A look at the second act after the retirement of Tom Brady Crypto / NFT Heavy

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With NFL legend Tom Brady officially announcing his retirement from football after 22 seasons, the next realm Brady is looking to conquer could be on the blockchain.

Brady co-founded Autograph last year, an NFT agency that recently closed a $170 million Series B funding round led by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins.

Autograph essentially acts as an intermediary for celebrities, athletes and artists and non-fungible token collections.

Brady’s company has put together an All-Star Board of Directors that includes himself; Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services; FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and singer The Weeknd. Featured athletes on the platform include Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, Wayne Gretzky, Tony Hawk and Naomi Osaka.

Autograph entered into an exclusive agreement with sports betting platform DraftKings in July 2021 allowing users to buy, sell and trade digital sports collectibles on the DraftKings Marketplace, which also has exclusive distribution on sports merchandise. of Autograph.

Brady is also into crypto

Brady and his wife Gisele Bündchen took a stake in crypto firm FTX Trading last June to serve as brand ambassadors for the exchange.

The company has already become one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world after just two years.

This week, FTX, led by billionaire Bankman-Fried, raised another $400 million in its third round of funding, taking its valuation to $32 billion. Investors in the round included Singapore state holding company Temasak, cryptocurrency venture capital firm Paradigm, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Board and private equity firm. NEA risk.

Last week, the company’s US sister exchange, FTX US, also raised $400 million from the same investors at a valuation of $8 billion.

In total, FTX has raised around $1.8 billion since July, when it was valued at $18 billion.

Bankman-Fried told CNBC on Monday that FTX is discussing a potential public offering.

Brady the Crypto Evangelist

The future NFL Hall of Famer, who has 11 million followers on Instagram and more than 2 million on Twitter, has used his social media platform to push crypto in the past.

“It’s not the first time they’ve been involved in crypto, not the first time they’ve thought about it or even used it, which I think makes it a much more natural and genuine partnership,” Bankman-Fried said. Bloomberg by Brady and Bundchen. “These are examples of audiences that we would really like FTX to be the product for.”

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