Ice Cube declares his support for DOGE

Ice Cube declared his support for the “DogeArmy” after Bill Lee purchased $625,000 (R10m) in NFTs tied to the rappers’ BIG3 basketball league in DOGE. Ice Cube, also known as O’Shea Jackson Sr, has jumped on the Dogecoin bandwagon, endorsing an “incredible and historical” DOGE transaction.

Cube’s foray into the wild world of Dogecoin is connected to the BIG3 basketball league, which he co-founded. Former NBA stars play in a three-on-three format rather than the traditional five-on-five basketball games in the organization.

The BIG3 announced a new ownership model for the league last month, which consists of selling tokenized stakes in each of the 12 teams. Each team is given 1000 NFTs in total, with 25 “Fire” NFTs worth $25,000(R 402K) each and 975 “Gold” NFTs worth $5,000(R80.4K) each.

On May 4, MyDoge wallet co-founder Bill Lee tweeted at Ice Cube, saying, “if ya dig DOGE, me and the DogeArmy will take one as well,” referring to Ice Cube’s previous post announcing that Snoop Dogg was purchasing two teams.

“Come on with it Bill, you know I’m down with the DogeArmy,” Ice Cube responded.

While it’s unclear how “down” with the DogeArmy Ice Cube is, the BIG3 quickly issued a press release the next day announcing that Lee had purchased all 25 Fire NFTs for the “Aliens” team via DOGE.

The “incredible and historical” transaction, as described by Ice Cube, was worth $625,000, or approximately 4.86 million DOGE, and the BIG3 also referred to it as the “largest commercial transaction in DOGE history.”

The Fire NFTs represent the top tier of ownership and utility benefits, including game management, voting rights, and intellectual property/licensing rights for team logos, names, and merchandise. Notably, if the owner/hodler sold their Fire NFTs, they would also receive a 40% cut of the sale.

As part of the announcement, Lee made a slight jab at NFT projects that feature apes and owls, implying that he only considers NFT projects that have utility. Despite the fact that some ape and owl projects have built utility for hodlers, this is pretty lofty rhetoric for a man primarily working on wallets for a meme coin that was created as a joke.

“While others are buying NFT images of apes and owls, I believe that NFTs with utility are the next frontier. It is a dream to own a basketball team and the BIG3 is shifting the NFT game by offering ownership rights such as licensing/IP, team voting/management, and merchandising.”