Privately, the luxury fashion brand is also developing a long-term business strategy called metaverse. Crypto is one step closer to mainstream acceptance of crypto as a payment option. If $1,250 hoodies with predestroyed are mainstreamable, then that would be Crypto.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the luxury French fashion brand Balenciaga will accept Bitcoin and Ethereum payments online and at selected brick-and-mortar stores starting next month.
Balenciaga is now the latest fashion brand to accept cryptocurrency as a payment method. Gucci had earlier this month announced it would allow crypto payments online as well as at five of its in-store locations. Gucci accepts Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Cash, Bitcoin Cash and Dogecoin as payments.
Balenciaga will initially allow payment in Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, plans are to expand the program to include other coins.
Web3 is home to luxury fashion. Many legacy brands such as Gucci, Gucci and Nike have launched NFT collections and metaverse pop ups in the last year. These brands may be traditional in certain ways, but they all seem to agree on digital fashion as an opportunity. Decrypt interviewed several industry experts in October to discuss how the digital fashion industry could soon approach, or even surpass, the $2 trillion worth of physical fashion.
Balenciaga’s December announcement of the creation of an in-house business unit for metaverse was made. Although Cedric Charbit (the label’s CEO) declined to discuss the plans and long-term strategy of the unit to the , he did state that he views the metaverse “a country”, a market as important as any other nation in which the brand operates.
Balenciaga’s embrace for cryptocurrency is a sign that the crypto market may be entering another Cyber Winter. A little less than $563 would get you a Balenciaga hoodie worth $1,250 in November. The brand’s leadership is not affected by the volatility of the crypto market. Charbit was asked by Balenciaga if the recent market crash had affected his position on crypto. He simply responded that his thinking was “long term.”
