Enter the Margaritaverse: My Week at NFT.NFC

Wandering through the damp, grey streets of Brooklyn this past Tuesday, I encountered a paper sign, haphazardly taped to a street pole. “Missing Cat,” it read. There was something off about the image of the cat itself – a sort of Halloween-themed caricature, rendered whimsically in midnight black, with a stitched-up mouth and a button for an eye, a la “Coraline.”

Cautiously, I approached the sign. “After an experiment went awfully wrong, this Monsta Cat went missing from the Paw-X Lab on Wednesday, October 13th, 2021,” declared the fine-print. “She’s been generated from over 500 traits and her ID is #5502. Might look scary, but actually really shy.”

Things began to blend together. At an event for the crypto-focused social startup Yat, guys with undercuts shilled their startups as tubs of sauteed mushrooms languished under fluorescents on a buffet table. Questlove had inexplicably been hired to DJ. The bartender offered me something called a “Hodl Toddy” – I didn’t ask questions. I told someone I liked their CryptoPunk t-shirt. “I own it,” he told me, proudly.

Early Wednesday morning, I found myself back in the heart of Times Square, staring down a mountain of glistening shrimp ceviche on the sixth floor of a Margaritaville – the newest location for Jimmy Buffet’s sort-of-campy, sort-of-horrifying chain of tropical-themed restaurants. It shares the space with a synagogue.

Attendees wandered around in a daze. The shrimp was free, and apparently endless. The coffee, I was told, wasn’t.

Also, they were out of coffee.

On Thursday afternoon I headed to Terminal 5, a much-maligned concert venue on the far west side of Manhattan, for a digital art show sponsored by the NFT fund Metapurse. After slinking through a strobe-lit tunnel, I arrived on the main floor, where the NFT artist Beeple was casually signing autographs and posing for pictures. The space was bathed in harsh green light; crypto’s nouveau riche pranced around in Guy Fawkes masks. The vibe was part Electric Daisy Carnival, part Gaspar Noé.

Upstairs, I encountered a grim hallway lined with TV monitors. Attendees wearing virtual reality headsets stood in front of the screens – feet planted, arms whirling – attempting to explore a digital art gallery in the metaverse.

A teenage attendant tried to get me situated in a headset, but couldn’t quite get the focus aligned, and so gave up. As he was removing it, another metaverse explorer wheeled into a nearby ledge, knocking over a perched drink.

On the way out I saw a book for sale, “Goodnight Moonlambo” – “Goodnight Moon” for the laser-eyes Bitcoin crowd. “20 bucks,” chirped the seller, humorlessly.

Source