Queer from the start: The utopianism of LGBTQ+ NFT collectors

While much has been written about the volatility of digital assets, academic scholarship has largely overlooked how blockchain technologies have been adopted and reimagined by LGBTQ+ communities. This article addresses that gap through a digital ethnography of queer NFT communities active during the crypto craze of 2022, combining online participant observation with semi-structured interviews. Drawing on José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of queer futurity, it examines how queer users imagined blockchain as a speculative platform for alternative economic and social possibility—despite the financial risks embedded in the technology’s libertarian and capitalist structures. The article interrogates the utopian rhetoric of inclusion, decentralisation, and wealth redistribution that was deployed within these communities to justify their interest in and holdings of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrency. Queer leaders leveraged the blockchain to foster inclusive digital communities and promote wealth circulation amongst LGBTQ+ individuals, while community members embraced the technology as a risky opportunity for queer economic mobility. The article positions blockchain as a contested site where competing futurities collide—offering the illusion of liberation and the reproduction of existing inequalities. It argues that while queer users sought to make the blockchain ‘queer from the start,’ their efforts were ultimately constrained by the capitalist logics that underpin the technology.