Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
BTS member RM is being credited for keeping the group away from HYBE‘s flopping NFT venture, which is the kind of heartwarming news I’m always on the lookout for.
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HYBE has a joint venture with crypto exchange Dunamu in an NFT platform called Momentica, which is currently being rejected by both K-pop fans and crypto bros alike. The former has problems with basically the existence of NFTs to begin with, while the latter hates that Momentica has centralized control and stuff like anti-money laundering measures. So they basically pissed off their entire potential market with this.
Unfortunately, HYBE groups like SEVENTEEN, TXT, ENHYPEN, Fromis 9, and LE SSERAFIM were roped into the venture, but one reported example shows just how poorly it’s going.
According to the industry, on January 23, a total of 1231 video takes (referring to digital cards made NFTs in Momentica) based on 30 different concepts of LE SSERAFIM’s 2nd mini album ‘ANTIFRAGILE’ were released, but only 40 to 60 video takes were sold.
For $12, you can buy a ‘special video pack’ containing three video takes, but only 157 people purchased it. Total sales to date are estimated to be around 8 million KRW (~6,497 USD). Considering that LE SSERAFIM’s official YouTube subscribers are at around 2.22 million, the demand for these video NFTs among fans is only a tiny fraction.
The report goes on to say they felt BTS would be a trump card of sorts for them, but that RM made a whole-ass PowerPoint presentation to HYBE executives that maybe kept them away from it.
Though Momentica’s potentially killer content is considered to be of BTS, who has the biggest presence out of all the HYBE artists, BTS’s intentions are the biggest variable. BTS is known to have a strong voice in the agency. It’s reported that RM, the leader, made a presentation (PT) directly to HYBE’s executives to change the company’s policy and received favorable responses.
Thank you, King.
Even if you believe that’s speculative or whatever, the main thing to take away from this is that the NFT project is a complete flop. That should always be celebrated, and I’m enjoying watching the NFT shit being flushed down the toilet so quickly in the past year or so.
