Hawke's Bay trio (from left) Anita Jones, Kowen Houston and Amy Baker are ready to mint their New Zealand and fantasy-inspired NFT collection Cryptowild Druids. Photo / Warren Buckland
Hawke's Bay trio (from left) Anita Jones, Kowen Houston and Amy Baker are ready to mint their New Zealand and fantasy-inspired NFT collection Cryptowild Druids. Photo / Warren Buckland
A Hawke's Bay trio are ready to mint their own fantasy-inspired contribution to the wave of blockchain-based digital art known as NFTs.
IT engineer Kowen Houston and friend Anita Jones, a web designer and artist from Hastings, have joined Napier graphic designer and marketer Amy Baker to create Cryptowild Druids.
NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a style of digital art that has a coded "smart contract" linked to a cryptocurrency database which denotes it as unique or original.
It could be compared to proof of original artwork, rather than a forgery or copy.
Houston said he traded NFTs about a year ago and got the idea to build his own NFT project.
"I saw quite a few people getting a bit of hype off it and it felt like what I imagine the start of the internet was like right back at the dotcom boom."
He said the hand-drawn artwork by Jones and Baker is inspired by New Zealand's natural beauty and Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy.
"I am not a Dungeons & Dragons player but I know the fantasy stories, I grew up reading Harry Potter and stuff like that, but both Anita and Amy are into Dungeons & Dragons so they are making a sort of pick your path adventure and trying to make a strong lore and story behind the NFT."
Some NFT collections get managed services to write their smart contracts, but Houston and his friends are self-taught and write the code themselves.
"I spent about a month just cram learning just because I was interested, NFTs, blockchain, Ethereum and just all the coding that would be required to make an NFT."
The first Cryptowild Druids' drop will have 4000 NFTs typically priced 0.1 ETH, or about $440 NZD each on May 7, with a reveal and story episode released on May 14. Photo / Warren Buckland
He said their followers come from across the globe.
"It's all over the place, I've seen people from Palestine, from the US, from all over Europe and funnily enough I've seen so many people from Australia but personally I haven't seen that many people come through from New Zealand."
He said NFTs still seemed to be fairly unknown to most New Zealanders and there hadn't much in the way of interest domestically.
Houston said there was a lot to learn from the negative attention another New Zealand-based NFT project, Pixelmon, received domestically and internationally earlier this year.
Pixelmon, created by Waikato man Martin Van Blerk, sold $104 million worth of NFTs and was accused of misleading investors with a release of "comically bad" art unlike what was advertised.
"He promised a big game and I don't think he was able to deliver and he didn't meet the expectations of people unfortunately.
"When we saw that, it was like okay, let's dial back what we're going to do just so that we can actually meet expectations."
He said they all do the project in their spare time, but they would like to make NFTs and crypto their fulltime jobs.
"It would be quite cool building websites and code for other NFT projects and helping other people to make their own stuff in the space."
Financial adviser and Stewart Group CEO Nick Stewart said he did not get many queries from clients about cryptocurrency or NFTs.
He said most financial advisers did not deal with fringe assets like cryptocurrency since they were difficult to research and there was little regulatory oversight.
"Most retail investors want the protection of regulatory oversight and it's just not there."
He said regulators were doing a lot to increase activities in the cryptocurrency and NFT space but it was a work in progress.
In the meantime, he said those who did choose to invest in those areas were "swimming at the deep end of the pool".
The first Cryptowild Druids drop will have 4000 NFTs with a public price of 0.1 ETH, or about $440 NZD each.
If all are sold, the trio will make a profit of about $1.8 million before accounting for costs.
