Hong Kong NFT start-ups jockey to become the next Bored Apes and CryptoPunks in an increasingly crowded field

Working professionals in Hong Kong are leaving job security behind to start their own NFT projects as competition ramps up along with concerns of a bubble

The Asian financial hub has seen many new NFT projects in the span of a few months with names like Monkey Kingdom, Lucky Kittens and Burnout Excel Monkey Club

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Hong Kong-based Going Ape is one of many monkey- and ape-themed NFT projects vying to become the next Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most valuable NFT project to date. Photo: Handout

Published: 5:00pm, 7 Jan 2022Updated: 6:05pm, 7 Jan 2022

When 33-year-old LuckyKaptain started a non-fungible token (NFT) project with four friends in Hong Kong last November, it had been a few months since he quit his job in the city’s high-flying finance industry – but the green entrepreneur felt he had to move fast.

LuckyKaptain, who asked to be referred to by his online pseudonym, is just one person who has joined a gold rush in the booming market for NFTs, which have fast become a popular means of collecting and investing in art over the past year. After leaving his job in August, LuckyKaptain was burdened by a three-month non-compete clause. So he and his friends spent some time back home in Europe and North America before taking the plunge on their project called Lucky Kittens.

“The NFT space is moving crazy fast,” LuckyKaptain told the South China Morning Post. “Now you see new projects almost every day.”

Lucky Kittens is just one of many new NFT start-ups to spring up in Hong Kong in recent months. Famous projects like Bored Apes Yacht Club and CryptoPunks enriched their creators with massive windfalls in 2021, and now countless entrepreneurs in Hong Kong are looking to replicate that success, forming an ever-growing community in Asia’s financial capital.

In just the last month, dozens of new NFT projects have either launched or announced an upcoming launch in Hong Kong, sparking a rare start-up boom in the city typically dominated by large, entrenched businesses, especially conventional banks and other finance firms. Some projects such as Monkey Kingdom and LuckyKittens have seen NFTs get scooped up by buyers within seconds after launch, while upcoming projects such as Going Ape and Burnout Excel Monkey Club are going all over town to compete for the attention of potential investors and buyers.

The hype around NFTs revolves around the technology’s ability to prove ownership of digital assets using blockchain-verified vouchers. This has enabled digital artwork to be traded like traditional art pieces, with the most sought-after items being valued in the millions of dollars.

Monkey Kingdom, which comprises 2,222 portraits of the mythical hero Monkey King dressed in different styles, has become one of the better-known projects in Hong Kong, with celebrities such as Singaporean singer JJ Lin and US DJ Steve Aoki being the project’s highest-profile promoters. While the project is only one month old, each portrait is now being traded for an average of 35 Solana, the cryptocurrency used on the Solana blockchain, currently valued about US$5,000.