Introducing "Liquidity Crunch" Cereal Box Charitable NFTs

We took a quick break to help out the ecosystem... here's how:

macbrennan ◼️

Nov 21, 2022

The Inspo

If you’re in the startup world, you’ve probably heard the Airbnb cereal box story.

Cereal boxes of Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s

The founders of a new, tech-enabled bed & breakfast concept were about to run out of money. This was a problem. They knew they had a shot to capture new users at an upcoming political convention, but without cash they couldn’t fuel their operations to get there.

The team got together and came up with an idea to sell the other half of “bed & breakfast”. They went out and bought some cereal boxes, designed politics-themed branding, and pieced the designs to the boxes to complete the product. They took these to the conference and sold “Obama O’s” and “Cap’n McCain’s” to a crowd of politically-minded, potential users at a huge markup.

This got them $30,000 and sustained their operations to see another day.

The Context

Scrappy, out of money, but with a killer (eventually massive) idea. Crypto feels a lot like the early days of Airbnb right now.

We’ve been hit with a ton of adversity. There’s been a ton of chaos. I recently saw this visual shared across Twitter:

Specifically with mrgn, we were acutely impacted when Drift went down, when Mango was exploited, and when FTX turned out to be a scam. However, I’m willing to bet that if others across the industry were to put their three biggest things, FTX would also be one of those answers 95% of the time.

FTX happened on a level greater than perhaps anything we’ve seen before in crypto. It wasn’t chain specific, it didn’t affect one user archetype. It impacted everyone — projects, traders, venture firms, and individuals. The TAM was bigger, the trust was greater, and the user base was wider.

The cool thing about crypto, however, is that it’s still a small community. We tend to know each other, and the things we’re building often end up benefitting each other. Those principles often lead us to do what we can to help each other, even when it extends past our core responsibilities. This was a guiding factor behind this drop.

Here at mrgn, we decided it’s time to sell some cereal (for others).

Introducing “Liquidity Crunch” Cereal Box NFTs

NFTs for you, not for me. NFTs for those, not for thee.

NFTs made for a — dare we say — altruistic purpose. The proceeds from the mint will go to a few teams/individuals adversely impacted by FTX’s collapse.

As a bit of a background, these boxes represent perhaps the most historic turning point in the lifecycle of crypto. They were designed in-house by our team, with lots of fun, small details included. I won’t spoil them all here… you’ll have to find out for yourself.

Focusing back in on the purpose of the boxes, these are made for victims of FTX. It would be poor taste to profit off the disaster of others. We’re not about that. Many of our brethren in crypto are hurting right now. Just as with the Airbnb story, many are at the point where they’ve run out of money. We wanted to take up arms and “sell some cereal” for them. It’s worth noting, we’re managing this as a small side project. We don’t expect to make much, and the project won’t have all the bells and whistles of a full-fledged NFT project, but we wanted to do our small part anyway.

We’re ultimately looking to give some time back to those who have helped push this industry forward. We can’t have their work invalidated. If anything, the FTX collapse made it even more clear why we need to do the things we do on-chain. As we say that, we recognize liquidity follows a different rule framework. That’s a big reason why we want to help.

Mint Details

Show me the numbers? Here they are:

Supply: 420

Why 420? Because we all could take a breather. Life has been crazy recently in the crypto markets.

Price: 20◎ (~$200)

Why 20? Because with a low supply we want to donate as much as possible to those down on their luck from the FTX collapse. This is a historic time… We want to maximize our small part in making it better.

Process:

Whitelist
- We’ll be whitelisting a small percentage of those who want a cereal box. We’re doing this to ensure some NFTs get into the right hands. We have some deserving people in mind.
Mint
- Soon after the whitelist, we’ll arrive at the mint. This will be open to the public… everyone can get in on the good cause.
Redeem
- We’re considering making some NFTs redeemable. We’re going to leave this up to the community post mint, but there’s some tricks we have up our sleeves to make these even more fun.

Links:

Fin

We fight the good fight. We choose to stay in the arena. Crypto is on to something, and it’s our responsibility to help sustain it during the tough times.

Be a part of this. Help your brothers out. Grab a NFT and turn our darkest time into a bright tomorrow. Let’s make new history 🫡