Despite the crypto market downdraft, the NFT.NYC conference tripled in size since last year. Someone slept in a garage because “the FOMO” would be “too hard” and he couldn’t afford a hotel. A top VC explains how crypto conferences have changed throughout the years. At a yacht party on the Hudson river, about a dozen men are chugging beers they’ve poured into their shoes as onlookers cheer. Elsewhere, a Web3 developer is sleeping in a parking garage in the Bronx because he can’t afford a hotel room. And a corporate lawyer – who also collects nonfungible tokens – traveled thousands of miles and proposed to his now-fiancée under the Brooklyn Bridge.
They, and some 15,000 other people, have all descended on New York City to attend the largest NFT conference in the world.
NFT.NYC has been compared to “the Woodstock” or Coachella of NFTs. Founder Jodee Rich recently told Insider the four-day event has the potential to be “the South by Southwest of NYC.”
For a VIP ticket, NFT.NYC attendees can pay up to $1,999 to attend panels and other perks. This year, there were more than 1,500 speakers, with talks including “How to Win Friends and Influence Degens,” “Commercial Real Estate Applications for Digital Land,” and “The Importance of Female Entrepreneurship in the NFT Space.”
The function was chock-full of artists, founders, venture capitalists, and the occasional opportunist trying to shill me their pfps, or profile picture NFTs – all in the heart of Times Square. Amid a sea of early-20-something males, one is adorned in a black t-shirt that reads “utility deez nuts.” There’s a dancing non-descript mascot in the same room, blasting electronic dance music. It’s 10:00 a.m.
Attendees and events aren’t all sensationalized caricatures of “down bad” bear market memes, or overly zealous “degens” and “shitposters” from Twitter.
Truckloads of funding, for example, continue pouring into the space despite less-than-ideal market conditions.
NFT marketplace Magic Eden announced a $130 million Series B raise at a $1.6 billion valuation during the conference. This includes a partnership with $1.2 billion valued Solana-based wallet Phantom. On Thursday, Solana Labs cofounder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko said the company would be building a Web3 mobile phone.
Yachts and FOMO The talk of every Web3 conference, however, is rarely the conference itself.
The most work gets done, at least a dozen attendees told me, at the after-hour gatherings, parties, satellite events, and meetings with investors and prospective hires on the side.
The conference is not where the “alpha” is, developer Nate Workman told me.
Connecting with other people in-person, he says, is what brought him to NFT.NYC from New Hampshire. To make it to the conference, he borrowed a friend’s 2018 Chevrolet Equinox and slept in a parking garage for two nights.
“I’ve just been kind of short on cash and I have a two-year-old kid,” Workman said, adding that a friend did offer him a place to stay, but he declined. “I knew the FOMO would just be too hard for me not come here.”
Workman, like many attendees I spoke to, is less concerned about token prices and mass liquidations. Instead, he says he’s focused on building in the space and just excited to be with friends in-person.
Bearish sentiments and volatility aren’t impacting the mood of the conference, per Leah Callon-Butler, director of the tech consulting firm Emfarsis and an NFT.NYC speaker.
“The vibe has been amazing. I don’t think the market slump has killed anyone’s energy,” Butler said in a message. “If anything, everyone is looking forward to the crypto winter so they can focus again on building. I’m hearing that again and again.”
It doesn’t hurt, however, that many of these after-hour events are free parties, with open bars, live music, raves, and gallery openings. My personal b-list to household name celebrity sightings this past week included: Busta Rhymes, Questlove, The Chainsmokers, and Don Diablo.
In 2021, NFT.NYC took place following Sotheby’s auction of Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” NFT for a record $69 million, not to mention that ethereum (one the most common blockchains to mint NFTs on) was nearing record highs.
The NFT market has since simmered down, however, causing tourist builders and investors to exit the space. Weekly NFT sales have declined by more than 80% from a January peak of nearly $1 billion, according to data from NonFungible.com. In the past three months, Ethereum has also declined 61.33%, per research firm Messari, along with crypto’s total market cap , which notched an 18-month low under $1 trillion last week. Beyond the crypto universe, consumer sentiment is at its worst since the 1970s as Americans grapple with inflation, rising interest rates, and a potential recession .
Still, the conference, has tripled in size over the last year, organizers said.
Compared to when NFT.NYC first started, Framework Ventures cofounder Michael Anderson said it’s almost like night and day in terms of number of attendees, energy, and events in the conference. Anderson attended as a speaker during the conference’s first year.
“There’s so much excitement and energy. It’s just a complete 180 since it started,” Anderson, who manages a $1.4 billion crypto venture firm, said. “Compared to last year, it seem a little bit more normalized though. We haven’t gone back to 2019 by any means, but it feels like everybody’s kind of taking a step back.”