Tungsten chatter has been the order of the day over on the Twittersphere lately. The latest crypto craze to capture social media by storm is the Tungsten Cube.
Tungsten, a very strong and hard-wearing metal, is often associated with the aerospace industry for its resistance to corrosion and impressive pliability.
Cubers can pay with crypto
Coindesk said the trend started last week on the back of a tweet, and it’s now being touted as the hot new crypto-esque commodity to own. Although, why it’s being labeled a crypto asset is not entirely clear, as it’s not a virtual entity but a dense physical cube of metal.
Nevertheless, crypto enthusiasts are all over this craze and can now buy tungsten cubes using bitcoin.
Midwest Tungsten Service is an industrial tungsten cube supplier that’s thriving on the back of the publicity. And it’s now happy to accept payment in bitcoin through its partnership with crypto payment processor OpenNode.
Social media is now flowing with tungsten cube memes, and some Amazon sellers have sold out.
— Brian Pendleton (@backbooked) October 20, 2021
Gary Gensler Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Don’t worry we would never send you gold cubes @SBF_FTX pic.twitter.com/pyQnbM1Thj
— Tungsten Cube NFT (🧊,🧊) (@tungstencubenft) October 19, 2021
Tungsten – not gold – cubes
The cubes being purchased are generally very small, only a few cubic inches, but the novelty comes from how heavy they are. And collectors appear to like having something physical to showcase, rather than a piece of code or novelty jpeg in the form of an NFT.
A 1-inch tungsten metal cube weighing 315g and engraved with the periodic table W specimen is selling for around $120, and a plain 2-inch cube with no engraving sells for $399. But others are selling for thousands of dollars.
Cubers be cubing
According to Bloomberg, crypto traders have contributed to a 3x to 6x surge in sales of these small tungsten cubes.
Adding further fuel to the fire was a rumor that Tungsten cube reserves were running low and shortages to be expected. Pretty much all commodity supplies are tight on an industrial level, but as of now, there’s no major shortage of tungsten cubes for the retail market.
The craze is known as cubing for those in the know, and some ‘cubers’ have been collecting tungsten cubes for several years. But since crypto Twitter caught on, the frenzy around the cubes has taken off like a rocket.
Cube pic.twitter.com/zD7hhXMEWx
— Kyla Scanlon (@kylascan) October 19, 2021
Why cube?
The sellers at Midwest Tungsten said the novelty aspect of a tiny item being exceptionally dense lends itself nicely to the viral factor. So, it’s not the first time the company has seen a spike in sales. However, tungsten cubes gaining meme-stock status is giving it a particularly welcome surge in popularity this time around.
A particularly elaborate Amazon review lamented the mystical qualities surrounding the dense cube and its otherworldly qualities.
Amazon 1.5 inch Tungsten Cube Review
Amazon Tungsten Cube review Continued…
Moving on from Amazon, and YouTube is full of videos unboxing tungsten cubes, trying to destroy tungsten cubes and generally admiring the sheer density of a shiny tungsten cube.
This heavy metal episode is an unusual twist in the crazy world of crypto trading, where life is never dull.