You may download the original clipart for $0 if you don’t have $300,000 to spend on this crypto collectible.
Nothing is off the table in the domain of non-fungible tokens. After witnessing individuals willing to pay outrageous sums of money to acquire NFTs of farts, cat images, and Lindsay Lohan fanart, you might be wondering what kind of nonsense will next make its way into the blockchain. Clipart, it appears, is the answer. A rock clipart image. Anyone may download free rock clipart right here, but it’s also being sold on the blockchain for the equivalent of a modest house.
If seeing that doesn’t make you want to jump into the water, there’s good news: you can own one of the EtherRock on the market right now for $272,679. And the price will simply continue to rise. There were just 100 pet pebbles in circulation when the unknown developer behind this initiative originally released them in 2017. This limited run implies that “each fresh virgin rock grows more and more costly,” according to the project’s website.
They also pointed out that these virtual rocks had little utility “beyond being able to be transported and sold, and giving you a great sense of pride in owning one of the game’s limited 100 rocks.” So, there you have it.
That proposition appears to have piqued the interest of crypto collectors. Gary Vaynerchuk, an angel investor turned crypto star, tweeted about EtherRock two weeks ago as one of the “pre-2019 NFT ideas” to watch over the next decade. People began putting down cash almost immediately, and their prices surged. Transaction records reveal that the price of a single pet rock has risen from 1.2 ETH (approximately $3,700 USD) to 32 ETH (about $99,200 USD) to 80 ETH (nearly $248,600 USD) since Vaynerchuk’s tweet. Buyers have paid almost $664,000 on these artifacts in the last 24 hours, which are essentially simply subtly coloured variations of the same royalty-free clipart that anybody can download.
ROCK THREAD: Why I spent $46,300/15 ETH for a PNG file of a grey pet rock and why I think it could end up being one of the best investments I make since getting into crypto. A thread (continued) #EtherRock #EtherRocks pic.twitter.com/kkkUVGFKh7
— Z (@degenharambe) August 7, 2021
Varied people have different reasons for purchasing one of these rocky companions. In a Twitter thread, one buyer said that their $46,300 purchase was a means to own a piece of NFT history.
“As we go into the era of digital treasures, being one of the first kinds of art and the first to do anything offers them considerable provenance,” they stated. “The pet pebbles have the ideal shock value; they’re so foolish that they’re perfect.” Fate is a sucker for irony.”
Another buyer, who spent around $25,000 on his own rock, told Motherboard that these purchases were either “the most dumb or fantastic choice of our life.” He went on to say that while he initially thought the premise was ridiculous, “FOMO kicked in,” as it often does, and $25,000 later, he had his own piece of NFT history. And I completely get the sentiment—the internet’s design is bound to decay from the inside out as time passes, leaving us with the task of archiving or purchasing pieces of online history before they go forever. However, if that piece of history is a low-res rock clipart, you’re definitely better off saving your money and downloading it for free.
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