NYSE celebrates historic 'first trades' with NFT series

The New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE, has jumped on the NFT bandwagon by minting nonfungible tokens celebrating the first trade made in the shares of prominent U.S. companies.

In an April 13th announcement, NYSE’s president, Stacey Cunningham, described NFTs as a “new, fun way to mark the moment” of a company’s first trade on the NYSE.

The first six NYSE NFTs commemorating the first trades for Spotify, Snowflake, Unity, DoorDash, Roblox, and Coupang, with Cunningham confirming “there will be many more NYSE NFTs to come.”

The first NFTs are already listed on Crypto.com’s NFT marketplace, with the tokens hosting a 10-second video clip presenting information about the company’s first trade — including its time, date, and listing price.

NYSE’s announcement received a mixed response on social media, with Twitter user “Aaron” saying he “had to check the calendar just to make sure it wasn’t April 1st” upon reading the news.

Infamous crypto Twitter troll “Bit Lord” was less political with his phrasing:

“You clowns haven’t even listed $BTC, get off my timeline scammers.”

Alex Gausman, the founder of nonfungible token fractionalization platform, NFTX, noted he could not find the contract address for NYSE’s tokens, adding: “That’s like the least cool/artistic thing ever. Just buy the stock.”

While NYSE’s NFT listings are yet to receive any bids, similar tokens issued by rival publications including Forbes, Times, and the New York Times have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars this year.

Forbes’ first NFT featuring its latest issue cover with Gemini owners and billionaires the Winklevoss twins sold for $333,333 on April 8 this year. Times Magazine has issued nine NFTs to date with each individual cover NFT selling for between $100,000 and $250,000.

A column in the New York Times was tokenized for charity in March, raising more than $550,000 for NYT’s Neediest Case Fund.