NetGems is an agency specializing in setting up OG Memes as NFTs. Their first NFT Collection features three iconic memes. It includes 2014’s Numa Numa Dance and 2011’s The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger youtube videos. The third one is the 2020’s Two Pretty Bestfriends Tiktok video.
NetGems
Greg Cervenak, the co-founder of NetGems, said, “A lot of these creators, especially YouTube ones, have made a little cash initially, but very few of them have made much money off these. They’re certainly not making a living.” This is the situation that NetGems aims to change.
The business model of NetGems agency is straightforward. It will act as the middleman by taking care of all the work needed in setting up an auction on the OpenSea platform. In return, they will charge a cut on the sales.
The opening bids for the three videos is 3 ETH or about $8000, which reflects the optimism of NetGems in its current pool of OG Memes.
Throwback to the OG Memes
The Numa Numa Dance youtube video features 18-year-old Gary Brolsma dancing to a song of a Moldovan Techno Group. Brolsma’s video popularized the song but he wasn’t able to monetize it. However, as the copyright owner, the band received royalties when Rihanna and Happy Feet used the music.
Christopher Gordon, creator of the Honey Badger Don’t Care video, is slightly better positioned. He was able to trademark the phrase. As a result, Gordon landed on a merchandise, book and TV deal. However, It was an arduous journey because he fought off copycats in court.
Jordan Scott earned around $1500 for his Tiktok video with over 50 Million view. Despite the disparity, Scott sees his viral moment as a foot in the door to the industry. He said, “It gave me a chance to be featured on BuzzFeed, Good Morning America, Business Insider, a lot of other opportunities.”
Near-Monopoly in the NFT Meme Space
NetGems hopes to ride on the precedent set by other successful memes sold at the height of the NFT boom. Disaster girl generated $500,000 in sales. Charlie Bit me viral video and Nyan Cat also did well at $760,000 and $600,000, respectively.
The figures from the past sales do not paint an accurate picture of the meme NFT Space. Disaster Girl, Charlie Bit Me, Overly Attached Girlfriend and Creepy Chan share the same buyer. Farzin Fardin Fard, a music recording studio owner in Dubai, has near-monopoly of the space.
The near-monopoly presents a unique situation that will put OG Memes NFTs to the test. If Fard does not bid for these videos, will other buyers have the same spending power?
The lack of liquidity is a pressing issue for all NFTs. It applies to all digital assets, which pulled in thousands and millions of dollars. As such, an NFT platform is developing an NFT Fragmentation technology to split high-value NFTs into shards and make them accessible to the mass market. The same way that these memes because viral because of every single view on the internet.
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