Reflecting on, Looking forward and Giving back: $WHALE
Excuse the pun, but wow. What a $WHALE of a journey.
The leadership team and I started $WHALE on the fateful day of May 18th 2020. We had no expectations, an undercompensated small operational team and a couple of Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs).
What we lacked however, was made up for through a burning desire to share, to build and to give back to an industry and community that had enraptured all of our lives.
A passion to achieve a vision that the moderator team, the community and myself were willing to forsake sleep and rest to achieve: Empowering anyone and everyone to become a Whale through $WHALE.
This journey has always been, and will always be, about the empowerment and betterment of others.
While we are still only 9 months into our journey, I am so proud to see this vision becoming more and more of a reality every day.
Some numbers:
- The $WHALE Community is approaching a robust 10,000 members worldwide on multiple platforms that includes Discord, Telegram and Wechat.
- The value of those “couple of NFTs” are now valued in the millions. How many millions will depend on who you ask, but a leading AI valuation website in the space values the $WHALE Vault NBA Topshot collection at over US$75 million.
- The $WHALE fully diluted market captial has risen to US$165 million, positioning $WHALE as the 8th leading NFT token and the largest Social token by both market captial and liquidity in the entire blockchain industry.
The path to empowerment starts with those closest to you, and our journey to change the lives of the brave and innovative citizens of NFTland started exactly in that manner: As a project, we have never sold $WHALE to the community, and have never profited from the past or recent price action.
The tokenomics for $WHALE has always stipulated that 40% of $WHALE’s total 10 million token supply will be distributed over an indefinite period of time to $WHALE Community members, at a rate determined by the $WHALE DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).
Over the course of the last 9 months, we have distributed over US$7 million to not only $WHALE Community members, but also to projects that pioneered the space prior to this recent NFT bull-run: Rewarding creators for their contributions in laying the foundation of this new digital asset revolution that we find ourselves in today.
Giving starts at home, and we have always believed that we too could change the world, member by member, step by step, NFT by NFT.
It is at this point in time, that I, as the founder of $WHALE, would like to make my intentions for my personal holdings of $WHALE clear. That is, to: Look forward and give back.
As per the time of the posting of this article, I am officially pledging the first 10% of my $WHALE holdings (1 million $WHALE), currently valued at US$16.5 million, to a yet-to-be-named charitable trust.
This trust will focus on empowering disadvantaged children and women around the world, so that they too can make a difference in the future.
Many of us have been fortunate enough to have been born or accepted into good homes with access to a good education. I believe that an equal platform for everyone to succeed, thus bringing them the opportunity to give back and share with others, is a basic human right.
This and future donations from myself will vest over a long and extended period of time so as to allow for the economic stability of the $WHALE token, while allowing for future price growth to maximize the positive difference that the trust can bring to the world.
Details to be released in the future.
This announcement is step one in the process and I welcome others in the NFT and greater crypto community to participate, advocate and act in the greater good versus the allure of short term profitability, if you are able to.
As the NFT community, we are changing the world by bringing true digital asset ownership and management to a new digital economy…
But I know that we can also change so much more in the world today.
Post up, WhaleShark out.
