Non Fungible Tokens
Will Big Cat Rescue Promote My Project?
A lot of NFT creators and COIN creators reach out to me and ask me to promote their project. My name, Carole Baskin and that of the sanctuary I founded, Big Cat Rescue, are well known and respected, so these creators want the cache of saying that we back their project. Most of them, I believe, are well intentioned and they want to make a lot of money so they can make meaningful donations to the sanctuary cats or our conservation efforts in the wild. The ones who have made a difference for animals are listed on our NFT Leaderboard.
There are many, many others (including my own NFTs) that have not reached their potential for one reason or another, so it's hard for me to consider new projects when there are so many that still haven't generated any meaningful income for the cats. I'll list projects where I own the NFT or Crypto Tokens first and then below that the projects we tried to promote that never sold enough to reach the first mile stone that would generate any funding for protecting wildcats.
NFT & COIN's Created to Benefit Big Cat Rescue
OpenSea https://opensea.io/BigCatRescue
Foundation https://foundation.app/@BigCatRescue
Rarible https://rarible.com/bcr/sale
Proton Market https://bigcatnfts.vercel.app/
Rally.io https://rally.io/creator/CAT/
BitClout https://bigcatrescue.org/bitclout/
Outside Projects That Hoped to Benefit Big Cat Rescue
These projects had seasoned teams, great art, roadmaps with a purpose and just couldn't reach a big enough audience to reach their full potential, despite me joining them on podcasts, on Clubhouse and in Twitter Spaces. If I couldn't help these projects sell out, or even reach their first milestone, then I probably can't help yours either.
Stray Cats NFTs https://straycats.io/
Cool Cats and Kittens https://www.nftjunglecollective.com/ccak
Projects We are Considering
There are some projects by outside creators that I think hold promise, but that I am not actively promoting yet. I may promote some of these if they choose legitimate wild cat sanctuaries and conservation efforts with the highest Charity Navigator ratings. I'm not interested in projects that want to fund efforts that are not highly respected by watchdog groups. While I am looking into the following, I can't vouch for them yet, because I just don't know enough about the projects or the people. My opinions are not advice and shouldn't be construed as such.
Wild Fat Cats NFTs https://www.wildfatcats.com/ I am in discussion with them because I feel they are pushing the boundaries of Web 3 with the most unique website in the industry. They have other elements that are ground breaking in the world of AR that I think will be a distinguishing factor.
Tippin' Tigers NFTs and COIN may have a unique proposition of merging the sale of NFTs and using the gifting of COIN Tokens, as a way of interacting in virtual reality commerce.
Why is Big Cat Rescue Involved in NFTs or COIN at All?
I think these are stepping stones toward a world where all wild cats live free. In essence, my vision is a world where no wild cat is held hostage. The only way to see them will be via remote viewing in the wild via live streaming cameras. You can read more about how those cameras would then generate income, via smart contracts on the blockchain directly into the wallets of people who live near populations of free roaming wild cats, so they are incentivised to protect the wild cats and wild spaces at BigCatRescue.org/earth
Aren't NFT's Bad for the Environment?
No real conservationist, nor anyone who knows anything about this industry, ever asks this, but we hear it all the time. If you go back in time far enough you will find those cavemen who warned against the use of fire. "It can burn you. It can burn down your home," they'd warn! Thankfully, the visionaries led us out of our cold, dark caves. There are costs to minting and trading NFT's and crypto currencies currently, but there are people smarter than either of us who working to make these transactions more eco-friendly. If you want to cast aspersions on those of us in the space, then first you need to compare the cost to the environment of an NFT vs all of your physical possessions and your animal based foods.
How Long Has Big Cat Rescue Been Interested in AI, VR, AR, Crypto, NFT's and such?
2003 was the first year Big Cat Rescue embed Oddcast characters and imbued them with AI to answer questions about the sanctuary and all exotic cat species. This later became SitePal.
2011-2014 Windsong Merit was our avatar in Second Life where we interacted about protecting wildcats.
2013 Carole Baskin was one of the Google Glass Explorers and captured video in real time during her work with the cats at Big Cat Rescue to share with our fans.
2014 Big Cat Rescue offered BitPay as a portal whereby people can donate BitCoin to the sanctuary.
2015 Chris Wilson's Tiger Selfie Augmented Reality app was promoted widely by Big Cat Rescue as an alternative to abusing cubs. The app member could overlay a number of tigers from the sanctuary with their own photos and create mashups that looked better than the real thing ever could.
2016 Began using the 360 Fly camera to record immersive videos of the big cats including hospital procedures, feeding them and daily cat keeper work. From 2016 forward we have invested in the best prosumer 180 3D cameras and put out one immersive video every week at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue We jumped on Google Cardboard when it came out to give fans a stereoscopic view of the big cats and gave away tens of thousands of our own branded versions.
2018 Carole Baskin purchased her first CryptoKitties this year and then promptly lost her seed phrase to her wallet and didn't find it until 3 years later in April 2021. When she saw how much crypto had increased in value, she began investigating further into all aspects of crypto and NFTs. We employed dozens of Oculus Go headsets into our education and outreach department and used every opportunity to put people faces in headsets.
2019 March 22 Big Cat Rescue opened the world's first Augmented Reality Zoo at the Citrus Park Mall. We used this space to get people to try both VR and AR. On August 10, 2019 a second location was opened in Plantation Florida at the Broward Mall. That same year we won a grant to train at the YouTube VR Creator camp and was given a Zicam K 1. This camera was too big and fussy for our run and gun type content with very active big cats, so we sold it and used the EVO YouTube gave us instead. We liked the EVO so much we bought and distributed 22 of them to our InSitu partners and sent Lauren Buckingham to their conference to train them in the use so they could share their work in the wild saving cats.
]
Carole Baskin's First NFT Purchase
2020 Met Xennial Digital at the Synapse Conference and hired them to create the world's first Virtual Reality game that teaches about the plight of the tiger. Game play includes rescuing a snared tiger from poachers and setting her free. This was deployed for free in the Oculus store for the Rift S and for under $5 on Steam and in the Oculus App Lab. It was also syndicated via Springboard / Veem to arcades across the U.S. and via VictoryXR to schools.
2021 On April 3 Carole Baskin minted Seth Tiger which sold for .44 ETH (nearly $1000 USD at the time) as income for Big Cat Rescue and was hooked. This led to setting up accounts for BigCatRescue on OpenSea, Foundation, Rarible, Rally.io, BitClout, Proton Market, Nifty Gateway, Nifty NFTs and others.
2021 On May 4th, Big Cat Rescue issues $CAT a freshly minted “alt coin”, AKA “creator coin” to their millions of fans worldwide. https://rally.io/creator/CAT/ The coin is used via Bonfire to reward AdvoCats with merch from our gift shop.
2021 When the Broward Mall AR Zoo location was closed the assets were donated to the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, FL.
2022 Discovered Crypto.com and began dabbling in their NFT space after meeting the founders of PsychoKitties in a Twitter Space in January.
