The future use cases and value proposition of this iconic IP is going to be mind blowing.

If you are an avid follower of the blockchain and crypto space you’ll undoubtedly have noticed that the amount of rightful and misplaced negativity runs the the gamut, especially for NFT projects which have come to a crawl not only for established brands but most especially for small projects and start ups.

Take Recur’s multi-IP approach that has come to a crawl in terms of progress with the NFT licenses it has acquired over the past year. Virtually all have come to a complete stop or are progressing very slowly with superficial progress. People who had invested considerable amounts expected great things (and lots of dough) when they first piled in over a year ago in projects like Nickelodeon, Star Trek, NFTU (Cancelled) and others.

All projects on Recur have come to a crawl at one point or another however there is one project that, despite delays, has been making steady overall progress. Yes with the some unexpected course changes and hiccups but progress made nonetheless. That project is Hello Kitty.

Out of all the IP’s Recur has licensed none is better prepared nor better situated to take advantage of the future for physical and digital merchandise collaborations then Sanrio’s Hello Kitty. If you look at the recent ongoing success of Pudgy Penguins you’ll see that the team behind Pudgy Penguins was finally able to successfully and at a scale of success similar to Nike’s RTFKT. To attempt to onboard the masses into NFT’s through physical items through a relatively seamless process is arguably a historic achievement.

We can also draw parallel’s to Reddit where they dropped hundreds of thousands of NFT’s, and still go, to countless people on their platform. Some of these NFT’s are worth pennies and others are worth thousands. Both Reddit and Pudgy are showing you can drop more than 10,000 NFT’s and offer innovative ways to onboard people to new tech without necessarily diluting the NFT’s themselves to the point of destroying their value completely.

Of course though not all NFT drops are necessarily for the value creation itself and collecting digital blockchain based collectibles is its own sort of fun, people still want to have a chance to own valuable items they can flex and have some sort of value proposition. If not monetary value then utility value such as special drops, invites or special positions.

Although the Sanrio brand was brave enough to enter into NFT’s in 2022, the market has shown it is very bearish and negative on the tech. Who can blame Sanrio for taking it slow? The bear market has been unforgiving to all NFT’s. Even Pudgy Penguins had to oust the original founders as it had become an abandoned project whose rights were later sold to Luca Netz. Netz turned the project around and has so far successfully reinvigorated the brand. Connecting physical merchandise, Pudgy Penguins, with non tradeable PFPS but with tradable traits on the Pudgy Trait Marketplace.

Although volume is low there is a healthy market developing. We have yet to see how well the digital market will hold up long term but nevertheless this first attempt is still something to admire and we will see how the team adjusts to any problems that arise in the secondary market for traits. For example problems such as over saturation, blockchain processing issues etc.

So how does this whole rambling of mine mean anything for Hello Kitty?

Well for one Sanrio is a so called “lifestyle” brand that deals almost exclusively with cute, attractive and sought after merchandise products. It is literally where the Pudgy Pengin’s brand wants to be at with physical merch. Sanrio, owner of HK, will eventually have the critical mass that Pudgy Penguin’s has with the critical mass it has recently started to achieve. All Sanrio has to do is take the initial steps in entering the NFT space and it has done so already.

Although HK collection on the Recur site shows a low floor price for collection itself, around 40 dollars for the cheapest (usually Kerropi) it is nonetheless an important step that Sanrio has taken. When Sanrio first dropped their NFT collection through licensor Recur, they allowed people to “stake” their HK characters for a few days and in return not only get their HK NFT back but also get 3 stamps. These 3 stamps would later be redeemed months later for a “snapshot” that will eventually be “wrapped” to their main HK pfp. If it sounds a bit confusing it’s because I suck at explaining things but if you had done it you would have found it quite easy.

Hello Kitty collection consists of 6 popular characters from the Hello Kitty Universe: HK herself, Pompompurin, Kuromi, Kerropi, My Melody, Cinnamorrol.

Those that did redeem their stamps for snapshots will, at some point in 2023, be able to wrap or attached them to their main HK collection NFT of choice and make it their own unique collectible. The snapshots are NFT’s but they are more like traits. The original HK and Friends NFT collection is 10 thousand NFTs. About 4300 snapshots were created after the stamp redemption period. So the snapshots are secondary NFTs that will be attached to the main PFP/NFT from the HK collection. Hope that made some sense.

Bringing it all together, over time as Sanrio becomes more savvy on how it can best integrate NFTs into marketing and connecting with the buyers of their merchandise they will start to drop thousands, tens of thousands and eventually millions of NFT’s free of charge to their physical collectors. Of course some will have little utility value except to be cute (and possibly tradable?) while other NFTs will be exclusive, highly sought after and most likely with some sort of utility or benefits for owning or buying one.

