My accidental $7500
Today I woke up and accidentally made $7500.
Well actually, you made me $7500, so thank you. But it’s been a weird day. Let me explain.
Don’t worry if some of this is confusing…it should be. Sometimes I worry more about those of us who start to think this all makes sense.
How this started.
I am going deep into Web3. For reasons I do not have time to explain here, I am incredibly bullish on web3 overall. Web3 was built for me and frankly, after being around web1 and web2 (yes, these are things), it’s time to mix it up. That’s for another day…
Because of a few pet projects of mine, a few months ago I was playing around with some NFTs, in part because of a project that I have in the works and in part because NFTs have the potential to be complete game-changers in how we distinguish ownership. Do not let the silliness of NFT artwork fool you into thinking this is some weird meme scenario. It’s not. For the future of NFT’s, and Web3, this art craze is simply a proving ground. Remember, Amazon used to sell books…or so we thought.
As part of my NFT weekend, I decided to mint several NFTs - mostly some paintings I made for my niece and nephew, but I also wanted to try something more tangible…a domain name. But which one?
ShakeTheBull.eth
Of course! What else would I choose?
Now, this little adventure took me about 10 minutes and cost me roughly $150 in fees (the cool kids call these gas fees), and to be honest, I didn’t think much of it since then. That is, until today.
When I bought that domain name using ENS, I essentially was paying a fee to a group of guys who were trying something. For all practical purposes, I was simply supporting their cause, not purchasing a service. This has a special place in my heart, since I know how hard it is to try new things. I knew that when I bought it.
Yesterday, that changed. The group of individuals running the ENS awarded anyone who had purchased a domain free tokens. In the crypto world, the act of getting free tokens is called AirDropping and so I was airdropped about 112 tokens. Most tokens are worth fractions of a penny, so I had little hope of anything special.
The truth: This happened last night and to be honest, I wasn’t paying attention. I had heard it was happening but frankly, that world is so damn confusing that you learn to hear/unhear all sorts of things. But today, after being reminded, I went ahead and claimed my 112 tokens.
But get this…on the open market, those tokens were being traded for $70! So, by absolutely no fault of my own, or with very little forethought or skill, had (and have since sold) 112 tokens worth $70. A cool $7500. Not enough to retire, or buy some fancy private jet, and surely nothing to brag about, but anytime you wake up having $7500 more than you went to bed with is a good day. I’ll take it.
Here is the kicker. I received the free tokens simply for the act of buying the domain, so I still own ShakeTheBull.eth. I bought something for $150 and then the seller then gave me something worth $7500.
What a strange world we live in.