On today’s Business Beat, Jeff Sloan explains the latest trend in the digital world: Yats. These one- to five-emoji strings can be used as a digital username and more.
Turn in to the Business Beat, below, to learn more about yats:
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Good morning, Paul. Well, business in the digital world is going crazy. And we mean way beyond just buying and selling online. We mean Bitcoin cryptocurrencies, the metaverse and then NFTs. But now along comes the yat? What in the world? That’s right, a yat. What’s a yat, you might reasonably ask? Well, it’s a string of between one and five emojis that can be used as your digital username when strung together. You can also use it as a website URL and/or a payment address for your personal digital wallet. And people are paying big money for them, Paul. Now, I know. Stick with me here. In simple terms, a yat lets you use emojis as your universal username and identity on the Internet and that’s why they’re so valuable. Now, a Nashville-based startup by the same name, that’s yat, has this to say. They indicate that they’ve already sold 160,000 of these yats worth a combined $20 million. Now one of these one- to five-character yats can cost anywhere from $4 to hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase initially. And typically the shorter and more memorable the combination, the higher the price of the yat. The most expensive yat was the single character of a golden key, get ready, which sold for $425,000 at the Yat Destiny auction in mid 2021. Having trouble grasping all of this? Well, just like with NFTs, many notable celebrity investors, including Paris Hilton and Kesha, for example, are big investors in yats and no doubt this is influencing others to get on board. And so with all these newfangled businesses selling digital assets, like NFTs and yats and even virtual property in the metaverse now selling for millions, it’s certainly eye-opening and even admittedly a bit hard to grasp for those of us in our region where we’re used to selling things that are made of steel and glass and rubber and have true utility, as in something you can drive to go somewhere. But look, here’s the thing. This also opens our minds to the amazingly tantalizing new array of business opportunities emerging, which are driving billions of dollars in transactions. I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of startupnation.com and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice to the Great Lakes, WJR.
