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That Tungsten Company Is Auctioning Its Largest-Ever Cube as an NFT

Midwest Tungsten Service will take bids on a 14-inch cube via OpenSea.

Midwest tungsten cube (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)
Midwest tungsten cube (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)

A key manufacturer feeding Crypto Twitter’s tungsten craze is auctioning off a non-fungible token (NFT) tied to the largest tungsten cube it has ever made.

The NFT’s title says it all: “The Tungsten Cube - 14 inch, ~1,784 lb cube held in Willowbrook, Illinois, USA by Midwest Tungsten Service.” Bidding on OpenSea begins Friday, e-commerce director Sean Murray told CoinDesk.

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According to the description on OpenSea, the NFT grants its holder once-a-year visiting rights for the super-dense cube.

The NFT is the latest twist in a weeklong meme saga that turned a sleepy metals manufacturer into Crypto Twitter’s unlikely celebrity, and all because of super-dense cubes.

Traders and journalists and tweeters and moonbois have been acquiring these desk tchotchkes for hundreds of dollars or more. (Disclosure: This reporter has his own Midwest 1-incher. It’s surprisingly dense!)

Keeping the 14-inch cube at Midwest Tungsten HQ might be out of necessity.

Murray previously told CoinDesk that Midwest Tungsten was considering creating a supremely heavy cube but wasn’t sure how to get transportation squared away.

He’d also sworn to keep Midwest Tungsten focused on the metals and not NFTs. But a week of surging sales changed the calculus.

“I wanted to let you know first that we’re going to try an NFT. Swerving out of our lane, I guess,” Murray said. “The Crypto Twitter community’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrency and NFTs is contagious.”

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Danny Nelson