From the moment Alexandre Arnault unveiled his Cryptopunk pendant from Tiffany & Co, it was as clear as day that the jewellery brand’s VP was on an exploratory journey to discover how the business can use NFTs to get real-time benefits. The CryptoPunk #3167 pendant was the first project. The second is a new program dubbed the NFTiff.
NFTiff: A made-to-order program for an exclusive minority
For now, NFTiff is available only to the CryptoPunk community, and not just any NFT holder. The reason is quite simple.
According to the younger Arnault, CryptoPunks as the ‘OGs’ of the NFT world. The collection, which is limited to a supply of 10,000 one-off avatars, can only be afforded by a certain, very affluent, subset of people. Alexandre Arnault is one of them, and so also are Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, Gary Vee, Logan Paul, Serena Willams and Alexis Ohanian, amongst others. It is this very rich, rather young community that the VP hopes to turn into Tiffany & Co loyal customers.
“These clients obviously skew a bit younger than our [classic] client base. It’s an anonymous [population], it’s not like you know who owns what, but what we generally understand is that they are younger and very affluent, a lot of them made large amounts of money in the crypto sphere. People need to understand that a lot of the things in their world are linked to luxury like desirability, scarcity, trends — they understand the ups and downs,” explained Arnault.
“What is exciting for people is that you can hold an NFT but you can’t see or experience anything with them. At Tiffany, we are giving them the opportunity to turn [a Cryptopunk] into a piece of jewellery made by hand with the utmost craftsmanship,” he said further.
How the Tiffany & Co NFTiff platform works
From August 5, Cryptopunk owners can access the NFTiff website to purchase a digital pass that will be stored in blockchain technology. The passes are only available for purchase with Ethereum cryptocurrency and are priced at 30 Ethereum, which is currently trading at around $50,000 dollars.
The NFTiff passes are not unlimited, however. Restricted to only 250, any CryptoPunk holder with more than one ‘punk’ will be only permitted three passes.
Once purchased, holders can then go ahead to exchange them for a custom-designed pendant and an NFT digital artwork that resembles the final jewellery design. Each pendant will be designed at Tiffany’s innovation centre in New York City and produced at its workshop in Cumberland, Rhode Island.
Based on the colour palette of the NFT, each pendant will wither be rose or yellow gold and will have at least 30 gemstones and/or diamonds. It will be attached to an 18k gold adjustable chain of rectangular links made to resemble pixels. NFTiff holders will receive a render of their piece by October, and although the CryptoPunk used to create the pendant belongs to them, they will not be allowed to participate in the design process or provide feedback on the render. Pendants are expected to reach their owners by early 2023.
What next?
For now, it is not immediately clear if version 2.0 of this bespoke program will be made available to other NFT communities, like the Bored Ape community. However, as Alexandre Arnault says of the possibility of this happening in the future, “Never say never.”
Source: Yahoo Finance
