The 29-year-old man makes money from ‘virtual’ watches, some of which are resold for the same price as a Rolex – LLODO

Jesus Calderon, the creator of the Generative Watches collection, owns virtual watches worth thousands of dollars. Calderon is a watch guy, a crypto enthusiast, and a motion graphic designer. In recent years, Calderon has combined his interests and skills to establish a market for NFT watches, which is beginning to grow rapidly. There, the 29-year-old designs and sells virtual watches under the “brand” Generative Watches.

Calderon’s Gen Watches is a collection of “virtual” watches designed in digital form based on famous watches that people know and love, like the Rødex Daitona or the Rødex Bitmariner.

Generative Watches by Calderon is a collection of digitally designed fake watches based on famous watches that people know and love. Photo: Hodinkee.

Calderon designs 3D animations with the help of an algorithm and uploads the finished product as JPG or GIF to his store, where watch enthusiasts pay handsomely in an abstract currency. Today, a watch made of pixels that you store in your hard drive and show off on social media can fetch as much as a Rolex Submariner.

Talking about the origin of the idea for the Gen Watches collection, Calderon shared: “Earlier this year, I was scrolling through crypto content on Twitter and saw all the big players posting pictures of watches and cars. . I remembered that I also like watches and can make 3D pictures. What’s more, no one has made NFT watches yet. I think people would love to have a great collection of 3D watches, especially if they are replicas of real-life products.”

The “boss” of Gen Watches said he spent about a month writing an algorithm in Google Sheets to generate a series of properties for color, material, graphics, needles, etc. are randomly combined to create a product, however, Calderon still has to manually process to ensure the elements match.

The NFT watches that Calderon creates are often based on the pieces that people recognize the most, like the Submariner, Daytona, Speedmaster or Day-Date. As such, his collection will be noticed by many people, thereby helping to improve trading ability and liquidity.

Each “virtual” watch in the Gen Watches ban was priced at 0.1 ETH by Calderon, or about $3.00 at the time. As for the Daitona, the price is slightly higher at 0.2 ETH due to less quantity and in real life it is difficult to find a Daytona.

“I sold 68 watches for 0.2 ETH and then 1 ETH was worth $3,500 at the time, so it was about $700 each,” Calderon said.

Talking about his most successful watch, Calderon said that after the collection came out, people bought up to 25 pieces, including that watch. “Actually, this person won it through a giveaway. Then they sold it for 6.6 ETH, or about $20,000 at the time,” Calderon said. At this price point, it’s clear that Calderon’s virtual watch costs as much as some real Rolexes.