The Defiant

Hashmasks is Newest NFT Craze

NFT collectors are flocking to get their hands on Hashmasks – a collection of 16,384 unique digital portraits. Each portrait features a combination of five traits with different levels of scarcity. The sale window opened with seven price tranches, quickly breaching the 100 ETH threshold and selling out yesterday morning for a total of $14M…

By: Cooper Turley Loading...

Hashmasks is Newest NFT Craze

NFT collectors are flocking to get their hands on Hashmasks – a collection of 16,384 unique digital portraits.

Each portrait features a combination of five traits with different levels of scarcity. The sale window opened with seven price tranches, quickly breaching the 100 ETH threshold and selling out yesterday morning for a total of $14M in ETH.

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All Hashmasks were revealed when the hard cap was reached, allowing collectors to see which random traits they received. This led to a flury of Tweets as collectors shared their Hashmasks to compare various levels of rarity, or “pulls.”

Okayyyy @Hashmask rarity time! (n=1943)

Below is a sample of 2k hashmasks and the rarity of features. There may be rarer masks but at the moment Mystic is a winner at .1% frequency (#16251) pic.twitter.com/kZxD23149Q

— Lewis Freiberg (@LewisFreiberg) February 2, 2021

More than Media

Hashmasks go beyond the visual appeal by including a naming feature using fungible Name Changing Tokens (NCT). To name a Hashmask, collectors must burn 1830 NCT – currently valued at ~$500 at the time of writing.

Early purchasers received NCTs worth two naming rights. Additional tokens are earned by holding Hashmasks at a rate of 3,660 tokens per mask per year.

The naming element quickly led to a vibrant market of squatting on Hashmask names like Buterin, Elon Musk and Moon, and a Uniswap market for NCT with $15M of 24h volume.

NFT Season

The excitement around Hashmasks comes as the latest viral project in the NFT landscape, building on the momentum that started in the later half of 2020.

For Hashmasks, the combination of Cryptopunk-like scarcity, generative art and naming rights created a unique breeding ground for new collectors dipping their toes into NFTs for the first time.

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With NBA Topshot breaking market records, the launch of the Flow blockchain and Nifty Gateway hosting six-figure drops daily, it’s safe to say that NFT collecting is starting to go viral.

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Credit: cryptoart.io/data

Pop into Clubhouse and you’d be hard pressed not to find an NFT room at any time of day.

But, this trend is one that must be taken with a grain of salt. It’s without question that the vast majority of collecting is for speculatory purposes, which as 2017 showed, is a short-lived driver. While it’s great to see NFTs garnering attention, most – if not all – are still a whale’s game.

Still, the energy around an emerging sector of crypto goes to show that mainstream adoption could be just around the corner – and it may be colored with Hashmasks.

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