Like a lot of people, Nick O’Neill got the crypto bug during the pandemic. Unlike a lot of other people, he’s still got it: O’Neill runs The Nifty, which is partially an NFT-related content company, and partially a company that mints and trades NFTs.
Up until last week, you had probably never heard of O’Neill or his company. But then he stumbled into a bit of viral fame: A joke post he made boasting about his crypto prowess took off, fueled in part by people who didn’t realize he was joking.
So O’Neill made another post responding to the people responding to the first one, and then the people who make “Community Notes” on Twitter started fact-checking his not-very-serious claims, and he responded to those.
Now the whole thing has been going for several days. “Choose rich” is O’Neill’s catchphrase, which is mostly a joke, but also very similar to things people used to say on crypto Twitter, for real.
My hunch is that O’Neill’s window is probably closing soon. Crypto culture starts out pretty close to a caricature. There’s not a lot of room to extend it.
But even if that’s the case, O’Neill won’t complain. He says the publicity he’s generated has translated into more than $100,000 in new sponsorship deals and NFT sales in the last couple days. (That claim, he says, is for real. But I haven’t verified it myself.)
I first met O’Neill way back in 2007, when he had founded AllFacebook, a blog dedicated to the startup trying to dislodge MySpace as the top social network. At the time, I was working at Silicon Alley Insider, which would eventually become the website you’re reading right now.
We caught up on the phone this week; the following is an edited excerpt of our chat:
Peter Kafka: How did this start? Were you hoping to go viral?
Nick O’Neill: My team flew down to Miami to do an offsite. One day we decided to rent a boat, have the team together and have a couple of drinks. There were people who had sort of been posting a “this is who you’re trading against” meme. And I decided to do something similar, but post a picture of us. And as that started to take off, we spontaneously decided to make a video —
Peter Kafka: Wait. When you posted that first picture — that’s supposed to be funny, right?
Nick O’Neill: Yes. I can’t say it was designed to incite as many people as it did, and it got a flood of deep hate. I thought, “Well, this is probably a good sign.”
Peter Kafka: But NFTs are a serious thing that you believe in. That’s not a joke.
Nick O’Neill: It’s not a joke. It’s a legitimate business that we’re actively growing.
Peter Kafka: But you acting like a Web 3/NFT/hustler bro is a joke?
Nick O’Neill: It is a character, amongst many characters that I do for video content. We did one where I dressed up as a solider and walked through Washington Square Park as the “Sergeant of Solana,” where I ask people whether they wanted a dollar or a Solana, and literally no one wanted a Solana, despite it being worth at that time $100.
Peter Kafka: But you’re not satirizing NFTs and the blockchain and Web3. You’re a believer. In 2024.
Nick O’Neill: We do believe in it. The thing that we’re satirizing are people like the Dan Bilzerians of the world that have the personality of “I’m rich. You’re not. And that makes me better than you.” And people genuinely hate that.
But there’s also people that really hate crypto people for whatever reason. Maybe because they think it’s a scam. Or they lost money. We’ve all lost money at some point. If you’re involved in crypto, you’ve had your money stolen at some point.
I can’t speak for each person, why they’re so emotionally triggered by it. But there are a lot of people that seem to be so.
Peter Kafka: You make this thing that is a little sincere but is mostly a joke, and it triggers people who don’t think it’s a joke. And your response is, “Let’s make more of it?”
Nick O’Neill: 100%. I just posted a video of us in a helicopter —which, of course, I own because I own multiple helicopters, obviously — and we lean into the character.
Peter Kafka: The Community Notes on Twitter, fact-checking your wealth, are cracking me up. Do you think people who are writing the community notes get the joke? Or are they the most serious?
Nick O’Neill/X
Nick O’Neill: Initially, I thought they were serious. But I increasingly believe that there are people in the crypto community who just enjoy it and want to contribute to it.
When those notes started happening, it just increased the virality. “Oh, this guy thinks he’s pulling the wool over people’s eyes. But we see the truth.”
So there’s two insider jokes happening in parallel. There’s the people who think they can see through it and realize that I’m just a sham. And then there’s other people who get that it’s satire.
Peter Kafka: I couldn’t tell if you were satirizing crypto, or crypto culture, or Twitter/X culture. And it seems like a mix of all of the above. But, again — you’re also a believer.
Nick O’Neill: 100%. Literally, 90% of my net worth is in crypto.
Peter Kafka: You were just on Dave Portnoy’s show, in character. How far can this go?
Nick O’Neill: Well our job is running an entertainment business. I wish I could predict how far it goes. I have no idea.
It’s an opportunity to extend the reach of my personal brand, as well as the overall company. So we’re going to do as much as we can to get effectively near-free promotion.
