NFTs brighten Wall Street’s evening as VanEck works to build community with Afropolit

As Wall Street stocks ended sharply lower on Tuesday, Chika Uwazie found herself ringing the New York Stock Exchange’s closing bell in an upbeat mood.

“How many times do you see black people ringing the bell, especially Africans,” asked the co-founder of Afropolitan, a company that wants to create a digital land for the continent’s diaspora. “That’s why we brought our community into the space.”

As traders—at least those with long positions—went home to lick their wounds, an after-hours event at the Big Board hosted by VanEck, the $50 billion investment manager turned crypto bull, was just getting underway, bringing together Afropolitical and global investors. The focus was on non-fungible tokens (NFT), which share elements of investment and collaboration.

“We realized that their project was community-centric, like ours,” says Matt Bartlett, head of the NFT community and Web3 at VanEck. The money manager hosts events with Afropolitan, seeking to bring together crypto and traditional finance.

“Events like this are the story of access,” says Eche Enziga, the other co-founder of Afropolitan, “Traditionally we can’t even get into the space to know what’s out there.”

The two companies connected at the CryptoBahamas event in April through Culture Capital, one of Afropolitan’s investors. Since then, they have been working together based on their community-centric approaches, hosting events to educate people about crypto, NFTs and what a digital country might look like.

The event brought together Afropolitan’s network of community members and investors with VanEck employees and NFT holders. The floor of the exchange was filled with early supporters, childhood friends and members of VanEck’s growing NFT and Web3 teams. After the bell rang, sliders, chicken sandwiches and glasses of wine flowed through the exchange’s boardroom as images of VanEck’s and Afropolitan’s NFTs took over the screens in the over 119-year-old chamber.

The ringing of the bell and the event with VanEck was just part of Afropolitan’s seat at the table during a cycle of crypto events in New York City. Uwazie was a speaker at this year’s SALT conference, and the Afro-political co-founders quickly left Wall Street for their next meeting – a dinner with UN officials.

VanEck’s foray into digital assets is not new. It launched a bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund in November, when the crypto market peaked at $3 trillion in value. The investment manager then launched its first NFT program in May before attempting to launch an ETF in the US for bitcoin the following month. A decision on the proposal was delayed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has yet to approve a cash bitcoin ETF.

Unlike most NFT collections, VanEck’s is decidedly non-commercial. Sent directly into the wallets, or airdropped, of a select few crypto-enthusiasts after the initial announcement, the asset manager made it clear that the NFTs are not investments. They are intended as “digital memories” meant to build community without running afoul of securities regulations

The VanEck NFTs are images of the character Hammy, a caricature of Alexander Hamilton, the first US Treasury Secretary, who has a special interest in CEO Jan van Eck. A goal of the company’s NFT program is to educate people about the history of the US financial system.

Kristen Capuano, CEO and CMO of VanEck sees its crypto and digital assets as part of a “forward-looking” value system. “We strive to find these very interesting or unique pockets of the market before they become mainstream,” she adds.

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