Crypto Market Heads to Goblintown as Ironic NFT Collection Booms

The floor price for a goblintown NFT topped 2 Ethereum for the first time today. 

Ethereum Goblins Rally 

It’s not only apes, lizards, and bears that have gained popularity in the NFT community. Now that the crypto space is deep into a downward phase, NFT enthusiasts are rushing to buy tokenized goblins. 

A collection of 10,000 goblin NFTs titled goblintown launched last week and has quickly taken the market by storm. The collection takes its name from “Goblintown”—a term crypto natives use to refer to bearish conditions in the digital assets space when prices are down and interest is falling. As Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other assets have been short of their highs for seven months, the crypto space is currently in “Goblintown,” which may explain why the NFT collection has taken off despite its deliberately grotesque visual aesthetic. 

goblintown NFTs were distributed with a free mint last week and demand has soared over the past few days. Trading volume on OpenSea has topped 8,800 Ethereum, making goblintown the second-most traded NFT collection of the past week behind Otherdeed for Otherside. The floor price for one goblintown briefly topped 2 Ethereum today, which is a relatively hefty price tag despite Ethereum’s weak performance of late (the floor price has since cooled to 1.8 Ethereum). Ethereum is trading at $1,840 following another drop today, putting the entry price for goblintown at about $3,300. Interestingly, the rarer NFTs from the collection are commanding even higher price tags despite the current crypto climate. goblintown #8995, a unique goblin wearing an ultra-rare crown, sold for 69.42 Ethereum worth $136,207 on LooksRare Wednesday. 

goblintown Embraces CC0

Besides the ironic namesake, one reason for the popularity of the collection might be its approach to copyright licensing. goblintown uses a “no copyright reserved” policy, otherwise known as CC0, meaning the goblins are available in the public domain and anyone can build upon them and repurpose them as they like. Other CC0 NFT collections like Nouns and CrypToadz have grown in popularity in recent months, fueling debates surrounding what “ownership” of an NFT should entail. Perhaps the most high-profile example of the copyright issue in the NFT space came when CryptoPunks creator Larva Labs issued copyright takedown notices to CryptoPunks derivative projects, taking an approach that some described as at odds with the Web3 movement. Larva Labs sold the intellectual property for CryptoPunks to Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs in March. Yuga Labs then gave Punk holders the rights to their NFTs following the acquisition. With goblintown, anyone could theoretically repurpose the collection’s artwork in their own content. 

Unlike most other NFT collections, goblintown boasts that it offers “No roadmap. No Discord. No utility.” In a space where successful projects often depend on the team’s promises and how plans are executed, goblintown’s stripped-back approach may also be a factor behind the price rise. Of course, there is also another explanation. It’s possible that market participants are speculating on the newest trend in hopes of securing profits while other assets trend down. Other NFTs have benefited from such market behavior and eventually fizzled out. Given that goblintown was inspired by crypto’s “Goblintown,” it may need the bearish conditions to prevail for the hype to last. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.