My adventure into the crypto craze.
Mid March NFTs were kinda THE thing — Non fungible tokens — think about that. Non fungible tokens — a digital file stored on the ethereum blockchain and that file is unique and cannot be exchanged. Hence Non fungible token. If you buy one that makes you the owner of a unique digital file stored on the blockchain. The mere thought of that makes me put on that leather coat and shades from the Matrix movie.
To put this in perspective, finally all the digital artists were in for a treat, the question how can digital art get valuable seems resolved. Files can be sold to collectors and they have proof they are the only ones owning that file (set aside the fact that the file can be copied — that makes it a new file — and sold again). NFTs allow ownership proof, help make digital goods valuable and tradeable. The NFT that helped the craze to visibility is a jpg consisting of many digital paintings by artist beeple was auctioned by sothebys for a stunning 69 mio $ making a relatively unknown artist rich. Yes THE sothebys — so must be legit thing going on there.
Now NFTs were traded like crazy, the trading volume on exchanges had reached like 500 mio within a few weeks. People were getting rich and people were now into collecting digital files as a way to store and grow their wealth — similar to speculating with art — just much more accessible and easier to trade as everything happens online. The voices of it all being a scam, pure speculation without value were starting to become louder, those already suspicious of the value of traditional art thought to be in for a treat. Their notion that art has no real value and is pure speculation was amplified and put for everyone to witness by the NFT craze — but nobody cared people were getting rich so who cares where the value comes from?
Aside from art, virtual collectors cards, parts of virtual worlds were hitting the markets. This is matrix style property ownership, if we all one day get stuck in a tube and are living our lives digitally, those early collectors are among the first people to own parts of that digital world.
Beeple, a guy nobody ever had heard about, was now rich. Caught by a tulip-mania style rush, I thought to myself: this was my time, my turn to be rich like a guy nobody ever had heard about. So somewhere stuck in lock down and in need of a weekend hobby, this was my chance — I was gonna be filthy rich overnight. Like Cinderella, a filthy rich princess — a dream story.
I did not waste any time — what could I create or list on opensea.io (one of the NFT exchanges) that could go nuts? I checked my pics on my phone and found a fingerpainting I once made in whatsapp on a pic of a friends living room, which shows people having sex in different positions. BINGO, I thought. Orgy — sex sells, thats it, what works for renessaince paintings works for me, that’s a master piece.
My mind went fast, my mind went big, quickly I had it all planned out. I was gonna be THE whatsapp finger painting artist with a sexy alias name: Dr Agane Ogodovic, a whats app finger painting sexual therapist (I made up my alias name in high school, as a joke with my friend, when I needed a writers name as I considered writing cheesy erotic novels that could be sold next to the supermarket counter).
Dr. Agane Ogodovic — I was gonna be like the guy who taped a banana on a museum wall — in art with a concept anything goes. The plan was solid, the story sounded perfect. I saw myself on magazine covers.
So I signed up to opensea.io, installed metamask to my browser (a crypto wallet), charged my coinbase wallet, transferred ether worth 55$ to my metamask wallet, a move which cost me 2$! in transaction fees as coinbase fees are insane. (I’d never recommend using their overpriced services, which makes their stock so overvalued as eventually cheaper competitors can wipe out their sexy profit margins). I uploaded my picture, gave my listing an exciting title ‘sofa happenings’ uhlala intriguing, named my profile ‘agane’ with the crunchy tagline: I capture the sexual nature of humans in the digital age — how spicy. Selfcontent, I patted myself on the shoulder. Nothing can go wrong. This is a sure deal — I’m gonna wake up to millions in my wallet. I reassured myself before proceeding to describe how this piece of art was made. ‘Index Finger (yes my magic finger did it) on Iphone 11 x max pro screen.’ — how ingenious instead of oil on canvas, that sounds modern, that sounds vogue. So I went on to pay the 50$ gas fee in ethereum to list my file. Gas fee is what the miners get so they use their CPU to solve the algorithms to compute your file into the blockchain. Then I pressed publish, my piece of art was now on the market alongside the 15,429,655 other NFTs — ohhh shit that’s a lot of listed files. But mine is gonna stick out. It will happen — available for the real artsy buyer to discover and make me filthy rich. There were around 40 000 active traders on opensea.io back in March — they must be able to discover my genius.
And I was even willing to give it a little push. One can’t leave everything to chance. I tweeted it to my 217 followers, tagged the big nft collectors in my tweet, added some popular hashtags as well as asked 4 people to reshare (of whom 3 did it, thank you guys for believing in me). Et voila — the magic was done. Now all that was left to do was to simply wake up and worry about how to answer the press and get the millions off of my metamask wallet into my bank account.
So of course I couldn’t publicly acknowledge that that was my endgame — I still regard myself as somewhat intellectual, analytical, down to earth? But yes, an ambitious person and with that sentiment — internet do your magic — I went to sleep.
The next day, like on the morning of christmas, I rushed down to open my opensea account only to see an empty wallet and 6 people that had seen my listing and none of them had bought. Are people insane nowadays? How could they not see the potential of this. I closed the opensea website and dismissed NFTs as evil witchcraft — I might as well buy lottery tickets worth 50$ to balance out the universe.
Check my listing: https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/78393606217312686147800030250291946356906797296594433439611960853363538526209
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