My partner is obsessed with NFTs

Over the past few years, the NFT market has exploded, changing the digital art world – with museums, auction houses and Art Basel everyone participates in the action – and creates a new generation of collectors and entrepreneurs (even as the general tension now cools). Standing right next to them, of course, are many wives and girlfriends who are… just happy you’re excited, babe! What happens when Bored Apes and CryptoPunks become household names to only half your household? Or when planning around new drops becomes as important as planning date nights? To find out, NYLON spoke to three women about how non-fungible tokens became a very tangible obsession for their other halves.

“Do you know what I had to do to get this?”

Ally, 30, New York City

About five years ago my now fiance was working at a big fancy hedge fund. We were new to the relationship and doing long distance. He calls me in a panic: “I’m leaving this hedge fund to work in crypto at a startup!” I thought, “Are you kidding me?” And then about a year and a half ago, he realized that NFTs were taking off, so he said, “I’ve got to jump into that space as much as I can.”

I had no idea what a non-fungible token was. I understood what a crypto token was – it’s like going to Dave & Buster’s and getting tickets to buy stuff. I’m a nurse, so I work with material objects. We like to joke that he works his way up in the clouds and I’m the realistic one in the relationship.

One year, his company was involved in the NFT.NYC conference, so he attended all the events and came home excited and charged about things I had no idea about: “I have a lazy lion!” One night he comes home like, “I got some swag!” There were a couple of nice sweaters. And then he gave me this tote bag, like the ones you get at Trader Joe’s that they charge 10 cents for. It only had a drawing on it. I thought, “Oh cool, thanks so much!” and threw it to the side and put my sweater on it. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “…With the bag?” He said, “It’s not just any grocery bag, it’s a Bored Ape bag!” I say, “OK? And? You have to help me here.”

He starts telling me, “You know what I had to do to get this? I was invited by someone who had a Bored Ape to this party that was exclusive to only Bored Ape owners!” And I said, “OK! It is so cool!” I wanted to be supportive, of course, but in my head I was like, “What the hell is a bored monkey?!” And then I started doing my own research. I came to find out that these Bored Monkey things cost upwards of $100,000 each! And then I started noticing on everybody’s Twitter, people had their Bored Ape as a picture. I’m like, “If football players put that as their Twitter handle and they are gets excited about it, the rest of the world will.” It was quite a learning experience.

I’m not completely sold on NFTs yet, but I can see the value in my fiance wanting to buy something like that. But now that we’re planning a wedding, I don’t think a space lion is the most appropriate thing to spend a couple of thousand on.

“It was a wasted night sitting in the queue”

Lauren, 33, San Francisco

My husband was an early adopter of crypto. He is the ultimate teacher – he always tries to take one thing from the real world that I understand and tie them together. But I still think of crypto as monopoly money – I can’t fathom what it is or how it works. Because of that, I don’t think he was ready to try to explain NFTs to me when he got into them in 2020. I walked past his laptop like, “What’s this dancing astronaut on your screen?”

His taste is… I don’t want to say anything weird, because art is a very personal thing, but he likes a lot of space pictures, which is interesting, because I’ve never known him to be fascinated by space or astronauts. more than the next person. So I guess via NFTs I have learned something about what is aesthetically interesting to him and how his brain works.

With NFTs, there are many hidden easter eggs. For him, it’s almost like Where’s Waldo? — he will sit and stare and look for them all, usually late at night. The way some of these drops go is that you have to grab what’s available; you don’t have the option to be selective. So he gets what he can and opens it to look for all those Easter eggs. Many of them connect to each other, so it’s almost like a puzzle that you can map out the more pieces you own.

There have certainly been times when NFT drops have dictated his life. About a year ago he was at a bachelor party where everyone was going to this concert 20 minutes away from where they lived. He stayed back to get a piece and was going to join them later, but the drop went sideways and the virtual queue was three or four hours. Everyone else went to the concert, got drunk, came back and continued to hang out and drink, but the piece was never actually obtained. It was a lost night sitting in line. That one was definitely a bummer.

We have a rule when we’re out with our families or our friends: If someone else brings up crypto or NFTs, he can go on a tear about it, but not until then. It was self-imposed by him, but there was absolutely no objection from me. It actually came up on Thanksgiving this year. I looked at him across the table like, “Sh*t, you have your opening, say what you need to say.” Everyone around the table laughed, like, “Oh no, was that me? Did I open the door?”

I can safely say that I have never been interested in wading in the NFT waters myself, but I am very supportive when he wants an opinion on the price of a piece or whether he should sell one. And now that we’re married I guess some of them are mine now? Call me back in a year.

“I feel like your mother”

Mohar, 36, New York City

It was Art Basel that triggered my husband to get into NFTs exactly a year ago. There was just something about seeing these works of art fully framed on a screen right in front of you, in a beautiful space curated with these other artists, that clicked. It just elevates the experience. You think, “Oh, I get it now.”

When we got home, my husband went down a total and complete rabbit hole. I remember sitting in our living room with his friend helping us set up our NFT wallets. When the two get together, it’s like watching two teenage boys having slumber parties. They’re just sitting there having a little cocktail with their laptops out, showing each other things like, “Hey, check out this project!” And then at some point they just go quiet, because they just go hardcore on Discord [an instant-messaging app which hosts many NFT communities]. I have several pictures of these two just geeking out on the couch with each other. I feel like their mother – I cook, I make dinner. I can’t say anything negative about this room because it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

In the beginning, my husband bought ETH for about 3000 dollars [Ethereum cryptocurrency] to start buying some projects and see where it goes. At some point he stopped buying them, he just started trading them and did so well. When I asked how he got so good at this, he referred to Pokémon: “I was so good at Pokémon cards when I was a kid, and I never thought that knowledge would carry over into my adult life.”

When I started building my portfolio, there was an artist I followed for a long time named Paul Milinski. I love his work, it’s very surreal, Dalí-esque stuff. I saw that he released a collection on Nifty Gateway [an auction platform for NFT art] and was like, “Cool, I’ll try to bid and get one.” I remember my husband had to run to a meeting at the time; he jumped on a ferry like, “I hope you get NFT!” He goes, I’m sitting there trying to get it, and someone outbids me. But suddenly, within a few minutes, my husband says, “I have a present for you.” He was the one who outbid me – it was so romantic. I thought, “My God, this is a weird NFT love story right now!”

These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.