‘RIP The Queen’ NFTs Live On OpenSea Less than 24hrs After Her Death

In the hours following her death, many people were glued to their TVs watching the news of Queen Elizabeth II. However, for others, this would always be an opportunity to make money. Within hours, numerous NFT collections ‘dedicated to the Queen’ popped up, and many people in the NFT community have raised questions about the morality of doing so.

Amongst these collections is RIP The Queen Official, Long Live The Queen, King Charles, and even a Queen Elizabeth Yacht Club collection.

Queen NFT collections split the Twitter community 

As soon as the news of her majesty’s death spread yesterday, the NFT Twitter community knew what was coming. One user, @ThreadGirl_eth, said, “First one to drop a queen nft collection will make bags”, while @zscuffed said, “Yes, the Queen of England died. No, you shouldn’t make an NFT collection about it.”

However, before you could say ‘God save the Queen’, numerous NFT projects were already live and tweeting about it. Hastily made projects featuring an image of the Queen in some form started to pop up on our timelines. Obviously, the collections have not impressed everyone. Many people consider this profiting from the death of the Queen and give NFTs a lousy name.

One NFT collection that caught the attention of Twitter is the free-to-mint poorly drawn Queen Elizabeth Yacht Club. One particular NFT image is a drawing of the Queen knighting Captain Sir Thomas Moore. The tweet had over 1000 comments, nearly 1500 RTs, and 2000 likes.

Popular NFT Tweeter @NFTherder said, “Dude makes a “RIP The Queen” nft collection. Couldn’t wait a day, could ya? This is why people hate NFTs.”

Who is buying the RIP Queen NFTs?

Surprisingly, quite a few of these NFTS have sold or minted. @sensorbotNFT, which records NFT sales activity over 30 minutes, had some surprising data in the following hours.

One 30-minute period had 3 Queen-related NFTs in the top 5 NFT collection sales. Long Live The Queen had 762 mints during the 30 minutes, RIP QUEEN ELIZABETH II had 347 mints, and King Charles had 170 mints.

Together, this is over 1000 Queen NFTs and proves there was interest in these NFTs. Some people collect souvenirs of significant events in traditional forms, such as newspapers. Perhaps this is just a new digital way of remembering events for people.

Using NFTs for good causes

Not every NFT collection is about profit. Over the last year, we have seen NFTs become a helpful tool in helping people. For example, there have been tens of millions of dollars raised for Ukraine by the NFT community, for International Women’s day, and for Children in Need. 

NFT philanthropy is an entirely new way of providing charity, and we already see it in action. But, this is just the beginning, and who knows how this will change in the future. 

The various Queen NFT collections show that there are plenty of opportunists out there. However, with some of these free-to-mint and getting high engagement, we might see a new way of marking historical moments. Only time will tell, but for now, Twitter is divided about the morality of these NFT collections.