I walked into the narrow booth in New York's financial district, got out my credit card and prepared to make my purchase.
I wasn't there for cigarettes, candy or condoms. I had come to this place at 29 John Street to buy NFT's or non-fungible tokens from what is being billed as the world's first NFT vending machine.
'NFT For Sale Here'
Neon, an NFT marketplace and gallery built on the Solana blockchain, operates the vending machine, which is open 24 hours a day--just the thing to satisfy those late-night NFT urges.
There's a neon sign on one window with an inscription saying "NFT ATM". On the other window, an inscription encourages people to "Buy Colors, Buy Pigeons."
As I stepped through the plastic strip curtain at the doorway, I got this funky, vaguely illicit vibe from the place.
The tiled walls and moody lighting made me feel as if I were in a club at 2AM when it wasn't even lunchtime yet.
Above the machine were the words "NFT For Sale Here" were spray-painted in a kind of faux-graffiti style.
I had my choice of buying Party Pigeons, a digital art collection created by the artist Typfy for Neon, for $420.99; or Project Color, a randomly selected color purchasers can buy, sell, and trade to create a collage, for $5.99.
I decided to go for a color.
"Please make your selection," an automated voice told me.
'Breaking Down Some Barriers'
It took me a few tries, but I did get my color. Inside the box was a strip of paper instructing me to scan the QR code and redeem the NFT.
The vending machine, which had a soft launch in December, accepts credit and debit cards and dispenses a box with a unique code inside it for the chosen NFT, which is redeemable on the Neon platform.
"The thought behind the creation of the vending machine was to make NFTs accessible to those without the knowledge of what exactly NFTs, crypto, blockchain, etc. really entails," Jordan Birnholtz, chief marketing office and co-founder of Neon, said in an email. "It serves as an experiential marketing effort to change the perception of NFTs."
The project is designed, he said "to break down some of the barriers to entry for new audiences by allowing them to purchase with a credit card or debit card as well as thinking about digital collectibles in a physical sense and destigmatize some of the current polarization."
Users are still able to purchase NFTs online through Neon’s digital marketplace, he said "the vending machine is just another means to purchase, not the only."
"NFT buying and selling doesn’t need to be a mystery and you shouldn’t be required to hold Ethereum, write a smart contract, pay gas costs or bridge blockchains to participate," Birnholtz said.
Neon, which closed a $3 million seed round earlier this year, is expanding the vending machines to a handful of cities this summer.
"One of our goals for building the vending machines is to inspire artists to sell on Neon, in our machines and on our website, and most of the artists on our waitlist have come from seeing the NYC location," Birnholtz said.
'This Concept is Epic'
Reaction to the concept on Twitter seemed to be leaning toward the negative at last check, but there were encouraging words as well.
"Make sure you #crypto folk check out @neon_gallery when you are in the city," one person said. "This concept is epic and I can't wait to see what is next. I just picked up three "Project Color" #NFTs and soon hopefully a "Party Pigeon" 😎. I love this!"
"Nice concept!" one person said.
"What’s that old line?" another person commented. "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
"The vending machine - dispensing junk since 1883," someone else tweeted.
A reporter for the Guardian recently described his experience with the machine, where one NFT he purchased got stuck in the machine and the second produced a blank square.
"Colonel Sanders was rejected 1,009 times before he finally launched KFC and look at him now!" Neon responded on Twitter. "Come visit us again and we will be sure to be the KFC of the NFT world."
Another Twitter user described a similar experience with getting the NFT out of the machine, but still gave the booth a positive review.
"It was actually a really cute experience," the person tweeted, "except for one of the boxes not deploying properly (however Neon was super responsive on twitter and fixed it asap!) You get a real little box with a card inside to redeem your nft!"
"Thank you for your valiant research efforts," Neon responded. "This data will be crucial to the scientific community. Godspeed."
