Funko Enters NFT Market with Majority Stake in TokenHead Developer
By Staff Reports
Funko, Inc. (“Funko,” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: FNKO), a leading pop culture consumer products company, today announced it has acquired a majority ownership stake in TokenWave, LLC, the developer of TokenHead, a leading mobile app and website for showcasing and tracking Non-Fungible Token (“NFT”) holdings. TokenHead is available on iOS and Android, and currently displays over 10 million NFTs and has more than 100,000 visits per day. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.
The investment accelerates Funko’s initial entry into the NFT market and will extend the Company’s pop culture platform to include digital assets. Funko expects to launch its initial NFT offerings in June, featuring a unique property each week at a starting price point of $9.99. Products will be sold on the WAX platform, the leading decentralized wallet on the blockchain, which provides verifiable authenticity for purchases of Funko NFTs.
“Funko is thrilled to advance another platform that our fans and collectors will love and find valuable,” said Brian Mariotti, Chief Executive Officer of Funko. “Our strategy in this space is clear – bring the value-added NFT opportunity to our licensing partners to leverage our broad range of existing pop culture content across Television, Movies, Sports, Music, Anime, Video Games and Comic Books. Our amazing licensing partners are excited about our entry into this new digital space and we believe the diversity of our licensing portfolio sets us up for long-term success.”
“The marriage of digital and physical using WAX’s patented NFT technology known as vIRLs™ is powerful,” continued Mariotti. “Our ability to combine Funko Pop! digital NFTs with exclusive Funko Pop! Vinyl Figures has the potential to be a game changer. By backing the rarest of the Funko NFTs with exclusive redeemable Funko Pop!s, we are poised to enter the NFT market in a very unique manner. Importantly, we plan to make Funko NFTs broadly accessible to our fans by providing affordable entry pricing. Utilizing WAX Blockchain technology, we have the opportunity to eventually bring Funko collectible NFTs to our millions of fans around the globe. The NFT world is all about content, and Funko has been connecting fans to the content they love for over 20 years.”