Bentley’s beloved former women's basketball coach, Barbara Stevens, was enshrined into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame on May 15, 2021. To help commemorate her career, Bentley is issuing two non-fungible tokens (NFTs). You now have the opportunity to own a piece of basketball history and one of the first NFTs issued by a university.
What are NFTs?
NFTs are a new kind of digital collectible that uses blockchain technology, allowing individuals to “own” a digital asset. A recent article in the NY Times provides more information about the emerging NFT market.
Coach Stevens NFT's
1,000th Win
This NFT commemorates Coach Stevens winning her 1,000th game, making her one of only 11 coaches in NCAA history to win 1,000 games or more. She retired with 1,058 career wins.
- Limited to (1) special edition
- Auction format with starting minimum price of $25.
- Auction ends May 31, 2021 at 11:59 pm EST.
- Ten-second video clip of Coach Stevens and team celebrating her 1,000th win. The NFT also includes a list of her key accomplishments.
In Her Own Words
This NFT shares some words of wisdom from Coach Stevens, one of the winningest coaches in basketball history. In addition to over 1,000 wins, she was recently inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, coached the 2014 NCAA Division II National Champions, and was a five-time Division II National Coach of the Year.
- Limited to (100) digital editions
- Fixed price format of $10 (plus cryptocurrency fees).
- Image of Coach Stevens shown above along with a 10-second audio clip of Coach Stevens providing some inspiring words. Also includes a list of her key accomplishments.
These NFTs are for entertainment purposes only. They may gain or lose value. Please see the terms and conditions (section 7) for a full description of the risks in purchasing an NFT. Terms and Conditions
The NFTs are deemed to have financial value equal to the final purchase price, and no portion of the purchase price is deemed to be a donation to Bentley University.
How to purchase Coach Stevens NFT's
The Barbara Stevens NFTs are being sold on the OpenSea platform. OpenSea is the largest NFT marketplace in the world and hosts NFTs from artists, musicians, athletes and sports teams. Because these are the early days of NFTs, setting up and purchasing an NFT can require a bit of patience, especially if you are new to cryptocurrencies. If you are a novice, consider this an opportunity to gain exposure to a rapidly emerging field.
To purchase a Bentley NFT:
- Go to Bentley’s page on OpenSea. Choose the NFT you are interested in and click the “Buy Now” button.
- When you press "Buy," you will be asked to connect your Ethereum wallet or open a new one. Wallets are where you store the Ethereum cryptocurrency that is used to purchase NFTs. OpenSea provides Help information on setting up and funding a wallet. The easiest wallet to use on OpenSea is MetaMask but OpenSea supports a number of other wallets, too.
- Once your wallet is funded, you can make the purchase. OpenSea provides some help on this process.
- Upon purchase, the NFT will be stored in your digital wallet where you can store it or sell it to someone else.
Frequently Asked Questions
This is a collection of NFTs celebrating important events and milestones in the Bentley University history. The first NFT collection will focus on the incredible career of women’s basketball coach Barbara Stevens, one of the winningest coaches in college or pro basketball history. Coach Stevens was enshrined into the Basketball Hall of Fame on May 15, 2021. The NFT allows you to own a piece of this basketball history and participate in one of the first NFT launches by a college or university.
The NFTs will be available for purchase via the OpenSea.io NFT marketplace. You will need to set up a MetaMask Wallet and an OpenSea Account to participate in the auction.
In order to bid, you must pay using Ethereum. Credit cards are not accepted.
The NFTs will be be available on May 17, 2021. The auction will end on May 31.
The Barbara Stevens' 1,000th Win NFT is being sold via an English auction which will start on May 17, 2021 and end on May 31, 2021. The NFT will be sold to the highest bidder. At the end of the auction, the highest bidder will receive their commemorative NFT in their wallet following receipt of payment.
Yes, once you own the NFT and it is in your wallet, you can resell it on OpenSea or any other NFT marketplace.
The NFT will be stored in your digital wallet. You can view it from within the digital wallet, transfer it to other compatible digital wallets, or sell it to someone else.
The Barbara Stevens NFTs are among the first offered by a college or university anywhere in the United States.
No. Due to the recent advent of NFTs and a lack of regulatory clarity on how to treat their purchase in the non-profit world, the Barbara Stevens NFTs are not treated as gifts to the university and are not tax-deductible.
Owning an NFT essentially means that instructions are encoded into a blockchain (mostly the Ethereum blockchain) specifying that you are the owner of a certain image/video/audio/etc. and pointing to where the file is stored and can be viewed. Most NFTs are stored in multiple locations using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a new protocol designed to provide storage redundancy for the blockchain. A good article on this subject can be found on Mashable.
There are transaction fees that Ethereum and OpenSea charge for NFT purchases and auctions. Because we have set a low price for the fixed-cost NFT, the transaction fees could be more than the actual NFT. There is also a fee to place a bid on the auctioned NFT. Blockchains are working to lower these fees, but for now, these transaction costs should be factored into the full cost of purchasing an NFT.
The majority of NFTs are created and sold on the Ethereum blockchain. In its current state, Ethereum is not as efficient as some of the newer blockchains, but it is scheduled to upgrade to a new architecture in 2021 that will significantly reduce its energy usage. Bentley is closely monitoring this upgrade in the hope that future sales of the NFTs will be on the less energy intensive Ethereum 2.0 blockchain.
To help bridge this transition, Bentley will purchase carbon offsets for 100 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is about 10 times the amount of energy required to create and sell its NFTs. These carbon offsets will help to finance a project in Louisiana that has developed technology to remove potent greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector.