The NFTs Craze #2 – regular updates

This is a continuation of our first article on ‘NFTs craze’ – where we explain its history and why it is an important step for the arts, entertainment, and creative industries, how industries are embracing it, and who are the main marketplaces and players from the field.

NFTs is on everybody’s lips from artists, journalists, business experts, and even Andreessen Horowitz – Horowitz explained that it is a great instrument for creators as it eliminates intermediaries, reduces customer acquisition costs – and you don’t need millions of customers, but 1000 true fans.

As such we decided to follow up with what is happening on the market related to NFTs, what are the debates and hot topics. This article will be regularly updated!

06.04.2021

We are closing here the regular news updates about NFTs. NFTs’ history is just being written and we are convinced that debates will continue. Andreessen Horowitz blog wrote a post with great resources, for those new and not-so-new in the NFTs. And the best recommendation is to get informed and decide for yourself if NFT is for you or not, and which platform to use.

The NFT Canon is a go-to resource for artists and creators, developers, corporations and institutions, communities, and other organizations seeking to understand or do more with non-fungible tokens. Just to get your appetite to study the canon, here are some interesting articles:

A beginner’s guide to NFTs — what they are, why they’re interesting, applications, by Linda Xie

NFT subculture — properties of disruptive subcultures, by Denis Nazarov

Crypto Will Change Value, NFTs Will Change Society — how NFTs change internet, work, economics, business models, more, by Andrew Steinwold

Non-fungible token standards — from Ethereum to non-Ethereum standards, by Devin Finzer

The relationship between visual art and music – Devendra Banhart interviewed by Samantha Ayson

How the blockchain broke the auction block — how is a Beeple JPEG worth $69 million?, by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Mary Childs

Community economics and the limits of today’s game economies — on the economic activity inside and outside virtual game worlds like Animal Crossing, by Kaiser Hwang

Artists on NFTs and more

29.03.2021 – 04.04.2021

Music and arts NFT project EulerBeats has sold its second collection of original tracks for $3 million. (TheBlockcrypto)

Sales figures across online marketplaces for digital art and collectibles have gone a little bit down. How much is that little? Daily sales volume falls from $19.3 to $3.03 million. (Bloomberg)

SuperRare, one of the leading NFT art platforms, raised $9 million Series A, led by Velvet Sea Ventures. Other investors participating in the round include Collaborative Fund, Shrug Capital, Third Kind, SamsungNext, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff, Naval Ravikant and Chamath Palihapitiya, among others. (TechCrunch)

Debates from the NFT world: Women & NFTs & Art. NFT market is booming, but where are the Women? Because not so many women make spectacular sales. Who’s to blame: Tech or Art? Both industries were famous for keeping women away. Contrary to the opinion that only techies are sexists, when it comes to fine art, things are not optimistic: Female artists represent just 2% of the market. (ArtNet) According to the graphic designer and digital artist Alycia Rainaud, who goes by Maalavidaa, the lack of inclusivity in the art market as a whole has also become part of the NFT industry (Vogue) But women are getting organized. Women of Crypto Art (WOCA) was formed in 2020 by NFT artists and collectors Etta Tottie, Angie Taylor, Stina Jones, GiselXFlorez, and Sparrow. A large article dedicated to the topic of women in the NFT world, you can read in Vogue.

And the Big League is here! Painter Damien Hirst will launch a new NFT platform. The Palm platform is set up by a group of the biggest players, including Ethereum and ConsenSys co-founder Joe Lubin, owner of Heni Publishing, Jow Hague, and the founder of HeyDay Films (that produced the Harry Potter series), David Heyman. The platform is using the Proof of Authority system, meaning more energy efficient. (ArtNewspapers)

Artnet columnist sees strange parallels between the art spending of today’s crypto-wealthy buyers and an ill-fated group in the late 1980s.

22.03.2021 – 28.03.2021

The New York Times journalist – whose column was sold for over half million dollars as an NFTs – asks himself why bidders paid the amount. Between the motivations: fun, support for NFTs, self-promotion. (NYTimes)

Artists are all amazed about the NFTs’ potential to offer thousands for their work. Some make, others not. For some it is a success, others consider it a pyramid scheme, with only those at the top make it. TechnologyReview writes about both sides of the coin.

The NFTs trend was noticed also by the investors! $90 million were poured so far in 2021 into startups dealing with digital collectibles. (CNBC)

Almost $700.000! This was the amount that Sophia, the world-famous humanoid robot created by Hanson Robotics, earned at the auction. The work was offered as an NFT and was created in collaboration with artist Andrea Bonaceto. Bonaceto began the process by producing a brightly colored portrait of Sophia, which was processed by the robot’s neural networks. Sophia then painted an interpretation of the image. (CNN)

New Spaces for Digital Arts is established. Feral File, led by artist Casey Reas, launched with an exhibition Social Codes, curated by Casey Reas, featuring artists such as Andrew Benson, LIA, Dmitri Cherniak, Raven Kwok, Anna Carreras, Manolo Gamboa Naon, Maya Man, Frederik Vanhoutte, Saskia Freeke, Dave Whyte. Feral File partners with artists and curators to establish transparent protocols for exhibiting and collecting file-based art. All work is sold in limited editions as Bitmark NFTs and priced affordably. As a new kid on the block, Feral File, wants to build a community of new media artists, curators, and collectors.

