As long as you dress them up, city pigeons look pretty nice. Like the one with a rainbow-colored mohawk, a black T-shirt with rips, and black-and-white checkered shoes. Or the other one with a white camisole, yellow bandana, spiked leather collar and worn pink socks. And even that pigeon with purple sneakers, 3-D glasses and a piece of greasy pizza in its (her?) mouth would enrich the gray streets in every city.
And that’s just three of the project’s 6,200 different pigeons Pointless Pigeons (aimless pigeons). All with slightly different decoration, colors or accessories (backpack, sunglasses, airpods), in ever different computer-generated combinations. Not one pigeon is the same as another, they are all unique.
These colorful birds do not exist in the city, but only online. And you can buy them and collect them – at least, not those pigeons, nor the pictures of the colorful cartoon birds. What you can buy is a so-called NFT, a Non-Fungible Token, a non-exchangeable token: a digital certificate of authenticity on the blockchain, the worldwide decentralized network of computers on which it is registered who is the owner of a certain digital file. For example from the digital file of that cartoon pigeon with that mohawk.
Three Amsterdam people in their thirties – an illustrator, a software developer and a financial specialist – have worked hard together over the past six months to launch the Pointless Pigeons. At the end of this week, the exciting moment will come for the three makers: the hour U when it must be shown whether there are enough buyers to make the project a success, and at the same time The Big Reveal where buyers see what kind of picture they have actually bought an NFT.
In the art world, NFTs of digital artworks have been traded at considerable prices (sometimes tens of millions) since last year. A wider audience is buying NFTs from pictures. Most popular are the bored cartoon monkeys of the fictional Bored Ape Yacht Club, which has been invested in by celebrities such as Snoop Dogg and Eminem. Many owners proudly place the picture of their bored monkey in the place of their profile picture on Instagram or Twitter.
The Amsterdam pigeon trio has been inspired by the success of the monkeys. “This is all because we have been bored at home for two years because of corona. We were looking for something fun to do,” says software developer @st4rdustOx (35).
Separated worlds
“We use our nicknames,” explains @Crypto_Dana (30), “because in the NFT world, we’re not necessarily the same person as we are at work.” During the day she works as a finance manager for a company, in the free hours she is the driving force behind the international online community of interested parties and (potential) buyers of the pigeons for the Pointless Pigeons. “I like to keep those two worlds separate.”
Another reason most people in the NFT world hide behind a pseudonym: when a project catches on, and the creators make a lot of money from it, or the collectors are lucky enough that their purchases suddenly become worth a lot of money, they want to be there. often not for sale for safety reasons. NFTs, which are only bought and sold in cryptocurrencies, are also a popular target for hackers.
The artist of the three is @miss_rustyn4il (32), who designed the pigeons and also designed the publicity material – and the computer game accompanying the launch of the Pigeons.
Why would someone put money into something as elusive as the NFT of an image, when you can copy the image for free as many times as you want on the internet? Software developer @st4rdustOx has often had to explain it to friends and family.
“Anyone can indeed copy the picture itself. But the name on the blockchain is unique, and it also states who owns it, that is fixed. Not the owner in the copyright sense, but the owner of that unique code.
“Compare it with Nikes. You don’t necessarily walk better on that than on fake Nikes, but you still prefer the real one. Some people also pay thousands of dollars for a real Gucci bag, while a cheap fake looks almost the same. Why do you buy such a thing? Because you think it says something about your identity.
“With NFTs, it’s not about your identity in the real world, but that in the digital world, you’online presence‘. And in the past year, our identity in the digital world has become much more important – perhaps because of corona.
“In this world, people mainly know each other through Twitter. You don’t see what kind of shoes they are wearing in real life, nor what their real name is, but you can see what kind of digital shoes they have, so to speak, what kind of NFTs, that’s what people are known for. The generation that grew up with games like Fortnite are used to buying digital stuff. In the past, someone bought a 20,000 euro Rolex watch to distinguish themselves. In a manner of speaking, we buy an NFT of a digital profile picture of 20,000 euros. We like that. We don’t care about such a watch, but we do care about that monkey.”
Show: I was there early
“Compare it with a special Pokémon picture. You don’t put that on your forehead all day long to show that you have it and that you are happy with it. You might even put it in a drawer. What difference does it make if it is digital or physical?”
For example, if you now have a Bored Ape, explains @Crypto_Dana, you will not sell it as a collector, even though some are now worth hundreds of thousands of euros. “With such a monkey you can show: I was there early, I did something very well, I got in when it was not yet a collector’s item.” But investors, who are primarily concerned with the money, will be happy to resell their NFTs if the price has risen high enough.
“Over the past five to eight years, a lot of people have invested in cryptocurrencies and made a lot of money from it. They have a wealth of cryptos. You are not going to convert that into dollars or euros – for tax reasons or because you think those crypto coins will become even more valuable. Thanks to NFTs, there is now for the first time something that allows you to invest in the same crypto world. That’s why NFTs are so popular now.”
Nice pictures are not enough to publicize your project. “Everyone in the NFT world is on Twitter,” says @Crypto_Dana, “so that’s where you need to speak up and show what you’re going to do. And that includes a story, that is a matter of marketing.”
The story behind the ‘aimless pigeons’ that the trio made up is that humanity has left for the metaverse – the digital world that Facebook and other tech companies are building. “Shill City’s 6,200 pigeons have been left with no purpose,” according to the website. “No more heads to defecate, no more garbage bags to destroy, no more traffic to hinder.” The pigeons, each with their own style and personality, according to the story, have taken over the city.
The Amsterdammers have also made a game with an important role for the pigeons – only those who have bought an NFT of the pigeons can play.
In addition, NFT makers try to keep interest in their project alive by building an online community around it. Anyone who registers can participate in the conversation on the Discord chat app – about the pigeons, but also about all kinds of other things. The official language is English, because the NFT community is international.
safe space
“It acts like the proverbial coffee machine, but online – people log in to chat,” says @Crypto_Dana. “We want people interested in NFTs to feel at home with us in the chat conversations. It must be a ‘safe space‘ are. Volunteers in different time zones act as moderators, making sure no nasty things are said.”
The two women and one man who are the makers of the Pigeons want to radiate diversity and tolerance in their project. Also in the pictures. “We have made sure that male attributes and characteristics do not predominate in the pigeons. We’ve done our best to add feminine elements, without it being pink bows or high heels.” The plan to make a dove of peace fell through – because what if, among the computer-generated pigeons, a white one came out as the most exclusive?
After more than half a year of hard work, the project is now finished or finished. If they sell a lot, they can make good money – one pigeon NFT costs 0.04 ethereum (at the current price about 88 euros). “If it flops,” says @Crypto_Dana, “I won’t give up on the NFTs and move on to yet another project. I am convinced that with the NFTs and the blockchain we are at the beginning of something very big.”
“Anyone in the NFT world who says money is no object is lying,” says @st4rdustOx. But there is also something else going on for him. “Twenty years ago I started making websites. It was the time when we could try everything, everything was still new. We made deals on the chat program MSN messenger: if you link to my website, I will link to yours. The atmosphere now around the NFTs reminds me a lot of then. This is a new world, with all kinds of new possibilities. Every week new concepts are released that use the blockchain.
“These pictures are a way for us to push the boundaries of what we can do with NFTs. There is already a company online that claims to be able to provide festival tickets in the form of NFTs, making it impossible to copy them and making fraud much more difficult. This is really something new.”