“Even if people are like ants, everyone has the urge to respond to the times to prove that we have lived enthusiastically or decadently.”
In the world of Flirting Scholar — a Hong Kong comedy film directed by Lee Lik-Chi, 9527 is just a domestic slave. But in a cyberworld, 9527 equals $340,000. The avatar below, the guy with the melon hat and smoking a cigarette, is the #9527 of the 10,000 avatars in the world’s hottest NFT project — Cryptopunks.
Cryptopunks #9527
Its owner “0x949…b786” just updated its listing price on January 23, 2022, 124ETH, equivalent to $340,000.
If you are willing to pay so much money, this avatar will be yours in the next second, how about it, it’s a good deal, right?
What? do you think it’s nonsense?
That’s because you don’t understand the rarity behind this avatar. Did you see that cigarette in his mouth? Only 961 of 10,000 people have this attribute. Did you see his little hat? Only 419 individuals had this attribute. Did you see his sexy moustache? Look carefully, it is the gray one above the mouth, only 288 people have this attribute.
Oh, even so, you aren’t moved to buy it? It doesn’t matter, you are not moved, someone is moved. On June 10, 2021, the world-renowned auction house Sotheby’s auctioned its “brother”, Cryptopunks #7523.
Looking at this melon cap, it’s still the same formula, except that the head below has become a so-called “alien”, and the cigarettes are gone, replaced by a mask with seven dollars for one dollar. Without further ado, let’s talk about the price first: this item sold for $11.75 million, which is almost a small target in RMB.
Because of the 10,000 avatars, there are only 9 people with alien faces, and he happens to be one of 175 people wearing masks.
An interesting detail is: although masks are an excellent metaphor for the world today, when the 1w avatars of Cryptopunks were born six years ago, there was no new crown virus in the world.
Therefore, the original owner of #7523, who sold it at a cheap price (about $1,646) in 2017, was transferred to the seller of this auction, Sillytuna.
In four years, 7523 has become a “new crown alien avatar”, and the price has increased by more than 7,000 times, which seems to be a better idea than buying a house.
That’s Sillytuna’s tweet, two days after the auction, and he’s still complaining that he doesn’t have any new shoes to wear. . . The tweet itself is pretty punk too.
Maybe some friends are getting impatient. What a mess, with your skill in speaking, it’s enough for me to download the picture, photoshop it to look like wearing a mask and smoking, and then change it to my WeChat social media profile picture. . .Why am I paying $1000w for this shit picture?
“Why is NFT valuable?”, I believe that countless people have already explained it.
But I want to tell you an interesting story from the perspective of “spiritual source”.
This article is translated from《NFT精神史：罐头、青蛙和平凡人的15分钟英雄梦想》written by a Chinese tech journalist Max Shi ZHONG and published on Qianhei.net. I translated it to pay my tribute to the author, it’s a legendary piece about NFT, even could be recorded in a history book. It is quite long, but 10000% worth reading it.