Trademark filings from Walmart Inc. discovered by CNBC Sunday reveal that the retail giant may have plans to create its own nonfungible token virtual assets in order to sell virtual goods, plus a cryptocurrency.

Walmart filed seven trademark applications on Dec. 30. They included a filing regarding the production of a digital currency as well as a software wallet and another that involved an online retail store featuring virtual merchandise.

Although the filings don’t necessarily signal a specific intent by the retailer, trademark attorney Josh Gerben told CNBC that the language in the documents was “super intense.”

“There’s a lot of language in these, which shows that there’s a lot of planning going on behind the scenes about how they’re going to address cryptocurrency, how they’re going to address the metaverse and the virtual world that appears to be coming or that’s already here,” Gerben said.

Facebook Inc.’s recent name change to Meta Platforms Inc. and shift of the company’s attention to the metaverse, a network of 3D virtual worlds where people can socialize and conduct commerce, has created a gold rush for companies to figure out how to fit virtual reality into their business models.

In many cases, NFTs and cryptocurrencies come along with that as an easy means to provide transactions. NFTs allow for the ownership of virtual items in virtual worlds such as avatars and virtual apparel, whereas a cryptocurrency would permit Walmart to create its own loyalty points system but use decentralized web3 technology to do it.

By taking advantage of NFTs and web3 technology, businesses hope to jump onto the ongoing gold rush happening in the industry surrounding its growing audience. An NFT collection produced by Walmart need not be locked just to the company’s internal ecosystem, meaning it could be exchanged for other crypto or dollars.

Already other retailers have begun to dip their toes into selling NFTs. Clothing retailer Gap Inc. recently began minting its own NFT collection between $9 and $436. Sportswear retailer Adidas AG also debuted an NFT collection called “Into the Metaverse” and made $23.4 million in a single afternoon from the sale.

The draw of NFTs in combination with metaverse efforts has been so attractive that Spatial Systems Inc., formerly a virtual reality collaboration platform, recently shifted the focus of its company to become a cultural venue for NFT exhibitions, galleries and branded experiences.

“We are testing new ideas all the time,” Walmart said in a statement. “Some ideas become products or services that make it to customers. And some we test, iterate, and learn from.”

According to a new estimate from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis Inc. the NFT market volume may have exceeded $41 billion during 2021, reported Bloomberg. If last year is any indication, NFTs and the virtual economy generated interest in them will only lead to even more large businesses offering NFT and metaverse products.

Photo: Walmart