Ben Simmons changed his Twitter and Instagram profile pictures. They now show a picture of a dog wearing a sailor hat.

Apparently it’s some weird Non-Fungible Token thing, which the kids are into these days. You buy a digital version of something that’s totally worthless, but it’s authentic and unique in this online world, and then you sell it for profit and get out. It’s scam city, and eventually some poor loser with insatiable FOMO is stuck with a $5,000 NFT of a Zebra doing a cartwheel, and nobody wants it, nor does it have any real world value.

The story here is that apparently Jonah Bolden, the former Sixer, recruited Ben into something called the “Gutter Cat Gang,” which is described this way on the official web site:

Welcome to the Gutter Cat Gang, the underground web3 social club where your NFT doubles as your membership to the gang and comes with exclusive members-only benefits.

Gutter Rats, Pigeons, and Dogs represent our base level membership and each will unlock varying and unique levels of access and perks. Gutter Cats represent our premier level of membership and will unlock our highest and most all-encompassing level of access and value.

I don’t know what any of this means. I’ll admit that the NFT and Crypto world makes me feel like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, i.e. completely out of touch with reality. But in the end maybe the lightbulb will go off and I’ll sacrifice myself in a hail of bullets.

Luckily for us, we have West Virginia Mountaineer Drew Smith at The Liberty Line to explain it all to us, we think:

I will be totally honest with you, I have no idea what NFT’s are. I stopped after cashing out $6,000 of DogeCoin over the summer and totally cut off the bizarre world of cryptocurrency and everything else involved with it because I couldn’t stop staring at DogeCoin every night until 5am watching it rise and then fall, over and over again. BUT, if you haven’t noticed, Tobias Harris and Daryl Morey both have Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT profile pictures.

The Philadelphia 76ers are in year one of a new partnership for their jersey sponsor with Crypto.com. When that announcement was made, a part of the deal was that the 76ers will launch their first NFTs alongside their City Uniforms for the upcoming season. The deal with the Sixers is reportedly worth over $10 million annually, one of the most expensive in the league. 76ers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey is a massive fan of NFTs, so it’s likely he was a driving force behind this sponsor.

The NBA guys love Non-Fungible Tokens and Crypto and all of that. Morey is into it. I don’t get it, but my parents probably didn’t understand why we were into AOL 3.0 and Myspace and all of this stuff that was similarly new and different back in the day.

#GangGang

https://twitter.com/Jonahbolden43/status/1453568638494015495?s=20