Digital NFT Art Craze, which wins several million creators

LONDON (AP) – A piece of digital art, modified using cryptocurrency technology to make it unique, sold at auction this week for nearly $ 70 million. That transaction has made headlines globally and has already sparked growing interest in these types of digital objects – known as non-fungible tokens or NFTs – which have caught the attention of artists and collectors.

In economic jargon, a fungible token is an asset that can be exchanged on a one-to-one basis. Think of dollars or bitcoin – each has exactly the same value and can be traded freely. A non-fungible object, on the other hand, has its own distinct value, like an old house or a classic car.

Pass this notion with the technology of cryptocurrencies known as blockchain and you will get NFTs. These are actually digital certificates of authenticity that can be attached to digital art or, well, just about anything else that comes in digital form – audio files, videos, animated stickers, this article you read.

NFTs confirm the ownership of an article by recording the details on a digital register known as a blockchain, which is public and stored on computers on the Internet, making it effectively impossible to lose or destroy.

Right now, these chips are hot in the collector’s world, where they are used to solve a central problem of digital collections: how to claim ownership of something that can be easily and endlessly duplicated.

I DON’T GET IT YET. NO ONE CAN COPY ONLY DIGITAL COPIES ON THE INTERNET?

Of course, anyone can download a copy of Beeple’s art from his social stream, print it and hang it on the wall. Just like you can take a photo with the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or buy a copy from the museum’s gift shop. But that doesn’t mean you own those original works of art.

One purpose of NFTs is that they can be used to track the digital origin of an object, allowing a select few to prove ownership. In the larger picture, it’s a way to create a shortage – albeit an artificial one – so that you can sell something at higher prices due to its deficit.

“All the time, money and effort you put into your digital life can create value for you,” said Andrew Steinwold, a fund manager in Chicago who started an NFT fund in 2019. “You own property rights.” in the physical world. Why don’t we have property rights in the digital world? ”

Some NFT issuers grant full copyright to the buyer, although others do not.

Beeple is an American digital artist based in South Carolina whose real name is Mike Winkelmann. For the last 13 years he has been creating digital sketches daily using 3D tools. Christie’s auction house calls his work “abstract, fantastic, grotesque or absurd.” It has 1.9 million followers on Instagram.

In December, the first extended auction of his art brought in $ 3.5 million, an attractive amount that was surpassed by this week’s record sale of his “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” collage for nearly $ 70 million. paid in a digital system the currency known as Ethereum.

SO WHO SELLS ENTERPRISES?

William Shatner of Star Trek last year sold 90,000 virtual trading cards for $ 1 each. Electronic musician Grimes sold digital art worth $ 6 million last month, including a video of winged cherubs floating in pastel dream landscapes that cost $ 389,000. The clips of the NBA star, LeBron James, are selling for 225,000 dollars. Actress Lindsey Lohan sold a picture of her face. You can also buy virtual land in video games and meme characters like Nyan Cat.

Digital artist Anne Spalter started as an NFT skeptic, but has now sold several works of art using chips. The most recent was a video called “Dark Castles” – with mysteriously distorted castles generated by artificial intelligence technology – that sold for $ 2,752.

“NFTs opened the art of a whole group of people who would never have gone to a gallery in New York,” said Spalter, who pioneered digital arts courses at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. in the ’90s. “They’re investors, they’re technology entrepreneurs, they’re in that world.”

BUT Who would spend $ 70 million on one?

Christie’s on Friday identified the buyer of Beeple’s work as the financier of a digital art fund called the pseudonym Metakovan, an ad that could fuel the concerns of a bubble in the cryptocurrency art market. The buyer founded Metapurse, described as the largest NFT fund in the world, which is likely to receive increased attention.

The British auction house said the purchase makes Beeple’s third most valuable work ever sold by a living artist, behind the works of Jeff Koons and David Hockney.

Spalter said he expects the bubble to appear, although he still believes NFTs are promising for artists as a way to reduce fraud and misappropriation of works.

“I’m still amazed at the prices and how high they are,” she said. “I think there will be a correction.”