Markets in everything

In the latest phase of the quest to turn everything into an NFT, crypto traders are now bidding to digitally own a 1,784-lb. cube of tungsten in Willowbrook, Illinois. According to the terms of the sale, which will have the receipt posted to the blockchain for posterity, the “owner” can have one supervised visit to the cube per year to touch or photograph it.

Over the past two weeks, a joke fired off by Coin Center’s Neeraj Agrawal about a nonexistent tungsten shortage thanks to crypto traders buying cubes of tungsten due to a meme actually caused one for Midwest Tungsten Service. The Illinois manufacturer actually creates small cubes of tungsten, and the tweet caused a 300 percent increase in sales that depleted the company’s stock on Amazon, Coindesk reported.

Last week, The Block reported that the company entered a partnership with crypto payment processor OpenNode to accept Bitcoin payments. One explanation as to why this is happening, which doesn’t really explain why this is happening, was offered to The Block by CMS Holdings’ Dan Matuszewski, who said “crypto just has a propensity for the density.” Tungsten is a very dense metal, comparable to uranium or gold, and its surprising weight is, apparently, pleasurable.

Midwest Tungsten told Coindesk that it primarily makes these cubes for industrial firms, and Sean Murray, the company’s director of e-commerce, suggested to Coindesk there would be a 14-inch cube next. The company offers cubes ranging from an 18-gram, 1-centimeter cube that costs $19.99 to a 41-pound, 4-inch cube that costs $2,999.99.

Well, the 14-inch cube is finally here. It weighs 1,784 poinds and is now listed on OpenSea as an NFT. Seemingly, it’s the biggest cube that Midwest Tungsten can create.

“Since we began selling the cube we have constantly asked ourselves, ‘What is the right size?’, and ‘Would anyone buy a bigger cube?’ Only recently has anyone asked us, or have we asked ourselves, ‘What is the biggest cube we can make?’

Here is the full story, via the excellent Samir Varma.  You know, circa 2010 I thought MR was about to run out of startling “Markets in Everything” examples — how wrong I was!

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