Late last spring Friday, Izzy Pollak decided to buy two Bored Ape NFTs. This is a reminder of what many people think. Yeah, but I still don’t know what an NFT is — Means he bought a unique digital image (in this case an ape).
As a boring monkey owner, he now has commercial rights to digital images as he wishes. Many people choose to view NFTs as profile pictures for their social media accounts.
(And if you’re wondering how you can prove ownership of your digital assets: every NFT, or non-fungible token, has a separate serial number and each NFT’s transaction history is stored on the blockchain. So you can see who is who is the real owner.)
A few months later, 29-year-old Pollack, who bought three more, got them from a collection of 10,000 NFTs known as the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Some apes wear gold jackets and animal print tunics. Others smoke cigars and laugh widely.
At the time, Mr. Pollack, who works for Geneies, a technology startup that manufactures NFTs and avatars in Los Angeles, didn’t have much disposable income. “I lived in a four-bedroom townhouse with the other three,” he said. “We all shared a bathroom. It felt like college life.”
He didn’t come from money either. During the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Pollack said at the age of 16 that his mother was unable to pay a mortgage and that he and his family had to rent an apartment.
Mr. Pollack’s interest in NFTs was inspired by listening to people talking about NFTs at the clubhouse. He said, “I’m saying,’Oh my god, this is insane. I’m trying to spend hundreds of dollars on monkey pictures,” he said.
It turned out to be a wise decision. A few months after he bought his first NFT last fall, the value of Mr. Pollack’s apes soared.He bought about 14 Ether (a virtual currency worth about $ 40,000 on the day of purchase) and about 70 Ether (about 70) $ 231,000 on sale date).
He spent the money on a down payment for a three-bedroom house in Los Angeles with a backyard. “We call it a chimpanzee chalet,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve always wanted to own a house, but I didn’t think I could make it work.”
He currently has three boring Ape NFTs In his portfolio. He hasn’t sold them yet, but he plans to sell them someday. For the first time in his life, he feels financially wealthy.
A handful of lucky people now have their own story from rags to riches, thanks to NFTs. Matt Medved, the founder of NftNow, a digital media publication on NFTs, has made “life-changing money” for some collectors and digital artists by investing in the right projects at the right time. Some people are spending money to repay student loans, buy a house, or quit a job they don’t like. (Of course, some people buy yachts or hold gorgeous parties.)
“NFTs are like heavenly mana,” said Pollack, who admits how lucky he is. “I’ve heard the horrifying stories of people spending their rent on NFTs. It’s usually painful to see people endanger their money when things go wrong.”
Most people who create or buy NFTs never make a profit. There are no regulations or consumer protection, and trading them is basically as dangerous as gambling. Investing in cryptocurrencies is risky and requires a lot of technical know-how and luck. Few financial professionals recommend it, and there are many scams.
Medved encourages people to think of NFTs like baseball cards. “For generations, our society has embraced the value of rare baseball cards,” he said. “There is a rare Mickey Mantle card that sold for $ 5.2 million last year and probably costs 5 cents. Why? It’s not about the physical part of the cardstock. It’s history, rarity, rarity, and cultural relevance. . “
“It comes down to fandom,” he added.
Similarly, creating by many NFT artists and investing by collectors is of little or no value in the long run. However, there are some NFTs that have become very valuable and have made huge amounts of money to owners and creators in a short period of time.
For example, a boring monkey purchased by Mr. Pollack could be cast for .08 Ethereum ($ 200 last spring). Now, in less than a year, the cheapest ones are worth about 73 Ether (about $ 190,000). (Ether can be converted to cash on major cryptocurrency platforms such as Coinbase and Gemini before being transferred to your bank account.)
Claire Silver, an artist in her early thirties dealing with artificial intelligence, is another success story for NFTs. In 2017, she was given three CryptoPunks by someone she met in Slack, a collection of 10,000 unique pixel art characters generated from the algorithm.
