The hype for super heavy tungsten cubes costing up to $ 3,500

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Three weeks ago, crypto enthusiasts were frantic to buy new tungsten cubes. A crypto group even bought an NFT to own a one ton cube that is only 14.5 inches tall. The small manufacturing company behind the cube craze shared what it was like to ride the wave of attention. Loading Something is loading.

Midwest Tungsten Service had already experienced peak sales.

The small industrial maker outside of Chicago would sometimes experience choppy activity after a science blog or YouTube video showcased one of its fancy metallic cubes, spheres or spinners.

But for a few weeks in October, the surge was unlike anything they had faced before, MTS ecommerce director Sean Murray told Insider.

“On day three, it was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is completely different,’” he said.

MTS was propelled into the national spotlight after a few viral tweets inspired an almost obsessive fixation among crypto enthusiasts with the unique tactile experience of the company’s tungsten cubes – and their extraordinary weight-to-size ratio.

—Neeraj K. Agrawal (@NeerajKA) October 12, 2021

Tungsten is a high density metal – comparable to gold – which is used in a wide range of industrial applications. Even small volumes of the item are oddly heavy, with 1.5-inch cubes weighing 2.2 pounds ($ 199) or 3-inch cubes weighing 17.6 pounds ($ 1,599).

“We actually had what we thought at the time to be several years of inventory of some of these different sizes,” Murray said.

On October 13, cube sales soared 300% and Coindesk jumped on the story, followed by Bloomberg, Vice and The Wall Street Journal.

Nic Carter, a VC and an early cube collectors, told the Journal that the density of the cube provides a pleasant sensory contrast to the intangibility of digital currency.

“We are just deprived of physical totems of our affection, and therefore tungsten fills that hole in our hearts,” Carter said.

One thing that differentiated the crypto crowd from previous buyers was the increased interest in larger cube sizes.

“We thought no one would buy our 17.6 lb, 3 inch tungsten cube. We were so wrong,” the company said on its Amazon listing for a new 4 inch, 41.6 lb cube (3,499 $).

Murray said the company was surprised by the sudden interest, but well prepared to make the most of it, as they tend to have more inventory than other “just in time” manufacturers and have a well-established system. fast order fulfillment. to treat.

“We have had people who normally come at 6.30am and 1.30am,” he said.

In addition to traditional responses to e-commerce, such as removing staff from other areas of the business to help fulfill orders or deal with Amazon’s order fulfillment network, Murray said he had also took a crash course in cryptography.

“I’m just someone who, if there’s a new thing, I like to check it out,” he said.

MTS began accepting bitcoin payments on its website and on October 22 announced it was auctioning an NFT for the largest tungsten cube ever made, measuring 14.5 inches and weighing 2,000 pounds.

Due to the sheer logistical difficulty of shipping an item with these specifications, the cube will remain at MTS’s facility where its owners can schedule one visit per year to touch and photograph it. The winner was a crypto group known as TungstenDAO who paid out almost 57 ETH (worth around $ 247,000 at the time).

Murray said the crypto-fueled peak has passed, but holiday sales are starting to increase as customers shop for stockings. He also said bulk orders are starting to increase with companies wanting engraved cubes offered to employees.

“In this case, companies related to cryptocurrency are a big part of it,” Murray said.

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