FC Barcelona unveils Barca Pass crypto wallet, NFT avatars
The soccer club is using the XRP-compatible Root blockchain and is expected to release a mobile racing game, too
FC Barcelona and A-R-T/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks
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FC Barcelona, the Spanish soccer club Forbes values at $5.65 billion, is releasing a wallet for its upcoming NFTs called Barça.Pass as part of its digital strategy.
Anyone with a Barça ID can now claim a wallet and will ultimately be able to use it to create an FC Barcelona avatar NFT, customize the character with official merch, and collect other types of digital items in anticipation of an upcoming FCB mobile racing game.
Crypto infra firm Futureverse set up the Barça Pass. Futureverse CEO Aaron McDonald told me that the NFT avatars will exist on the gaming-focused L1 blockchain Root and can be equipped with “semi-fungible” wearable digital items. Root is EVM-compatible and uses XRP as its gas token as well as the XRPL XLS-20 NFT standard.
Wearables will be purchasable via FCB’s Shopify integration, McDonald explained.
Traders will also be able to buy or sell FCB digital items on marketplaces like Tradeverse that are integrated with the Root chain’s ecosystem, and can buy those items with crypto like ROOT or XRP.
Over 11 million Barça IDs had already been created before the launch, according to the post from FCB.
Image: FC Barcelona image teasing the upcoming avatars.
The wallet won’t just be a wrapper to hold your avatar, though. McDonald told me the Pass will support “a wide range of onchain experiences and applications that developers build.”
Image: Teaser image of FCB’s anticipated racing game.
FCB has previously lent its name to different (non-crypto) mobile games over the years, including an endless runner mobile game roughly a decade ago and even a cooking game in 2018.
Last year, it launched a mobile minigame app called Barça Games, but that app is no longer available on the Google Play Store.
Back in 2020, FCB tried its hand at crypto with an FC Barcelona fan token, BAR, on Chiliz.
That token hit a market cap of nearly $125 million in 2021 — and today sits at $13.2 million.
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