Dogecoin fans will tomorrow be able to get their hands on a portion of a very valuable Doge-inspired NFT.
The NFT is linked to an image of a Shiba Inu, the mascot of the meme coin turned seventh-most valuable cryptocurrency in the market. It sold in a June auction to investment collective PleasrDAO, which snapped it up for $4 million.
But now, PleasrDAO is splitting the artwork NFT into billions of pieces and putting them on the Ethereum blockchain so anyone can buy a slice and invest in the iconic NFT.
An NFT is a crypto token that functions like a digital deed of ownership that can be connected to just about anything—in this case artwork—but also audio or video content. They are usually minted and stored on the Ethereum blockchain, though other networks like Solana have recently seen a surge in NFT activity as well.
These tokens can also then be fractionalized and resold, as PleasrDAO is doing with its Doge NFT. It’s worth noting, though, that even crypto-friendly regulators such as SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce have said that such sales may constitute unregistered securities offerings if sold in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Dogecoin, though created as a joke in 2013, now has a market cap of $36 billion. The coin’s logo, which has been turned into the NFT in question, is ubiquitous in the world of Internet memes and cryptocurrency.
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PleasrDAOGE
(@PleasrDAO) August 31, 2021
“This NFT represents the early innings of a decade’s worth of digital culture and we want you to own it too,” PleasrDAO said on their website. “Our darling Doge is getting split into billions of individual pieces, secured and verified on Ethereum.”
Would-be investors will be able to buy a fraction of the Doge NFT, which will be sold as $DOG, via SushiSwap, a popular decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, according to PleasrDAO’s website.
Why would anyone want to buy a piece of the NFT in the form of a digital token, you ask? Think of it as an investment: investors have long been interested in real-world assets (like art) that have been digitally tokenized and put on a blockchain so anyone can have ownership.
The idea is that if the NFT goes up in value, so will the individual tokens that give people partial ownership in the attached artwork.
NFTs are hugely popular—and lucrative. The market exploded at the start of this year, with $1.5 billion sold in the first quarter. In March, artist Mike Winkelmann (better known as Beeple) sold an image file for $69 million.
The market cooled down in the early summer but is blowing-up again: records are being broken for the amount of cash people are pouring into the market. CryptoPunks, pixelated art images of characters, are particularly popular—daily trading volume last week was closing in on $70 million.
