Never look a gift horse, or a bull in the mouth.
The curious economics and psychology of Beeple’s “Politics is Bullshit” NFT.
I love seeing perfect manipulation/persuasion employed, in this case with the marketing of Beeple’s NFT drop on NiftyGateway. It has it all, FOMO, ANCHORING, ILLUSION OF A GIFT, BUILDING OWNERSHIP AND ENGAGEMENT.
A still from; https://res.cloudinary.com/nifty-gateway/video/upload/v1603975889/Beeple/POLITICAL_BULLSHIT_uqbc8x.mp4
In a nutshell 3 NFTs were released, two were auctioned as edition of 1/1 and the other was an edition of 100 for $1.
Guess what happened?
The $1 NFT sold out in seconds, the other 2 ended up selling for the highest bid of USD$66,666.66 each, see links…
“POLITICS IS BULLSHIT” NFT, edition of 100, price $1
https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0x12f28e2106ce8fd8464885b80ea865e98b465149/3
Description; “ok first off it's a fucking dollar, if you need extra convincing from some BS artist's notes wether you want to spend a dollar on this i will punch you in the god damn face. smash the buy button ya jabroni.”
“Crypto is Bullshit” NFT & limited edition print 1/1 sold for the highest bid of USD$66,666.66
https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0x12f28e2106ce8fd8464885b80ea865e98b465149/2
“Crossroad” NFT & limited edition print 1/1 sold for the highest bid of USD$66,666.60
https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0x12f28e2106ce8fd8464885b80ea865e98b465149/1
Genius level Manipulation/Persuasion was employed using a combination of FOMO/FRENZY and ANCHORING. Selling a 100 NFTs for the ridiculously low price of $1 each from an artist who is greatly valued caused insanity to prevail. But that was the whole intention and it worked.
The FOMO frenzy to buy followed by an instant secondary market reselling saw within 3 days 58 resales with an average price of USD$1,588.73 and a total secondary market volume of USD$92,146.37.
I’m not sure if Beeple has assigned 10% resale royalty? If so, then “kerching!”, as they circulate and circulate.
Now we come to ANCHORING, the dark art of psychological price manipulation.
“Anchoring works by priming the customer to influence their subsequent thoughts and actions.
Anchoring and adjustment is where the initial value sets the mental benchmark for estimating an unknown quantity. Anchoring changes the expectant outcomes by exerting a psychological attraction, pulling estimates closer to itself.
It's a simple pricing trick to pull prices up towards the anchor and still make them seem fair. It’s used by all the upmarket companies, ie Prada etc. A perfect example would be an upmarket handbag company who would have an ultra-expensive handbag in a store, priced at over twenty thousand dollars. It makes their $2,000 handbags seem fairly priced by comparison.”
Beeple’s sale of 100 $1 NFTs mixed with 2 auctioned NFTs created an interesting psychological effect. The piranha like feeding frenzy to get and flip the $1 NFTs was heightened as the bidding for the 2 individual NFTs started to skyrocket. An illusion was created between the price gap which became a reality as more and more people flipped the NFTs.
Collectors who missed out getting one were now happy to pay thousands even after knowing full well the seller got it for a buck that same day….did I say genius?
It became a no brainer to flip and irresistible to buy because the “ANCHOR” price told you thousands of dollars was now a fair price. The anchor price being the auction price that also pulled the $1 NFTs up.
Not only that, but Beeple made a 100 collectors instantly feel wealthy and even people more envious. Those who got one now became INVESTED in Beeple’s future artistic career and those who didn’t instantly accepted the new valuation.
A screencap showing the tip of the iceberg where flippers believe the $1 NFT is now valued thanks to the “Anchoring” effect caused by the high auction price.
In the physical art world there was the case of the artist Dana Schultz, whose meteoritic rise saw her prices leap in just a few years from $6,000 to $120,000. You’d think it would make difficult to sell her paintings, however her art dealer had a genius idea for her upcoming exhibition. Collectors were not allowed to buy one of her paintings, instead they had to buy 2. One painting to keep and the other to gift to a museum. The whole exhibition sold out instantly and collectors happily paid $240,000 to keep one painting whilst appearing “virtuous” as they donated the other (a tax write off).
This isn’t in anyway a criticism of Beeple’s art, I think it’s great, it’s just an explanation of the psychology employed by NiftyGateway and worked out so well it’s going to become the Modus Operandi.
A month ago, I had the crazy idea of creating a persona “Gifty NiFTy” who minted NFTs but never sold them. Instead the NFTs are given away in pairs, one to keep and one for the receiver to sell. Twice a week, spreading NFTs like a virus that others do the work of selling and I live off the resale royalties, the gift that keeps on giving. At least wouldn’t have to keep shilling my art on Twitter, Discord etc. Actually, my original persona name was “PANDEMIC”, or “VIRUS”, even considered “COVID-NFT”, but the connotations were just too evil. Lol
Now if any of you out there use my idea of only gifting NFTs instead of selling them to gain royalties then I want a cut. That’s right I want royalties of your royalties because I do look a gift horse in the mouth, so cough up some of your viral royalties.
My ETH wallet 0xfABBe40643b278bDEDcD677AAb66A9960e3c338f
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