24/11/2021 Macy's iconic Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons are now NFTs

The non-fungible token craze has made its way to the annual Turkey Day parade.

Macy’s auctioning 10 limited NFTs which will benefit Make-A-Wish Foundation

Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images, FILE

Macy's is turning some of the iconic balloon designs from its annualThanksgivingDay parades into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), some of which will be auctioned to benefit the Make-A-Wish foundation.

NFTs have becomeadopted by the mainstreamand are especially popular amongbudding digital art collectors.

Macy's first-ever NFT series is launching in celebration of its 95th annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is returning in full-swing this year after pandemic restrictions curbed some of its excitement last year.

"As we celebrate our rich legacy, 95 years in the making, we were struck by the unique place the Parade holds in pop culture, always evolving and reflecting the greatest characters and artists of each generation," Will Coss, the executive producer of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, said in a statement.

"To celebrate that history, we created art in a new form through NFTs that would bring the magic of the Parade to a new generation while raising funds for our partner Make-A-Wish," Coss added.

The NFTs are based on Macy's archival content and balloons that have appeared over the parade's nine-decade history. They are being designed by a digital art agency REOMETRY.

Starting last Friday and going through Nov. 30, Macy's is auctioning 10 of its unique NFT designs, and 100% of the proceeds generated from these 10 digital collectibles will go toward benefitting Make-A-Wish, a group that grants life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.

Macy's is also dropping an additional 9,500 free generative NFTs, featuring past parade balloon designs, that will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis starting at 10 a.m. ET on Thanksgiving Day. The auction and NFT drop can be accessed at macys.com/NFT.

Bids on some of the 10 NFTs up for auction have already topped $5,000 as of Tuesday.

The NFTs are powered by the platform Sweet and built on the Polygon blockchain. Even if the free NFTs are sold by fans in the future, 10% of any sales generated will be donated to Make-A-Wish, in perpetuity, using the blockchain technology.

NFTs have exploded in popularity amid the pandemic, creating an entirely new marketplace in recent years for digital collectors. Many recent NFT sales have garnered eye-brow raising sums. An NFT of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet fetched some $2.9 million in March. A collage by digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, fetched a whopping $69 million when it was auctioned as an NFT by Christie’s.

Arts

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/macys-iconic-thanksgiving-day-parade-balloons-now-nfts/story?id=81348581

Interesting NFTs
The Rare Pearl Moon with Motion
Motion Version Part of my moon series. This super rare pearl moon has just washed ashore on a remote tropical island beach, fining one of these rare Jems is like a total worldly treasure! These moons, only fall to earth once in a few million years! When I found this one I felt the luck that is said to come with this pearl moon.
Crossroad
LIMITED EDITION 1/1 | includes signed limited edition prints of all 3 states (pre-election, Trump win, Biden win) This piece is a first for Nifty, a token that will change based on the outcome of the election. If anything is constant about the times we now live in, it's uncertainty. This uncertainty is perfectly encapsulated in this piece of artwork as the person buying the piece will not know the final artwork. The artwork will be one state at auction before the election, and after the results of the election are known, will forever change to reflect a Trump or Biden win. PLEASE FUCKING NOTE: If trump wins, this token will change to that video of sexy boi king trump stomping through hell FOREVER. I don’t want you coming back to me bitching that you spent $2M* on this and now it’s a video of orangeman going HAM and it’s keeping u up at night popping mad boners. should have voted bruh. *and stfu that this isn’t gonna be worth a fuckton more when I hit 30 years of everydays and have a permanent collection in the MOMA. smh.
#61028
By OthersideDeployer
Whitehill
A character from The Beacon
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
"Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" is dedicated to the mysterious creation of Bitcoin, and acts as the showcase artwork within Javier Arrés’ exploratory series "Bitcoin, The Origin". "Who is the creator of Bitcoin?" The artist, Arrés, explores this question, and the feelings of doubt and mystery that accompany it, through his unique artistic language. An unknown, an enigma. It should be remembered that the name Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of Bitcoin's author or authors and gives us little insight into its true creator. For this Visual Toy, Arrés uses the signature claw machine, his famous half-operation, to symbolize our collective ignorance and unconfirmed belief: As soon as it has the stuffed animal within its grasp and appears to have solved the puzzle, the animal escapes again, and again. At present, there are three more public and studied possibilities who are either believed to be the creators of the currency or who directly claim the creation of it. It may be all or none of them, yet these three personalities leave us clues which are an important part of this interesting enigma. For this moment, it will remain unknown... In this artwork, Arrés elevates the claw machine from the apparatus, to an iconic pop art object serving as an important element to the Bitcoin creation narrative. Action is everywhere, with each movement serving an iconographical or metaphorical purpose related directly to cryptocurrency: Various ups and downs, roller coasters, mining points, robot, coins and more speak to a sense of hope, risk, mystery, randomness and possibility of pay out. Hundreds of manically thought out details make this creation one of the artist’s most complex Visual Toys to date. ------- "Bitcoin, The Origin" is a set of two Visual Toys, titled "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto" and "It’s Alive!" which reflect and explore the mystery and enigmas behind the creation of Bitcoin. Arrés presents these proposals to us in his signature style, full of iconography, fantasy, maniacal animations and a panoply of details (both subtle and overt) which simultaneously fascinate, hypnotize, and narrate this historical milestone through the singular vision of the artist. Through this series, Arrés freezes a crucial moment of cryptocurrency history, taking a still photo under his vision and turning it into two unique crypto artworks. ---- More info about Javier Arrés: https://javierarres.com/about.html