It was the slap heard and seen around the world.
For the last couple of years, the Academy Awards have left fans perplexed and dismayed – either by announcing the wrong film as the winner or by being just plain monotonous.
And this year is proving to be yet another mind-boggling mess.
In an unusual and unexpected set of circumstances, Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock on stage – live on television – after the latter made an offensive remark about Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Within less than 24 hours of Will Smith’s public image being tarnished by whacking Rock in the face, the cryptosphere has created at least two initiatives claiming to register the incident on the blockchain.
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Profiting From The Will Smith Slap
A newly minted cryptocurrency that was inspired by the Will Smith slap during the 94th Academy Awards had a big rise in value over the previous day.
Despite the apparent lack of a correlation between cryptocurrency and the slap “felt” throughout the world, the freshly issued crypto assets appear to have produced some decent profits.
Shortly after the Oscars, a coin dubbed “Will Smith Inu” (WSI/USD) began trading on decentralized market Uniswap UNI/USD.
Slap Token Rallies 10,000%
The Ethereum ETH/USD-based Will Smith Inu coin “exploded” to a 10,000% rally following the live assault, and amassed a $3.65 million trading volume.
lmao of course it’s up 10k%. Why wouldn’t it be? pic.twitter.com/lOuBPllCEc
— razor (@razoreth) March 28, 2022
However, the coin has subsequently lost the majority of its value. As of Tuesday morning, the token was still up 286%.
The Will Smith slap has also been turned into an NFT collection on the OpenSea marketplace. So far, OpenSea user “Will Smith Slap DAO” has sold 730 tokens for between $7 and $300 each.
The entrepreneurial NFT artist, who self-identifies as a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), produced 2,000 Will Smith Slap NFTs – one-of-a-kind collectible NFTs, or “non-fungible slaps.”
Quick On The Uptake
Due to the ease with which a blockchain-based digital asset can be created utilizing the ERC-20 or BEP-20 token standards, meme-coin producers have frequently profited swiftly from current trends.
In this scenario, the token’s creator reportedly earned approximately 10 ETH or $33,000 while investing 4 ETH or $13,200 for contract creation and initial liquidity.
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A token inspired by Netflix Inc’s NFLX Squid Game experienced a similar peak and fall in value last year. Despite being deemed an evident hoax, the token’s price soared by 83,000% before collapsing to zero.
Meme-coins Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Floki Inu (FLOKI) prices have also increased significantly following Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweet about calling his dog “Floki.”
Featured image from The New York Times, chart from TradingView.com
