Despite the Frost of Crypto Winter, The Wrapture Holders Kept Their Cool

Holders of Dmitri Cherniak's NFT art project-meets-social experiment were instructed not to move, list or sell their assets for a year. The result was a test of patience and trust in the face of market uncertainty.

It's been a tough year to be a non-fungible token (NFT) holder. While 2021 welcomed high-value NFT sales, soaring cryptocurrency prices and an influx of new entrants into the space, this past year has seen trading slow and crypto prices drown in the sludge of an extended crypto winter.
Ethereum, which powers many popular NFT projects, was trading at around $4,000 just a year ago. Now, it's down to about $1,195. The global crypto market cap, once valued at about $3 trillion, currently stands at around $796 billion.
Given the deteriorating conditions over the last year, one would be safe to assume that many NFT holders would be eager to offload their assets and cut their losses. This would have been especially true for holders of generative artist Dmitri Cherniak's The Wrapture NFT project, a collection of 50 algorithmic art pieces made available to holders of his Eternal Pump collection that launched in December 2021.

Part social experiment, part community building exercise, holders of the project were given a set of rules that would ultimately determine their NFT's rarity and long-term value: If no one moved, listed or sold their asset for a year, the project would be capped at 50 editions and they would be free to move their art without consequence. But if one collector were to "break the rules," the remainder of the 666 editions would be released to the public for minting.
"Scarcity typically adds value to art," prominent collector Vincent Van Dough, who owns eight Wrapture NFTs, told me.
"I was hoping they would [wait]," Cherniak said. "I always rooted for it to hold." The artist also stored one of The Wrapture NFTs in his vault, meaning that he could have technically broken the rules at any point, leaving other collectors to face the repercussions.
Collector Ayybee, who holds The Wrapture #40, recalled the turmoil of needing to rely on other holders' goodwill. "It's sort of this form of the prisoner's dilemma," they told me, "except we could communicate and coordinate." They said they considered "all of the various possibilities as time passed" when deciding whether to wait an entire year to derive any monetary value from their digital asset. "One year is a millennium in this space," they said, adding that "much of the intrigue as it relates to this project was being a participant in the process and so naturally, you want to see that through to the end."
Others were motivated to hold onto their NFTs as an unspoken commitment to the community of holders that emerged from the project. "The social experiment aspect of the project is something that I think really resonated and was an important statement for the space," said Pete Molick, who owns The Wrapture #37.
"The Wrapture/Eternal Pump Holder group has become very close over the course of the last year," said Matt Miller, owner of The Wrapture #24. "It would not only would it be unfair to my fellow collectors participating in this experiment, but it would also be a poor financial decision to flood the collection supply with 616 more outputs."
"There was a faction of people from the outside clamoring for a knight in shining armor to break the Wrapture and allow more people to collect, but ultimately it was never even a question to hold on," he added.