Trillionaire Thugs NFT

Trillionaire Thugs is a collection of 7,777 NFTs, each representing a Thug in the hype of the hip hop universe.

Trillionaire Thugs has caused some waves within the NFT community over the past couple of days due to their marketing, their abrupt community and the future of the project itself.

The following is not advice on purchasing NFTs and should not be used to deter potential buyers from purchasing NFTs, it is an open, factual discussion.

Let’s take a little look back at how it all started.

In early January, Trillionaire Thugs was introduced by founders Sam Ratumaitavuki and Bandman Kevo. At first, it looked like a pretty cool project that I would assume is best used for PFP and that’s about it. Then the somewhat guerrilla marketing style started to take over my Instagram feed with every second post being about the project. Now this is great, but I have never really come across a project on Instagram, usually it’s on Twitter.

At first I didn’t really think much of it and I was telling a friend of mine about the project just saying, “Hey, it might be a good investment to flip on launch day, but I’m not too sure on the longevity of the project.”

At this point, the roadmap had not really been discussed or made obviously public, everyone was just shouting to join the Discord server. Once I found their official website and had a read of their roadmap, I can honestly say it was not really anything new, but at the same time, this isn’t a bad thing. Many projects have roadmaps very similar to Trillionaire Thugs and they are all about building the community, so their roadmap is generic, but it’s fair.

Then a few days later, I decided to try to do a search on YouTube to see if anyone was talking about the project. Of course, nobody was, but there was one video — HOW TO BE APART OF THE BIGGEST NFT IN HISTORY posted by one of the founders Bandman Kevo. Here is where I started to feel a little less attract to this project for the PFP side of it. The main topic/theme within this video was how people had previously missed out on BAYC and how catching “the wave” will set you up, so “don’t get left behind.” Now fair enough to people who want to here this, but I have to say, comparing an unreleased project to that of something like BAYC is like comparing apples and oranges. They are in different lanes, and frankly, at this point in time, Trillionaire Thugs were not available so it’s difficult, or almost impossible to say they could reach the potential of a Bored Ape.

I decided I would take the bench on this project and just watch from the side-line as I didn’t want to get caught in a situation where I could not get a ROI if the project was to not go as expected. The other thing that threw me off was the mint price of 0.3 ETH. Some people may think that’s not really that bad, but you should remember that before Trillionaire Thugs, the founders and developers did not have any other projects (that we know of) that were significant to justify their expertise and understanding. Take the Adidas Originals — Into the Metaverse drop, the mint price was 0.2 ETH, now for Adidas, you would more than likely expect this due to their global presence and brand trust. That is not to say that Trillionaire Thugs should not mint at 0.3 ETH and are not trustworthy, but I think that it just adds another layer that people need to do due diligence and understand the project first before dipping in.

One common theme I have seen from the community, the founders and their influencers has been everyone’s fixation on the project going “to the moon.” I even read a comment where they posted a Gold Thug, with a comment reading “500 ETH floor guaranteed.” Now, doing the math on that one, this user believes that this project has the potential for a single Thug to sell for $1.3 MILLION. I think that positivity is great, but here’s where it’s a real downfall. When I entered the Discord, all everyone was talking about was “hold until 10/15/20/50 ETH.” They all have believe that this project will bring them hundreds of thousands if not millions from a single NFT.

I’m not at all opposed to holders believing in a project and truly feeling connected with the community surrounding the project, but what I do think is something to be cautious of is the money talk. If this project is attracting people because they only believe it will be worth 50 ETH in 6–12 months time, or ever, is that really sustainable? For one of the founders to make a comment comparing the project to BAYC and advising people to buy now so you don’t miss the wave, is that sustainable?

Don’t get me wrong, I do like the project for the visuals. I think the artwork is nice and I think seeing it develop further will be great to see, but I feel like there is some clouded judgement within the Discord and a lot of angst against anyone who has questions regarding the legitimacy of the project.

Have they paid for followers or influencers?

I can’t make a definitive judgement on this, but there are some tell-tale signs that lead me to believe that they may have purchased followers on Instagram. As at the time of writing this 9:37 pm PST Saturday, 29 January 2022, @trillionairethugsofficial has 159k followers. This is an increase of around 80,000 followers from when I saw it 24 hours ago. This is extreme growth, yet their Twitter still sits at less than 20,000 followers — Twitter is generally the go to social media platform for the NFT community. From looking at the follower accounts, majority seem to have very little followers (less than 50–100) but are following over 4,000+. This is usually a very clear sign that these followers are purchased. I cannot say 100% this is true, but I will let you be the judge of that.

In regards to influencers and people promoting the project, this is another thing that I could not say 100% they pay for it. One thing that does appear to be purchased would be the shoutouts from The Island Boys, Ric Flair and Bruce Buffer — this may have been purchased from Cameo as the videos have a very Cameo style. If you aren’t familiar with Cameo, check it out here and you can see examples of videos. These three also are on Cameo and accept personal and business requests.

My conclusion

In all honesty, like anything new, you should always do you research and due diligence before spending any money on it. In saying that, I do think that for the value of mint, the project has some merit for a PFP case and would love to see where they take the project regarding the Play 2 Earn prospect.

The founders have funds to bring the project to life and I do believe they will work on that, I just think ethically, the project should not be pushing the idea that holders will be flipping these for the same value of BAYC and other large projects.

I think they have done a great job in gaining the interest and awareness of a community, but as mentioned above, the community does seem quite agitated when someone outside tries to discuss the project in some way that they don’t agree with. I would like to see an interview with the founders where they can go over the potential utility of the NFT and what future use case is available for holders because currently, I don’t see any. I understand the Metaverse has been discussed, but this could be some time before anything happens with that, so I don’t really see that as a benefit at this point in time.

Good luck to everyone involved, I do hope it works out. But please, do you research before diving into any projects (not just this one) to make sure you understand what you are buying into. Please also take the time to understand NFTs, purchasing NFTs and the crypto space in general as I did notice yesterday in the Discord there were a lot of people questioning how to buy an NFT, or why they couldn’t see their NFT yet. There were also a lot of people who feel victim and purchased a fake Thug, which is extremely unfortunate, but is avoidable if you understand what you are searching and what you are looking for.

Great chat,

Charlo.