The NFT art trade remains a bewildering joke.
A staple of high society is being able to own a yacht. Parties aboard large maritime vessels that are owned instead of hired for a few hours is perhaps the gold standard depiction of obscene wealth. A significant component in spending a lot of moolah on a luxury yacht, of course, is being able to go on the yacht. So what about a digital yacht that you can’t go on, IRL or virtually, because the game the yacht is in isn’t even out yet?
In ugly and depressing news first reported by Hypebeast, a big old Roblox For Adults boat has sold for 149 WETH, which is ‘Wrapped Ethereum’. That’s approximately $650,000 USD, and THAT’S approximately $920,000 AUD. Cool, right? This is, of course, due to it being an NFT. This is The Metaflower NFT Super Mega Yacht, a gamer boat that will exist in The Sandbox, a blockchain-based, self-described “metaverse.”
Congrats to the new owner of The Metaflower NFT Super Mega Yacht on making metaverse NFT history. This auction marks the highest price paid for a @TheSandboxGame NFT asset at 149 ETH ($650,000), and an exciting time for every member of the Fantasy Community. pic.twitter.com/Nl0278JbOT
— Republic Realm (@joinrepublic_re) November 24, 2021
The Metaflower NFT Super Mega Yacht boasts a digital DJ booth, helicopter landing pad, and single hot tub, and is part of “The Fantasy Islands,” something that is described by Republic Realm as a “luxury real estate development project of 100 NFT private islands (comprised of NFT land in the Sandbox + architecturally unique 3D NFT villas) on the Ethereum blockchain.” So if you feel like you’re not flexing your computer money enough, you can cosplay as a real-life squillionaire in a blockchain metaverse. This is very epic!
The Sandbox is kind of like if you wanted Zooper Dooper Capitalism in Minecraft. It’s a sandbox world that describes itself as a metaverse, filled to the brim with user content. However, instead of being funded by snotty kids buying $10 Robux cards from their nearest supermarket, it’s based on NFTs and the blockchain, meaning grown adults can drop around $17,000 USD (approx. $23,800 AUD) on NFT art of a sexy pixel lady.
And y’know what? It’s fine. Grown adults are allowed to spend their hard-earned cash on whatever they like. If you want to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on an NFT art boat in a game that’s still in closed beta, that’s okay! You are allowed to do that. Sure, it’s hard for the odd person to see why, but if that’s what makes you happy, go nuts.
When I was a kid, I would use my home phone to buy credits in Habbo Hotel, thinking I was some sort of evil genius and my parents would have no idea of what I was doing. Little did I know, my older brother was doing the exact same thing, which made our family phone bill very hefty. He got blamed for it entirely and I spent years thinking I got away with it, only to be faced with reality in my adulthood. But you know what? It made me happy. I got a sense of immediate validation and got to put the cool clothes on my pixel avatar.
It’s pretty much exactly the same as spending close to a million Australian dollars on a polygon boat. Normal!
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