How an Indonesian student turned the ‘stupidest idea’ into NFT and memecoin millions – DL News

Remember Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali?

Maybe not. But in 2022 the Indonesian college student made headlines for taking a selfie every day for six years and turning them into NFTs.

Don’t laugh. The collection, “Ghozali Everyday,” made him more than $1 million.

In August last year, he announced he had taken his last selfie at his graduation from the Universitas Dian Nuswantoro in Semarang, Indonesia.

He signed off by calling the project “the stupidest idea I ever came up with, but luckily I can make money from it.”

Ghozali’s hiatus didn’t last long.

Second part

He’s recently returned to X to promote a new memecoin, which he described as “the second part of Ghozali Everyday. It’s a memecoin and NFT hybrid on Base, Coinbase’s layer 2 blockchain network.

The presale for the memecoin has already raked in $1.4 million and those that bought in are currently awaiting their “memecoin and NFT hybrid” airdrop.

While people may have hoped memecoins died in the bear market, popularity is once again surging, with a current market capitalisation of over $66 billion, according to CoinGecko.

Projects like “dogwifhat” and “slerf” on Solana saw trading volumes of $516 million and $259 million in the last 24 hours alone, respectively.

That’s even after the latter burned a significant portion of Slerf’s supply due to a developer error, resulting in a $10 million loss for investors.

Taiwanese singer Jeffrey “Machi Big Brother” Huang has raised around $36 million for his new memecoin, Bobaoppa.Not to be outdone, the memecoins of the last bull cycle are still running.

Floki Inu had a large booth at WOW Summit in Hong Kong this week. The Securities and Futures Commission warned the public in January against its staking program.

Regulators also said the project was unable to demonstrate how it could deliver the annualised return targets of 30% to 100%.

The recent surge in memecoins has prompted warnings from regulators. In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority this week released guidelines for influencers promoting financial products, including cryptocurrencies.

More Asia News: HSBC offers tokenised gold for retail in Hong Kong

HSBC is rolling out a tokenised gold product for retail clients in Hong Kong via its Orion digital assets platform.

Don’t get too excited though. The tokens aren’t redeemable for actual gold and they can’t be traded on secondary markets.

HSBC isn’t the only tokenised gold issuer, however. Stablecoin issuers Tether and Paxos have gold-pegged tokens, as does Russia’s Sper bank and Turkey’s Takasbank.

In South Korea, CREDER also launched a gold-pegged token earlier this year.

Quick Bites

• South Korean police detained a duo for cheating an elderly man in his sixties out of $4.1 million in a crypto scam. The two promised returns of 70% in one month.
• Regulators in The Philippines have blocked access to the Binance website. Though the block had been in the works for months, it wasn’t clear when it was going to happen and many users are trying to quickly move their money off the exchange.
• South Korean authorities are set to take possession of Do Kwon’s flat in the Serbian capital Belgrade. The $2.2 million flat is located in an affluent district popular with business executives, diplomats and the head of the police.

Got an Asia crypto story? Get in touch with DL News’ Asia Correspondent at callan@dlnews.com.