Why do you call yourselves NiftyApes?
Absurdity is an excellent teacher, but we don’t monkey around when it comes to the memes of production

“NiftyApes” reflects what we do (nifty tooling) and who we do it for (NFT traders).
But our name also reflects the technology we use, our vision for its future, and how we’re going to achieve that vision.
This technology is nifty
Nifty things are particularly effective and fashionable.
Engineering (especially an excess of it) is how you create effective things. What’s fashionable may shift alongside markets and memes, but effective, useful things always endure.
Still, we strive to remain stylish, because it only makes us more effective. And riding these metaphorical waves to rise above them, to do a trick and showcase what’s possible? All the more nifty.
These apes are (more than) memes
Memes are cultural units transferred between peoples.
Memes, their effects on markets, and memes-as-markets sound like an increasingly absurd string of jargon, but they are real things that are shaping our everyday lives.
u gotta be so careful out here on the internet fr. memes are too powerful. a few 17 year old crypto degenerates who haven't been allowed outside since before their voices broke say 'gm' on discord and now every VC has a pixel art avi and an SEC indictment pending
— Gabriel (@gbrl_dick) December 10, 2021
We live, work, and play at this overlap of today and tomorrow. When we take a step back and look at it all, we can acknowledge that it all looks a little absurd. But today's absurdity is tomorrow's normal.
Offering mortgages for your JPEGS is a silly-sounding offering, but so are internet commenters creating a new class of stock. The future is ridiculous and real.
It would take literally hours to explain this tweet to someone in 2014. https://t.co/e2BxityI7o
— Senior PowerPoint Engineer (@ryxcommar) August 13, 2022
A delicious evolution
Lending is the most valuable financial market in the world, representing hundreds of trillions of dollars. Wealthy incumbents have dictated its terms for millennia.
Almost all loans are lender-first. The terms, outcomes, and penalties of the deal primarily benefit the lender. Over time, inequitable terms create greater inequity. The rich become richer, while anyone aspiring to that power can only borrow it on stilted terms.
But technology, at the right moment, can upend thousand-year-old systems.
We want to invert the borrower-first approach to lending to make the underlying system more fair. We want to fundamentally shift the concept of ownership in loans. We want to make capital compete for the their bones. That's a bit absurd. Fortunately, so are we. And that’s why we might succeed.
People listen to talking bananas
Every time we try to explain how Harberger Style Lending Auctions can reinvent markets, folks look at us like we’re reading them the nutritional facts on a banana. Facts are nice, but to foster the future, you have to make them digestible.
That’s why we sing our central thesis to you while a banana-man breakdances.
The future is bananas. To shape it, we need to speak its language.
If this all sounds tasty to you, NiftyApes is hiring.