Many firms, particularly the fashion industry, have discovered that cryptocurrencies are a must-have. By early this month, Balenciaga had become a prominent crypto-friendly luxury fashion label by adopting NFTs and now enables crypto payments.
Balenciaga’s select stores in the U.S. to start accepting crypto payments
The most avant-garde couture house, especially famous in recent years for its offbeat and scandalous lineups, will begin taking cryptocurrency payments, particularly in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Balenciaga’s flagship shops in Los Angeles and New York and online at the brand’s website will accept crypto.
The French giant fashion house announced that it will be releasing the “Cristóbal Balenciaga.” The Cristobal Balenciaga: To the Moon” NFT collection is set to go live on Crypto.com NFT. It got inspired by Lorenzo Riva’s more than 8,000 sketches created by Cristobal Balenciaga during the couture movement.
Owners of the NFT collection will be able to get Balenciaga gear, high-end designer gift cards, and even Cristóbal’s 70-year-old sketches. Furthermore, all NFT owners will be eligible for a whitelist spot for future “Lorenzo Riva X Cristóbal Balenciaga” NFT drops.
By 2030, according to Morgan Stanley, luxury branded NFTs may be worth US$56 billion. This explains why big businesses are interested in NFTs and why famous individuals have jumped on the trend.
It’s not clear whether this course of action was motivated by the decision to have its most recent fashion collection on the NYSE’s trading floor. An invitation provided by the company got forged using fake bankrolls. Balenciaga sees crypto as a means to break new ground in fashion, and it intends to use it to do so. Balenciaga has joined the ranks of other pro-crypto businesses in terms of innovation.
The lack of clarity remains; however it is obvious that Balenciaga considers crypto in its long-term plans and that even the record drop in BTC quotations has not compelled them to give up this concept.
It appears that the brand has made the correct decision. It waited until luxury company executives and competitors in the sector began to integrate cryptocurrency into their businesses. Furthermore, these organizations demonstrated by example what works now, what needs improvement, and what isn’t worth using at all. The last point, in particular, seems to apply to today’s hack. In the lead-up to his collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Beeple’s famous Twitter account got hacked. Around hackers made away with $440,000.
According to CEO Cédric Charbit, few Balenciaga shops in the United States will accept bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) payments starting in June. He told the Wall Street Journal that the recent substantial sell-off of crypto assets – TerraUSD (UST) and Terra (LUNA) – had no impact on his long-term plan.
The crypto industry meets the fashion industry
The creative director at Balenciaga, Demna Gvasalia, announced on Instagram that the brand would also take cryptocurrencies for website purchases. Given the plummet in their value over the previous ten days, one could argue that the timing was poor. In the past two weeks, $1 trillion got erased from the market as a result of market instability.
Concerns about the volatility of cryptocurrencies have been growing in recent weeks as investors carefully wait to minimize their losses. Interestingly, Balenciaga isn’t phased by the cryptocurrency market’s unpredictability. In a statement, the company said that fluctuations in currency value are nothing new and that they are thinking long-term about crypto.
The choice to accept cryptocurrency payments demonstrates how luxury fashion companies are attracting a younger population by reacting to current trends. For example, the majority of Off-White’s client base is made up of Generation Y (or “Millennials”) — those born between 1981 and 1996. They are also major adopters of cryptocurrency.
Off-White, a luxury fashion line, began accepting bitcoin payments at its flagship stores in Paris, Milan, and London. Off-White generated an estimated $7 billion in revenue last year. It said that it will now accept Bitcoin, ether, binance coin, XRP, Tether, and Circle’s USDC in trade for clothes and apparel.
Balenciaga and other fashion houses, such as Gucci, have metaverse and web3 space innovation teams working on innovative ways to use the technology. Balenciaga revealed in December 2021 that it would establish a metaverse business unit.
Charbit views the metaverse as a nation, and it sees it as a business opportunity with a clear profit-and-loss goal. On the non-fungible token (NFT) front, another brand announcing its involvement in creating NFTs comes out every week, including Givenchy, JW Anderson, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, and Adidas.
Tag Heuer is the latest luxury goods company to begin accepting bitcoin. EARLIER THIS MONTH, the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned watch brand said its customers would be able to pay at checkout in one of 12 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum using a BitPay platform that was made available.
The iconic Italian brand, Gucci, is courting the cryptocurrency generation. The company will take crypto payments in select U.S. stores at the end of this month. This summer, it intends to roll out the experiment to all of its directly-operated North American shops. The adoption by a major luxury brand is a significant affirmation of cryptocurrency.
