World's first NFT restaurant to open in Manhattan next year

FlyFish Club is a new high-end Japanese restaurant that will soon open next year and will have an NFT-based membership

FlyFish Club has announced that it will open a luxury 'seafood-inspired' dining restaurant, in the first half of next year, according to the Washington Post. To get access to the club, members will have to have a FlyFish NFT, a unique digital asset stored on the blockchain and purchased with cryptocurrency. According to the founder and CEO of VCR, David Rodolitz, FlyFish released 1,501 tokens this month, generating around $15 million.

Regular membership token of the club is available on the secondary market for $13,600. For $29,500 members would have access to an exclusive tier including a private room serving multicourse sushi meal created by the chef. The fees don't include meals and will have to be paid for separately by customers.

Rodolitz remarked in an interview, that the new NFT restaurant experience wasn't a luxurious dining experience, but "social currency is a big part of this. People are communicating digitally about what they like and who they are." He believes NFTs would serve as traditional status symbols to connotate taste and means, and that a few years down the line, people will stop looking at LinkedIn profiles but will instead look at a person's digital wallet.

The NFT-based membership of FlyFish is designed to be used as an investment as well, where owners can sell tokens or lease them to other people. Profits will, however, depend on the continuous demand of the tokens.

This is the first time an NFT is being combined with a real-life experience, where customers can eat in a particular restaurant in a physical location. While FlyFish hasn't yet revealed its location, its website drops hints that it might be "in one of the most beautiful buildings that exists." The company promises its members "various culinary, cultural and social experiences", along with Masashi Ito overseeing the omakase, which generally costs hundreds of dollars per head in high-end Japanese restaurants.