As crazy as the NFT market has become, there’s been an increasing range of other things to do with NFTs other than pimp images of apes and punks – even if they have become enormously valuable.
We’ve seen the auction of apartments as NFTs, for instance.
And now we’re seeing charities starting to benefit from the frenzy, raising funds in a transparent way, while engaging new audiences.
Even Binance has launched “NFT for Good”, an open platform founded by the Binance Charity foundation, enabling people to convert their art and creativity into an auction targeting social and humanitarian issues.
Part of the reason it’s taking off is that NFTs gamify the process of fundraising.
At the same time, Crypto art is entering the realism of Dadaism and Satire. Remember the Ethereum token called FUCK, which raised $30,000 in the first half-hour of a July 2017 ICO? Now we have the world’s richest line as an NFT, (literally a drawn line in red ink) currently priced at 260.774 Ether or $1.04M.
The worlds of NFT art and satire now collide in a new project, which has just gone live on the NFT platform OpenSea, dubbed “Non Fungible Tories – The Boris Drop”.
This consists of a set of 8-bit parody portraits of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, where 52% of proceeds (matching the infamous Brexit vote majority figure) will be going to a UK charity to help the homeless.
In the NFT series, the artist – who bills themselves as “Pfeffel, a punk artist” (their identity has been verified by TechCrunch as a UK-based tech founder) – satirizes some of Johnson’s most famous quotes
In their tribute to “a clown, an oaf, a wager of culture war, and a pound-shop Churchill”, Pfeffel has creates a series of NFTs based on Johnson’s quotes such as “Watermelon smile”, “Letterbox” and the moment he hid in a fridge instead of answering a journalists’ questions.
The NFTs also satirize the very Johnson latest controversy – throwing a party at No.10, featuring cheese and wine, while the UK was in full pandemic lockdown. The “8-bit images of a 2-bit politician” will all be first editions.
Pfeffel has pledged that the charity Crisis at Christmas, which helps the homeless on UK streets during the festive season, will benefit from the NTF auction.
Admittedly, there’s plenty of Johnson material for any NFT artist to lampoon.
Johnson has increasingly gained a reputation as a ‘care and conscience-free’ politician, infamously coining the lines “fuck business” and “let the bodies pile up” in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s also slashed the UK’s aid budget, presided over the highest COVID death rate in Europe, and the deepest economic slump in the G7.
Pfeffel told TechCrunch: “One way to rebuke the devil is to laugh at him. My art laughs at Johnson. These NFTs will hopefully help to, in some way, alleviate the suffering of those on the streets who have been forgotten by a government that seems happy to party while the bodies pile up.”
The auction will go live on Tuesday at Noon and will end on New Year’s Eve at Noon.
You can follow the auction updates on twitter here.