Major coffee retailer Starbucks said Friday afternoon that it will end its NFT-enabled customer loyalty program, called Odyssey.
The program closes on the last day of March. “The Starbucks Odyssey Beta needs to end to prepare us for what comes next as we continue to develop the program,” Starbucks said in an update on the program’s FAQ page.
The NFTs that customers can earn through Odyssey, called Stamps, will be transferred to the NFT platform Nifty Gateway, where they can continue to be bought and sold, Starbucks added.
It’s the latest in a growing trend of non-crypto companies shutting down NFT programs they started a few years ago. Video game venue GameStop closed its NFT marketplace in January over regulatory concerns. Also that month, social media platform X stopped supporting NFT profile photos. X competitor Meta ended its own NFT program earlier in 2023.
Read more: X reportedly no longer supports NFT profile photos
Starbucks Odyssey launched in September 2022 through a partnership with Polygon.
Memecoin mania leads to Las Vegas Sphere ad, research by Franklin Templeton
Crypto made a big fuss about memecoins this week as the familiar trope of overnight millionaires resurfaced.
The memecoin of the moment, dogwifhat, rose more than 30% this week. Supporters of the Solana-based token raised nearly $700,000 to place an ad on the Las Vegas Sphere.
Read more: A memecoin might get the Vegas treatment, but crypto ads rarely age well
The alleged owners of the hat-wearing dog put an NFT of the image up for auction, with bids reaching up to 30 ether (ETH) on Friday afternoon, worth approximately $113,000 at today’s prices.
Many of the new crop of memecoins, including dogwifhat and a slew of deliberately misspelled politicians, live on the Solana blockchain. Solana (SOL) itself rose 22% this week, according to CoinGecko.
Amid the excitement, the digital assets arm of major investment firm Franklin Templeton published an article on The newspaper pointed out that the price increase of the Solana memecoin, BONK, and Solana itself occurred at the same time.
One interesting statistic:
- The Pudgy Penguins price floor fell by about $17,000 over the past week, from about $56,700 to about $39,700, according to NFT Price Floor.
Also important:
- The NFT project Sappy Seals let some users participate in a playtest of the open-world game.
- The massive multiplayer online game MapleStory brings a “Web3 enhanced extension” to the Avalanche blockchain.
- A trading bot on popular crypto messaging app Telegram saw more revenue than Arbitrum this week.