Why an Italian soccer star is making NFT art | Interview with Chiesa & D'Anna

Hey, everyone. Hope all is well. My name is Tom Farren, I'm a tech writer at Cointelegraph and usually you can find me writing articles over on the website, but today I'm on the YouTube channel. I'm going to be chatting with Juventus and Italian national footballer Federico Chiesa and the founder of Hoffa Gallery and NFT platform, Elio Di Anna, about the launch of the creation platform and Chiesa's inaugural NFT collection. Federico, I wanted to come to you first. Congratulations on the successes in the summer for the European competition. How does it feel like reflecting on the past six months of that success? How does it feel to be a winner of that competition?

It's a pleasure to me to be here, to be interviewed by you, by Cointelegraph. It's just amazing. And, you know, creating this new collaboration with the Helio, with this, with the offline creation, it's just great. And I mean, the whole point of the collaboration of these artworks is on the European Championship. It was, you know, just amazing to win such an important tournament for your country, you know, and I think I still need some time to realize what actually I've achieved during the summer. So it was just, you know, an unbelievable moment. You know, it's difficult to be, you know, to have it again in the future because it was just something that, you know, incredible. Just incredible.

A lot of people said that you won the best players at the tournament. So congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you.

So I know you're an advocate of the NFT spike. You've got a keen interest in the space. I know you've got a few NFTs yourself from the Hofer Collection, from some of their recent exhibitions. And so what kind of, what aspect of NFTs really interest you? Is it the art side, the technology? Is it the potential for growth?

The thing that, you know, got me the most about, you know, this project with Helio and his North End creation, you know, about this, you know, creating my new NFT was just the art side of it because, you know, when I was a big fan, when I, when, you know, when I was traveling with my family in foreign countries, you know, we used to go and, you know, see museums of, you know, art paintings and everything. So it was just amazing. And then having the chance to create in this modern era, my painting, my virtual painting was just amazing, just amazing. You know, the idea of creating something like an artwork, actually an actual artwork, you know, and even if it's digitalized, but it was just great.

What kind of story you're Trying to encapsulate within that. What story you trying to tell with that artwork?

No, as I mentioned before, in this, in this artworks, we were trying to get the most out of the, of what I've experienced throughout the, the championship, throughout the tournament, and my emotions and especially One of the NFTs, you know, one of this artwork, it was about my celebration after I scored the goal against Austria. And we just tried to, you know, replicate the emotion, the feelings on, you know, on this artwork.

That's really good. And what's the ambition for the nft? What's the goal? For your perspective?

No, my goal was to give something to my fans, you know, after the Euro, of course, I had, you know, a massive, you know, increase on followers on Instagram and everything. So I wanted to give something back to my fans to have. And, you know, on the 29th of December, everything is dropping. So I'm hoping for the best, you know.

That's great. Yeah, good luck with that as well. Elio, I'm going to come to you now. I know that Hoffa Gallery has quite an established history with cryptocurrencies. I know some. When I visited the gallery, I researched a lot about it and since 2018, you've been engaging in that space. What kind of inspired you to collaborate with Federico on this initiative?

We were first of all so blessed to be able to collaborate with someone of the caliber of Federico. We were for a long time thinking, let's go and propose this. And when it just took a second, Federico was like, are you really asking me to make my own nft? I was like, yeah, that's right. He was like, I love.

Was my pleasure. It was my pleasure.

It took about two seconds. It was done. Then it was like, okay, we can talk about something else then. So apparently he had some good friends that were kind of pushing him. Oh, you know, you should really do that. I think we're living in a very particular moment in history and I think it's all about the timing and it's about finding that person that can represent that moment in history. And I think Federico Chiesa was the perfect, you know, the best possible candidate we could ever wish for when it came to doing our first ever.

Non.

Strictly fine art nft. So it's the first time we actually collaborated in making an NFT for someone that's in the sport industry, an entertainer and so on. So we, with this new platform creation, the whole concept is that I think the only aspect that's pushing people away from acquiring NFTs is obviously these very high gas fees that are in Ethereum. So what we've done with the creation platform is that it's built on Solana. For the end user, you don't really feel the difference because all you're doing is you're getting a phantom wallet instead of a metamask wallet. But effectively the purchasing experience is the same, but it cost a fraction. You buy an NFT for $1. And that's amazing because sometimes, and then you can buy a collectible NFT like this one. But in some cases people were trying to buy something and I think the prices were becoming astronomical in so many aspects and they're kind of scaring people away. And I think this is not about doing something that is only for a very high and collector and a very, you know, top of the pyramid sort of, sort of buyer. We wanted this to be, as Federico said, something for the fans, something for everyone. Of course there's an auction which, you know, we don't know where it could potentially reach, but there is also an addition of 2,500 of an NFT which will give, you know, effectively two and a half thousand people the opportunity to own an original work by Federico Chiesa.

So I saw a little bit about, in the future you're going to work with more sports people and also entertainment. I'm not going to ask for names specifically, but are you going to go down a similar route with that, with the Solana as opposed to Ethereum, just because of the high entry fees our.

Hoffa IO platform is built on. Ethereum is already out there on beta since, as you know, since quite a few months now, but that will focus strictly on, you know, fine art artists that have, you know, a background in, you know, being exhibited through galleries. So we're keeping a very curated, more high end approach. But with Creation, we really wanted to do something slightly more open, something that can embrace also entertainment, sports, music, also, you know, some gaming aspects. So we wanted something perhaps also, perhaps for a younger generation maybe, but definitely more accessible. And in order to make something accessible, Solana was the best solution for us. And yeah, we worked hard in making this platform.

Federico, coming back to you now, you might be aware that Juventus partnered with Socios.com in 2018 to release a fan token. And we've heard a lot about how this affects, how this affects, like from the fan side and how fans are becoming quite receptive to these new initiatives. As a player, like how does that impact you and what's your perspective on that?

As Elio mentioned, we're Living in a moment that we need to, you know, make people understand the possibilities that come with the NFT and all these, you know, platform platforms that you mentioned, you know, and it's just great. It sounds like something in the far future, but it's just happening right now. I think the whole thing about this is making them connecting even more to you, to the, to the club, the emotion side of things, you know, it's all about emotion, you know, football. So I mean, having this interaction, you know, even if it's digitalized, it's great.

I agree with that. Yeah, totally. Elian, coming back to you now, what's your like, expectations for the going into 2022? Do you think we will see that mainstream adoption that a lot of people talk about?

I think so. I think 2022 would be an absolutely defining year. We'll see a lot of mainstream adoption. The NFT and tokenization space. Yeah.

And do you think like specifically NFTs or just the wider crypto space?

I think the wider crypto space, I think what hasn't been explored yet on a major scale is obviously tokenization with, with, you know, something being owned by a multitude of people. So basically a crowd ownership of something which means, you know, things can be funded by, you know, the general public and you know, this can be done all via blockchain. I think it's amazing because, I mean, I remember some story there's a pub in London that was going to get closed, shut down and all the locals loved it. So they all decided to put some money all together and they kept this pub going. And I, I think that's a perfect example of something that there could be a business that's just not able to survive, but they have a beautiful business model and maybe it's something that's really worth keeping and they can just reach out and via the technology they can get funding and everyone can benefit from this directly through the blockchain with transparency of ownership. I think there are many examples of real world use where the, both NFT and in general, the tokenization models can become very interesting for the real world.

Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, definitely. Federico, we hope you get back to fitness as soon as possible.

Thank you for your time. It was just a pleasure having this interview with you and yeah, I'm coming back.

Great to hear.

Okay, thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate that.

Sam.