When Moments Become Assets: NFT Auctions for Political Footage and Personal Time

In a market where nearly anything can be tokenized, individual moments in time are increasingly becoming tradable assets on their own, and simply watching an event is no longer the only way to take part in it.

Trading clipped sports highlights already had a precedent in physical trading cards, but the idea has now spread into political history: one media outlet auctioned an NFT called "Trump's Coronavirus Calendar," described as a compilation of footage showing Donald Trump repeatedly downplaying the emerging Covid-19 pandemic. The move raises an open question about how far the practice — from sports memorabilia to footage of political figures — will eventually extend.

The video behind the Recount's Calendar NFT shows Trump dismissing the severity of the virus during its early stages, and regardless of anyone's politics, the compiled footage does not put him in a flattering light. A different outlet could presumably assemble equally selective clips to tell the opposite story, which points to a real issue: whoever holds the underlying footage controls the narrative packaged inside the token.

Bidding on the piece reached 1.38 WETH, a modest figure next to some recent high-profile NFT sales, though the format itself is distinctive enough to stand out regardless of price. Whether buying it amounts to profiting from a tragedy — the footage covers a period tied to a mounting death toll — is arguably no different from the question facing any commentary journalism on the same events that isn't strictly breaking-news reporting. What exactly a purchase like this says about the buyer's motives is left open.

An acknowledged experiment

The seller described the sale as deliberately experimental, stating: "Few disagree that our shared information ecosystem feels broken and in need of new thinking. The permanence, transparency, and flexibility inherent in blockchain-based systems reminds us of the energy, optimism, and, sure, the hype around the early internet." Outreach to several bidders and to the NFT's creator for further comment went unanswered, leaving open whether bidders were expressing disapproval of Trump's handling of the pandemic, signaling confidence in the media outlet itself, or something else entirely.

That ambiguity points to a deeper problem across much of the NFT market: the token and the underlying media are frequently not truly bound together. When the pseudonymous artist @neitherconfirm "pulled the rug" on a collection mid-auction, they argued that "all discussions about the value of NFTs are meaningless as long as the token is not inseparable from the artwork itself," adding that "all artists exploring NFTs should probably rely on something like IPFS to create censorship resistance and link their artwork or figure out another way of establishing trust." Since footage like the Trump calendar could in principle be swapped for something else entirely, the same question about where the value actually resides applies here too.

One plausible answer is that buyers are simply using money to signal identity or belief — the same impulse behind spending on fashion or charitable giving. If people are already paying for tokenized fragments of the past, the range of moments that could eventually be monetized is hard to fully predict, which raises the half-serious question of whether Donald Trump's March 2020 could someday be measured, in NFT-market terms, against Boris Johnson's.

Selling time itself, not just recordings of it

Beyond collectibles, tokenized time has a more direct practical use: prepaying for a future meeting, with the token itself functioning as the binding agreement. Some individuals in crypto are already testing this model. We spoke with Vasa of Stake DAO — part of the rekt.news family — about the approach.

Asked why he chose this over a conventional scheduling tool, Vasa explained the goal was to apply price discovery to his own time, testing whether his personal sense of what his time is worth matches what the market will actually pay. Using a modified English auction, he lists each 30-minute slot starting at a price he considers fair: strong demand pushes a slot's price higher, while weak demand lets it decay over time, potentially all the way to zero if no one bids. He compared the mechanism to "Proof of Stake for your time," reasoning that someone who has paid for a slot has shown they value the conversation and are more likely to bring something worthwhile to it. He also noted it would be interesting to see whether a secondary market develops — for instance, if someone cancels a booked slot or buys one intending to resell it — and was clear the project is meant as an experiment rather than a money-making venture.

Where this goes next

Minting individual moments may look like a novelty today, but people already spend money to signal affinity and belief, and this is simply the newest way of doing it. New technology always invites opportunistic cash grabs, but the interest here looks like more than that. Paid VR tours already let people experience different places and eras; it isn't hard to imagine a future where similar clips are marketed as windows into a specific moment from the past. The appetite for turning experience itself into a tradable asset doesn't appear to have an obvious ceiling.

The artwork accompanying the original piece was credited to Jim Steranko, described there as the "Graphic Prince of Darkness."