“I was in a chat room about cryptocurrencies, and I met this guy who was interested in art,” said Silver, who lives the nomadic lifestyle but recently lived in Denver. I did. He told her she had 730 CryptoPunks, she said. I said “of course”. “
In 2017, collectors could claim CryptoPunks for free as long as they had an Ethereum wallet. Currently, the cheapest ones sell for around 68 Ether (almost $ 175,000).
She grabbed her Until 2020 when she heard a grunt that they were selling for a lot of money. She sold one in July 2021 for about $ 60,000 and has two others. (Many are sold in 6 digits. One was sold for about $ 600,000 last month.)
Mr. Silver also makes his own NFT. She, like all NFT artists, can make money from the first sale and receive 10% of all secondary sales. One of her works sold for 15 ethers ($ 63,000 at the time).
She saved so much that she feels financially safe in the end, at least for now. “This amount is a big issue for me because I’m from poverty. We had to accept church donations for growing food,” she said. She said, “The other day, when she stepped into Wal-Mart, she thought,” You can buy cheese, you can buy good coffee. ” I have never experienced that freedom before. ”
She has recently returned from a trip to the UK where Sotheby’s is auctioning her work and is planning a trip to Japan.
This month she gave her mother a home and paid it all in cash. “I got one of those big red bows, and I’m going to stick it on the front door like those commercials,” she said. “Since I was little, I’ve wanted to do something like this for my mom.”
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Only two years ago, 29-year-old Alex Lugo, who lives in Lindenhurst, New York, drove a truck to support his wife and two children 9 and 5. “I was making $ 25 an hour,” he said. “It’s nothing in New York.” He decided to enroll in a program to learn how to trade cryptocurrencies, which changed the life of his family.
Some collectors buy carefully selected NFTs and hold them for years, but he flips a lot in the short term. “I bought them and ended up flipping some of them in 10K, some in 30K, some in 5K, 2K,” he said.
He also benefits from investing in a new type of NFT. “I own real estate in the Metaverse next to the Adidas headquarters,” he said. “It’s like owning real estate in the Hamptons, because what does adidas do when they want to expand? They buy me and pay millions of dollars, so I move. increase.”
(“This isn’t easy to prove, it sounds like a guess,” Medved said in an email.)
Lugo made enough money from these private sales and quit his truck driving job in January 2021. He now says he was able to get a fair amount of savings for his children. They want to live their lives. “
He and his family currently live in a two-bedroom apartment, but he is about to buy a four-bedroom home in Lindenhurst.
NFTs have helped others break out of financial holes and get a fresh start.
Gossa Marfaris, 32, currently a full-time artist in Brooklyn. But to take her comfortably there, she needed an NFT.
After graduating from college, she did 9-5 jobs at the Student Loan Service Center. “I was doing as much art as I could after work,” she said. “I was making illustrations, sculptures and textiles, and I was also making items such as small stickers that could be purchased from online stores.”
In 2019, she quit her job to become a tattoo artist, but nevertheless struggled, especially during the early months of the pandemic. “I had a hard time achieving my goals,” she said. “Unfortunately, I had surgery on a transgender person, so I had a lot of debt, like credit card debt and health-related debt.”
In the winter of 2021, she saw people engrossed in NFTs, created her own collection with works focused on the heritage of Filipinos and blacks, and collaborated with other artists on NFTs. I decided to do it.
Since then she has repaid her debts and now earns enough money through NFTs so she can pursue her passion exclusively. “There is no stress needed to make money as an artist,” she said. “She can pay the rent and she doesn’t have to worry about paying the rent.”
While some people are getting rich from NFTs, Medved advises people to keep in mind that many other NFT projects lose value over time. “Don’t invest more money than you’re willing to lose,” he said. “Like crypto space, NFT space is very volatile and the market moves up and down very rapidly.”
“I think many NFTs will be zero in the long run,” he said. “Your success depends on your ability to choose the best project. It’s not easy.”
