Investment is “Wearing” Digital
This is what Valerio Pastore, creator of XBinary, a new virtual reality project created through collaboration with Fondazione Sozzani, guarantees
Founder of Tailor Ventures and creator of XBinary. How would you explain these two creatures of yours to newcomers to the digital world?
I started out as an expert in computer security and cryptography in military environments, a sector for which I created Boolebox, a data protection software that has now been adopted by the European Commission and EEAS, a department dealing with European foreign policy. I founded Tailor Ventures in 2020 together with Massimiliano Maggi, a technological venture capital company, which is nothing more than an incubator for start-ups focused on “game changing” ideas. XBinary, on the other hand, is the first cross-reality designed for people working in luxury: it helps them construct their digital presence and prepares them to enter the Metaverse, transforming a selection of artworks into their digital version, thus creating unique pieces with augmented reality and eventually certified and listed NFTs.
How did the NFT Genesis Jewelry and NFT Heroes projects come about?
I have known Carla Sozzani for quite some time and when I saw the jewelry by Kris Ruhs, co-founder of Fondazione Sozzani, I thought it was just perfect for a first collection of one-of-a-kind pieces in the Metaverse and that’s how NFT Genesis Jewelry began. NFT Heroes, on the other hand, is a collection of animated designs, so to speak. The launching of “Heroes” was announced in April and the first piece was put up for sale online at Foundation - the market place for NFTs - at the beginning of June and since then, we have been offering a new one every Monday, which we regularly sell in less than 12 hours. With base auction price at €750 and average final price around €5,000, I’d say the response is more than positive.
What does this “virtual jewelry” consist of?
The idea came from DressX, a digital fashion platform with which we are collaborating. It transposes collections made in the physical world into virtual reality. XBinary is the result of associating this concept with that of NFTs: it makes a virtual jewel, transformed in turn into a perfectly three-dimensional work of art, wearable, perhaps during a video call. But above all, it is totally unique and therefore has the potential to increase in value in the near future. So, I buy a virtual jewel today, signed with its artistic version listed as an NFT, I wear it in the Metaverse and tomorrow, if I want to resell it, I may find that it has increased in value as a certified work of art.
What developments could such an invention lead to?
XBinary is not just a one-off experiment. The same process of transposing an object into digital and listing it on the parallel NFT market could be applied to the entire luxury segment. That’s why Xbinary will soon be launching its own special market place. In short, we are looking at the birth of a new asset: I buy something today that, thanks to perfecting this new technology and the growing interest it is arousing, could prove to be a fantastic investment in the not-too-distant future. Our intention is to create not only the best digital version of the physical object - whether it be an item of jewelry, a dress or a work of art - but also its history, the ecosystem that revolves around it, everything up to its reference market.
