NFT art hits town with shows by collectors WhaleShark and Cordell Broadus

With over 400,000 art NFTs (nonfungible tokens) worth around US$100 million (S$145 million), the NFT art collector who goes only by the name WhaleShark should know what he is talking about.

- Arthur Sim

Right now, he is bullish about metaverse real estate. His simple digital investment philosophy is that digital assets "must be able to draw parallels in real life".

The Hong Kong-based investor owns 2,800 plots in The Sandbox, making him one of the biggest digital real-estate owners on that particular metaverse platform.

The 39-year-old, who runs a venture capital firm, has also invested in gaming NFTs as well as next-generation Web3 infrastructure products. But it is the NFT art he bought with his early cryptocurrency gains - he started buying Bitcoin in 2012 - that remains his first love.

He will be exhibiting some of his collection to participants of Token2049 at the Sands Expo & Convention Centre, a Web3 industry event for entrepreneurs, investors and developers that is on till Thursday.

"This is my first physical art exhibition. And I want to bring prominence to these artists," he says of the exhibition called the OP3N Whale NFT Exhibition featuring 34 artworks.

On show are works by some of his favourite artists including Pak, XCOPY and Brendan Dawes.

Here for an NFT event as well is art NFT collector Cordell Broadus, son of American hip-hop icon Snoop Dogg. The 25-year-old did not want to follow his father's footsteps in the music industry and "dance when they say dance". Instead, he has set his sights on building a Web3 empire. And he credits his foray into the NFT world for this.