Tungsten is one of the heaviest elements: A 4-inch block of the metal, which can easily fit in the palm of your hand, weighs a shocking 41 pounds. Something about picking up a cube feels like it violates the rules of physics, and to show off this property, a company called Midwest Tungsten Service sells them in sizes ranging from 1 centimeter ($19.99) to 4 inches ($2,999.99). Recently, these novelty items have become a hot commodity—driven largely by interest from cryptocurrency enthusiasts. A combination of memes from crypto-influencers, a joke about a supply shortage, and the bizarre speculative energy around collectibles that permeates the crypto-community in general have conspired to generate an incredible surge of orders. Amid this fervor, which began in mid-October, some of Midwest Tungsten’s more popular cube sizes have sold out. One might reasonably wonder: What is going on?
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Nic Carter, a partner in the blockchain investment firm Castle Island Ventures, described himself as “Tungsten cube patient zero in the crypto-industry.” He has been buying cubes for about four years, for himself and as gifts for others. Of the recent surge, he said, “It’s classic crypto stuff, taking funny concepts and then massively taking the joke too far.” (He has recently changed his Twitter display name to “nic cubeter.”) Carter likes the cubes in part for their sheer physicality. “I like the atomic properties of Tungsten, the density, the hardness,” he said.
This is one of the main explanations people seem to provide for crypto-enthusiasts’ sudden turn to cubes: maybe they simply want something physical as a counterweight to crypto. “We deal with this immaterial virtual world—the metaverse, as we like to say,” Carter said. “We’re dealing with synthetic commodities, and NFTs, which have financial value, but are completely ethereal. So it’s nice to return to the atoms.” Financiers have long sought physical manifestations of their abstract work; maybe this is a crypto version of the “deal toy” that bankers get for IPOs and mergers. Perhaps there’s some comfort, in the world of financial abstraction, about something heavy you can hold in your hand.
But this something else at work here—a loosely-tied online community that more or less mimics each other’s enthusiasms, whether about particular NFTs or the joy of holding a heavy cube in your hand. “It’s a very close community in the sense that everyone just hangs out on Twitter and Discord a lot,” said Dan Matuszewski, partner at CMS Holdings. “It’s a very large online community that acts together, so things just pick up steam really quickly. It’s a hive mind.”
The unlikely winner of this hive mind’s recent activity has been Midwest Tungsten Service, which is based in Willowbrook, Illinois and describes itself as a company “providing high quality refractory metal”—raw materials including tungsten, tantalum, and molybdenum, in forms like rods, wires, and sheets. Founded in 1958, they make aircraft parts, x-ray shields, and vacuum furnace elements in their factory. The cubes were always a novelty product. They have gone through a few cycles of popularity in the past, said Sean Murray, who works for the company; they saw an increase in sales when someone made a YouTube video of dropping one from a high place, and when someone posted on Quora about them. But Midwest Tungsten Service has never seen anything quite like this. “My colleague got a voicemail when he came in recently, and it was someone saying, ‘Hey, you’re blowing up on crypto twitter, you guys should engage there,’” Murray said. “I’m not a Twitter creator by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve tweeted a handful of times in my life, so I’m not really in the habit of it, but we’re trying our best to be engaged with people who are really excited about Tungsten, and that matches our own excitement about it.” He described his own first experience of holding one of the tiny, bizarrely heavy cubes as “like a magic trick.”
They may not be able to pinpoint why they're so obsessed with these dense metal cubes, but crypto enthusiasts can agree on one thing: Holding a tungsten cube is an experience like no other.
In the past few weeks, the cryptocurrency world has become obsessed with the cube's tangible density.
The near-ubiquitous affection for the cube in crypto circles has been compared to cult-like behavior, driven largely by a fear of missing out (FOMO) on the next big thing, a sentiment deeply woven in crypto trading.
“Seeing the cubes pop up on my timeline triggered an itch within me,” Torkel Rogstad, a software engineer for the digital finance platform Arcane Crypto, told NBC News. “I understood that this was a surprisingly heavy cube, but pretty soon came to the conclusion that I’d have massive FOMO if I didn’t act on this."
