$WHALE x Sotheby’s: Natively Digital 1.2 and What it Means for $WHALE

Over the last 28 months and since my entry into NFTs, I have bought NFTs, gifted NFTs and been gifted NFTs. But never have I sold a NFT.

As one of the world’s largest collectors of NFTs (390,493 and counting), it has been inhumanly difficult to find a platform and a time to participate in the other half of the market. I am a collector at heart and investor on the side.

Given that, the right time, right place and the right partner has emerged.

I am honored to announce that on behalf of the $WHALE Community, we will be a participant in Sotheby’s Natively Digital 1.2 event happening from October 14th to October 20th 2021.

Over the last month, I have, in collaboration with the artists, curated 3 masterworks that not only are some of the most valuable digital art pieces in NFTland today, but are also highly representative of how I fell in love with their craft in the early days.

There are no new pieces here, but rather eternal masterpieces from the “early days” that marked the rise of their prominence and legacy.

Our participation in this event goes beyond the traditional meaning of what it means to buy-and-sell, as every single piece was hand picked from the $WHALE Vault in collaboration with the artists themselves, exemplifying a new paradigm shift in the communication, partnership and friendship among digital art creators and their collectors.

But what does this mean for the $WHALE Community and the $WHALE token?

While the $WHALE token is not a direct fractional ownership of the $WHALE Vault, it is a means to access, enjoy and at times, rent the NFT assets that we have collected. It is also a means to participate in the large variety of NFT oriented events that we hold in our discord (discord.gg/whale).

As a project, we have never sold $WHALE to the broader market and have only used it as a community reward for participation and engagement. This distribution has amounted to over US$10 million over the last 17 months.

In order to ensure that we continue to have a strong community treasury to issue our tokens to reward participation in the project, proceeds from the auction will be divested as follows:

Initial capital + 50% of profit: Reserved for future NFT purchases

50% of profit: Utilized in a $WHALE token buy-back from the open market over a period of 6 months to be re-deposited back into the $WHALE treasury for future distribution.

Profits will be calculated net auction fees and a 10% royalty to the artists.

To prevent front-running of the market on the $WHALE token, we will neither be disclosing the exact token buy-back schedule beyond the start and end date, nor will we be disclosing the platforms that this buy-back will occur on.

While the primary purpose of this buy-back will be to ensure a healthy treasury to support community distributions far into the future, a secondary effect that is inevitable will be the upward pressure on price discovery of the $WHALE token.

With over 1,500 masterpieces that sit within the $WHALE Vault from some of the most recognized (and soon to be recognized) creatives within the space, we are confident in the epic future of $WHALE, while optimistic on the possibility of business model validation that the participation in this tremendous event will bring to the $WHALE Community.

I would like to thank Max Moore and the team at Sotheby’s for providing us with an amazing platform to hold the very first sale of $WHALE NFT assets and look forward to an amazing future of curation, collaboration and continued success.

To learn more about $WHALE, visit the website at whale.me or join our discord at discord.gg/whale.