The NFT market is built by creators and collectors. One can not live without the other. This week, I interviewed Barthazian to get to know everything about his journey and his ethos regarding collecting NFTs.
Letâs have a short introduction explaining who you are. Your Twitter bio is anonymous (which of course is totally fine), but we all know that nowadays, you spend quite some time on NFTs. But, who were you 5 years ago, what were you doing then?
While my twitter bio is anonymous -only pseudo anon- I have attended several conferences and my online bread crumbs could reveal who I am.Â
I have a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in psychology.Â
Going back 5 years would bring us to the time in my life where I was running a startup that dealt with cosmetics, where I mostly did research and development.
How did you discover NFTs and what made you decide to start collecting NFTs?
While running my startup I was introduced to ICO's by a colleague of mine and it got me hooked on the possibilities. I had invested in a lot of ludicrous ICO's where I had pretty much lost all of my capitals. This was back in 2018 and during this time period I was exploring different alt coin Telegram groups and learning about different ecosystems. In one of these Telegram groups, I was introduced by one of the moderators to a sort of NFT gaming protocol named NEOFISH. This got me interested in exploring the different opportunities that blockchain gaming offers. Eventually I landed on a game called Crytospace Commanders, which I invested in and became my first Ethereum NFT.
This was in March of 2019 and for the next 6 to 8 months I was an avid gamer on it. I accumulated ETH and some of the gaming assets while playing it.Â
You have a stunning collection of over 6k NFTs. What was the first one you got and why?
At the start of 2020, I started exploring generated art with my first mint being Chain Faces (Nate Alex). One of the mints sold for 20X the mint value. This got me hooked!
After that, I started exploring similar projects. I discovered a project called Crypto Morphs and helped the creator with some marketing. To thank me, the creator gifted me a Crypto Voxel land. This led me to âestateâ NFTs and I started actively flipping them for weekly sales. After that it just steam rolled and I started to be involved in all genres of NFT projects.
Right now, I have over 10k NFTs across different chains.
How do you generally find new projects or artists?
Most of the new projects I discover come to me through word of mouth from connections in the space. I've also started using tools which show new project mints like nansen, ICY tools etc.
When it comes to 1/1 artists, most of them are through Twitter posts and personal interactions
Most of your NFTs are part of bigger collections or projects. What motivators play a role in the decision to collect/invest in a specific NFT for you? Could you give us a top 5 + why?
The choice of buying into an NFT varies for secondary market buys and for minting.
Minting:
- Team - preferably a team with a history of execution and clout.
- Supply and price dynamics
- Aesthetics
- Possible narrative development based on project usp
- Social metrics such as discord members and twitter followersÂ
Secondary market
- price action and history
- Road map execution
- community sentiment and interaction
- holder base and supply owner ratio
- future execution plans and collaborations
What has been your biggest collecting âmistakeâ so far and what did you learn from it?
The biggest mistake is aping into a collection without a basic DYOR because I saw it on twitter. Biggest lesson is to never buy an NFT for investment purposes unless personal conviction is developed from analysis.
What are you hoping to see happen in NFTs in 2022?
I hope more metaverse land immersion along with NFT interoperability and healthy economies develop in these metaverses.
