Pandemic confinement, long-term closures of public spaces, and the ubiquitous fascination with digital life have opened the world to the phenomenon of NFT. Essentially, NFTs are a type of cryptocurrency that can be invested in creating your own digital art collection.
But sometimes NFTs are far from art. Sometimes it’s just stupidity that people pay real money for. Let’s talk about them today.
#1. Place on skin
Tennis player Alexandra Oleinikova put up for sale a part of her body. The 20-year-old athlete offered bidders a lifetime right to tattoo or any other art object on her right arm or shoulder. According to buidlbee.com, at OpenSea, Oleinikova received over $5,400 for this weird NFT. Whaaaat?
#2. Toilet paper for $4000
After Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Quartz, toilet paper brand Charmin has also joined the trend to launch NFTs. The Charmin brand, manufactured by Procter & Gamble, has released a non-fungible token under the motto “sometimes the best bathroom experience goes beyond the seat.”
Charmin has released six unusual NFTs and listed them on Rarible. Artists such as Shaney Benjamin, Donna Ady, and Made by Radio have created each of these NFTs, which are different types of toilet paper rolls. A physical painting also accompanied each item and was auctioned for 3,221 wETH ($3900 today).
#3. Art by Paris Hilton
It is worth saying that Paris Hilton generally shows miracles of involvement in the context of time. Paris, whose fashion is experiencing a new round, was one of the first to understand the nature of NFT and launched a whole gallery of digital art. To purchase a self-portrait of a shameless blonde, which she called the Iconic Crypto Queen, it took more than a million dollars. The celebrity and businesswoman believes that this is a completely justified price.
#4. Burnt Morons from Banksy
Blockchain company Injective Protocol purchased Banksy’s Morons (White) artwork for $95,000, after which it was burned live and turned into a digital asset – a non-fungible token. By the way, the picture itself makes fun of collectors who spend a lot of money on art.
According to Mirza Uddin, CEO of Injective Protocol, this was the first time that a serious piece of art has been turned into a unique digital asset.
#5. $85 for the sound of fart
When the COVID-19 lockdown began last March, Brooklyn filmmaker Alex Ramirez-Mullis and four friends did the unobvious thing: they started sending audio recordings of their farts to each other via a WhatsApp group chat. A year later, Ramirez-Mullis auctions off the 52-minute flatulence sound as an NFT.
Auction starting price was $85. Would you pay $85 for gases? If you did, it would be a solid investment as someone ended up being willing to pay about $420 for this NFT.
#6. Symbiosis of Homer and Pepe
This is stupid, but a good example of why people buy NFTs: so that they can then sell them for a higher price.
This so-called piece of art looks like a Pokémon card with the fusion of Homer Simpson and Pepe. Homer Simpson is Homer Simpson and Pepe is an internet frog popular on 4Chan and various places on the internet. The NFT for this art was sold for $320,000.
#7. EtherRock
In August 2021, NFT tokens from the EtherRock collection, which was created in 2017 and consists of one hundred identical patterns of stones, gained popularity. Their value ranged from $96,000 to $1.9 billion.
The total trading volume of internal project tokens exceeded $15.5 million, according to the OpenSea marketplace.
On August 8, 2021, an unknown person purchased a non-fungible token from the EtherRock collection for $135 thousand. Then another token was bought for $103.9 thousand on the same day. On August 22, TRON CEO Justin Sun announced the purchase of an NFT token from the EthereRock collection for $611,000. World has gone mad.
So what’s next?
A lot of stupid NFT projects have popped up over the past few years. Definitely, there will be many more.
Perhaps the idea of non-fungible tokens was noble. Tokens can forever change the system by which digital content copyright works and protect crypto-pictures and videos from illegal copying. Also, the NFT will greatly ease the burden of copyright for musicians and allow streaming services to license films and series more quickly.
But for now, it’s just a bunch of useless and sometimes stupid things that people make big money on.