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- Idea Of The Day - Build the On-Chain Marketplace for Luxury Watches (Where Real Data = Profit)
Idea Of The Day - Build the On-Chain Marketplace for Luxury Watches (Where Real Data = Profit)
Needs To Exist
March 06, 2025
In partnership with
GM. This is Needs to Exist (NTE), delivering you a startup idea that turns luxury watches into a tradable asset class.
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Here’s what we’ve got for you today.
Daily Idea - Trade luxury watches
RWA’s - You Must Know About Them
Stock market for luxury watches
Inspired by this tweet
The One Liner
The stock market for luxury watches—speculate on prices, trade with confidence.
The 140 character tweet (or X) version
Bet on the future of luxury watches. A decentralized trading platform with real-time price indexes. Trade in 2 minutes.
The Longer Story Version
The Problem
Buying and selling luxury watches today is a mess.
Prices are all over the place.
Marketplaces are controlled by middlemen.
Data is unreliable or locked behind paywalls.
You know that guy who flipped his Rolex for 3x profit? Cool story. But without real-time, unbiased data, you’re either lucky or late.
If watches are an asset class, where’s the Bloomberg Terminal for it?
The Solution
The first decentralized marketplace where you can speculate on watch prices, trade seamlessly, and rely on real price indexes that update daily.
Here’s how it works:
Daily Price Indexes: We pull data from multiple sources to create a real-time, blockchain-verified price index. No BS, just real market value.
Speculation & Trading: Buy and sell based on price trends. Think a Patek is underpriced? Go long. See Rolexes cooling off? Short it.
Seamless Trading: Set up in 2 minutes. No paperwork. No middlemen. Just trading.
It’s the stock market for luxury watches—backed by transparent, verified data.
How We’d Build It
1. Data Aggregation & Indexing
Use WatchCharts API + Chrono24 Market Data + direct scrape from auction houses.
Aggregate price trends and normalize them into a reliable median price index.
2. Decentralized Trading Layer
3. Fast, Simple UI
Build with Next.js + Supabase for a sleek, fast-trading experience.
Plug in TradingView charts for easy price visualization.
4. Monetization
Transaction fees on trades (like an exchange).
Premium analytics for deep historical price data.
Data licensing for hedge funds, watch investors, and market analysts.
Why It Needs to Exist
Because the watch market is a trillion-dollar casino with no scoreboard.
Right now, only insiders and deep-pocket collectors have access to real market data. This levels the playing field, turning watches into a true asset class—where anyone can trade based on real, verified price trends.
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Real-World Assets (RWA’s) on Chain
Want to own a piece of a skyscraper? A Banksy? A championship-winning sports team?
Until now, you needed a trust fund, a hedge fund, or a rich uncle. But thanks to real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain, you might only need a few bucks and an internet connection.
RWAs are about bringing offline wealth into the digital world—fractionalizing ownership of physical stuff and making it tradeable, liquid, and investable for the masses.
And if you’re a founder? This is a once-in-a-generation startup opportunity.
Let’s break it down:
WTF Are Real-World Assets?
Imagine turning expensive, illiquid assets—real estate, art, gold, or even a yacht—into digital tokens that can be bought and sold in real time.
A $10M mansion? Fractionalize it.
A rare Ferrari? Split it into tokens.
A Billboard Top 100 song’s royalties? Tokenize and trade it like stocks.
It’s Robinhood meets Monopoly—but the game board is the entire global economy.
RWAs aren’t new (think ETFs or REITs), but putting them on blockchain supercharges liquidity, transparency, and access. No banks. No brokers. No middlemen charging 3% for breathing.
Why RWAs Are A Startup Playground
Here’s what happens when you move trillions of dollars worth of real-world assets onto crypto rails:
🚀 More liquidity – Assets that used to take months (or years) to sell can move in seconds.
🌎 Global markets – Anyone with an internet connection can buy a piece of an asset, not just accredited investors.
🤯 New business models – RWAs open the door for innovative lending, trading, investing, and ownership structures.
Which means… founders can build billion-dollar companies around tokenized RWAs.
5 RWA Startup Ideas You Can Build Today
1. Tokenized Luxury Assets (The "Stock Market for Cool Stuff")
Build a fractional ownership marketplace where people can buy and sell shares of luxury goods (like above) —Rolexes, Patek Philippes, rare sneakers, supercars.
🔧 Tools: Manifold, Fractional.art, NFTfi
💡 Example: Rally Rd. (but fully on-chain)
2. Music & IP Royalties (Passive Income for the Masses)
Create a marketplace for tokenized song royalties, patents, or books—where investors can earn revenue from streaming, licensing, and resale rights.
🔧 Tools: Royal.io, Anote Music, Catalog
💡 Example: Imagine if you could own 0.1% of Drake’s next album and collect streaming royalties forever.
3. DeFi Mortgages (Instant Home Loans, No Banks Needed)
Use crypto as collateral to underwrite loans for tokenized real estate. Smart contracts replace banks, making mortgages instant, transparent, and global.
🔧 Tools: Centrifuge, Goldfinch, SkyMoney
💡 Example: Borrow against your crypto stack to buy a fractional home in NYC.
4. Sports Team Ownership (Buy a Stake in Your Favorite Team)
Fans pool money to own a slice of their favorite sports teams, stadiums, or player contracts—all managed by DAOs.
💡 Example: Imagine if fans owned 5% of the Dallas Mavericks and got voting rights on jersey designs.
5. Ticketing & Event Passes (Kill Scalpers, Make Tickets Resellable)
Turn concert & sports tickets into on-chain assets—where resales are fair, transparent, and split profits with artists & teams instead of scalpers.
💡 Example: Resell your Coachella ticket without losing 30% to StubHub.
Why RWAs Haven’t Exploded (Yet)
The space is early, but big problems = big opportunities:
⚖️ Regulation is murky – SEC still figuring out the rules.
🔗 Bridges between physical & digital – You need trusted custodians to ensure a token truly represents a real-world asset.
💡 Education gap – Most people still don’t know RWAs exist, let alone how to invest in them.
These aren’t roadblocks. They’re startup ideas.
The Next Wave of RWA Startups Will Be Huge
RWAs will be the backbone of the next bull market. Institutions like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are already moving into the space.
If you’re a builder, the time to start is now.
Got an idea? Ship fast, test faster.
One More Meme
