Meet the young luxury watch collectors driving Hong Kong’s NFT frenzy
- Gen Z and millennial luxury watch collectors in Hong Kong follow the lead of social media influencers betting big on NFTs
- A Monkey Kingdom NFT sold for more than US$148,000 in December, higher than the prices of some collectible wristwatches

On a Saturday night in early December, dozens of people mingled in a luxury watch shop at The Landmark, an upscale shopping centre in Hong Kong’s most vibrant business and financial district of Central. Most attendees were time piece enthusiasts, but many had also recently become owners of another type of expensive collectibles: digital pictures of cartoon monkeys.
The Diamond Hands party, organised by luxury watch retailer Wristcheck, brought together holders of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from one of the hottest projects in the city. Named Monkey Kingdom, the collection consists of thousands of pixelated portraits of Monkey King, a mythical animal hero in Chinese classical literature.
The project’s first collection of 2,222 digital primates, each costing 0.49 solana, or roughly US$100 at the time, sold out in late November. By this week, those NFTs were traded on NFT marketplace Magic Eden at an average price of 45 solana, or about US$4,000 at current exchange rate.
In December, one of the priciest monkeys sold for an equivalent of over US$148,000 – higher than the price of a Richard Mille RM11 watch sold on eBay in 2019.
For some Monkey Kingdom owners, holding an NFT offers not only the prospect of a financial windfall, but also a sense of prestige and belonging – similar to being a part of the watch-collecting community.