"All week in New York, the myriad token-gated parties and meetups applied social filters based on digital ownership. Tickets to these events could only be purchased once you connected your crypto wallet and proved that you held the correct NFTs. At any given party, the coolest people in the room were always the “whales,” semi-mythical figures who own over 1000 ETH ($3 million at the time of writing) in digital assets. Rumors of exclusive “whale dinners” trickled down through the ranks of attendees, who jockeyed in anonymous group chats for passwords to invite-only events."

This honestly makes me physically cringe. It's not even the worst aspects of new money, it's people LARPing as the nouveau riche. Imagine sitting in a room full of adults with status anxiety who compare their 20 dollar deviantart ape drawings they bought with their entire savings.