Bella Hadid to sell series of NFTs as 'invitations to a new global nation'

The Palestinian-American model is planning to set up a 'private society'

Bella Hadid arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York. The model has announced she will release a set of NFTs. AFP

Brie Larson's been there, so has Justin Bieber and Lindsay Lohan joined the fold, too. And now, Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid has announced the imminent release of her own NFTs.

Called CY-B3LLA, it will be a collection of 11,111 non-fungible tokens that "serve as your passport to this new world", the celebrity wrote on Instagram.

"As we've been reminded too many times, the universe we live in is imperfect. But I believe this provides a true opportunity to build a meta community, sustained by peace, love, compassion and meaningful connections."

Hadid, who co-founded the collection with reBase, which sets up celebrity NFT collaborations, describes them as "invitations to a new global nation".

Each NFT features different 3D scans of Hadid, "designed to encourage travel, community, growth, fantasy and human interactions".

The plan, she says, is to grow "this new meta-nation" with real locations and events around the world in the coming months, where she plans to meet those in her online community.

She's set up a website, too, which features a video of Hadid's avatar set to an eerie soundtrack, teasing a "private society" and 10 locations. It simply says "more information coming soon" and asks people to register for the "whitelist".

Celebrities have been backing NFTs and cryptocurrencies for a while now, and have received some criticism for it.

Captain Marvel star Larson sparked a storm of criticism in February after a tweet about an NFT artwork. The tweet received comments that accused her of promoting a "Ponzi scheme", but also concerns about the environmental impact of NFTs and artists' intellectual property rights.

Larson’s post followed an episode of The Tonight Show in which the host Jimmy Fallon and guest Paris Hilton showed off their recent Bored Ape NFT purchases, created by the secretive collective known as Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The 77-second-long segment, a glaring non sequitur that followed a conversation about Hilton’s recent wedding, was described as “cringe”, “embarrassing” and “unbearable”, as Fallon declared: “We’re part of the same community. We’re both Apes.”

Bella Hadid's style evolution, from teen to catwalk queen — in pictures: