He was sold before Jenkins was nominated.
Prior to that, it existed on the auction site as a maxillary prognathism, jug ears, hat, waistcoat, and number 1,798 apes.
He was an unknown avatar in a collection of 10,000 cartoon ape brothers called Bored Ape Yacht Club.
It was May 2021.
One day, a Toronto man with a creative writing background pulled out about half of the Ethereum coins, which were worth about $ 1,300 ($ 1,400) at the time, from the auction house lineup.
Specifically, men have their own cryptographic digital assets ( NFT, or non-fungible token) Simply represent the image alone, right-click and save a copy to your hard drive, and grant ownership beyond that man (or someone else).
“We knew there was a clerk. He just looks like a clerk,” says a man pretending to be Jenkins in this zoom call (video off).
And Jenkins was born.
Seven months later, Jenkins has the ears of a Hollywood agent, an avid fan club, and a famous writer who writes “tell everything” memoirs of apes.
The writer is Neil Strauss, the best-selling author of The Game, a 2005 book that spread the word “pickup artist.”
that’s right. Neil Strauss is currently writing a memoir of a fictional cartoon ape.
How did the world reach this?
And what does it say about the future of NFTs?
NFT boom, bust, boom
Think back to the beginning of 2021 and remember the simple times when most people had never heard of NFTs.
And the boom started in February.
A series of artwork sold as an NFT for millions of dollars.
This started the gold rush, and soon people realized that gold was everywhere and waited for it to be picked up.
You didn’t have to be an artist to make money from NFTs. Old meme It can be “tokenized” and sold to aspiring buyers.
Or you just Tokenize the art of others, Sell it, whether or not the artist agrees.
And why stop by art?You can tokenize Single Tweet (Sold for $ 2.9 million or $ 4 million) or Flatulence man (Sold for $ 85 or $ 120).
It was a bubble of hype and speculation that would soon pop out: in May, the value of NFT transactions fell by 90 percent.
It may have spelled out the end of crypto tokens, which are now synonymous with cynical “pump and dump” financial speculation.
However, the NFT did not disappear. They continued. It is evolving. From art and sports collections to new industries, the vague world of entertainment, including characters from games, movies, TV shows, and other creative spin-offs.
Build Disney from scratch
One of the innovations was to give NFT owners commercial rights. In other words, anyone who owns a particular NFT character can make money by selling prints, T-shirts, and so on.
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This is a bit like Disney selling Star Wars R2D2 figurines. This also gives the owner the right to sell R2D2 merchandise.
The big difference is that the Star Wars world is already imagined and sold (and therefore worth a lot of money), while the NFT characters are brand new and relatively unknown.
By owning commercial rights, NFT owners have a great incentive to flesh out the imaginative universe they have purchased.
In effect, these owners can try to build the next Disney.
And that’s exactly what’s happening.
One of the first NFT collections to offer owners commercial rights was the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC), a lineup of 10,000 cartoon apes.
BAYC launched in April 2021, and by May, “Jenkins the Valet” (also known as ape number 1,798, the man in Toronto) had tweeted his story.
“We found that Barrett’s most important skill at #BAYC was discretion,” Jenkins tweeted.
“I was good at my job and didn’t say a word about what I saw. Now there are so many plots around BAYC that are the most fascinating thing I’ve worked on. I decided to talk about apes. “
Jenkins launches NFT series and builds a bank
By August, his servant Jenkins had earned over $ 1 million.
His maker (they expanded to a team of two) was selling Access to “Writer’s Room” It made up the story of Jenkins.
This included being able to vote on what details and plot points would be included in the all-truth memoir written by Neil Strauss.
Of course, access required you to own an NFT “key” sold by Jenkins.
Therefore, NFT characters had their own NFT.
“The first night we dropped the NFT, we made 480 Ethereum, which I think was about $ 1.2 million at the time,” says Jenkins.
Also, because it is an NFT, the manufacturer (Jenkins) will be cut every time it is resold.
A single NFT key that allows top-tier access to the writers room is priced at as high as $ 125,000 ($ 175,000).
“This basically guarantees that your character is written in the book by name,” says Jenkins’ best friend SAFA.
SAFA is another member of the Jenkins team and is on the phone (video off).
In the BAYC world, his avatar is Jenkins’ best friend.
“If one of the NFT holders owns a BAYC avatar, they can actually license that IP and display it in a book in different capacities.
“And it is the license that gives them the right to earn a certain percentage of the profits of the book.”
It sounds complicated, but it’s very easy. To use the Star Wars analogy again, it’s like allowing the owner of commercial rights to R2D2 to use R2D2 characters in a spin-off series of television.
Licensed for a character effectively expands the imaginative world of BAYC and Jenkins the Valet, making it easier to see. In short, the value of NFTs is even higher.
“The richness, character, and folklore around the pop-up NFT community is really, really interesting,” says SAFA in New York.
“It’s like a breeding ground for creatives. It’s going to be very popular in the future.”
Jenkins goes to Hollywood
In September, Hollywood’s leading talent agency signed Jenkins the Valet.
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CAA, on behalf of renowned Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and others, will collaborate with a four-month-old NFT Avatar on opportunities across film, television, podcasting, and book publishing.
“The most exciting thing about us is that they also represent producers, writers and directors,” says SAFA.
Celebrities like Jimmy Fallon are flocking to BAYC.
By November, the tokens associated with BAYC avatars had generated about $ 1 billion ($ 1.4 billion) when they graced the cover of Rolling Stone.
In mid-November, Universal signed the Kingship. This is a band of 4 virtual BAYC avatars that haven’t released music yet.
It’s a bit like Gorillaz, a virtual band created by Blur’s Damon Albarn in the late 1990s, but it’s mostly behind the scenes.
“Before you hear one sound, you know what they eat for breakfast,” the founder of the record label said at the launch of Kingship.
If that sounds scary, I’m sorry, but expect to see all kinds of Kingship Promoted content in 2022.
Meanwhile, Jenkins’ memoirs will be released around March or April.
A storytelling project generated by another BAYC community is popping up.
SAFA and Jenkins see these groups as a counterbalance to the more ironic use of NFTs for pure financial speculation.
“It shouldn’t have been a money-making adventure,” says Jenkins.
SAFA agrees. It’s not a matter of money.
“The truth is that any NFT can be zero tomorrow,” he says.
“If so, what did you leave? Is it a community? Is it a utility? Is it what you enjoy along the way?
“I think we have them all. We have a group of the most amazing and dedicated people who just want to write a book together.
“I think it’s really cool.”
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