TragedyStruck.eth 🦇🔊

After six years, NFTfi is winding down. When I was 20 I had to pick a path in life. Coder or artist? Ultimately I chose coding. When I first heard about NFTs in 2019 I realized I could combine those two paths into a single project, @NFTfi. I was all in. In the six years since, this project has been my sole focus. In the early days I was the first lender and learnt a number of painful (and expensive) lessons on how to lend against NFTs safely. I still own Founder Kitty #72 that I got in a default for the low, low price of 30 ETH. The Meebit I use as my profile picture was minted in a hospital chair watching my sleeping wife and first born hours after his birth. Together, we helped pave the way for the NFT lending industry. From doing the first fully trustless on-chain NFT backed loan to facilitating more than $730 million in peer-to-peer loans. Without losing a single NFT. In an industry that often struggled with trust, that's something I'm incredibly proud of. In the end, the market that made NFTfi possible, became too small to support the company we had built. What pulled me into this was never the promise of profit. It was the possibility that artists and collectors could truly own the things they cared about. I still believe that matters. Looking back there are some things I would do differently. However, if I had to go back to 2019, I would do it all again. What we had as a community in that moment will stay with me. To my co-founders, Jonathan, Mads and Charlotte and the team who built NFTfi, from the first year to the last: you gave years of your lives, your craft, and your belief to this project. You took a chance on an idea that was never guaranteed to work and built something real alongside me. NFTfi only existed because of that. Thank you, and thank you to the community and investors that kept it real alongside us. All those years ago I chose coding as a path. Six years next to passionate artists and collectors has made me curious about the other side of that path again. Who knows, maybe next time we meet I will be sitting on the artist's side of the table. Hope to see you in Marfa.