With the increasing demand for the NFT market, the pricing of unique digital assets is also very high. Aside from avatars and collectibles, many NFT-based digital assets are gaining popularity. For example, images of rock in different colors are selling for millions of dollars. The NFT collection EtherRocks, which is defined as a kind of “domestic rock”, continues to gain fame with each passing day. The collection made headlines when Justin Sun, the founder of the popular blockchain firm, paid more than half a million dollars for an EtherRock. What is the EtherRocks NFT collection and why is it so expensive?
What is EtherRocks?
The NFT collection, also known as ETHRocks, seems to be gaining popularity, but it is almost as old as the CryptoPunks collection. CryptoPunks avatars were produced in June of 2017, while the EtherRocks collection was produced in December of the same year.
EtherRocks can basically be described as digital rock images tokenized on Ethereum. The shapes of the rocks are the same, but their colors vary.
It is known that the design process of the collection was inspired by the toys called “Pet Rock”, which were popular in 1975. The stones collected from the Rosarito region of Mexico made the owner of the idea a millionaire as a result of the successful marketing strategy.
First sale only $300
It is impossible not to be surprised by the numbers that I will explain shortly. The first sale of the collection took place with 0.0999 ETH ($300 at the price of the period). The remaining pieces of the collection met with buyers between 0.1 and 0.36 ETH. Also, the collection was not so popular at the time of its initial release that only 20 EtherRocks were sold.
However, today the prices of the collection have skyrocketed. Most of them are not for sale, and those for sale have a minimum listing of $2.5 million.
Why is it so expensive?
As stated on the collection’s website, the rocks have no value or purpose. In addition, they do not hold any property other than being traded and owning one of the 100 EtherRocks.
Despite the fact that the metadata of the rock images is not etched into the blockchain, EtherRock pricing remains high. There are two main reasons for this: Its supply is limited to 100 and it has an effect similar to the effect of CryptoPunks in the crypto ecosystem.
NFT holders’ motivation to hold EtherRock is to have a share in the nostalgic side of unique tokens rather than the financial benefits they provide.
Finally, some of the crypto ecosystems think that prices will increase, while others think that the pricing is speculative. The fact that the tracking mechanism in NFT sales is more difficult compared to cryptocurrencies also makes the possibility of money laundering possible.
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