And also Russia enters the NFT digital art world, launching a platform ArtCollecting. ArtCollecting is a global agency specializing in art management, integrated events, advertising, IR and fundraising in art and blockchain spheres. Art Collecting Agency works with young Russian artists and European art galleries in Russia.

Artnet – the leading online auction platform – announced that it enters the NFT market and soon will start its first auction of digital artworks. (Finanznachrichten)

Debates from the NFT world. Eco or Not-Eco? This is the controversial question surrounding NFTs, due to their large carbon footprint caused by a proof-of-work consensus mechanism. “The sale of a piece of crypto art consumed as much energy as the studio uses in two years” said artist Joanie Lemercier, in a story from Wired, who also started a campaign on a website cryptoart.wtf. Some platforms try to shift to another protocol called proof-of-stake (proof of work – it is supposed to add each block to the chain, miners must compete to solve the difficult puzzle using their computer’s processing power. Proof of Stake – there is no competition as the block creator is chosen by an algorithm based on the user’s stake. More details can be read HERE. But, the NFT ecosystem is progressing, and South Korea’s largest social gaming app will mint low-carbon NFTs for millions of users, according to CoinDesk. The mechanism used is proof-of-authority (PoA) – only invited parties can participate – that company says can reduce power consumption as much as 99.98%.

As we said earlier, the auction of Beeple was not just about the price tag, but also about questions in the fine art word about “what is art?”An interesting review of different positions from the art world and the effect it has produced, by The New Yorker.

As the BOOM goes on, Business Insider looked up for the most expensive art sold, and the artist behind it. you can check the list here.

In 2018, at the Tech and Art Summit, Christie’s gave away 300 free NFTs, but most people throw them away. Now they are worth over $10,000 (Artnet)

18.03.2021

Mysterious buyer of $69M Beeple’s artwork, revelead! Vignesh Sundaresan said he wants to show Indians and people of colour could be art patrons (Coindesk)

Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart discussed how NFTs are disrupting the art world. (CNCB)

Brands are entering the NFts market! Charmin is selling toilet paper-themed crypto art. (The Verge)

Have you earned a lot with arty-NFts? Well, here is a new trend: Crypto wealth management. And Morgan Stanley is the first major US bank to offer wealthy clients access to funds that enable ownership of bitcoin. (CNBC). At the same time, Mark Mobius, founder of Mobius Capital Partners, declares: I hope and pray that bitcoin doesn’t crash (CNBC)

17.03.2021

Cathy Hackl write quite an extensive article for Forbes, about Making Money in the Metaverse and this new era where artists and startups are being celebrated. Worth reading article, because it talks about companies that come on board in the metaverse, early adopters and forward-thinking technologists and warns that “when other industries are getting into the space, some of them will start to experiment with new types of products and business models using their brand”.

Sotheby’s jumps into the NFT space, too! It will host work by the anonymous artist Pak soon. Pak is an omniscient designer/developer/wizard. A leading figure in the design scene and on social media, Pak is the creator of Archillect, the synthetic curator. (Sotheby’s)

Debate: Physical vs Digital Art? Or it is just a debate if Beeple is an artist or not? Since Beeple’s artwork went to Christie’s auction, the debate around physical and digital art came to life.
WashingtonPost has a huge article on this topic, claiming that “the ‘artwork’ as art, it’s a great big zero” and “it is a marketable product by a graphic designer known as Beeple”. Also the author continues: “People can debate the merits of Koons and Hockney all they like. But at least their artworks were physical objects”. So, till the end of the article, we did not really get it, if it is the lack of physicality or Beeple’s work or both, that does not make his art, art. But, alongside the physicality of art debate, a bigger question is in the air: what is art?

Performers join the NFTs party, and turn dance moves Turned into animated NFTs for games and apps (CoinDesk). And the World’s First NFT House, that promote calmness and well-being is now for sale. (Robb Report). But, take care, because, unfortunatelly, hackers are on board, too! Users of the digital art marketplace Nifty Gateway reported hackers had taken over their accounts and stolen artwork worth thousands of dollars over the weekend, according to CyberScoop.

16.03.2021

The bid for Elon Musk ‘music-art’ NFT about NFTs, tweeted on Monday, is over $1.1 million (CNBC). update: He changed his mind, not selling anymore. “Actually, doesn’t feel quite right selling this. Will pass” he tweeted.

The Film world join the NFT-crazy-party. Worth reading the Variety article about the topic: the first Oscar nominee documentary released as digital token.

15.03.2021

The NFT craze really started with the auction at Christie’s of the digital work made by Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) ““Everydays: The First 5000 Days””. And it was a ‘biiiiiig boooooom’ – it was sold for a record of $69 million, making Beeple the third most expensive living artist! Of course, the first digital art ever auctioned was paid in crypto.
The buyer a Crypto investor. If you thought the story was over, you were wrong.
On Monday, two big events mark the NFTs world.

Sophia, the world most advanced robot, announce that it will release a collection of NFT-based digital artworks to be sold on Nifty Gateway, announced Hong-Kong based Hanson Robotics (via Coindesk ). The collection was created in collaboration with artist Andrea Bonaceto and curated by Los Angeles-based IV Gallery.
Stay tuned on the March 23!

And it seems that Elon Musk is selling his first digital artwork/short-music video about NFTs as NFTs.
Stay tuned, date is unknown, yet. And he did not mention which marketplace. You can view his NFT on his twitter account.