Insights / Community

How NFTs Gave Me a Tribe

By Amir Soleymani • September 10, 2023 • 5 min read

My love of collecting did not begin with pixels. It began with my grandfather's stamp collection — the careful order of it, the small story each square seemed to carry. When I found NFTs, that lifelong passion found new life. But the part that surprised me was not the technology, and certainly not the prices. It was the people.

Finding my tribe

The NFT community — or, as I fondly call them, my tribe — became an integral part of my life. These were not transactional relationships. They were meaningful and deep-rooted, built across borders that would normally keep us apart. In Web3 we greet each other with a simple “GM,” good morning, and that small ritual says everything about the culture: people from wildly different backgrounds showing up for one another, every single day.

I have met artists, collectors, and friends I never would have crossed paths with otherwise — the artist Sacha Jafri, the Persian rapper Tohi, the calligrapher Diaa Allam, and many more. Some of these people have become far more than friends. They are family.

Art as a bridge between worlds

One of the early milestones for me was NFTLiverpool, an exhibition that drew thousands of submissions and put digital artists from every continent on the same wall. Seeing that shared space made the promise of this technology feel real. It was never about changing what art is. It was about expanding the canvas of possibilities for artists and collectors alike.

NFTs as a force for good

What convinced me most was how this technology could do good. NFTs let us turn acts of kindness into something secure, verifiable, and lasting — digital badges of generosity that inspire others to give:

• I won an auction of Nadya Tolokonnikova's work for 100 ETH to support victims of domestic violence.
• I helped found The NFT Guild to give artists and collectors a place to build together.
• Through Time to Help, our community funded a water well in Kawulumu Village, Uganda.
• We rallied around causes close to home, from the victims of Flight PS752 to the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran.

In the NFT space, at its best, people and community matter more than profit. That is the part of this story I never want to lose — and the reason I keep building.

This essay draws on my first book, The Art of Connectivity: Unveiling the Magic of NFTs (2023).