, besides digital interactions, is that the Metaverse is persistent and seamless.

Others don't believe this romanticized version of the metaverse is possible. Microsoft recently announced its mixed-reality platform called Mesh. Startups like VR Chat have virtual worlds with strong communities. Facebook has Horizon for Oculus and so on. Baszucki has explained that his vision for the metaverse highly depends on the operating system, app store, and hardware decisions from Google and Apple.

What do you think — is the Metaverse imminent?