Nana Otafrija Pallbearing & Waiting Services, the Ghanaian group of pallbearers that originated the “coffin dance meme“, announced that their official NFT of that meme itself has been sold for ETH 327 (about RM4.5 million). It was bought by @3fmusic on Twitter, who also has a wide range of other expensive NFTs including the NFT version of Charlie Bit My Finger.
Lucas Bean, an NFT consultant, helped sell the coffin dance meme NFT on his Twitter Space. The live auction lasted about one and a half hours on 9 April—from around 5.30am Malaysian time to 6.59am Malaysian time.
3FMusic, who won the winning bid in the auction, describes themselves as being “the best and well equipped music studios” in Dubai but I can’t find any tweets about their music-related work. Instead, they’ve been posting a lot more of what they have purchased—and it’s just a wild amount of popular or meme-based NFTs.
The “music studio” bought the NFT version of the extremely popular YouTube video, Charlie Bit My Finger, which was sold for over USD 760,000 (RM3.2 million). They’ve also purchased several Ape-related NFTs. Other meme-related NFTs in their collection include Overly Attached Girlfriend, Disaster Girl, and a version of Nyan Cat.
“Congratulations to the official owner of Coffin Dance world fame @3fmusic,” tweeted Benjamin Aidoo, the lead pallbearer who uploaded the original coffin dance video on YouTube.
NFTs are a controversial topic, as they can play a huge part in damaging the environment but they can also help make money for struggling artists trying to earn a living through their art. When memes are made into NFTs, it can mean that the creators of those memes can earn a whole lot with it. But since the NFT world is still a sort of lawless place, there have been cases where NFTs are made without the artists’ permission—and the artists don’t even get the cut of the profits.
In Aidoo’s case, they’ve earned quite a lot from their popular meme. They’ve also issued the token in partnership with the Ukrainian community. According to Aidoo, 50% of the proceeds go to charity in Ukrainian charities in light of the war with Russia.
