A group of strangers gathered at a smoky colorful venue less than 1.6 km (1 mile) from the Crypto.com arena on Saturday night in downtown Los Angeles. The atmosphere was relaxed but excited. The party attendees, whom many met for the first time, greeted like old friends and called out in the name of Discord. The mood was a celebration. The CryptoCannabis Club, an NFT community for Stoners, was gathered to celebrate the launch of its Metaverse Dispenser.
The warmth and attribution of the weed-filled party contrasted with the overwhelming Metaverse store. However, the NFTs needed to launch a dispenser and join a group are just excuses. Like most Web3 projects, it’s really about the community. CEO Ryan Hunter told the protocol that the crypto cannabis club is not gradual, despite the crypto crash and the use of NFTs.
“We all grow together.”
The community has taken CCC members to downtown Los Angeles, apparently for the 4/20 launch of the Metaverse Clinic. Over 6,000 members of the club needed to acquire a brightly colored stone-like character NFT, the Talker, in order to join the group and take advantage of benefits, including face-to-face events. The minimum price for a talker is about 0.15 ETH, or about $ 300 (no one knows what the future holds now).
April and Manny Hernandez love clubs, so they flew from New York to Los Angeles to join. Manny owns nine talkers and only one in April. The couple traveled to Playa del Carmen, Mexico in March for another CCC meet-up.
“Being a former army, friendship is what I’m looking for,” Manny told me. “It’s great to have this kind of access to this kind of event. We all grow together.”
As the couple tried to leave, they saw Manny’s flashy outfit. In a lab coat with the words “Crypto Cannabis Club” spelled out on his back with rhinestones, he said he designed himself and was dazzled.
As the hunter greeted the excited guest as he walked through the crowd, he found himself wearing an embroidered shirt with pot leaves on his shoulders and laughing deafeningly. He turned me to the weeds.
The front room was surrounded by colorful lights, and the walls and ceiling were littered with blue, purple, and green neon signs. After guests received a party souvenir, they lined up devices for smoking various cannabis concentrates, helping two employees of the cannabis technology brand Dr. Dabber brighten people. We were greeted at the dub bar, which is a table. At the next table, three marijuana growers at the High Water Farm were handing out buggies for the plants themselves. The guests were excited to line up at the table, chatting, laughing, and hugging while inhaling. It smelled as you expected.
I went through the brightly lit foyer to the second room. It is a high-ceilinged warehouse filled with smoke in dim green light. A bar with two bartenders was set up in the corner, serving both alcoholic and cannabis-injected cocktails. Two guests took turns shooting videos in the middle of the venue, blowing a cloud of smoke through their large comical joints. Behind was a truck offering free tacos and burritos — nothing left by the end of the night.
From boom to crash
The climax of the party just a few weeks ago is far from today’s mood, but hunters say the Crypto Cannabis Club remains “an oasis in the middle of this crazy desert we’re passing through.” said. Group NFT prices fell slightly last week, with floors reaching around 0.1 ETH, but then recovering 50%. While other NFT communities have become “ghost towns,” Hunter says, club members continue to support each other through shared Discord and social media channels.
Groups connect primarily through Discord servers with thousands of members, but members may meet in person at parties like I attended. The energy of the Discord channel is reassuring in the midst of a cryptocurrency crash, encouraging members to “hold firmly” on each other. Crypto Cannabis Club is a strange club where a passion for the project inspires the floor. [price]”Someone said. According to Hunter, some people are using a strong community consciousness as a recruitment opportunity in the chaos, he said, calling for more people to buy as the lowest prices have fallen in recent weeks.
And, Hunter said, NFT price tags have recovered and some are trading at three to four times the lowest price, and crypto cannabis clubs seem to be on the rise so far.
“I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think there are a lot of signs of encouragement from where I’m sitting,” Hunter said. “Our hope is that as things settle down a bit, people really understand the value of what we are offering and consider it a sustainable collection.”
Weed NFT
Kevin and Jim Fitzpatrick, founders of the Crypto Cannabis Club, worked in the cannabis industry for nearly a decade before entering crypto space in 2020. The duo realized that the community was starting to form around the NFT collection and was a strong community for cannabis consumers. So they launched the club last July, and after spending a few months as an advisor, Hunter became CEO in January.
The Crypto Cannabis Club community quickly gathered. The entire NFToker collection was created and sold out just 7 days after its launch. The cheapest talkers were priced at 0.8 ETH, or about $ 200 to $ 250 at the time. Hunter says the 10,000 NFTs in the Crypto Cannabis Club’s NFT collection are owned by about 4,500 digital wallets. Membership has some perks, but you don’t have to own an NFT as part of your enjoyment. The group Discord has 23,000 subscribers and 28 chapters worldwide. Prominent members of the group include rappers Ja Rule and Lil Baby, Cookie CEO Burner, and actors Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong.
Membership is not cheap. Club NFTs start at the low end for hundreds of dollars. Rare things can cost thousands more, Hunter said.
“They all have different traits. Some of those traits are more unique than others. Therefore, the character with the most unique traits tends to be the most valuable from a collector’s point of view. “He said.
