“I love technology. I was looking for the next thing, and I realized that there was more you could do than just trade these coins; there were applications being developed.”
Ben Jammin describes web3 as “the social group for antisocial people,” which is, of course, a contradiction in terms, but then Ben himself is something of a contradiction. While he appreciates art, he says, “I’m mostly a swing trader. I collect what I think looks good or what I think has potential. Essentially I look to flip.”
During his many years in the restaurant industry, working up from bussing tables to managing places, Ben enjoyed flexible shifts, which allowed him to do other stuff, and found he had an aptitude for fantasy sports. He started to collect data from all over the internet and compiling cheat sheets that he shared freely on Twitter, but then later monetized it into a business.
He went back to school to study computer programming and web development, getting into NFTs in 2017. He shares: “I love technology. I was looking for the next thing, and I realized that there was more you could do than just trade these coins; there were applications being developed.”
Ben spent a lot of time on projects around gamification or utility, but ‘Ghxsts’ was one of the few based on art. After falling in love with Web 3, he went full-time into trading NFTs. He launched Dizzy Dragons and, at the same time, created Moving Forward Management, an advisory, and consultancy on NFT projects.
“Moving forward, there needs to be a lot more education. People need to take control of not just their assets, but their knowledge because when people jump into things without fully understanding them, they put themselves at risk.”
Ben says: “The biggest attraction in this space and why people have come to it, other than the financial aspect, is how you can have supportive communities working to bring together all these different people who have so many different skills to work in a decentralized way.”
There’s technology, there’s profit, and people get rugged, but ultimately, everyone would agree, the NFT art world is about people and communities – all those antisocial people out there being social together.