Trevor DeHaas is auctioning his 2017 tweet of the “dinner” he acquired at Fyre Fest as an NFT. However not like the Fest itself, the tweeted photo of the limp cheese slice on wheat bread with some greens and a tragic tomato in a styrofoam container isn’t a grift; as first reported by Axios, DeHaas is hoping to boost $80,000 which he plans to place towards his medical payments.
“With how scorching the NFT market is true now I figured I’d give it a shot and will hopefully increase sufficient cash that I wouldn’t must depend on a GoFundMe to pay for my medical bills,” DeHaas mentioned in an electronic mail to The Verge. “The very last thing I need is to guilt journey somebody into shopping for the NFT and copyright to pay for my medical bills however I would really like the public sale winner to know that their cash could be going to trigger.”
The organizers of Fyre Fest billed it as an unique, luxurious music pageant within the Bahamas, which would come with top-notch catering, big-name performers, and transportation by way of Jet Ski and yacht. Kendall Jenner was among the many celebrities paid $250,000 to advertise the occasion, which company paid as much as $12,000 to attend.
That’s not what occurred, nevertheless.
Social posts from attendees like DeHaas confirmed photographs of a poorly organized, subpar occasion that wasn’t near what was marketed, and shortly the lawsuits started. In 2018, Fyre Fest organizer Billy McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading responsible to wire fraud expenses.
DeHaas mentioned he was impressed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s public sale of his first-ever tweet, which sold for $2.9 million on March 22nd. “Now, a number of weeks earlier than the Four yr anniversary of the pageant (4/28) I’m promoting essentially the most iconic cheese sandwich on the blockchain together with the possession of copyright,” he advised Axios.
DeHaas clarified on Twitter that he was promoting the tweet on flipkick.io, a New York-based firm for artists and musicians to “monetize their work with Bodily NFTs,” based on its website. Ironic twist: Fyre Fest co-organizer Ja Rule is a companion in Flipkick, however DeHaas says the musician just isn’t immediately concerned within the public sale of his cheese sandwich tweet. Nonetheless, Ja Rule, who was cleared of wrongdoing in reference to Fyre Fest, not too long ago sold an NFT of a painting of the Fyre Fest logo for $122,000.
DeHaas says he plans to switch copyright and possession rights for the NFT to the public sale winner. His goal is to boost cash for his medical bills; based on his GoFundMe page, DeHaas is in end-stage renal illness and desires a kidney transplant. “I presently do dialysis for 7 hours each day and for the time being looking for a dwelling kidney donor,” DeHaas advised The Verge. “The bills from a kidney transplant could be astronomical even with insurance coverage. Plus there are bills for my donor that I wish to cowl.”
Which raises a troubling query: are NFT auctions going to develop into one other device — like GoFundMe pages — to boost cash for prices not lined in America’s abysmal well being care system? If one thing good comes out of the debacle that was Fyre Fest (apart from the dueling documentaries on Hulu and Netflix), that’s definitely a win. However utilizing NFTs to pay for surgical procedure and remedy introduces a fair bleaker situation for folks determined to pay their medical payments who aren’t Walter White or independently rich.
Replace April eighth, 1:02PM ET: Added remark from Trevor DeHaas
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