Sergito Silva — aka Sergito — was an unofficial ambassador for t
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Sergito Silva — aka Sergito — was an unofficial ambassador for the Meebits collection of 20,000 3D voxel NFTs. Despite coming from Larva Labs, the founders of CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs, the collection was arguably undervalued.
Fast forward to now and the ex-Goldman Sachs employee is at the center of the Meebs universe as CEO after acquiring the collection from Yuga Labs in February.
The journey into NFTs for Sergito started in February 2021 after he stumbled on an article about a guy named gmoney who’d just purchased an Ape CryptoPunk for $150,000 in the largest Punk sale at the time.
“That caught my attention. I was like, what is this? This is crazy. Why are people spending money on jpegs? Out of curiosity, I downloaded Discord and I joined the Punk’s group. 72 hours later, I was completely NFT-pilled,” says Sergito.
“I found the community incredibly exciting to chat with, super friendly and helpful. I bought my Punk on February 13 of 2021 and I never looked back.”
Sergito recalls thatbeing a Punk owners opened doors in the digital collectibles space in the same way his Goldman Sachs business card did in the real world.
“When I put the Punk as my PFP in places like Discord and Twitter (X), people just started paying attention to me, they were asking me questions, they started treating me very differently. It reminded me of being 23 years old at my first job with Goldman Sachs in the Latin America sales team,” Sergito says.
He says the Goldman Sachs brand gave him instant credibility with pension fund managers and investment managers who were much more experienced, “but because I had the Goldman Sachs business card, they paid attention to me and so I had a seat at the table.”
“Having the Punk on my profile picture reminded me a lot of that and it really was the ‘Aha moment’. I delisted my Punk. I thought this was a form of signaling something to an enormous amount of connected internet users worldwide. The concept of digital asset ownership and the ability to own something over the internet was extremely powerful.”
Buying the bottom of crypto during the COVID crash
Sergito, who graduated in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis in 2009, had a decade of experience by 2020 as COVID-19 shook the world. Sensing a pattern, Sergito decided to go long on crypto amid the chaos that was occurring around him.
This was a bold move as many in crypto thought everything would be wiped out amid lockdowns and the possibility of a worldwide depression: Bitcoin plummeted 50% in a single day, while the total crypto market cap lost over 50% during that time frame in mid-March 2020. As a frequent international traveler who saw the way the wind was blowing, he’d previously exited the market early.
“I shorted it and it crashed. It was a good week for me,” says Sergito.
“But I also realized they’re not going to let the market and the economy just go to zero, so let me buy something that has a lot of beta to that… I had seen Bitcoin rally a lot and also crash but never go to zero, so it just made sense.”
“It was my first time buying crypto and my timing was just particularly lucky. It was that week when Bitcoin went to around $3,000 and Ethereum went to like $110.”
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The love affair with the Meebits
Sergito’s relationship to Meebits wasn’t exactly love at first sight. He missed the original minting entirely because he was preoccupied with the birth of his second niece.
His fascination began about a month later while chatting in the Punks Discord with the well-known collector Von Mises, who mentioned the broad range of traits within the Meebits collection, something that Sergito hadn’t noticed.
“He asked if I’d seen all the Meebit trades? Obviously, I had followed the whole hype around the mint and all the stuff that happened with the Dissected Meebit and all the big sales. I had a couple left from the ones that I got airdropped as a Punk holder. VonMises encouraged me to scroll the Meebs traits.”
“I came across a full suit trait with a tie, which really reminded me of being in Wall Street, and it was the first time that I really felt like I connected with a PFP that looked like me.”
Sergito’s love for Meebits continued to grow…
cointelegraph.com