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Monkey Kingdom NFTs have attracted buyers who are also luxury watch enthusiasts. Photo: Handout

Meet the young luxury watch collectors driving Hong Kong’s NFT frenzy

  • Gen Z and millennial luxury watch collectors in Hong Kong follow the lead of social media influencers betting big on NFTs
  • A Monkey Kingdom NFT sold for more than US$148,000 in December, higher than the prices of some collectible wristwatches
NFTs

On a Saturday night in early December, dozens of people mingled in a luxury watch shop at The Landmark, an upscale shopping centre in Hong Kong’s most vibrant business and financial district of Central. Most attendees were time piece enthusiasts, but many had also recently become owners of another type of expensive collectibles: digital pictures of cartoon monkeys.

The Diamond Hands party, organised by luxury watch retailer Wristcheck, brought together holders of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from one of the hottest projects in the city. Named Monkey Kingdom, the collection consists of thousands of pixelated portraits of Monkey King, a mythical animal hero in Chinese classical literature.

The project’s first collection of 2,222 digital primates, each costing 0.49 solana, or roughly US$100 at the time, sold out in late November. By this week, those NFTs were traded on NFT marketplace Magic Eden at an average price of 45 solana, or about US$4,000 at current exchange rate.

In December, one of the priciest monkeys sold for an equivalent of over US$148,000 – higher than the price of a Richard Mille RM11 watch sold on eBay in 2019.

A beginner’s guide to minting NFTs on the OpenSea platform

For some Monkey Kingdom owners, holding an NFT offers not only the prospect of a financial windfall, but also a sense of prestige and belonging – similar to being a part of the watch-collecting community.

“I’ve never met these people before, but just owning this cute photo of a monkey on my phone gave me the opportunity to mingle with so many people, and they are so open and welcoming towards you,” said event participant and Monkey Kingdom NFT holder Usman Qureshi, a 22-year-old in his final year of undergraduate studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Qureshi, who went on to co-found his own NFT project, said he developed an interest in luxury watches last summer and started following a number of watch influencers on Instagram. Within months, however, they began posting pictures of pixelated monkeys next to photos of Rolexes and Patek Philippes.

Austen Chu, the 25-year-old founder of Wristcheck and a luxury watch collector, was one of those influencers. Chu said he learned about NFTs in late 2017 when he took a college course in cryptocurrencies, but he held out on buying digital avatars until he discovered Monkey Kingdom. The founders of the project had bought watches from him, Chu said, and he liked the idea of an NFT project with Chinese cultural elements.

“Everyone who grew up in Greater China pretty much watched Sun Wukong growing up,” Chu said, referring to the name of the Monkey King in Mandarin.

The team behind Monkey Kingdom has never publicly revealed its identity, but people familiar with the matter said that Hong Kong-based Soul Ventures is currently running the project. Soul Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.

Austen Chu, founder of Wristcheck, is an owner of Monkey Kingdom NFTs. Photo: Nora Tam

The connections and influence of Gen Z and millennial tastemakers like Chu, who bought into NFTs early on, have helped drive the city’s NFT boom.

Chu, who owns at least eight Monkey Kingdom NFTs, said he told his celebrity friends about the project, including Taiwanese American actor Sunny Wang and Japanese rapper Verbal, who both promoted it on their social media accounts. Other celebrities of Asian descent, such as Singaporean singer JJ Lin and American DJ Steve Aoki, have also talked about the project.

“Having the liquidity to play with, lots of real life collectors have got into NFTs,” said Qureshi. “And that’s been very important for the development of the community, as these wealthy individuals have the connections to get other influencers on board, and create the funnel for the mainstream to hop on.”

Monkey Kingdom currently has more than 25,800 members on Discord, a group messaging platform popular in the NFT community. In a Facebook post in December, the project thanked Chu for being its earliest supporter and helping “grow the Monkey Kingdom to where we are today”.

“One aspect of NFTs is that they are also quickly becoming a digital status symbol, similar to watches and shoes, so it is not surprising that status-conscious individuals want to be able to flex in the metaverse as well,” said an NFT collector who asked to stay anonymous.

A billboard of NFT project Monkey Kingdom in Hong Kong’s Central district. Photo: Handout

One of Monkey Kingdom’s Discord channels is dedicated to discussions on watches.

“Watch collecting in the crypto community is generally very very strong, and a lot of NFT collectors are watch collectors,” said the founder of a Hong Kong-based venture capital fund that manages US$1.2 billion, who asked not to be named.

Despite their preference for anonymity, many investors and collectors are keen to attract more attention to NFTs and bring newcomers on board.

A new Hong Kong NFT project named New Old Stock is designed to offer buyers shared ownership of real luxury watches. The purpose – according to a project co-founder who asked to be addressed by his surname Tang – is to allow enthusiasts who cannot afford real watches or those who are unfamiliar with the market to “have a skin in the game”.

Wristcheck’s Chu said the Diamond Hands party in December drew some 300 people – most of them young and local owners of Monkey Kingdom NFTs – even though he did not spend any money on marketing the event apart from social media announcements.

“In Hong Kong, if you wanted to get high-spending people to come to an event, do you know how much a PR agency would charge you?” Chu asked. “This was free, and it’s just the power of NFTs.”

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