Jay Pegs Auto Mart: LARP meets NFT inside a 2007 Kia Sedona
Trading JPEGs is big business, so big that faceless corporations like Visa are now grubbying up to crypto. But an anonymous group of insiders are thumbing their noses at the industry’s gentrification with a new venture: Jay Pegs Auto Mart.
Jay Pegs Auto Mart is a used car dealership that sells just one vehicle: the 2007 Kia Sedona.
The firm maintains a fleet of 10,000 Kia Sedona NFTs, and it ran a special sale in a bid to distribute them fairly.
Jay Pegs strongly believes in the value of his Sedonas (the car is reliable and economically sound, a spokesperson told Protos).
That enthusiasm is bubbling over into the crypto community at large.
Over the past 72 hours, prospective Sedona owners could participate in an “End of Summer Sellathon” for Pegs’ native crypto, DONA.
Pegs will swap each DONA for one Kia Sedona ERC-721 token, algorithmically generated to imbue special properties so they stand out from the rest.
Much like other generative projects, every token will have common and rare traits. “The rarity of the vehicles is determined by the traits of the DONA NFT,” said a Jay Pegs sales rep.
Demand for Pegs’ Sedonas was high. Under batch auction rules, the price was scaled to demand, and the sale needed at least 490 ETH ($1.8 million) to succeed.
The auction just ended, raising 864.8 ETH ($3.1 million). Buyers will receive tokens based on the Ether they’d committed — leaving possibility that smaller contributors could end up with just fractions of a DONA.
As 1 DONA = 1 NFT, Jay Pegs himself contributed 200 DONA ($64,000) to a liquidity pool on Ethereum-powered decentralized exchange SushiSwap.
This allows acquiring more fractions to make up a whole token (or liquidating stashes).
Protos understands NGMI Global (Jay Pegs Auto Mart’s shadowy parent organization) had rigged the dealership to “explode” if the auction didn’t sell out, and all funds would’ve returned to investors.
Luckily, it didn’t come to that.
LARPing for NFTs
Jay Pegs Auto Mart is a collective of 10 figures operating anonymously.
Artworks tied to DONA NFTs were created in-house (unlike Bored Apes which leveraged briefly contracted artists for its brand).
The team is serious about its roleplay. In an hour-long Ask-Me-Anything (AMA), Jay Pegs himself — a no-nonsense career car-man with no interest in computers — fielded questions from a crowd absorbed by the project’s painfully ’90s aesthetic.
Pegs’ AMA was, almost literally, an infomercial for the 2007 Kia Sedona.
“Look guys, I mean this is real simple, okay. I’ve been in business for give-or-take 38 years, we’re down here in Kenanville, Florida,” said Pegs.
“I’m not gonna lie to you, I’ve sold other cars. It’s been a long journey for me. But at a certain point, you reach a point where you find what you need. You find quality, and you stop looking for other crap.”
In 2007, MotorWeek dubbed the Kia Sedona (sold as ‘Carnival’ in some markets) as the year’s best minivan — the first time the Korean motoring stalwart had won a Drivers’ Choice Award.
- Consumer intelligence giant JD Power ranks the 2007 Kia Sedona at a respectable 79 out of 100.
- Kia’s Sedona was the fourth-best van of 2007, tied with the Honda Odyssey and Ford Freestar.
- The car was only two points behind number-one Toyota Sienna, but 10 points ahead of the homely Nissan Quest.
According to JD Power, owners of the Kia Sedona 2007 particularly enjoyed its acceleration, heating and air conditioning, and the comfort of its third row seats.
And so, Pegs encouraged listeners to not get “distracted by the new stuff” and “lock into quality.” He described the 2007 Kia Sedona as the “vehicle of your dreams.”
“If you don’t believe me, which I doubt, you come down to the lot or you give us a call on our hotline any day of the week, and I can prove to you that this vehicle is going to change your life, Lord willing. That is a promise,” said Pegs.
Interested listeners are joining the LARP. The project’s Telegram is now filled with comments like:
“Mr. Jay Pegs, I am sure you are quite busy with the [Sellathon] and you are not a big fan of computers. Perhaps this is for your sales agents: Will there be a Discord server for even better service & consultation?”
What Jay Pegs Auto Mart does to Sedonas, few understand
Last month, a crypto researcher unintentionally minted a copypasta when they mused on the concept of diamond-backed NFTs:
“If you make a NFT of a real diamond, and the diamond itself gets destroyed in a fire tomorrow, you still have the same asset,” they tweeted.
“Because the token still exists and is in limited supply just as before. Nothing has changed. What NFT is doing to the concept of asset, few understand.”
In a way, it’s clear Jay Pegs Auto Mart is toying with this thought-leader logic — that tying an NFT to a real-life asset magically renders them identical through the power of blockchain.
Indeed, the team is semi-committed to the narrative that Jay Pegs Auto Mart (and its fleet of 2007 Sedonas) really exist — and so should the value of their associated NFTs.
A second-hand 2007 Kia Sedona currently goes for around $4,000 in the US. The price of DONA at the end of the batch auction reached 0.0882 ETH ($319).
Although, a Jay Pegs Auto Mart rep noted the NFTs do not represent fractional ownership of a Sedona fleet or a single Kia Sedona.
“However, there may or may not be a real Kia Sedona that exists,” they said.
Pegs’ website curiously states three lucky ‘Sedowners’ will be chosen randomly to receive something “very, very special” at the end of the Summer Sellathon.
Crypto-fueled alternate reality
Pegs’ spokesperson claimed the auction and next week’s NFT exchange are just the beginning.
After requesting a roadmap for the project, we were directed to follow a path from Jay Pegs Auto Mart to the Kennedy Space Center.
Considering how closely the project echoes the ‘destroying a diamond tied to an NFT turns that NFT into a diamond’ mumbo-jumbo — rumors of the NFT-linked Sedona fleet suddenly detonating are starting to circulate.
That would explicitly transform Pegs’ real-but-imaginary Sedona fleet into NFTs; closing the loop on this surreal crypto roleplay.
Speaking directly to Protos, Jay Pegs maintained that Kia Sedona 2007s are “meant to be passed down generationally.”
“It’s a new form of generational wealth,” he said.
Read more: [Gartner’s Hype Cycle predicts 5 years until mainstream NFT adoption]
“I think the Kia Sedona 2007 would continue to run, if you take care of it according to the manufacturer’s recommendations, you’re looking at a family car that will run for at least another seven years,” added Pegs.
In the meantime, fans can don Pegs’ signature sunglasses and print their very own Pegs-themed DMV photos.
“Print out the picture when you’re done. You gotta mail it in yourself though — this is a dealership, not the dang post office! Haha,” reads the website.
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