Famous artists and companies entering the NFT market for easy money
Since the Rari bull run in the summer of 2020, we have seen the first inflow of already made artists and celebrities into the NFT space. The highest sold crypto art (excluding the controversial sale of the Gala Games Citadel of the Sun for $800,000) was created by famed digital designer Beeple. You could argue that his work does not match your taste, but one thing you cannot deny: The works he produced have artistic merit and require years of practice to implement.
The line between art and what I consider a “quick way to make money based on the stupidity of the common man” is thin. Let’s look at “The Title” collection sold by Murat Pak on Nifty Gateway a few weeks back: https://niftygateway.com/collections/thetitle.
The identical video of a cube, represented by an NFT, sold for prices ranging between $1 and $18,000. I know that Pak is trying to make a comment on society by selling the same object for different prices. It reminds me very much of the banana taped to the wall that sold for $125,000. But wouldn’t the statement be even stronger if he did not enrich himself along the way? Remember when Banksy shredded his $1.4 million art work in front of everyone at Sotheby’s in 2018 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/guymartin/2018/12/31/clues-and-legal-liabilities-what-happened-after-banksy-shredded-his-own-1-4-million-artwork/?sh=5cf4aa1c61c7)? That is a very strong statement in my view. In comparison, I would argue that Murat Pak’s statement falls into the “quick way to make money based on the stupidity of the common man”.
Another example are the basic pen drawings recently sold by Justin Roiland from Rick and Morty. He drew a collection of basic pen drawings, which look like they were produced within minutes, and sold them under his branding as NFTs. Again, it worked. He raised over $1 million in just a matter of hours. Imagine Justin wants to buy a new boat. If I were Justin, my thinking would be as follows:” I have worked hard in life to build my brand with Rick and Morty. I should utilise this brand to sell something quickly. Maybe I could draw some pen drawings, hash them on a token and sell them under the disguise of digital art. Worked for PAK.”
As I said before, the line between quality art and a “quick way to make money based on the stupidity of the common man” is thin. One prime example of an artwork done right is Hashmasks. They wrote a manifesto that captures my thoughts better than any words I can think of: https://www.thehashmasks.com/manifesto. The art is created by a collective of different artists and regardless of the intentions of the creators, you can see that hundreds of hours of work are put into the artwork (proof-of-work?). On top of that, the art itself is also a collectible. What intrigues me the most about it, is the fact, that the consumer of the art has a direct influence on the art work itself as holders of the digital portraits get to name their works on-chain, thus, creating a market for names.
My all-time favorite NFT project are — without a doubt — the Cryptopunks. Maybe you saw it on the news, but an Alien just got sold for 605 ETH last Sunday. Though the NFT art market is plagued with wash trading to artificially increase the price of pieces, we know that this sale was legit. Newly launched FlamingoDAO (https://flamingodao.xyz/), a specialised NFT fund which already holds several punks, Autoglyphs, Squigglies and other NFT artefacts, is behind the purchase.
I see a bright future in NFTs. Just like I see a bright future in DeFi. But just like we have to deal with hords and hords of scammers on Telegram and rug pulls of food protocols, so does the NFT space have issues. But in contrast, the rug pulls in the NFT space are not done by anonymous developers, but by celebrities and renown characters in the industry. They take advantage of their existing branding to make a quick buck and the consumer is left with a worthless cube. The ones that always make money are the trading venues as they charge transaction fees on transactions.
Do we even need Nifty Gateway or Superare? I guess an easy to use UI would be useful to interact with the contracts without the need to read them, but somehow it feels a bit like business as usual. Companies making money by selling art to consumers and focussing on the marketing much more than the art itself.
