Coachella and FTX are unfortunately linked. As crypto exchange FTX files for bankruptcy, more victims of the scandal are becoming known. Now, flower-hat wearing modern-day-hippie frolickers have been dragged into the kerfuffle.
The Coachella festival is an annual music and arts festival that appears once a year. The event went from a good day out to a bad day out after punters who received exclusive tickets in the form of NFTs have been screwed over by the exchange.
The festival, which takes place in the desert of the Coachella Valley, California, is one of the most widely-known music festivals across the international music circuit. The festival’s rebellious emergence was born after acclaimed Pearl Jam gigged at the location and the event popped off, and was consequently caught on as a concert venue before spawning into a festival that continued to grow.
Celebs known to haunt the event include Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, among other humans perceived to be A-grade festival-goers.
Coachella NFTs
Coachella NFTs were first sold in February of this year in collaboration with FTX US. The event was the second major festival to launch NFT tickets tied to experiences after Lollapalooza. The latter was lucky enough to have no connection to FTX.
As part of the deal to help Coachella hawk their NFT tickets, FTX said they would offset the carbon footprint of the sale by donating to something … somewhere … but who knows if that money ever got there. Maybe it was spent on designer bean bags for staff to hump on in similar fashion to the exorbitant furniture of the FTX polyamory mansion.
Coachella NFT benefits
The tragedy of the stuck Coachella NFTs is that some of the tokens have pretty epic unique benefits tied to them. This could be on-stage access, dinner in fancy places like in the “Rose Garden”, access to virtual events, and luxury camping priority, among other advantages. Some of the NFTs were “passes for life.”
These lifetime admissions were highly prized. If people deemed themselves too weary to carry on going absolutely stupid at festivals, they could potentially sell the NFTs to an individual with plenty of energy left in the tank.
This type of NFT was the very bridge that helped many newbies of the technology make their first foray into the NFT space. The tokens had expansive utility (unlike many other new NFT projects), and were associated with an incredibly modish vibe. It was the perfect recipe to bring non-crypto natives over to Web3.
FTX sucks so bad
The implosion of the FTX exchange has been a disaster for the crypto sphere and set back the recovery from the crypto winter by a mile.
A Coachella staffer, speaking on their Discord server, vented their frustration at not being about to fix the situation immediately.
“Like many of you, we have been watching this news unfold online over the past few days and are shocked by the outcome. We do not currently have any lines of communication with the FTX team. We have assembled an internal team to come up with solutions based on the tools we have access to. Our priority is getting Coachella NFTs off of FTX, which appears to be disabled at the moment.”
Another talking head at Coachella, Sam Schoonover, said in a separate statement, “We’re actively working on solutions and are confident we’ll be able to protect the interests of Coachella’s NFT holders.”
There has been no word on releasing the Coachella NFTs yet, so that leaves the NFTs and their owners in a land of limbo.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the overlord of the FTX collapse, likely won’t be an attendee of Coachella, but rather a frequent attendee in courts, and potentially prison. His lifetime benefits will probably include a free cellmate, and that is about it.
