NFT project takes prime Hong Kong ad spot in Central as crypto firms test residents’ appetite for blockchain assets
- Projects like Delirious Mind Travelers and Degenerate Ape Academy are spending big money in a bet on the future of NFTs in Asia’s financial hub
- NFT investment minted many new millionaires in 2021, but some investors have also raised the alarm about scams that leave buyers with little recourse
At the heart of Hong Kong’s business district, the latest big advertisements are not about asset management, stocks or diamonds – they are for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of digital avatars in the form of koalas and apes.
On the first day of 2022, a little known NFT project called Delirious Mind Travelers decked out half of the 200-metre passageway between the Central and Hong Kong subway stations, two of the city’s busiest, with huge banners in an advertising campaign to tell the financial hub’s 7.5 million residents that the future revolves around NFTs, which are encrypted tokens on a blockchain proving ownership of digital assets like art.
In large, bold letters, the ad screams: “NFTs going mainstream is inevitable.” “Three letters. Infinite potential.” “NFTs: Art with utility. More than just a JPEG.” The slogans are meant to drum up interest for the group’s upcoming NFT sales, scheduled for later this month.
Delirious Mind Travelers, a project started by a team of four recent graduates looking to sell digital art of cartoon figures and koalas, is the latest NFT start-up to buy prime advertising space in the city’s Central district.
Just days ago, a group of collectors of Degenerate Ape Academy – a popular NFT project comprising 10,000 digital portraits of cartoon apes – put up a 90-second ad on a massive curved screen outside Lan Kwai Fong, a popular Central neighbourhood for bars and nightclubs, wishing passers-by a merry Christmas. A variety of other local NFT projects with names like Bunny Warriors, LuckyKittens, GoingApe and Cyber Ape Age have also been putting up large billboard ads in major commercial areas across the city.
The ongoing cryptocurrency and NFT boom minted countless new millionaires around the world in 2021. Hong Kong, which remains friendly to many cryptocurrency and NFT businesses, is emerging as a hub for digital asset enthusiasts as mainland China has ruthlessly cracked down on cryptocurrency-related trading and financing.
“Booming cryptocurrencies and NFTs have made a lot of people very rich over the past months,” a member of the Degenerate Ape community in Hong Kong told the South China Morning Post under the pseudonym Burger Bob, the name of his NFT ape. “This is just the beginning.”
In recent months, minting NFTs has turned into a gold rush for the digital era. Global sales volumes of NFTs surged to US$10.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021, up more than eightfold from the previous quarter, according to data from market tracker DappRadar.
Can cartoon apes land these NFT owners a fortune?
Burger Bob, an investment professional at private capital consultancy Mentha Partners, said NFT projects are now attracting mainstream attention in Hong Kong, where people are forming related communities and clubs. Degenerate Ape Academy, one of the most popular NFT projects on the Solana blockchain, which boasts faster speeds and lower costs than blockchains such as Ethereum, currently has about 80 members in the city, according to Burger Bob.
Each so-called Degen Ape NFT costs around 40 Solana, the cryptocurrency used on the blockchain, which is currently worth about US$6,700. But that is just a fraction of what NFTs from the Ethereum-based Bored Apes Yacht Club go for, with some selling for more than US$200,000.
Just as the Bored Ape NFTs have seen their stature and prices rise, Degen Ape collectors believe their NFTs will continue to rise in value as more people use the Solana blockchain.
More NFT projects flooding the market has also led to a growing number of scams. Some collectors have been left with worthless digital tokens after developers abandoned their projects and absconded with the cryptocurrency they received in payment. There have been many accusations of pump-and-dump schemes, as well, referring to buyers’ deliberately inflating the price of an asset and selling before a crash.
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A project like Delirious Mind Travelers is taking a gamble, too. The massive ad campaign in Central is not a small investment, and it could amount to little if it does not interest a wide enough audience. Eric Suen, the project’s strategy lead and co-founder, said that that is a price the team is willing to pay.
“The NFT space is fast-moving; we need to make an impact,” Suen said. “We want people to remember us as one of the main NFT projects that’s going on.”
More than 1,000 people have scanned the ad’s QR code per day this month, he added.
Just over a year ago, Suen was still studying medicine at Imperial College London. That changed in August, when Suen and his friends decided to start working on their NFT project with their own savings and funding from their families.
He said that compared with the UK and the US, people in Hong Kong are still a bit more foreign to NFTs, which he considers an opportunity. This has emboldened the team to announce the project to the world.
