🔊 Miami Heat Star Gets Hit With Crypto Lawsuit 🥵

Welcome to The Hype Report where we break down the latest news, stories & insights around sports & web3.

Here's What You Need To Know This Week 📝

• Binance & Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler Hit With $1B Crypto Lawsuit

• FIFA Debuts AI-Powered World Cup Soccer Mobile Game

• Soccer Star Rúben Dias Partners With OKX To Launch Metaverse Training Session

• Quick Hype & What To Watch + Read

Let's Dive Into It 🤿

Binance & Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler Get Hit With $1 Billion Crypto Lawsuit 🥵

How does the saying go? When it rains...it pours.

And it's been pouring on crypto influencers and ambassadors this year.

This past week, lawyers hit major crypto exchange Binance, its CEO, and several celebrities and influencers—including NBA star Jimmy Butler—with a $1 billion civil lawsuit for promoting cryptocurrency.

The suit, filed by The Moskowitz Law Firm and Boies Schiller Flexner, states that Binance boss Changpeng Zhao and his exchange inflated unregistered securities and paid celebrities to help do so.

After a year-long investigation, they're looking to get $1 billion in damages.

The lawsuit also mentions influencers such as Ben Armstrong—also known as BitBoy Crypto and Graham Stephan as defendants who allegedly received kickbacks for getting people to sign up for Binance.

Currently, Binance is the world’s biggest crypto exchange, and its native token, BNB, is the fourth largest digital asset, with a market cap of $48.8 billion.

U.S. authorities have been keeping a close eye on the company for a little while now.

It'll be interesting to see if this has any impact on the overall market, but hasn't seemed to so far as most of the top coins are up big year-to-date.

Why Does This Matter?

We've seen a number of celebs and athletes get hit with lawsuits in the past few months all related to some sort of crypto promotion.

But I still don't think crypto is going anywhere especially as it pertains to sports.

In fact, despite the market downturns, legal ramifications, and risk - crypto will play a huge role within the sports landscape for years to come ⬇️

FIFA Debuts Its AI-Powered World Cup Soccer Mobile Game ⚽

FIFA has released a new mobile soccer game called the AI League.

The game was developed and published by a New Zealand-based web3 game studio called Altered State Machine.

The open beta version of World Cup AI League launched this week and is based around a 4v4 soccer strategy game that uses AI for its characters, cosmetics, and gameplay elements.

This open beta is an extended version of the World Cup prediction game they launched back in November.

AI League doesn’t feature world-famous soccer stars.

Instead, the game's characters are colorful cartoon creatures.

There also seems to be a positive sentiment around the game so far

Characters’ movements are controlled by AI, which also determines their respective strengths and weaknesses.

Similar to games like Sorare or MFL, players can act as team coaches and owners.

While it's a free-to-play game right now, supposedly the plan is to launch an NFT marketplace for the game in the near future.

When that drops, the game’s characters will be minted into NFTs and all characters will be represented via NFTs going forward.

AI League currently offers an in-game currency called AI League Coins where users can buy certain enhancements for their players, but that currency is not a cryptocurrency.

This is in part due to Apple and Google restrictions around crypto trading.

And this isn't FIFA's first rodeo in the web3 and crypto world.

So far they have:

• Enlisted a crypto sponsor for the 2022 World Cup

• Launched an NFT platform

• Partnered with other web3 games and companies for World Cup integrations

Why Does This Matter?

One of the best ways to onboard everyday people to web3 is through gamified experiences.

Games are great tools for engaging people because they provide a fun and interactive experience that can be easily personalized to the user's interests and preferences.

They've also been used for years to educate and help people learn new skills, concepts, and behaviors.

In my opinion, this is an amazing step toward bringing more sports & soccer fans into the web3 ecosystem.

Soccer Star Rúben Dias Partners With OKX To Launch Metaverse Training Session 🌎

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX recently partnered with Portuguese soccer star Rúben Dias to launch an immersive metaverse experience called “Train Like Dias."

This partnership is part of their OKX Collective initiative, which is a metaverse environment that gives fans access to exclusive content from several Manchester City players such as Alex Greenwood, Ilkay Gündoğan, and Jack Grealish.

Through “Train Like Dias,” OKX lets football fans discover some of Rúben Dias’ most effective training techniques within the metaverse.

In addition to exclusive training content, users can access music and NFT-based digital experiences.

Fans can also participate in contests and win prizes, such as passes to:

• Team training sessions

• Match tickets

• Other exclusive rewards

This is a pretty interesting initiative that shows how committed OKX is to providing immersive opportunities for fans to learn from the players while incorporating elements of web3 tech.

Quick Hype 🎯

Baron Davis, founder of Sports Lifestyle in Culture (SLiC), announced a partnership with CasperPunks, to help bridge the digital divide in Web3 between fan communities, sports, and lifestyle groups.

Why virtual stadiums are a testing ground for the next phase of sports sponsorship. What happens when the best-laid media plans go awry in the sporting arena, and could developments in virtual worlds offer clues to some future solutions?

MoonWin, a new Web3 gamified platform, has launched with the aim to offer "fair and transparent gaming, utilizing the benefits of blockchain technology."

Sports technology has helped athletes, fans, and officials keep the games modern. Here are six shifts in sports technology that improve sports as you know them.

Web3 football metaverse TOPGOAL scores big investment from DWF Labs to build metaverse sports experience.

What To Watch 👀

Not necessarily sports tech related but given how compelling the Women's Final Four was this year, I thought it'd be cool to check out LSU forward's Angel Reese's first exclusive sitdown since they won the championship.

For the record, I'm super impressed with this generation of female athletes.

They're poised, confident, mature and entertaining.

The future of women's sports is in great hands.

Check it out ⬇️

What To Read 📖

Unfortunately, most DAOs will fail for various reasons:

• Legal issues

• Low or no engagement

• Weak infrastructure or mission

• Founders burn out

But there will be some that prevail and lay the blueprint for others to follow.

Links Golf Club is doing just that.

I talked with co-founder Jim Daily about the recent purchase of their first golf course, how the community played a major part in this happening, and some of the plans they have for the future.

Check it out ⬇️

Thanks for checking in with me this week.

If you have 50 seconds - would really appreciate it if you could fill out this brief anonymous survey:

Talk again next week,

Malcolm

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice in any capacity. The information shared is my thoughts & opinions and does not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity, or sponsor.

The contents of this newsletter also should not be used in any public or private domain without the author's express permission. The contents of this newsletter should not be used for any commercial activity, for example, research report, consultancy activity, or paywalled article, without the author's express permission.