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A popular meme photo of a guy at a club yelling into a girl's ear—about something that she doesn't appear to be into—is going up for auction as an Ethereum NFT on Foundation.
“Milk Edinburgh” received its name from the nightclub where it was taken—Milk, in Edinburgh Scotland. The picture was originally shared around the internet with a watermark of the club's moniker on it, which is why the name stuck, and it’s since been widely used as an example of a “guy explaining” or “mansplaining.”
The photograph was originally taken in 2018 by David Wilkinson—who along with the help of pseudonymous Feisty DAO member Cryptopathic—is now offering the original artwork for sale as an NFT.
A member of Feisty DAO was able to get ahold of Wilkinson, and found out that he had actually minted the image as an NFT back in 2021 but it had never sold; Cryptopathic and FeistyDAO offered to step in and host the auction for him free of cost.
The next meme to be auctioned is "Nightclub Meme" by David Wilkinson. The reserve will start at 15 ETH, for a 3 day auction beginning at 10am BST on Monday the 22nd of April. pic.twitter.com/40gkrIUbFg
— path.eth 🛡️ (@Cryptopathic) April 17, 2024
This isn’t the first time that they’ve connected with the creator of a meme to sell it as an NFT. He helped the owners of the dog depicted in the Dogwifhat (WIF) meme coin auction off their pet’s photo for $4.1 million in a similar auction. Previously, they helped the owners of Kabuso—the dog used for the logo of crypto’s first dog-themed meme coin, Dogecoin (DOGE), sell NFTs.
Path told Decrypt that their motivation behind all of this is to onboard more creators into crypto, and show them that NFTs are a beneficial way to monetize their work.
“Many of these creators are approached by predatory teams that are looking to take huge cuts, or hugely underpay the artist—making it seem that this space is just as bad or worse than the rest of the art industry,” he said. “With our model, we are happy to benefit purely from PR, and really show people how easy it is to take control of their work in this way.”
The meme will go up for auction on Monday, April 22 on Foundation at 5am ET. The NFT will have a reserve price of 15 ETH, or about $45,000 at present.
Edited by Andrew Hayward