Still, when Okada first offered the NFT, it was valued at around $12,000; it is now worth half.
While his company is looking for tenants for the building, it also puts down the building for sale as NFT — essentially a ticket to acquire the deed.
Houses are sold this waybut Mr. Okada, who lists his building on OpenSea for $29.5 million or 15,105 Ether, the cryptocurrency that can be used to buy the NFT, said he believed this was the first time a commercial building in New York had taken the same route.
Whether this is the wave of the future or a marketing gimmick remains to be seen, insiders say.
Solana, which has signed a 10-year lease at 141 East Houston, has no plans to fill its new office with employee desk space — the company doesn’t need daily gigs. Instead, it plans to build out the space for meetings and boot camps, otherwise known as hacker houses.
Solana also plans to occupy a floor at EmpireDAO, the new web3 co-working operation, at 190 Bowery, a six-storey former bank of historic status that was long the photographer’s home. Jay Maisel† Solana takes the word meant for TerraUSDa stablecoin that imploded this month.
EmpireDAO is intended as a kind of creator space for the web3 community. The management system will be cryptocurrency-based, said Mike Fraietta, the founder of EmpireDAO, but the landlord, RFR, requires rent payments the old-fashioned way.
“Our lenders need US dollars, we pay our mortgage in US dollars, and that means our rents have to come in US dollars,” said AJ Camhi, director of leasing at RFR Realty.
