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

4-MIN READ4-MIN

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.