Snoop Dogg is seen at the 2015 DIRECTV Super Fan Fest, Jan. 30, 2015 in Glendale, Ariz. (Photo by Donald Traill/Invision/AP)
Hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg sold a non-fungible token (NFT) on 4/20, the high holiday for marijuana culture, netting $33,000 in an auction on the NFT marketplace OpenSea.
His latest NFT, known as “Nyan Dogg,” stemmed from a collaboration between Snoop and the digital artist behind the 2011 Nyan Cat meme.
Other NFTs that also traded on 4/20 include “Hazy Nyan Cat” and “Nyan Blunt”. They sold 131 and 81 editions respectively, taking in about 90 ETH ($208,000) combined.
Non-fungible tokens are blockchain-based digital assets that represent ownership of an associated item, typically virtual trading cards, collectibles, or pieces of art.
Snoop sold his first-ever NFT collection titled “A journey with the Dogg” on Crypto.com on April 2. The collection was inspired by Snoop’s memories from his early years and the widespread, ongoing NFT movement.
It featured exclusive Snoop content, including new songs and videos from the hip-hop artist.
In a tweet, Snoop said that with his NFT collections, he was going to “smoke 1” with Elon Musk “on tha moon!”
One of the debut pieces sold by Snoop, titled “Death Row,” fetched an impressive $108,000. The piece is a nod to both the first record label that Snoop signed and “the Dogg’s electric and magnetic personality.”
Snoop told Vanity Fair that he was excited about the potential NFTs have for artists and he feels it will be a game-changer for the music business once it catches on.
“The NFT explosion hit fast,” he said. “There are still a lot of people out there who don’t know about it, or just don’t get it. They will though. It’s a big moment and a big technology that is changing the way artists do business and connect with our fans. I am excited about it.”
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 74 Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin returns for a new season of the GHOGH podcast to discuss Bitcoin, bubbles, and Biden. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble?
Journalist Amanda Yeo argued against the claim that NFTs help artists. “NFTs are not a boon for struggling artists,” she wrote for Mashable. “They are a plague facilitating art theft … NFTs don’t even guarantee any money goes to the person who created the work. As it currently stands, there is nothing stopping people from simply tokenising other people’s work, claiming it and profiting off it.”
Meanwhile, celebrities including NFL player Rob Gronkowski, hip-hop artist Ja Rule, actor Lindsay Lohan, and investor Mark Cuban have jumped on board NFTs. Alex Atallah, the cofounder of OpenSea, told Business Insider he expects to see even more celebrities joining the space.
