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Nifty News: The Simpsons roast NFTs, Yuga Labs exec departs after anti-semitic tweets and more

3 min read
1 year ago admin
Nifty News: The Simpsons roast NFTs, Yuga Labs exec departs after anti-semitic tweets and more

The Simpsons roasts NFTs in new Halloween special

Animated television series The Simpsons spent an entire segment mocking nonfungible tokens (NFTs) during the latest 34th annual Treehouse of Horror Halloween special, in a segment called “Wild Barts Can’t Be Token.”

In the special, Homer accidentally mints Bart on the blockchain, and in the ensuing scenes, the creators poke fun at NFTs, all while referencing collections such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Doodles, as well as the viral digital artist Beeple.

The special revolved around poking fun at the speculative nature of NFTs and how the market is largely fueled by the fear of missing out (FOMO).

Once Marge discovers that Bart has become trapped on-chain, she too digitizes herself as NFT. She battles her way through carriages on a virtual train — which is literally powered by FOMO — to rescue Bart, fighting NFT-themed characters all the while.

The final joke lands when Homer finally gives into FOMO and mints himself as NFT. The second he does so, the train runs out of steam and the price of all the NFTs plunge to near-zero, ending the episode with his iconic catchphrase “Doh!”

Despite being the essentially the punchline of an episode-long joke, the NFT community on Crypto Twitter reacted with delight, with Beeple saying that his work appearing on the show was a “bucket list moment” for him as an artist.

Notably, the Simpsons creators even parodied their own NFT collection — Golden Moments — which was first offered in conjunction with Disney+ by the NFT platform VeVe in Nov. 2021.

“We saw that,” wrote the official account for Veve.

Degens cash in on Simpsons NFT episode

NFT enthusiasts certainly didn’t let the Simpsons roast go to waste, with creators rushing to capitalize on the newfound publicity for NFTs.

Just hours after the episode first aired, Italian parody artist Rino Russo launched a Simpsons-derived NFT project, which combined the likeness of Simpsons characters with CryptoPunks.

The collection, dubbed Springfield Punks, was launched as a free mint and quickly sold out as NFT fans raced to jump in on the action. 

At the time of publication, the Simpsons Punks collection has witnessed a whopping 1,377 Ether (ETH) — worth $2.6 million at current prices — in trading volume, making it the third most traded collection on OpenSea in the last 24 hours.

Yuga Labs social lead steps down after anti-semitic tweets resurface

Shpend Sahilu, the social lead for NFT company Yuga Labs announced that he would be stepping down after anti-semitic tweets he posted years ago resurfaced on social media.

Sahilu, better known by the pseudonym NGBxShpend on X, explained that he would be leaving his role at the company, due to his past anti-semitic tweets becoming “a distraction” from the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

“I want to apologize to anyone who I may have let down with tweets I made in poor taste,” he wrote in a Nov. 5 post on X.

One user attached a screenshot of one of the offending tweets from 2016 in the comments section of the original post,