Crypto Investors Spend $250K to Touch 2,000-lb. Tungsten Cube Once a Year

A group of investors spent $250,000 worth of cryptocurrency on Monday night on an NFT conferring the right to make a pilgrimage to Willowbrook, Illinois once a year to have a supervised visit with a 14-inch, roughly 2,000-lb cube of tungsten that they may gaze at, photograph, or even touch. 

Tungsten cubes and their deliciously deceptive density are currently a potent meme among crypto investors. The 14-inch cube was put up for sale by Midwest Tungsten Service, an industrial tungsten manufacturer that now sells cubes to Bitcoin fans, last month. In a blog post, the company said that it was the biggest cube that it could make, and that since shipping it would pose numerous issues, they decided to store it at their headquarters and sell the receipt of remote ownership via NFT. 

You know what, let’s just appreciate the terms of the sale, as written by Midwest Tungsten on the OpenSea listing:

“This NFT represents a real-world physical cube that will be stored at Midwest Tungsten Service headquarters and owned by the NFT owner. One visit to see/photograph/touch the cube per calendar year will be allowed and scheduled with a Midwest Tungsten Service representative. Unlockable content required for scheduling and proof of ownership required for entry. The cube will be stored in a room of its own that will be locked and only accessible by the NFT owner.”

The terms of the sale also state that the owner may choose to burn the NFT—send the token to a dead address—which will result in the forbidden cube being shipped to the owner by freight. 

The cube’s new owners are a collective of investors and meme-makers under the banner TungstenDAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization in crypto-speak). 

“Extremely proud to announce that the @TungstenDAO has acquired the 14.545 inch Tungsten cube, which weighs 2000 lbs, for 56.9 ETH,” said pseudonymous DAO member VincentVanDough in a tweet. “The cube will remain at @MTSStore’s factory until the NFT representation of it is burnt, which will trigger delivery of the cube via freight.”

As for what TungstenDAO plans to do with their new cube, which is in Illinois and can only be visited (supervised) once a year, so far it’s being used as a marketing point to sell meme NFTs and grow DAO membership. 

“24 hour auction for ‘The School of Tungsten’ has been kicked off. Winner enters the @Tungsten_DAO, holder of the world’s heaviest tungsten cube,” VincentVanDough tweeted with a link to a cube-themed NFT for sale. 

According to Midwest Tungsten’s listing, 10 percent of the sale proceeds will go to charity, and there’s even a bit of future-proofing: “options for replacing the cube with a larger size (if available, based on improved manufacturing capabilities) will be presented to the current NFT holder” during their annual visits. 

“We’re very happy the Tungsten Cube NFT was purchased at auction and excited to host a visit to the cube. The 14.545” 2,000 pound cube entered our production queue as soon as the auction completed,” Midwest Tungsten spokesperson Sean Murray said in an email. “We require some time to produce the cube, inspect it, and set up the room to display it so we have said throughout that the cube will be viewable by the NFT owner in about 12 weeks. A feature of this NFT that was part of the concept from the beginning is the NFT owner can take delivery of the cube by burning the NFT.”