Throughout the NFT growth of 2021, NFT-aficionados mentioned “I’d like it even when it went to zero” as a tongue-in-cheek countercultural declaration that that means and membership mattered greater than revenue.
It grew to become form of like a punk rock ethos in Web3. Burning cash (figuratively or actually) was a flex to sign particular person belonging to an in-group that positioned itself because the ethical antithesis to the speculative frenzy that outlined the time.
Just like the early cypherpunks who fought for freedom and autonomy, or the Bitcoin maxis who held by a number of crashes, the next-gen NFT degens threw eyewatering quantities of magical web monies at in any other case right-click-and-savable JPEGs to show they understood the deeper layers of web tradition and crypto ideology.
However even essentially the most ardent believers in blockchain’s promise usually are not resistant to doubt when a protracted, chilly Crypto Winter drains each capital and conviction. And the NFT bear has been grizzly.
Regardless of a flutter of exercise in current weeks—somebody picked up 45 CryptoPunks for practically $8 million, another person grabbed an Ether Rock for over $300K, the Pudgy Penguins’ ground doubled, Moonbirds tripled—for essentially the most half, the NFT market is down unhealthy. At $156 million for July 2025, we’re nowhere close to the loopy highs of August 2021 when OpenSea reported over $3 billion in NFT buying and selling quantity. For NFT artwork particularly, buying and selling is down 93% since its 2021 peak.
So, assuming the one you love NFT is nearing its all-time low, it’s time to verify in and see: do you really nonetheless like it?
If that’s the case, why do you continue to like it?
And you may’t simply say: Oh, I like the artwork, in any other case a screenshotted JPEG would suffice.
As a result of to nonetheless love this stuff at their all-time low, firstly, it’s important to be content material with the worth you paid in relation to the worth you continue to get out of it.
Second, there must be a motive for it to be an NFT. If it had been only a fairly image that may be saved, copied or shared with out consequence, there is not any level in it being an NFT and no sacrifice in watching it go to zero.
As all people’s favourite media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, would argue: the medium is the message. You don’t love the picture extra due to its content material. You like it extra as a result of as an NFT, the picture is one thing else. The NFT reprograms your function from mere viewer of the picture to participant in a medium that tracks possession, identification, worth and standing.
McLuhan believed each medium is an extension of ourselves. A e book extends the attention. A cellphone extends the voice. Likewise with an NFT, we’re in relation to an object in a approach we couldn’t have been if it had been only a JPEG.
Bert Is Evil
With this in thoughts, let me current to you a case examine for my beloved NFT: Bert is Evil.In November 2022, I purchased an NFT that could be very in all probability price zero right now. Known as Bert is Evil, this was one of many first-ever viral web memes (circa 1997), minted as an NFT by its authentic creator 25 years later.
Regardless of its wealthy historical past as an early on-line joke, it failed horribly as an NFT assortment. Which is a really huge a part of why I like it. For me, the NFT is a priceless artifact that you possibly can be marveling at in a museum.
It’s an historic residue; an immutable reminiscence from a failed crossing between two eras of the Internet. It revealed the bounds of translation between networks, eras and cultural grammars and the way that means and worth in Web3 shouldn’t be assured by the act of minting.
The OG Meme
Earlier than Pepe the Frog and Trollface, Wojak, LOL man and GigaChad, there was: Bert is Evil. Prefaced maybe solely by Mr. T Ate My Balls and Dancing Child, the early web meme uncovered the sordid secret lifetime of one-half of the Sesame Avenue duo, Bert and Ernie.
Photoshopped right into a collection of mock images, the Muppet was pictured alongside historical past’s most notorious, from Jeffrey Dahmer and Lee Harvey Oswald to Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan. There was “proof” of Bert smoking marijuana, fondling a younger Michael Jackson’s crotch, and forcing Ernie to get a lap dance.
One other “picture” referenced an alleged deleted scene from Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s leaked intercourse tape the place the newlyweds had engaged in “a torrid orgy” with Bert.
Spawned in 1997 whereas he was nonetheless a scholar of High quality Arts on the College of the Philippines, the web site was only a factor that twenty-something Dino Ignacio did to make his pals chortle. Armed with a hand-me-down 14.4 baud modem and {a magazine} assortment spanning Omni Heavy Steel to Mad Journal, Ignacio was a disciple of mashup tradition on the web’s daybreak.
Bert rapidly went viral, touring by nascent web boards, electronic mail chains and blogs. Again then, the online was participatory and anarchic. Remixing was rampant and authorship blurred, privileging circulation over provenance. Anybody might edit Bert; nobody owned him. He mutated endlessly by the hands of Photoshop pirates lengthy earlier than phrases like “faux information” entered our lexicon.
When Bert gained a Webby, his recognition exploded. The web site grew to become so widespread that Ignacio might now not afford to run it on his personal. Fairly than shut it down, he zipped it up and supplied it to others to reflect in trade for internet hosting the unique website. After decentralizing, a whole lot of mirrors popped up internationally, rising Evil Bert’s attain and notoriety.
Then, in 2001, an altered picture of Bert and Osama Bin Laden appeared on protestor indicators at a pro-Taliban rally. Ignacio felt it had gone too far. He shut down the web site out of concern.
However the meme had a lifetime of its personal. It lived on.
The NFT
1 / 4-century later, Ignacio had the thought to immortalize Bert is Evil as an historic, ownable object of document. Minting the meme as an NFT consciously resurrected an icon from a earlier technological rupture. The gesture was not meant to be industrial however cultural: an act of media continuity.
Initially, my affection for the NFT was grounded in nerdy McLuhianism. However, as Bert failed to draw followers, my relationship to the NFT deepened.
