Midwest Tungsten Service, a company supplying raw tungsten, alloys, molybdenum and tantalum in all forms, has seen 300% sales growth, Bankless Times learned. Why the sudden demand for this relatively rare product? It seems they have a crypto joke on Twitter to thank.
Nobody is laughing at the joke now, which was along the lines of crypto brokers and traders being to blame for tungsten shortage. At the very least, Midwest has been compelled to consider new payment options in the context of skyrocketing sales.
According to director of ecommerce Sean Murray, Midwest’s stock of tungsten cubes with the retail giant is now fully depleted.
Amazon to restock tungsten cubes
Murray confirmed Amazon planned to restock. For their part, Midwest are considering accepting payments in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as a way of saying ‘thank you’ to crypto meme lords on Twitter. However, the company will convert it to fiat immediately.
An expensive toy
Most of Midwest’s clients are industrial and need tungsten as a ballast-distributing, specialty metal that protects from radiation. So what’s the connection with crypto traders? It seems tungsten cubes have become their latest plaything. They have been buying tungsten cubes since at least Tuesday, Coindesk reports.
Dan Matuszewski of CMS Holdings tweeted that he had bought a four-inch cube that weighs 41 pounds from Midwest Tungsten for $3,000. He also asked the company in an email if they could make a bigger cube. Soon after that, Coin Center’s Neeraj Agrawal tweeted a fake Bloomberg post about imminent tungsten. The meme soon went viral. Agrawal said:
I will take credit a little bit for the recent surge. I think it triggered to the rest of Crypto Twitter that, like, ‘Alright, we’re doing something now. We’re doing a thing. We’re all buying these cubes.’”
Meet Nic Carter, the ‘original’ tungsten man
This isn’t crypto’s first tungsten moment. Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures has been promoting it on Twitter for years, and his tweet went viral long before Agrawal’s. Carter gifts tungsten cubes for Christmas. His friends love them because of how unexpectedly heavy they are, he says.
Special edition cubes will weigh over 1,700 lbs.
Carter finds tungsten cubes to be a simple, yet sophisticated status symbol. Tungsten’s density is roughly the same as that of gold. Rumor has it that a special edition 14-inch cube from Midwest is in the works. If made, it will weigh over 1,700 pounds.
