In 2021, we learned we could speculate on anything. Through NFTs, investors traded on emoji, tweets, jpegs, and farts. And in the memecoin market, a lot of people made a lot of money on inside jokes. For the uninitiated, a meme coin is a crypto asset based on a meme or an internet joke. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, which try to serve a real-world purpose, the point of most meme coins isn’t really to do anything. Instead, they’re largely vehicles for speculation, their value driven by hype. Meme coins generally begin at a price of a few cents or less but can quickly soar to hysterical highs, making them beloved by the Robinhood crowd. Here, a student turned crypto trader in his mid-20s shares his frenzied journey through the meme casino and what it was like to make his first million.
I FIRST BOUGHT BITCOIN in 2019 in order to buy drugs. I put in $500 and forgot about it, and when I checked at the end of 2020, I had $2,000. So I started putting my savings in little by little. I was doing really boring stuff, just buying coins and holding them. Then, this past August, Visa bought a CryptoPunk, which is a very blue-chip NFT, and I thought, Shit, maybe I should look at NFTs. I got lucky—I ended up minting the rarest type of one NFT, which was worth more than $200,000 at its peak. I was feeling good and decided to put all the money I had in crypto into NFTs, which by then was about $75,000. Half of it was mine—it was basically all my savings after I maxed out my 401(k). The other half was from my dad, and the plan was to split the profits with him. But two weeks later, halfway through October, NFT prices dropped. And NFTs just kind of died.
Denne historien er fra January 3-16, 2022-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra January 3-16, 2022-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