I had realized about it by studying the maiden version of Philippines Vogue (September 2022), the place Ignacio had been profiled by the shiny in recognition of his influence on the expertise trade. Whereas Vogue shouldn’t be the apparent place to get your NFT alpha, I used to be intrigued, considering this unsold, unknown NFT may need been missed and undervalued.
Within the story, the journalist probed Ignacio as to why he thought his NFT undertaking was a flop. “Perhaps I simply don’t perceive NFTs,” he mentioned.
If I had been a greater investor, I might have acknowledged this because the purple flag it was and continued to flip by my journal. As an alternative, I jumped onto Basis and acquired the primary of 4 within the assortment. Inside hours, a mutual buddy had seen the transaction on-chain and linked Ignacio and I on Fb DM.
Ignacio was shocked that certainly one of his NFTs had lastly offered, virtually a 12 months after the mint. His buddy instructed him that I used to be somebody in crypto so he agreed to a cellphone name after which, I heard the backstory. Ignacio mentioned he felt like an imposter in Web3, disingenuous, overseas. Whereas he was assured amongst his current Web2 spheres orbiting sport design, software program improvement, VR, avatars and extra, he didn’t really feel the identical credibility in Web3 and he blamed himself for not doing sufficient to publicize the mint.
A few of his pals supplied recommendation on the right way to construct hype, like diving into Discords, shitposting on Twitter and performing some Areas. However Ignacio spent solely a pair weeks earlier than giving up.
Admission Necessities
Whereas crypto is technically permissionless, the tradition is much less so. As a lot because the Web3 group likes to bang on about onboarding the following billion, and insists on branding itself as inclusive and empowering, for essentially the most half, it’s a clique with its personal assembly locations, rituals, language and admission necessities.
In Ignacio’s case, his Web2 pedigree — having held senior roles at Digital Arts, Oculus, Fb and Roblox — earned him few reputational factors in Web3; sliding into Discord to rattle off these roles conjures that Steve Buscemi “How do you do, fellow children?” meme.
The Bert NFT failed as a result of Ignacio introduced a Web1 artifact right into a Web3 context utilizing Web2 assumptions about popularity, consideration and standing. Ignacio was rightly revered in early web circles. However he didn’t go to the trouble to ascertain a presence in Web3 areas.
Web3 is tribal and tight-knit with a bullshit detector fine-tuned to outsiders who have not achieved the time. Web3 doesn’t care who you had been on different variations of the web. Web3 offers zero fu*ks what you listed in your LinkedIn. You’ll be able to’t simply present up and count on your legacy to mint itself. Web3 needs to know what NFTs you’re accumulating, what shitcoins wrecked you, what DAOs you’ve contributed to.
Wallets inform tales. And with out actual, verifiable involvement with crypto, the community sees you as read-only, not write-own. I imply, Ignacio admitted that he couldn’t even get into Crypto Twitter. My guess is that he was rapidly labeled an extractor relatively than a value-add. Which is, maybe, the quickest option to kill an NFT undertaking earlier than it’s even launched.
For that motive, I’m wondering if Ignacio really dodged a bullet. He by no means needed to have that dialog along with his patrons about why these Bert NFTs went to hell as an alternative of the moon.
In a last, tragic, oh-so-crypto twist within the story, Ignacio was scammed when he clicked on a malicious hyperlink despatched by electronic mail; a phony inquiry trying to purchase one of many different Bert NFTs.
Ignacio DM’d me for assist and after briefly trying into it, all I might inform him was that the 1 ETH I paid for Bert #1 was gone eternally. This was notably painful since Ignacio had dedicated to donating 50% of the proceeds of the gathering to the Seattle affiliate of the Public Broadcasting Service. The one motive he hadn’t made the donation already was as a result of I’d instructed him (again in 2022) it was higher to attend til the entire assortment offered, and in that point, the worth of his ETH treasury would certainly improve. In hindsight, that was the worst recommendation ever.
Not But Useless
And so, I assumed, that was the tip of the story. Bert was wealthy in that means however poor in bids, had not offered by now, he was by no means going to promote. I wrapped my trustworthy homage to this market-resistant NFT, despatched the article to my editor, and shot a DM to Ignacio to let him know one thing was popping out.
“Have been you the one who bought the second?” Ignacio replied, with a hyperlink to a tx hash from a pair days in the past.
Umm, what?! No! I didn’t purchase Bert #2. So who did?
Looking out the pockets deal with, I found it belonged to the Bureau of Web Tradition (BIC)—crypto’s historic immutable meme treasury, as described at their X profile. Shopping their assortment valued over 900 ETH, I noticed they held iconic web memes as creator-minted NFTs together with Me Gusta, Baton Roue, Vibing Cat, Unimpressed Nightclub Woman and Kevin, and had paid as a lot as 11.11 ETH for Dancing Child and 36 ETH for Keyboard Cat.
I couldn’t consider it. These guys obtained it; this was the museum I at all times knew Bert belonged in.
I puzzled: If Ignacio had identified there was an on-chain collective that truly ‘obtained’ Bert, and who acknowledged Ignacio himself as a visionary whose on-line legacy deserved a spot in a blockchain-based corridor of fame… Then perhaps, he wouldn’t have felt so alone in Web3?
After which I puzzled: what if I used to be proper in my authentic considering that Bert was undervalued at 1 ETH? All it took was for this exterior physique to agree that the NFT was price shopping for and abruptly it was. Perception in worth must be validated—by value motion, cultural narrative, influencer assist and group hype. And when that occurs, the factor does certainly grow to be beneficial.
However hey, perhaps I liked it much more when it was at zero.
