Since most of bitbanter will be cryptocurrency satire, it stands to
reason that I have a loosely associated, harebrained degenerate
regenerative financial scheme hastily bolted onto it. So I'm running a
smart contract mint. Each mint produces a pixelated Bitbanter Tulip NFT.
There's also a Golden Bitbanter Tulip, which may or may not entitle you
to something special. It is randomly assigned to a regular Bitbanter
Tulip holder after the mint concludes (unless someone — against
all financial and common sense — buys it first).
Minting is a way to send a small amount of ETH to support bitbanter and get a poorly drawn tulip as a receipt. The tulip does nothing, it is worth nothing, and you should expect nothing back. If the mint fails to reach its arbitrary 10,000 participant goal, then some ETH is burned for no good reason, some ETH goes to a few good causes, and I get nothing. If it does reach its goal (or someone buys the Golden Bitbanter Tulip outright), some more ETH goes to a few good causes, and the rest funds continued development of bitbanter and related satirical projects. No refunds, no guarantees, no legal obligation — this is satire.
Nothing here is something a well-adjusted person would do.
Intrigued or disgusted? Read on for details!
Wow, a pixelated golden tulip! So cool. Perhaps the best NFT that exists, or will ever exist. How can I get it?
Buy it. If you are an avid collector of digital, on-chain rubbish, you have the option of "buying it now" for the market price of 10,000 ETH and claiming the golden variant directly...just as a premium-tulip-buying whale would expect. You'd be paying 10,000 ETH for a pixelated tulip and my bewildered gratitude. I may write a book for you — but like everything in life, there is no guarantee.
Otherwise, mint a regular Bitbanter Tulip. If an avid on-chain rubbish collector doesn't purchase the Golden Bitbanter Tulip outright, then it is instead issued to one regular Bitbanter Tulip minter at random, once the mint concludes after reaching 10,000 participants. Each mint is one more entry, so minting more nudges your odds. But please don't mint for the odds. (which are terrible) Mint because your sense of financial nihilism is even higher than mine.
To provide an extra (dis)incentive, the Golden Bitbanter Tulip holder gains an additional privilege: I may, at my own discretion, write a book for them. The book itself will be encrypted against the public key of the Golden Bitbanter Tulip owner, whenever the book is finished. I will never publish another book again, and they can choose when and if their bespoke book ever sees the light of day. Consider it the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin of crypto-satire.
...they will, as a matter of course, have zero creative control over what I write (or if I write it at all). And if they are not anonymous and I don't particularly like them, I will — in all likelihood — make the entire thing an epic literary roast of whoever they are.
Okay...well how does the mint work?
The price to mint starts at 0.0001 ETH, but it increments upwards by 0.0001 ETH each time someone mints, with the goal to have 10,000 participants. So the very last participant would pay 1 ETH. I'd say it pays to be early, but honestly you're wasting your ETH either way.
Every mint issues you one regular Bitbanter Tulip. They can't be moved until the mint concludes, so consider yourself a forced tulip HODLer or something.
What happens to the ETH?
No matter what the outcome, 40% of the ETH is hard-coded to benefit four groups doing good things: ZachXBT, Coin Center, the Internet Archive, and Give Directly.
As for the rest of the ETH? If the 10,000 participant goal isn't reached and I arbitrarily decide to conclude the mint early, it's burned (I've been told Ethereum enthusiasts love burning things), and the Golden Bitbanter Tulip comes back to me.
If the goal is reached, or the golden variant is bought outright? Well, originally I wanted to put it into a loan protocol and lever it up as a joke, but upon reflection that was even too Rube-Goldberg for me. I suspect the funniest thing will be to put most of the proceeds toward the most ironically productive, crypto-triggering investment I can imagine. Might do that anyway, mint or not. Either way the outcome will be humorous (to me).
Cool, that sounds cursed, good for you. So other than having a very low chance of receiving a book that may or may not ever be written, what do the tulips do?
Absolutely — and I cannot stress this enough — nothing. I don't even personally find them aesthetically pleasing; I spent 20 minutes whipping them up. They are intrinsically worthless, unless you are deranged enough to believe wasting space in Ethereum's state trie is valuable.
Hmm so is there a roadmap or a discord–
I'm going to stop you right there. Under no conditions in this (or any other) universe am I going to encourage, endorse, participate in, or cater to any kind of "community" — particularly if it consists of members who expect a roadmap.
There is no roadmap. There is no community. If any one of you suggests or hints at the prospect of "governance," I swear to God I will nuke the contract and burn the ETH early. Don't test me.
...do I get to have any input in bitbanter or any kind of special privileges or–
NO. No no no no no no. You get nothing but a weird pointer to a stupid pixelated tulip bloating the Ethereum blockchain. I am not lying. There is no utility in these; if anything, I will probably think less of you if you have one. Especially if you receive the golden one.
Well then why would I participate?
I HAVE NO IDEA. Nothing makes sense anymore. If you like what you read here, it's a way to say so that costs you money and gets you nothing. Enjoy!
An Obvious Disclaimer My Lawyer Claude Made Me Include
This is a satirical art project. The NFTs have no utility, no investment value, and no expected return. Participants should expect to receive nothing of economic value and should have no expectation of profit from the efforts of others. This is not a security, not an investment contract, not a raffle, not a lottery, and not a gambling product. Participation is at your own risk and may be restricted in your jurisdiction. No refunds.