Winklevoss-Owned Nifty Becomes First USD-Based NFT Exchange

Nifty, a USD-based exchange for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), announced the completion of its ‘Nifty Gateway 2.0’ revamp on March 17.

The platform, which was purchased by the Winklevoss twins’ crypto firm Gemini in November 2019, describes itself as the first US dollar-based centralized exchange for NFTs. 

The platform allows U.S. users to withdraw fiat currency, and plans to support fiat withdrawal for international users “as soon as possible.” All other services are currently available to international users.

Nifty to take cautious approach to new NFT listings

While users are able to list NFTs on the Nifty marketplace, the platform states that it will be “slow and intentional” about which tokens its supports:

“You may also deposit NFTs from other projects and put them up for sale on the marketplace — however, for the time being, we will be slow and intentional about which NFT projects we support, so that we can handle the volume, and deal with any fraud issues that may arise.”

Users can sign up and begin trading NFTs on Nifty with just an email address.

Nifty partners with celebrities to issue tokenized collectibles

Nifty also revealed it will create and release exclusive tokenized collectibles in partnership with celebrities over the coming months. 

The company will launch a new NFTs approximately once every three weeks. The first collectible will be a product of collaboration between female mixed martial arts pioneer Cris Cyborg and photographer Lyle Owerko.

NFT platforms collaborate with sporting industry

A number of sporting companies and athletes seeking to drive new forms of fan engagement have announced partnerships with blockchain firms to release tokenized collectibles in recent months.

Earlier today, Cointelegraph reported that blockchain-based fantasy soccer game Sorare had inked a licensing deal with Italian soccer team S.S. Lazio. The partnership will see Sorare create tokenized player cards of Lazio’s athletes that can be used in weekly fantasy tournaments or traded on secondary markets.

Last month, CryptoKitties creators Dapper Labs announced a partnership with the UFC to create tokenized representations of fighters that can be traded or used within a game.