Penn students start NFT company to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

A team of three students recently started an NFT company, MyCryptoWish, to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

College sophomore Evan Golinsky, Engineering junior Sebastian Melendez, and Zach Lederman, a senior at Purdue University started the company in July 2021. According to CNN, NFTs —  non-fungible tokens — "transform digital works of art and other collectibles into one-of-a-kind, verifiable assets that are easy to trade on the blockchain."

Golinsky, who has raised money for charities in the past, said that he saw a new opportunity with the rise in popularity of NFTs.

“The purpose of this company is to raise over a million dollars for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital through selling 10,000 non-fungible tokens, with 100% of the profit going to St. Jude,” Golinsky said. 

MyCryptoWish works two ways — through the website and through Golinsky’s Discord channel. Golinsky plans on selling 10,000 unique, hand-drawn NFTs in the form of cartoon stars designed by a local artist in Miami, where Golinsky is from. 

Users can purchase NFTs through the website but will have to wait until Golinsky releases them to have access to them. He added that he's using his Discord channel to gauge interest in each NFT and will release them when he gauges that there is enough interest in them.

After that, he plans to release them in a raffle-like style — if more than one person expresses interest in a single NFT, an algorithm will randomly select an individual to purchase it.

“Essentially, someone will purchase one of these NFTs through the website. And in return, they not only get a star to represent that they own this NFT, but also they get the satisfaction of knowing their money went towards a good cause,” Golinsky said. 

After receiving the NFT, consumers can choose to resell it to whomever they choose. Through a wired address, the programmers for the company arranged a system where the money will go directly from the consumer to St. Jude to provide transparency. 

“So as long as the NFT’s will be traded and kept in circulation, money will be raised and sent to St. Jude,” Golinsky said. 

The current goal of the company is to raise over a million dollars for St. Jude, but Golinsky says that the “sky is the limit” in terms of how much money they can raise in the future. 

He added that he hopes to expand this concept of using NFTs in the future to raise money for other charities, and create a community around raising money for charity through NFTs and other cryptocurrencies.

“Most people haven’t seen a charity project done in this way, and hopefully I will be able to inspire people to do something similar and create a community built around inspiring people to do such projects,” Golinsky said. 

 Golinsky and his team hope to release the NFTs and begin raising money by the spring.