Nfts
How an Indonesian Student Turned “The Dumbest Idea” Into Millions of NFTs and Memecoin – DL News
Shipping to Asia
- Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali took selfies every day for six years and turned them into NFTs.
- Now he’s back with a new memecoin and it’s already taking off.
- HSBC offers a tokenized gold product to retail investors in Hong Kong.
Do you remember Sultan Gustav Al Ghozali?
Maybe not. But in 2022, the Indonesian student made headlines for taking selfies every day for six years and turning them into NFTs.
Do not laugh. The “Ghozali Everyday” collection earned him more than a million dollars.
In August last year, he announced that he had taken his last selfie during his graduation at Universitas Dian Nuswantoro in Semarang, Indonesia.
He concluded by calling the project “the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, but luckily I can make money from it.”
Ghozali’s break didn’t last long.
Second part
He recently returned to X to promote a new memecoin, which he described as “part two of Ghozali Everyday.” It is a memecoin and NFT hybrid on Base, Coinbase’s layer 2 blockchain network.
The memecoin presale has already raised $1.4 million and those who purchased are currently waiting for their “memecoin and NFT hybrid” airdrop.
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While people may have hoped that memecoins would die out during the bear market, their popularity is growing again, with a current market cap of over $66 billion, according to CoinGecko.
Projects like “dogwifhat” and “slerf” on Solana saw trading volumes of $516 million and $259 million in the last 24 hours alone, respectively.
It’s even after the latter burned a significant part of Slerf’s supply due to a developer error, resulting in a loss of $10 million for investors.
Taiwanese singer Jeffrey “Machi Big Brother” Huang has raised around $36 million for his new memecoin, Bobaoppa. Not to be outdone, memecoins from the last bull cycle are still running.
Floki Inu had a big booth at the WOW Summit in Hong Kong this week. The Securities and Futures Commission warned the public in January about its staking program.
Regulators also said the project was unable to demonstrate how it could achieve annualized return targets of 30% to 100%.
The recent rise in memecoins has prompted warnings from regulators. In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority this week published guidelines for influencers promoting financial products, including cryptocurrencies.
More Asian news: HSBC offers tokenized gold for retail in Hong Kong
HSBC is rolling out a tokenized gold product for retail clients in Hong Kong through its Orion digital asset platform.
Don’t get too excited though. Tokens are not exchangeable for real gold and cannot be traded on secondary markets.
HSBC is not the only issuer of tokenized gold, however. Stablecoin issuers Tether and Paxos have gold-pegged tokens, as do Russian bank Sper and Turkish bank Takasbank.
In South Korea, CREDER also launched a gold-pegged token earlier this year.
Quick Bites
- South Korean police have arrested a duo for cheating a man in his 60s out of $4.1 million in a crypto scam. Both promised returns of 70% in a month.
- Philippine regulators have access blocked on the Binance website. Although the block has been in the works for months, it was unclear when it was going to happen and many users are trying to quickly get their money out of the exchange.
- The South Korean authorities are ready to take possession from Do Kwon’s apartment in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. The $2.2 million apartment is located in an affluent neighborhood popular with business executives, diplomats and the police chief.
Do you have a cryptocurrency story in Asia? Contact the DL News Asia correspondent at callan@dlnews.com.