If you live in Williamsburg, you’ve walked past the shuttered Urban Outfitters at 98 North 6th Street. A Swiss luxury watch brand and the hospitality group behind the “world’s first NFT restaurant” are turning that empty three-story building into a members-only club, and most of your neighbors will never get past the door.

The Brooklyn Paper first reported the plan on July 7. “A luxury watchmaker and the group behind the ‘world’s first NFT restaurant’ are bringing a members-only club to Williamsburg,” the paper wrote. It described the project as “a joint venture between the Swiss watch brand Breitling and VCR Group,” and reported that VCR Group “aims to open the club by the second half of 2027.”

VCR Group is the company behind Flyfish Club, marketed as the “world’s first NFT restaurant.” An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a blockchain receipt, and Flyfish sold its membership as tradable tokens instead of reservations. The club, Brownstoner reported, “sold 1,151 membership tokens on its public launch day, and raked in $14.8 million before even opening its doors.” Then, “right before opening day, the club paid a $750,000 penalty to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for selling the NFTs as unregistered securities.” Decrypt, covering the September 2024 settlement, reported the same haul: Flyfish “created approximately 3,000 NFTs ahead of the launch, raking in total proceeds of $14.8 million for the sales.”