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Late on a Friday last spring, Izzy Pollak decided to purchase two Bored Ape NFTs – as a reminder to many people, Yes, but I still don’t know what an NFT is – unique means that he bought digital images (in this case, monkeys).

as an owner bored monkey, now has the commercial rights to do as it wishes on the digital image. many people Choose to view their NFTs as a profile picture on social media accounts.

(And if you’re wondering how to prove ownership of a digital asset: Every NFT or non-tradable token has a separate serial number, and the transaction history of each NFT is stored on the blockchain, so people can see who is the real owner.)

Pollak, 29, bought three more a few months later, from a 10,000 NFT collection. Fored Ape Yacht Club. Some of the monkeys wear gold jackets or animal print tunics. Others are smoking cigars or smiling broadly.

At that time, Mr. Pollak, who was working at his company, JinnHe didn’t have a lot of disposable income, a tech startup based in Los Angeles that makes NFTs and avatars. “I was living with three other people in a four-bedroom mansion,” she said. “We all shared a bathroom. It was like college life.”

It didn’t come from money either. During the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Pollak said that when he was 16, his mother could not pay the mortgage, so he and his family had to rent an apartment.

Mr. Pollak’s interest in NFTs was stimulated by hearing people talk about NFTs. clubhouse. “Oh my god, this is crazy,” I said. “I’m about to spend hundreds of dollars on a monkey painting,” he said.

It turned out to be a wise decision. Last fall, a few months after purchasing their first NFT, the value of Mr. Pollak’s monkeys skyrocketed. He sold one he bought for around 14 Ether (a virtual currency worth about $40,000 on the day of purchase) for around 70 Ether (approximately). $231,000 on the day of sale).

He used the money to prepay a three-bedroom house with a backyard in Los Angeles. “We call it the Chimpanzee Chalet,” she said with a laugh. “I always wanted to own a home, but I never thought I could make it work.”

Now has three Bored Ape NFTs in his portfolio. It hasn’t sold yet, but it will one day. For the first time in his life, he feels financially well off.

A lucky handful of people now have their own rag-to-riches stories. NFTs. Founder Matt Medved says some collectors and digital artists are making “life-changing money” by investing in the right project at the right time. Now, a digital media publication about NFTs. Some use the funds to pay off student loans, buy a house or quit jobs they hate. (Of course, some people buy yachts or throw flashy parties.)

“NFTs are like manna from heaven,” said Mr. Pollak, who also acknowledged how lucky he was. “I’ve heard horror stories of people spending their rent money on NFTs. It’s very sad to see people risk their money when things don’t usually work out.”

Most people who make or buy NFTs never make a profit. There are no regulations or consumer protections, and trading them is basically as risky as gambling. Investing in cryptocurrency is high risk and involves a lot of technical knowledge and luck; few financial experts recommend it and fraud many.

Mr. Medved encourages people to think of NFTs like baseball cards. “For generations, our society has recognized that rare baseball cards have some value,” he said. “There is a rare Mickey Mantle card that probably costs 5 cents. sold for $5.2 million last year. And why? It’s not about the physical piece of cardstock. It’s history, rarity, scarcity, cultural relevance.”

“This is coming for the fandom,” he added.

Similarly, what many NFT artists create or collectors invest in will have little or nothing in the long run. But there are a few NFTs that have become very valuable and bring huge sums of money to their owners and creators in a short time.

For example, the Bored Apes that Mr. Pollak bought could be minted at 0.08 Ether ($200 last spring) – meaning it could go to market. Now, less than a year later, the cheapest is worth around 73 Ether (about $190,000). (Ether is redeemable on major cryptocurrency platforms such as: coin base and Gemini and then transferred to a bank account.)

Claire Silver, an AI-powered artist in her early 30s, is another NFT success story. In 2017 he had three CryptoPunksA collection of 10,000 unique pixel art characters created from an algorithm by someone he met on Slack.

Silver, who lives a nomadic lifestyle but most recently lives in Denver, said: “I was in a chat room about cryptocurrency and met this guy who is into art.” He told her he had 730 CryptoPunks, “and asked if I wanted three. I said ‘Sure’.

In 2017, collectors can claim CryptoPunks for free as long as they have an Etherum wallet. now the cheapest for sale around 68 Ether (almost $175,000).

clung to hers He heard rumblings that they were selling for a lot of money by 2020. He sold one for about $60,000 in July 2021 and still has two more. (Many sell for six figures. One sold for almost $600,000 last month.)

Ms. Silver also does her own NFTs. She, like all NFT artists, makes money from the original sale and can receive 10 percent of each secondary sale. One of its pieces was sold for 15 Ether ($63,000 at the time).

He has saved so much money that he feels financially secure, at least for now. “This money is very important to me because I come from poverty. “We had to accept church donations to grow,” he said. “I walked into Walmart the other day and said, ‘I can get the cheese, I can get the good coffee. I’ve never tasted this freedom before.”

He has recently returned from a trip to England. Sotheby’s was auctioning off his work.and planned a trip to Japan.

He even gives his mother a house for which he paid all his money this month. “I got one of those big red bows and I’m going to stick it on the front door like in those commercials,” she said. “I’ve wanted to do something like this for my mom since I was little.”

Just two years ago, 29-year-old Alex Lugo of Lindenhurst, NY, was driving trucks to support his wife and two children, ages 9 and 5. “I was making $25 an hour,” he said. “In New York it’s nothing.” He decided to enroll in a program to learn how to trade cryptocurrency, and it changed his family’s life.

While some collectors buy select NFTs and hold them for years, they replace many in the short term. “I finally bought them and converted some to 10K, some to 30K, some to 5K, 2K,” he said.

It has also benefited from investing in newer types of NFTs. “I own real estate on the Metaverse next to Adidas headquarters,” he said. “It’s like owning real estate in the Hamptons, because what will Adidas do when it wants to expand? They’re going to buy me out and pay me millions of dollars so I can move.”

(“This sounds speculative rather than anything that can be easily proven,” Mr Medved said in an email.)

Mr. Lugo made enough money from these individual sales and quit his truck driver job in January 2021. Now, he says, it can save significant money for his children “who will have the freedom to choose what”. they want to do with their lives.”

He and his family currently live in a two-bedroom flat, but are looking to buy a four-bedroom house in Lindenhurst.

NFTs have helped others get themselves out of financial vacuums and start fresh.

Gossamer Farris, 32 is now a full-time artist in Brooklyn. But it took NFTs to get him there comfortably.

After college, she worked a 9-to-5 job at a student loan service center. “I was doing art as much as I could after work,” she said. “I was doing illustrations, sculptures and textile work and also doing things like little stickers that people could buy from my online store.”

He left the job in 2019 to become a tattoo artist, but even that was a struggle, especially in the first months of the pandemic. “I had a hard time making a living,” she said. Because I’m transgender and had surgery, I unfortunately had a lot of debt like credit card debt and health-related debts,” she said.

In the winter of 2021 she saw people go crazy for NFTs and decided to make her own collections with works focused on her Filipino and Black heritage and collaborate with other artists on their NFTs.

He has since paid off and now only makes enough money through NFTs to pursue his passions. “I don’t have the stress that I have to make money as an artist,” she said. “I can pay the rent and don’t have to worry about making a living.”

While some people get rich from NFTs, Mr. Medved advises people to remember that many other NFT projects depreciate over time. “You should never invest more than you are prepared to lose,” he said. “The NFT space is very volatile, as is the crypto space, and markets are rising and falling very quickly.”

“I think many NFTs will go to zero in the long run,” he said. “Your success depends on your ability to select the best projects, and it’s not easy.”