Inside the Earnest Parties at the First NFT Conference

Inside the Earnest Parties at the First NFT Conference

The Times Square Margaritaville is not the normal hangout of young tech millionaires and hip artists. But the shiny, tropical-themed tourist trap was the central hub and gateway to accessing this fall’s first-ever NFT.NYC conference, a sprawling citywide event with dozens of panel discussions and hundreds of official and unofficial parties attended by over 5,000 eager cryptocurrency enthusiasts exploring the strange new world of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, the blockchain-based assets—often art—that are rapidly growing into a multi-billion dollar industry.



Not that you would see 18-year-old star artist FEWOCiOUS at Margaritaville. Victor Langlois, who goes by FEWOCiOUS or Fewo for short, is one of the NFT world’s biggest success stories of the past year: he has sold millions of dollars worth of artworks as NFTs at auction. But on his second-ever visit to New York from his current home of Seattle, Langlois—who prefers paint-splattered clothing and splashes of bright eye makeup with streaks of golden highlighter swiped across his cheekbones—was primarily posted up in industrial Red Hook, Brooklyn, to host painting parties for his friends and collectors.



In an austere, high-ceilinged studio space near the waterfront, staff arranged 10-foot-tall canvases and buckets of paint on crafting