The genesis HK and Friends NFT collection is the first officially licensed NFT collection. Not the first digital non blockchain collection as that distinction goes to Quidd. Quidd deals in NFT’s too but did not have the license for the first Sanrio NFT collection and so even though you can find Hello Kitty digital collectibles on Quidd, they are not NFT’s.

The Genesis collection will, in my own opinion, be worth several thousand dollars per NFT in the next few years as Sanrio’s NFT and blockchain marketing footprint grows bigger and more sophisticated. As Sanrio drops more and more NFTs the obvious importance of the genesis HK collection will also start to be noticed. What real Hello Kitty fan or NFT collector would not want to own at least one NFT from the first licensed Sanrio HK NFT collection?

More importantly besides value deriving from the collectible standpoint, a good portion of that value will come from being able to be part of an exclusive owner of an NFT that will surely bring with it benefits aforementioned above like community events, special invites, discounts, free drops both physical and digital, and special status as an owner. Above that we will have our HK NFT’s be utilized in games as cross platform interoperability among games on different blockchains becomes a growing trend in the next 2 to 3 years.

Imagine being able to port your HK NFT to MapleStory or Habbo Hotel blockchain games, get special access to drops in those worlds, have a NFT/PFP that can play in that world and then whatever you collect or win you can bring it out of that world. If for example your HK NFT earns a special prize within MapleStory, say a special wand. The gaming mechanics of that wand won’t necessarily translate into a wand in Habbo Hotel but when you take your character and wand prize from MapleStory to Habbo Hotel, the Habbo game might change the want into a special table or a whole apartment or something of value. There is much to be done with consensus standards and protocols like how the internet is set up however we will get to a point in the next few years where these standards will arise and be implemented and that’s where you’ll see the beginning of the enormous value and potential for all NFTs including name brands like Hello Kitty.

If you enter the Recur Discord you might throw up in your mouth a bit as most of the folks in there are very bitter about the NFT bear market and how Recur licensor handled the multiple projects under its belt. This is a very common occurrence in the blockchain space and this is due to projects having drank the NFT hype koolaid in the past NFT bullrun. If you go in there for advice on the brands you won’t get any objective advice as people are too hung up on Recur itself and not focusing on the IP brands. The Discord is swarming with trolls who ironically don’t own any NFTs or very very few and yet are there constantly ridiculing and looking down on people who even remotely have a positive view of certain IP brands like Sanrio. For them looking at the IP and not at Recur’s failures is akin to spitting in their face and because they are miserable they want you to be miserable too. Some from that discord might even find what I am writing offensive but its the truth.

My advice to you is if you go to the Discord please be aware those people, the negative ones I mean, represent a small small percentage of those of us who actually see the potential possibilities in both blockchains and NFT smart contract technology. If you go in there without your wits about you, you will be easily swayed by the legions of trolls who have nothing better to do then to put doubt in your mind under the guise of “helping you out”. They don’t want to help you and don’t care about you so please make sure you are willing to understand where NFT’s are going and what their use cases are and also above all else remember that these are licensed projects. If Recur were to fail, the project would most definitely be taken over by another licensor and take over the project. Remember Pudgy Penguins fails at first and then the rights were bought out and not it is at the top of the NFT world at the moment.

Should Recur fail with executing Sanrio’s HK NFT vision, Sanrio will definitely take the collection to another company to manage because as time goes Sanrio will see more and more success with the melding of NFT’s and physical items. At the moment however, irrespective of Recur’s handling of other IP’s it manages, I am very happy with the Recur HK experience and I am very excited of what is to come.

Once the wrapping event begins I will sell my snapshots in order to invest into more HK NFT’s as well as to have some money on the side to invest in, what I believe, to be undervalued crypto projects across different chains. My initial goal this year in 2023 is to acquire 30 more HK and Friends NFT’s to complete the first 100. After that depending on prices and how successful I am with my snapshot sales and investments in crypto I hope to acquire 5% of the entire HK and friends collection. Yes 5% is a massive 500 NFTs but again this is only if my investments with the snapshots and crypto go well. At the very least owning 1% of the entire HK NFT collection will be viable before 2023 ends.

Take advantage of the opportunity of extremely low prices and rampant pessimism in the NFT space because a few years from now you’re going to regret why you listened to trolls and naysayers about the future of NFT’s and why you didn’t buy in the double and triple digits. You can jump in when the floor is 500 or higher but why not jump in when its at 50?

Not financial advice but I hope my honest review and my biased leanings towards HK IP NFT project have at least convinced you to take a look at it and if you’re well educated about the NFT space and its future that maybe you take a tippy toe plunge into the branded NFT world.

Don’t be afraid to fail or to make mistakes in public. If I’m wrong about all this what’s the worst that can happen? Trolls laugh at me and cynics snicker with laughter? That’s all they live for.

Don’t be afraid of taking calculated risks. Be smart, be clear about what you want and go for it. For me? I’d love to be in NFT’s and crypto full time and I believe I will achieve this goal. I might be wrong about all this but something tells me I just might be onto something here :P.