He received his cube last week, tweeting that the two-week wait "without the intensity of density" was "heart wrenching."
He described holding his tungsten cube as an "intensely physical" sensation," which was a refreshing experience in the "age of a rapidly expanding metaverse." For now, his cube rests on his nightstand — it greets him every morning with its sheer density.
The cubes are now a meme in cryptocurrency circles thanks to a now-viral joke from CoinCenter communication director of communications Neeraj Agrawal, who tweeted about a “global tungsten shortage.”
Tungsten, which weighs approximately 1.74 times more than lead, is often used in metal alloys to reinforce hardness and strength.
The manufacturer Midwest Tungsten Service typically sells tungsten sheets and tungsten wires for industrial uses, but also sells the material in cube form as a desktop novelty. The cube sizes range in size and price; a 1 centimeter cube weighing 0.64 ounces goes for $19.99, and a 2-inch cube weighing 5.2 pounds costs $449.99. Its largest cube, clocking in at 41.6 pounds, retails for $2,999.99.
Following Agrawal’s tweet, Midwest Tungsten Service saw a 300 percent increase in sales and its Amazon storefront inventory wiped clean, the company told CoinDesk.
Cube enthusiasts even made pilgrimages to the company's facility in the suburbs of Chicago, which prompted Midwest Tungsten Service to publicly ask followers to stop doing so in a blog post.
The demand for an even larger cube inspired the company to sell a 1,784-pound version as an NFT, which will allow the “owner” one annual supervised visit to touch the cube at Midwest Tungsten Service’s Illinois headquarters.
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The company's director of e-commerce, Sean Murray, told NBC News that the "unprecedented" surge in sales has been "incredible," even if overwhelming.
"We've had to add extra staff and arrive a bit earlier at times to handle the huge increase in demand while trying to maintain a high level of customer service," Murray said. "At times that has meant diving (not literally) into piles of boxes looking for the one that was canceled a few minutes before a carrier's pickup window."
Last week, Justin Paterno tweeted a photo of a matte gray cube sinking into his matte gray bedspread. He told NBC News that he “saw them go viral” and bought one for himself.
“The cube has arrived,” the former Stocktwits COO captioned the image. Stocktwits is a social media platform for investors and traders similar to Twitter.
The veneration surrounding the knickknacks only reinforces the cultish assumptions, but owners swear that there's nothing quite like holding a tungsten cube. It's a unique tactile experience, they say, because the cubes are deceptively dense.
“Holding a tungsten cube is truly indescribable, with its massive presence immediately felt upon picking it up” Rogstad said. “It gives you a sense of awe, immediately thinking, ‘I will utterly destroy whatever this falls on if I drop it.'”
“It’s wild,” CoinShares chief strategy officer Meltem Demirors told NBC News. “[You] think it’s going to be light. But it’s so heavy. Like mind-blowing.”
Demirors held a cube for the first time last week and tweeted that her “life changed forever.” The experience was such a delight, she ordered her own cube.
“I love the density,” she said, adding that it’s “just a fun meme.”
And to most others online, the perplexing obsession with tungsten cubes among crypto enthusiasts has become a joke in itself.
Demirors doesn't take the cubes — or the online jabs against cube owners — too seriously, but she does think that the cubes' popularity is part of a larger cultural shift.
“This community memed Bitcoin into existence and made it into a global movement,” Demirors said. “Cubes are no different. Never underestimate the power of memes and communities!”
The pressure to be ahead on trends undoubtedly contributed to the cube's rise in fame, especially in crypto circles. Rogstad said he thinks "bitcoiners" are more prone to "FOMO-dispositions" than the "general population."
"Bitcoin FOMO is probably a more profitable endeavor than cube FOMO, but it's the same kind of feeling deep down," Rogstad continued.
As for the cube naysayers, Rogstad believes they'll come around once they experience the rapture of holding a cube themselves.
"I'd wager that those people haven't experienced the cube, but only observed from a distance," he said. "Everyone has their own cube journey, but all cube journeys start with physically experiencing one."
In the meantime, cube owners will continue to preach of the joys of tungsten cubes.
"We love the cubes," Demirors said.
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