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A fresh spark has been lit in the red-hot NFT market, a game that allows cryptocurrency users to create and trade their own unique digital cannabis budscalled MonsterBuds. The digital creatures, once sold through popular NFT platforms OpenSea and Rarible, now live in their own, independent MonsterBud Marketplace developed by crypto entrepreneur Greg Tumolo. The new marketplace allows MonsterBuds to keep 100% of the proceeds in-house, rather than slicing trading fees off the top for third-party NFT platforms. Over 10,000 different MonsterBuds could potentially be designed from the combinations of traits available to gamers. MonsterBuds arrives at the crest of the NFT craze; according to CoinTelegraph, OpenSea has generated over $700 million in the first four days of 2022 alone, mostly through investments in Yuga Labs’ “Bored Ape Yacht Club” (BAYC) and “Mutant Ape Yacht Club” (MAYC)[1].
MonsterBuds founder Tumolo, a lifelong tech aficionado, began seriously investing in cryptocurrency back in 2017, when the field was still relatively new. He built an impressive portfolio over the next four years when, in February 2021, his DeFi account was hacked, and he lost roughly half of his cryptocurrency value. Devastated and looking for a new venture, he came up with an idea to combine cannabis with cryptocurrency and call it “CryptoBuddz”. Tumolo called upon his network of developers and designers to create a game in which users create pieces of digital artwork inspired by cannabis and sell their designs as NFTs. They launched their program in September 2021 and sold out on presale day. Since then, Tumolo has built a strong community online via conversation-style interviews with other major players in the NFT space, which he publishes on MonsterBuds’ Medium page, along with quickly-growing communities on Discord and Twitter.[2] MonsterBuds continues to grow into a thriving NFT platform, offering several different games to play and ways to make real money.
Following the enormously successful examples of musical artists like Travis Scott and Ariana Grande using cryptocurrency to sell virtual concert tickets within gaming platforms like Fortnite and Roblox, MonsterBuds aims to similarly collaborate with musicians and brands in the future. The company already partners with several reggae artists, who create digital cannabis characters for their fans to bid on, and they plan to provide other artists with the technology to sell concert tickets, merch items, and unreleased songs as NFTs. MonsterBuds is also collaborating with cannabis dispensaries to market the sale of real cannabis where it’s legal to do so. 2022 is sure to see an explosion of these creative ways to invest in and trade cryptocurrency.
[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/opensea-nft-trading-volume-surges-as-bored-ape-mania-intensifies
[2] https://medium.com/@monsterbudsnft
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