NFT.NYC party at the end of the world

by · August 30, 2022

Our friends at FT Tech Tonic podcast has produced a fantastic skeptic’s guide to crypto series, and for last episode on non-fungible tokens they sent producer Josh Gabert-Doyon to the industry’s oddly unproblematic New York jamboree this summer. We just couldn’t resist asking him to write up a broadcast from the guts of NFT.NYC.

Despite a monumental crypto downturn, the mood was upbeat at the world’s largest NFT conference in June. Smiling JPEG speculators, who had paid $849 (fiat dollars, please) for a last-minute registration on NFT.NYC, strolled through the tourist-filled streets of Midtown Manhattan and gazed at the oversized crypto ads flashing on Times Square billboards, all without a care in the world.

The brilliantly enthusiastic NFT community kept the party going with a four-day fever dream of cocktails, cold croquettes and yachts. With a staggering 1,500 speakers, most sessions at NFT.NYC lasted just 5 or 10 minutes, enough time to pump your merch from the top of a Marriott ballroom before storming off stage.

So what exactly makes a party so good that it can keep rocking even when stablecoins destabilize, Bitcoin crashes through key price benchmarks, crypto lenders freeze withdrawals and the average price of NFTs drops by more than 70 percent?

A rousing performance by Ja Rule on the first night of the conference certainly helped lift the mood. The rapper, of Fyre Festival fame, took the stage for an after party, presumably held to celebrate good long-term financial health and the bright outlook of the buoyant NFT market.

“Where are all my degens? Where’s my fucking dough?” Ja Rule yelled to the crowd of frat boy lookalikes. Downstairs, the catering staff cleared away steaming stainless steel tubs of sliders and onion rings. “You know when the markets are down it’s time to buy,” he said to the crowd before launching into his next song, which was performed in front of a screen announcing NFT thoroughbred races.

In some respects, gambling is the easiest thing for the NFT community to square the circle and keep the party going. Why even bother pretending that a market based on highly volatile speculation and colorful pictures is anything but a casino? After all, passengers looking for entertainment aboard the Titanic were eligible to enter daily contests where they could bet on the number of miles traveled.

At the conference the next day, a four-piece brass band toured the Marriott and periodically broke into New Orleans-style jazz, attendees were introduced to “Ape Poker,” NFT-designed playing cards, and a speech entitled “Horse Racing NFTs: Bridging Traditional Sports with the Metaverse,” which was hosted by sports super agent, racehorse owner and wheeler Kia Joorabchian.

Conference goers were happy to announce that you don’t lose until you sell. Instead, they were looking for new revenue models, which have become a fixture of the NFT community. The reality is that beyond being a speculative digital “asset”, even the NFT market hasn’t really figured out what NFTs are good for.

For example, take some panel highlights:

  • “How to thrive as a DAO after a founder pullover”

  • “Moms and NFTs: How to Engage these Powerhouse Creators for NFT and Product Growth”

  • “NFTs Are Now Collateral for Secured Loans: Are You Legally Protected?”

  • “Enable your child to thrive in the NFT room and fly above the bullies”

  • “Understanding the Value of Tokenized Property”

Jodee Rich, the co-founder of NFT.NYC, is best known as the founder of the company One. Tel, an Australian dotcom bubble disaster. One. Tel has enlisted big-ticket investments from Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer, both sons of newspaper moguls hoping to prove themselves with a smart technology investment. They were both members of the board at the time of One. Tels collapsed and was subsequently involved in a decade-long legal battle over its liquidation.

Not surprisingly, Rich was pleased to have some eye-catching names at this year’s NFT. NYC. “I was pleased with the session I had yesterday with Kimbal Musk, where at our event he announced an extraordinary application for NFTs — where the NFT contains code that controls a swarm of drones that paint art in the sky,” Rich said, referring to the younger Musk’s Nova Sky Stories project launched last week. Why a swarm of drones needs to host the blockchain is unclear and alarming to say the least.

On the third night of the conference, two separate yacht parties were held side by side at a dock on the Hudson River. Aboard one of the yachts, an NFT collective called The Whitelist held an event to celebrate a new NFT launch and their recent purchase of a minor league basketball team.

Jordan Norwood, a Whitelist co-founder and former NFL player who wore a large, diamond-encrusted Super Bowl championship ring, told FT Alphaville that Whitelist NFT holders are currently in the market to purchase a large multi-unit rental property in Mexico. with hopes of running it “almost like a timeshare”.

In other words, another good sign of longevity and responsible financial trading in the NFT market.

For all the partying at NFT.NYC, a deeper, nagging feeling lurked beneath the surface: NFTers can pull through, but even the most optimistic can lose their souls in the process. If the dream of NFTs was for a decentralized creator economy, free from the clutches of Big Tech and concerns about digital privacy, the direction of travel of NFTs. NYC seems worrying.

Rather than being an escape from the platform gods, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed marketplace OpenSea has become the JPEG agora of choice, and a major presence at the conference in particular. The NFT crowd increasingly relies on OpenSea for revenue and copyright arbitration (as well as having their data occasionally hacked by phishing scammers).

MetaMask, run by the Microsoft-backed Consensys, has an onboarding chokepoint, while Coinbase and Polygon Labs, both backed by Silicon Valley big dogs Andreessen Horowitz, have managed to convey the crypto dream of disintermediation.

And then there are the so-called “blue-chip NFTs” which have massive influence over society, and inspire countless rip-offs. Namely Doodles, helmed by a slick former Billboard exec with creative support from Pharrell, and the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), who held their own ApeFest the same week as NFT. NYC, which hosts Eminem, LCD Soundsystem, The Roots and a real Snoop Dogg (as opposed to imitates sent to NFT.NYC).

The BAYC collection looks to survive the current downturn (its Otherside metaverse land sale earlier this year was the largest mintage in NFT history) and concentrate market power with its own brand of streetwear creep.

Kevin McCoy, an early internet artist and Bitcoin enthusiast, was inspired by the anarchic, anti-hierarchical possibilities of the technology and enjoys the unofficial title of “NFT Inventor”. But his early optimism seems far removed now, he admitted to us.

What was so surprising to me about the rise of NFTs was the fact that the platforms became so important so quickly. And it doesn’t take very sharp insight to see that platform as a new form of gallery, the new gatekeepers.

Just as FTX bailed out crypto lender BlockFi and Goldman Sachs announced it was buying up Celsius’ assets at a steep discount, the NFT market looks poised for market consolidation. Small flea market collections will die and the big brands will take over.

The parties are about to get a lot worse.

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