Let’s talk about art-tech. Is there a single person out there who has not heard about NFT’s yet? We talked to an art expert Sonya Stubblebine. Being the manager of the Fuelarts accelerator dedicated to uncovering potential of art+tech startups, Sonya is right in the epicenter of innovations taking place in the art world. We did not miss a chance to talk to her and find out her perspective on up-and-coming trend that seems to be absorbing millennial culture. So, what is NFT all about?
SONYA: It seems quite impossible to live in 2021 and not to get hit by constant news and updates about NFTs.
So let’s first start with what is exactly NFT?
According to Christie’s Auction House – NFT, or ‘non-fungible token’, is a “unique, digital certificate that is stored on a blockchain and provides certain ownership rights in an asset, typically a digital one, such as a digital work of art”.
Although NFTs appeared around mid-2010s, NFT only became a thing with digital cat-trading game CryptoKitt gaining popularity in 2017.
When the common digital standard was released in 2018 for minting NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain – NFTs became more popular within blockchain community. In 2021 there were couple of peaks in the NFT Market – first one in March with the legendary sale of Beeple’s “EVERYDAYS — THE FIRST 5000 DAYS” at Christie’s for $69 million and second peak in August.
Why I personally think NFTs are important?
In a long run NFTs can change the way we understand the concept of ownership.
NFT can only have one owner at one time. When you purchase an NFT, you buy the exclusive ownership of a particular digital asset. So far NFTs include these digital assets: artworks, GIFs, songs, tweets and essays.
The main point here is that NFT is signed exclusively to you, but anyone can view the work.
SONYA: I believe everyone should not only acquire but also create your own NFT piece to get familiar with this trend. This will give one an understanding how to create your own NFT piece, how to put it on NFT Marketplaces, and hopefully sell your digital piece of art.
SONYA: NFTs are mostly purchased in NFT platforms like OpenSea, SuperRare, Foundation and Nifty Gateway. Like other pieces of art, NFTs are purchased mostly for emotional reasons (buyer just likes the piece). I saw some people storing their NFTs on computers and phones, while presenting their NFTs on various screens within their apartments and houses. Other significant motivation is investment purposes. Some people buy NFTs as a speculative investment – to flip them with the much higher price than they originally paid. Although the opportunity of making high returns is appealing – that doesn’t happen too often.
SONYA: Absolutely – the only thing you might need to pay attention to is a digital wallet. The buyer needs it to purchase, access and transfer his NFTs. Ledger and Trezor produce popular hardware crypto wallets. After buying one, you need to download the software from the official company website.
SONYA: NFTs provides ownership rights in digital asset. Like copies of physical pieces of art do not change or affect ownership of the actual physical artwork– similar is happening with NFT works. The existence of copies of digital artworks do not affect ownership of the digital work.
SONYA: With NFT being quite a recent trend, it is hard to predict what is going to happen. With two main peaks – in March and August 2021 – we should probably wait for another peak next year.
SONYA: I believe that NFT is a great trend that can help us with a wide variety of problems within Art Market. At the same time, I really like how NFT was described by the founder of Art+Tech Accelerator “Fuelarts” Denis Belkevich – he stated that NFT is a wrapper of a piece of art. So, we shall not forget what comes first and what the whole NFT trend should circle around – Art itself.
SONYA: I believe that NFTs can give fashion brands an opportunity to reach to a bigger audience and use the hype around this trend while it is still hot. Apart from gaining more visibility, designers and fashion brands can use NFTs as a chance to turn their digital designs into collectible and unique pieces.
SONYA: NFT solves many of the problems that have been pivotal for the Art Market. NFTs gives us a tool to see provenance, authenticity of ownership and other important details that make a huge difference for any piece of art. What is crucial is that NFTs presents this information in a permanent and secure way
