Update: Nifty Gateway's 889th Problem

Me.

Most people in the crypto space do not know me. The ones that have met me only know a very small fraction of me. Most everyone in crypto know me to be complimentary, jovial, dare I say even nice?

However, there is another side to me.

I am confrontational, online. I like to punch up, never down.

The truth of the matter is I’m a bastard; a bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling, dipped in hot bastard with bastard sprinkles.

This story will surprise no one I know in my personal life.

As of this writing I am still in timeout. I am sure there has been much more discussion after I was placed in timeout, none of which would have been flattering to me. So what did I do? I punched up. I punched up at a team that believes to be above criticism, above their customer base, incredulous that anyone would be anything but grateful. I’m glad I took screen shots because I thought this was coming.

Act 1, Scene 1

I posted a link to the article in the chat. Others in the discord room came to Nifty Gateway’s defense. I always find it humorous when individuals come to the defense of companies that would sell them out if it profited them. This individual, Du5t1, attempted to argue that Nifty Gateway is the answer to NFTs becoming successful. Although, he uses the argument that “It’s just they keep making the same mistakes” which isn’t exactly making the point I think he wants.

Enter Tommy Kimmelman. I tagged him specifically because he has been the most vocal in the chat and most indignant.

Freudian slip aside, I think this response is interesting. They don’t plan drops a week in advance, but when the market began to boom Nifty Gateway quickly responded by ramping up drops. So, they planned to do that months in advance? And they panned to slow down before they saw the market turn? Can they see into the future? Either he’s lying or he’s lying.

Why can’t people just stay positive? My guess is because it’s not a positive experience most people are having on Nifty Gateway, but most people always want to just ignore the things that are bad and just enjoy the good. That’s not what I took issue with though:

I present Exhibit A:

I’d post the original tweet that Tommy posted in regards to 888’s complaints but…

Enter Stage Left

By now the conversation began to digress into a circle of Tommy deflecting blame and two word responses like, “Cool bro”. I didn’t expect much more engagement beyond this but Tommy’s team members decided to come to his defense.

One thing I’ve learned in arguing over the years is that most people cannot do it. Quickly it turns personal and the actual argument is lost. That’s exactly what Tre decided to do. I didn’t feel attacked, he just decided to attack the “vibe” I was bringing to the group rather than read any of the issues I discussed. I called myself a bastard at the beginning of this post, Debbie Downer is not going to hurt my feelings.

I did check the announcements. Not much of anything other than drop information and a reiteration of their dedication to ensuring 1 billion people are collecting NFTs. There are town hall meetings on clubhouse that may have addressed some of the topics I brought up, but I have my doubts. Recently (last few weeks not the past few months) they started weekly updates addressing minor issues, none of which are related to what I wrote. So my point regarding their indifference to the issues remained. However, they helped me find another issue:

June 2021, Nifty Gateway has been around for 1 1/2 years, is attempting to be the premiere marketplace for NFTs and they are just now implementing burning unsold NFTs? Maybe NG isn’t capable of navigating the NFT space.

The Final Act: Where I Get Owned

Sike!

The concerns I laid out were not just my own but an amalgamation of everything that has transpired, publicly on Twitter, somewhat more privately in the Discord chat, in the market and the experiences of site users big and small. So it became apparent that they had no retort or response to what I had actually written. The corporate responses began to showcase this:

And Now We Reach the Beginning

I’ll admit, this wasn’t an argument up to my standard in the previous responses. It may have discredited my arguments a bit by losing the moral high ground; I just got tired of him. His attitude towards me is not unique. I have seen him in the discord on a number of occasions responding like this. I’m human, sometimes I just want to knock someone down a peg. I didn’t think this would be the comment to get me banned. But alas, here we are.

Epilogue

In the coming days I began to worry. I worried how it would reflect on Cryptowriter. I worried that perhaps I hadn’t done enough research. I worried that perhaps they had made enough changes in the last month to address most of the things I had written. My self-awareness and self-doubt will often lead me to the conclusion that perhaps I was wrong.

And then, Thursday, during a daily drop that fear receded. I had left out in my previous piece one of the largest complaints of the website in the month of February when demand was outrageous. I was willing to accept that a website could not have scaled quickly enough on the fly for such an increase in website activity. But certainly, in the past few months they addressed that since they are listening to their community, right?