Boring monkey keeper explains why he quit his job for Web3

When Keith Martin bought his first Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible token in May last year, he paid less than $ 500 and seemed confident of turning it around for a profit, given that the market was just beginning to boom.

But things did not turn out that way, and Martin lost out on his virginity trade.

With a lesson under his belt, he soon bought another for around $ 1700, or 0.64 ETH, this time, determined to hold on to it, given his belief in the prospects for the digital asset market.

“After I first sold, I immediately bought back another Monkey for more money, because I really did not want to miss out on what could happen next,” Martin, 31, told Insider at the NFT.NYC conference on Monday.

At the time, one ether token was worth around $ 2700. Today, it is worth around $ 1,111, after falling victim to a vicious slide in cryptocurrencies this year. Meanwhile, Martin’s precious Bored Apes NFT is worth about $ 111,000 at current market prices. Martin’s NFT transaction receipts were reviewed by Insider.

“Not much happened then, while today there are about 10 new projects a day,” said Martin. “A year ago there was only one new project every few days. So on Telegram and Twitter, a lot of people at the time said Bored Ape would be the next CryptoPunks, so I bought one.”

Martin, who walks by IllusiveApe on Twitter, co-founded a marketing company in 2017. But when he started joining NFTs about a year ago, his passion shifted to digital assets.

In June, he quit his job at the company he helped launch and now works for Tribe, a Web3 company, because his enthusiasm for the NFT sector had become his main focus.

“I definitely look at the crypto space and NFTs as the future, so I thought there is no better time than now to get involved,” he said.

He added that while starting as an investor and trader, he sees himself more as a collector now, because he has no plans to sell his favorite NFTs, including his original Bored Ape NFT, as well as a CryptoPunk NFT which he bought for around $ 51,000 in May last year.

Martin claimed that while doing much of the same marketing work for Tribe as he did for his previous company, the work is more exciting now because he sees Web3 as the future.

NFTs today, he added, may seem like they’re just about art and profile pictures, but they’s backed by sophisticated blockchain technology.

“Name industry, NFTs are going to disrupt it,” Martin said. “See where some of the smartest people are going, big developers, all in the IT field. The smartest heads are all moving into this field. It makes me very optimistic.”

NFTs had a monster year in 2021, but weekly sales have fallen by more than 80% from a peak in January of almost $ 1 billion, according to data from NonFungible.com. And

market value

for cryptocurrencies, meanwhile, has recently fallen below $ 1 trillion after rising above $ 3 trillion last year.

But even in the middle of

bear market

Martin said he plans to stay on track with buying more crypto and collecting more NFTs.

“I ask myself about my son, who is already sweeping on virtual screens,” he said. “Would he rather get bitcoin or a gold bar in the future? And the answer seems obvious to me.”