Uni textbook NFTs are coming 📚

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• Prices accurate as of approximately Wednesday 4:30PM BST.

📚 Textbook NFTs

University is one of the biggest rackets on Earth, and the textbook game is the fuckin' pinnacle. The more I learn about this, the more unbelieveable I find this whole industry.

Since 1977, the average cost of text books for UK students has increased by 1,041%. That's four times the rate of inflation. Students are a resourceful lot, especially when it comes to saving money. That's why there's always been an active market for second hand books, but the big publishers have been snotty about that for a while.

With the textbook publishing industry dominated by just four companies, they try heaps of dirty tricks to make students buy new books each year. Stuff like changing page numbers around, adding or removing chapters, requiring codes to access certain information and reducing the update cycle from an average of five years down to three or even two.

It's all fair game to them, and now they're jumping on the NFT bandwagon.

That's right, one of the big dogs in this space, Pearson, has announced that they'll be using NFTs in their digital books to receive ongoing royalites from second hand sales. You might be surprised to hear me say this, but I think this could actually be a good idea, and a win/win for the company and for students.

Essentially, this will work by having a digital contract which will automatically pay Pearson a percentage of any future sale on the book. So if you sell a book to your mate for £50, Pearson might take a tenner of the sale.

There's no detail on exactly how this will be implemented, but it could mean that there is less bullshit and fewer attempts to screw students over. Books could remain in circulation for longer if companies like Pearson are receiving a continuing revenue stream from second hand sales.

It means they can have less pressure on their annual profits, and students will actually be able to use second hand books, rather than being forced into buying new ones.

This is one of the first use cases for NFTs I've seen that that isn't totally fuckin' stupid.

🦁 The Lioness Business

The 'It's Coming Home' song is the cringiest shit ever, but then again, it's still better than 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi Oi Oi.' You obviously already know that the England women's football has won this year's Euro's, which is the first major trophy since 1842 or something. I dunno, I don't really care about football (cue 438 unsubscribes).

What is cool though, is the growth in women's sport in general.

It's making huge strides, and the best part is that the commercial side is catching up to the men's game. The final at Wembley was watched by 17.4 million people on the BBC, the biggest audience for a women's football match ever.

It was also the most watched TV broadcast this year. Yep, it even beat out the Love Island final.

Even more impressive was the attendance at Wembley itself, which at 87,192 is the highest figure for any England match, men or women! This is big. This is millions of eyeballs and they're the kind of numbers that make advertisers and TV networks stand up and take notice.

It's also how the women are going to get paid. Both men and women only receive £2,000 per game to play for England, but at the club level it's a different story. The average Women's Super League player receives £47,000 per year.

That's not awful, but right now it appears to be significantly underpriced based on the interest and growth in women's football. Compare that to the men's game, where estimates are that the average player receives in the region of £5 million per year.

My old neighbour from Perth, Australia, Sam Kerr, is the highest paid Women's Super League player, earning around £400,000 per year. Great money, but the Premier League's highest paid star, Christiano Ronaldo, earns that every week.

The total rights package for Premier League tops £10 billion including commercial rights and TV broadcast, whereas the Women's Super League recently signed a deal worth just £24 million.

I reckon we'll see some massive growth in this space over the next five years.

🚀 The Latest Reddit Meme Stock - AMTD Digital

21,426%. That's how much this random Hong Kong based financial services startup has gained since it's IPO on the 15th July 2022. At one point it was up over 30,000%. Tasty.

AMTD Digital is the last Reddit meme stock and the price is going berserk. Some days it's gaining almost 200%. The company IPO'd on the New York Stock Exchange at $7.80, and as of the US market close on Tuesday it had hit $1,679.

As of the market close on Tuesday it had a market cap of $310 billion, more than Shell, Costco, Pfizer, Chevron and Coca-Cola.

Even funnier, AMTD Digital is 97% owned by parent company AMTD Idea, and the market cap of that is only $2.6 billion.

What's the lesson? The stock market be fuckin' crazy. Meme stocks are fun, but there's no way this isn't going to crash harder than Wayne Rooney on a Friday night in Alderley Edge.

🔺 The Hedge Community

We've had some great discussion over in The Hedge Discord server. Want to join? It's free.

🌏 Snippets

• Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri is relocating from Silicon Valley to London, joining an ever growing UK-based Meta workforce of over 4,000.

• A sophisticated WhatsApp scam is targeting Mum's and Dad's and has swiped £1.5 million in less than 6 months.

• Nancy Pelosi pissed off the Chinese with her official visit to Taiwan. The Chinese responded by conducting live fire military exercises which just happened to surround the disputed island. Subtle.

• Airbnb announced a 58% increase in revenue off the back of soaring booking post that virus thing.

• Warner Bros is axing the Batgirl movie, even though the movie is completely finished and ready for release and they've already spent $90 mil on it.

See you next week 🚀

Jason

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