As NFT-mania maintains its vice grip on the public consciousness, early adopter Ja Rule continues to capitalize on the craze by once again returning to the scene of one of his biggest business failures: Fyre Festival. After selling a massive painting of the Fyre Festival logo as an NFT for over $120,000, the latest Fyre-related NFT to appear on his Flipkick platform is a viral tweet about the “gourmet” dinner provided to attendees, which turned out to be a sad cheese sandwhich.
The 2017 tweet was one of the wider world’s first indications of trouble in paradise, as influencer attendee Trevor DeHaas alerted his Twitter followers to the logistical shortcomings that would soon become a full-blown disaster and the subject of competing documentaries on Netflix and Hulu. DeHaas seems to have developed a sense of humor about the whole thing because he has partnered with Flipkick to sell the rights to the now infamous tweet. They’ve valued those rights at $80,000, which will go toward DeHaas’ medical expenses — he needs a kidney transplant and is currently on dialysis.
There’s precedent for selling tweets as NFTs, with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet going for $2.9 million, but it’s unclear just what happens once the non-fungible token trades digital hands. Plenty of investors are betting big that other rich folks will want to “own” a digital code that says they have the rights to a piece of artwork most people can just right-click/save as on their desktops. But at least the money in that case went to a good cause; Dorsey donated the money to GiveDirectly, which works with US families affected by COVID.
Meanwhile, Ja’s other big investment this year, into inflated GameStop stock, isn’t quite showing the payouts that enthusiastic investors promised when they made a run on the stock in January. Maybe this isn’t the guy to take your financial advice from, just a thought.
Futures Movers: Oil prices fall as U.S. data show hefty rise in gasoline supplies
Oil prices headed lower on Wednesday, with gasoline futures leading the losses in the sector as traders parsed U.S. government data showing a more-than-3-million-barrel decline in crude inventories, and a bigger-than-expected climb in gasoline inventories. Weekly gasoline demand was “disappointing as drivers may be resistant to higher prices,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at […]