However, owning it has considerable advantages. NFT holders have access to all CryptoCannabisClub events, both virtual and face-to-face. The club is also affiliated with 20 cannabis brands and accessory makers, so members get discounts on weeds and accessories.
Metaverse weeds
While cryptocurrencies are crashing, tech companies are still fully committed to investing in the Metaverse. The CryptoCannabis Club Metaverse Clinic in the Cryptovoxels virtual world opened properly on April 20th. Also accessible from a web browser, VR Dispensers are basically online weed stores where members can buy marijuana and smoking accessories and ship them directly.
“It’s really a gathering place for our community,” said Hunter.
When I first clicked on the pharmacy, a gray faceless avatar with a placard with the word “anonymous” on my head popped into an empty room. That strange little avatar was me. I looked around and noticed a brick wall decorated with the word “vibe”, a wooden countertop labeled with a crypto cannabis club on it, and a small little virtual cash register. Once I understood how to turn my avatar, I was greeted by a big purple and green sign saying “Welcome to the Cryptographic Cannabis Club”. One of the group’s leading talker characters appeared, and a glass case filled with virtual marijuana plants tempted me to wander.
The Metaverse pharmacy displayed the Crypto Cannabis Club brand on one wall. Each colorful character represents both the marijuana lineage and the free NFTs that buyers get when they buy. Screenshot: Nat Rubio-Licht / Protocol
The “store” part of the Metaverse Dispenser is a colorful room dotted with artwork displaying the names of popular online weed stores. Clicking on the logo of the brand you want to shop for will take you to the brand’s website outside the pharmacy. My avatar wandered to the second story, “Talker Arena”. There, about 12 NFTs with picture frames are lined up on the wall, and virtual tables, chairs, and sofas are scattered throughout the room. I didn’t know how to sit — the avatar just passed through.
According to Hunter, virtual space wasn’t as exciting as the real-world parties I visited, but it wasn’t always empty. The club held hours of events on the day of launch so members could drop in at 4:20 local time. Dozens of people were chatting and exploring space at any time, playing music and video in the virtual auditorium, Hunter said.
“What we are trying to maintain is a sense of that welcoming community,” said Hunter. “If you’re a cannabis consumer, that’s what you expect from the real world. You’re trying to develop the same atmosphere in a virtual way.”
While enjoying the click-through, the pharmacy felt more like a simple video game than a weed store of the future. The CCC clinic was just one of several spaces you could explore with Avatar. To see what the world looks like, I turned in the wrong direction and fell into a deep virtual ocean in a place called “Shell Beach”. If the Metaverse is in the future, it will take a little work — or at least some guardrails between my avatar and the ocean.
The Crypto Cannabis Club space is located on the virtual waterfront of Shell Beach (which is surprisingly easy to fall into).Screenshot: Nat Rubio-Licht / Protocol
Another type of crypto club
But no one at the party seemed to be there at the Metaverse clinic. The thread of unity was the community: I started hanging out with other weed-loving crypto owners. Matt Kaestner, a real estate broker in Orange County, compared the CryptoCannabis Club to the Internet community in the early 2000s.
“This is no different than it was 15 years later,” he said. “Like cannabis, these communities are beginning to emerge that offer a variety of benefits and bond members.”
Kaestner said he has always been a “cultural part” of cannabis and entered cryptocurrencies when the boom began in the last few years. When he first discovered the CryptoCannabis Club last summer, he said he felt it was a “perfect fit.” At that point, he was unfamiliar with the world of NFTs. He currently owns 45 club NFTs, valued in the hundreds to thousands of dollars.
“When the club started, I saw more and more communities come together to share this common interest,” he said. “When we meet at an event like this, friendships and relationships are really sealed.”
Healthcare worker Sergio Corrado’s passion for cannabis and crypto has made it “easy” to join the club. Corrado owns eight talkers and can sell several, two of which are called “eternal talkers.” One is a character with green skin and floppy brown hair, wearing a pineapple-covered shirt and having joints hanging from his mouth. Corrado printed the character on his shirt. Corrado said others were most similar to him, wearing chains similar to him and having the same haircuts.
Grasp the height
The Crypto Cannabis Club is less than a year old, but the group is busy. Meanwhile, the company hosted five events and meet-ups, including the Weed Business Convention MJBizCon, Art Basel, and a few-day trip to Mexico for members.
And it doesn’t slow down immediately, Hunter said. The club is committed to hosting more events, working with more cannabis brands, and bringing their own cannabis brands to more states (currently only available in California). We are also working on opening a second metaverse space and launching the next NFT collection. These diverse sources of revenue can help the group survive the crypto winter. However, according to Hunter, the biggest goal is to grow the community, which can be a difficult sale given the current cryptocurrency situation.
The 4/20 party was a snapshot a few weeks ago when the multi-billion dollar crypto value seemed to disappear overnight. But when I went out, a performer named DJ Positivity started their set. The people I just met said goodbye to me, as I knew them for years. There was a bit of a second-hand topic, and when I got in the car and went home, Manny Hernandez’s words remained in my head. “We all grow together.” Even if the NFT loses its value, cannabis club members may be able to stay high.
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