I’m a few posts into my jobless quest, one which sends me to the depths of the internet in search of unconventional income streams. You can find the previous pieces here.
Until a few weeks ago, I had barely scratched the surface of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Then I fell down a rather large rabbit hole. That led to Twitter stalking, joining one too many Discord servers, and even some impulse buys…I’m the proud owner of two Avastars and one TinyBox.
The NFT world has stolen most of my free focus in recent weeks. Half of me is love drunk on the chance of being at the ground floor of a massive emerging market. A quarter of me is love drunk on the possibility of flipping into wealth in the near term. And the other quarter of me loves the thought of holding these as collectibles.
Yeah, seriously I’d be ok with holding these. LOOK AT THIS THING. It’s NimBud #320!
The NimBud above, from Bryan Brinkman’s curated project at ArtBlocks.io was my second strategic NFT purchase of the week.
But as badly as I’d love to take my NimBud to the grave, it’s true that I’m looking to generate returns. Yes – NFT folks…I’m not just Twitter stalking you for fun. I’m trying to internet-sleuth my way into a life outside the 9-5…one that lets me wake up whenever and wherever I want.
The sleuthing from this week started here…
Let’s put together a few puzzle pieces…
Notable artist…check.
Healthy secondary market….check.
Respected project, curated on ArtBlocks.io…..check.
I quickly snatched up mint #31 from Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers project for 0.5 ETH.
I showed my mom. She didn’t get it.
Flip the calendar forward a few days…keep going…keep going…scroll past my Discord stalking, the NimBud purchase, me fantasizing about CryptoPunks, TopShot Market meltdown, and arrive to the dark of night on February 8th.
As I made my way through another uncomfortable episode of M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant on AppleTV+, I received a rather pleasant notification.
Yes, it is true. I parted ways with Ringers mint #31 in exchange for ~1.5 ETH. Approximately a 1 ETH profit in just over a week.
Let me show it off.
The good? Between the art appreciation, and the subsequent dollar gains in ETH, this was nearly a $2,000 profit in a week’s time.
The sad? I actually really loved the piece and I’m certain it’s worth more than 1.5 ETH. But it takes money to make money… and liquidity is important for me at this stage in the game.
TopShots might never let me withdraw…but I’ll always have this Ringers sale.
There’s more in the works, but this was a big first step. The easiest way to know whether or not I’ve truly made progress on my quest to generate freedom through unconventional wealth creation? Ask my mom if she understands what I’m doing.
Her reply… “what you’re doing is weird. It’s just weird.”
Confirmed….Good start.
Update: In my first post on NFTs, I deailed the anxiety that filled me as I awaited the genesis box drop from NFTBoxes, a project curated by renowned NFT collector, Pranksy. A few minutes after the drop, I was able to wipe the sweat from my brow, and I was rewarded with two boxes for my collection.
The sweat was worth it. At an entrance price of ~0.5 ETH per box, I could reasonably expect a 360% gain per box if I were to fetch the average secondary sale at OpenSea.io.
I have no plans to immediately liquidate, as I’m confident the boxes and the NFTs which will soon fill them, will be worth even more than they are now.