How NFTs fueled ‘crypto art’ like Beeple’s, creating a new way of collecting
- Digital art carrying unique blockchain-based ID tags that confirm authenticity is selling for big money, able to be collected and traded just like regular art
- A piece of crypto art by graphic designer Beeple currently being auctioned by Christie’s had a high bid of US$8.3 million on March 9
Blockchain activists are mounting an insurrection in the traditional art market.
On March 3, an anonymous group calling themselves “art and NFT enthusiasts” set alight a US$95,000 Banksy original print live on social media and put up its non-fungible token (NFT) – a digitised, one-of-a-kind version of the print – for investors to bid on. After a five-day bidding war, it sold for 228.69 Ether, a cryptocurrency, on the trading platform OpenSea, an amount equivalent to about US$380,000.
Earlier in the week, the singer known as Grimes made US$6 million in 20 minutes by selling her digital artworks, also sold as NFTs, in an online auction.
While the former was most likely a stunt – Morons (White) (2006) by British graffiti artist Banksy was never intended to be destroyed and resurrected in the virtual world 15 years later – the latter shows how NFTs are becoming a widely accepted and legitimate means of authentication for digital (or digitised) art and its ownership.
NFTs, pronounced “Nifties”, are a means of stamping any digital asset as a one-of-a-kind “original”. They carry a unique ID tag - based on the digital ledger infrastructure, or blockchain, commonly associated with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin - that is traceable back to the asset’s original creator. This ID serves as a digital representation of that creator’s “signature” authenticating the asset as the original version.
While there are no such originals for digital works without an NFT - only an endless supply of identical copies - just one or a few versions of an NFT-based work are “minted” on the blockchain. This scarcity introduces value and exclusivity to the digital art world, with NFTs able to be owned, collected and traded just like other physical assets such as hand-painted works.
