McDonald’s Is Trying to Bring Back NFTs
NFTs became a punchline. But some people are taking another look.
McDonald’s will soon feature cartoon animation-style characters on its McCafe coffee cups for a limited time. That’s not particularly odd. But in this case, the animated characters are from Doodles, the web3 project. And it’s just the latest sign that some people are trying to bring back the NFT fad after a very brief but loud explosion in the tech scene a few years ago.
Remember non-fungible tokens? When NFTs went mainstream in the winter of 2021-22, everyone wanted to get in on the hype. Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton bragged about their Bored Apes on late-night TV, Budweiser launched Dwayne Wade NFTs to promote its no-alcoholic beer, and Starbucks launched a marketplace for NFT stamps.
But it didn’t last long. Fallon’s Bored Apes promotion in Jan. 2022 was the beginning of the end. By Sept. 2022, trading volume for NFTs had fallen 97%. Doodles, which started as an NFT project, was declaring by early 2023 that it was no longer just an NFT project. And now Doodles is partnering with McDonald’s for a coffee cup promotion and Doodle NFTs are soaring in price, according to CoinTelegraph.
The X account for McDonald’s shared a teaser on Tuesday which included a short 7-second video with the numbers 11/18, meaning Nov. 18.
It’s perhaps telling that Doodles ends its tweet thread with a warning about scammers.
“this is the last post in this thread from the official @doodles account beware of impersonator accounts & phishing links remember, DO NOT click on links that appear to be from Doodles before cross-referencing with http://doodles.app,” the tweet reads.
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