In the last year and a half, Gary Vee (Vaynerchuk) released his Series 1 and 2 VeeFriends NFTs. These non-fungible tokens are situated on the Ethereum blockchain and were minted on ERC-271smart contracts. Gary believes NFTs are here forever and intends VeeFriends to be a major player in Crypto.
Gary’s NFT vision
Gary, who seems to have a hand in everything these days, predicted NFTs would explode. To understand NFTs, he immersed himself in the VeeFriends project. He designed and hand-drew all the Veefriends original 268 images for Series 1. The cards depict traits Gary admires in business and life. Gary hopes that through VeeFriends, his NFT will create a “community” of people that will live the mantras on these cards.
These NFTs can be resold minus a 10% royalty fee reverting to VeeFriends. Gary has stated that he will donate 1% of current and future royalties to his charities. Gary believes “people should stop worrying about the money they make and worry about how many people will be at their funeral.” He donates exclusively to five charities, charity: water, BADG, Pencils for Promise, Spark Eco, and Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. In March, Gary announced he would auction off a G.O.O. card-Brilliant Barb NFT, with all proceeds going to Pencils for Promise. OpenSea and Rarible are the marketplaces to resell VeeFriends. While none of the NFTs offer royalties, they come with unique experiences. Hangout Hawk token holders will be doing a virtual hangout with Gary for an hour Q and A five times over the next two years, and five Facetime token holders will get a 5-minute phone call from Gary yearly for three years!
VeeFriends Series One: Book Games, Gift Goats, and Mini Drops
In May of 2021, Gary released 9,013 of the Inaugural (Series1) NFTs, keeping 1,242 for his collection. 2 weeks later, he sprung his genius market plan in the form of Book Games. Gary made his book Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success part of the NFT collection when he announced that buying twelve books in the one-day promotion would get you one NFT by way of an airdrop. Plus, books obtained through Barnes and Noble purchases gave you a better chance at rare Game Book tokens. He sold one million books in the first one hundred days!
January of 2022, Gary announced the gaming aspect of the book. Any Book Game NFT holder could use them as an exclusive ticket to VeeCon. They can also be traded for other VeeFrineds NFTs, sports cards, and prizes Gary will reveal throughout the year. In July of 2021, a VeeFriends Mini Drop featuring VeeSpooks, a Halloween version of the NFT, was released. Included in the Mini Drops were the Gift Goat NFTs, 555 of them offering 18 of those as gift experiences by Gary and his friends. VeeFriends saw sales of $234,62k for Series 1, with $9k being the average price per NFT. In the 1st quarter of 2022, VeeFriends was still at $52,000 (16 Eth).
VeeFriends Series Two: Book Games Access List
When Gary shared that Series 2 would add 55,555 new NFTs, he also revealed an access list (called the whitelist) that Book Game NFT owners could mint The Series 2 NFTs. Series 2 VeeFriend tokens would cost $995 in Ethereum. Gary hoped that by lowering the price, more “average” consumers would purchase the NFTs, with 32,000 out of the 55,555 NFTs reserved for Book Game holders. Gary added 15 new characters within the series with 220 tokens attached to each character.
While Series 2 was not a ticket to VeeCon 2, it did attach six more of the eighteen gifting experiences to the non-fungible token. The first week’s sales for Series 2 had ETH reaching 1.34 for the series as opposed to its current price, which vacillates near 0.62 ETH.
Series 2 of VeeFriend’s first week saw $17 million in sales plus $13 million in trade volume, the highest in April 2022.
Closing the wallet
Gary’s ability to use an NFTs utility value in each series leads one to speculate that he would be using the 1,242 NFTs referred to as G.O.O (Gary owned originals) from Series 1 as a gaming perk in a later series.
While VeeFriends images are forever collectible, holders lose their admission, access, and gift portion of the NFT on May 4, 2024.
Sales volume on OpenSea has seen almost $160 million (approx. 49,000 ETH) from the VeeFriends Inaugural collection as of April 2022. Not bad for someone whose love of sports cards created a hand-drawn non-fungible token worth $52,000 in its first quarter!
VeeFrineds has captured the hearts of many far and wide. Will he capture your heart to invest, or is there sticker shock? You choose!
