Culture

This 45-second animated NFT up for auction comes with the deed to a house

It's being sold by a 27-year-old who just passed his real estate broker's test and the tax situation is murky, at best. What's not to love?

Would you believe it if we told you lot of people are beginning to get completely and utterly exhausted by this whole NFT thing? Earlier in the month, market trading volume reportedly collapsed an impressive 70 percent from its February high — which could be related to the rumors that some of the most jaw-dropping sales look incredibly goddamn sketchy upon closer inspection. Of course, that hasn’t stopped many others from jumping on the bandwagon in recent weeks. Most recently, the NFT bubble has apparently swallowed up the real estate bubble world which... totally isn’t problematic at all.

Fast Company reported earlier today that a 27-year-old real estate broker, Shane Dulgeroff, is offering the world’s first real estate property sold as part of an NFT auction. 221 Dryden Street in Thousand Oaks, CA, is a pretty nondescript, standard California home from the looks of it, and includes “two modern, two-bedroom, one-bathroom rental units” featuring “newer” appliances and wood flooring. Dulgeroff claims the two units earn a combined $60,000 a year in rent, and are both currently occupied by tenants. “Dulgeroff says he briefed the tenants about the auction and says that the sale won’t change much for them,” explains Fast Company.

We are sure this will end well for everyone involved, especially those unnamed tenants.

The NFT art is beside the point — The NFT art for sale comes courtesy of Kii Arens, who Dulgeroff notes has “worked with the likes of Lady Gaga, The Rolling Stones, Coachella, Dolly Parton, RadioHead [sic],” and many others.

That said, he readily admitted to Fast Company, “It’s less about the significance of the art as it is the significance of us using a platform like this to sell a home... The significance that the art will carry, it’s going to be stored in your digital wallet forever as living proof that you purchased the first home ever that was done through any kind of a crypto platform directly. So that’s where the real value is.”

“Real value” being the operative term here.

Waiting for the bubble to burst — Dulgeroff readily admits there are a lot of unknowns that come with the world’s first NFT/property auction. As it currently stands, there aren’t any laws or specific tax regulations on the books concerning cryptocurrency-backed real estate sales, although Dulgeroff hopes for that to change in the near future, explaining he views this as a proof of concept for “a platform that’s specifically designed for cryptocurrency-based real estate transactions.” Fast Company notes that, if successful, the project could simplify home buying and other real estate transactions, thus putting people like Dulgeroff out of business.

The Flying in Colors auction runs through April 23, and has a starting price of 48 ETH, or roughly $117k. As of writing this, no one has offered an opening bid.