“Artists put so much of their time-and themselves-into their work. “You will have so many people from different backgrounds and genres coming in to share their art, connect with people and potentially build a career,” Boykins says. These artists of all kinds-authors, musicians, filmmakers-envision a future in which NFTs transform both their creative process and how the world values art, now that it’s possible to truly “own” and sell digital art for the first time. But many digital artists, fed up after years of creating content that generates visits and engagement on Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Instagram while getting almost nothing in return, have lunged headlong into the craze. The phenomenon is attracting a strange brew of not just artists and collectors, but also speculators looking to get rich off the latest fad.Ī bubble it may be. Critics have dismissed the NFT art craze as just the latest bubble, akin to this year’s boom-and-bust mania around “meme stocks” like GameStop. They can then list their piece for auction on an NFT marketplace, similar to eBay.Īt face value, the whole enterprise seems absurd: big-money collectors paying six to eight figures for works that can often be seen and shared online for free. Doing so usually costs anywhere from $40 to $200. Artists who want to sell their work as NFTs have to sign up with a marketplace, then “mint” digital tokens by uploading and validating their information on a blockchain (typically the Ethereum blockchain, a rival platform to Bitcoin).

By contrast, NFTs have unique valuations set by the highest bidder, just like a Rembrandt or a Picasso.

But like dollars, cryptocurrencies are “fungible,” meaning one bitcoin is always worth the same as any other bitcoin. Like cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, they exist on a blockchain-a tamper-resistant digital public ledger. NFTs are best understood as computer files combined with proof of ownership and authenticity, like a deed. TIME is now accepting cryptocurrency for subscriptions to.

And that was before the digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, sold a piece for a record-setting $69 million at famed auction house Christie’s on March 11-the third highest price ever fetched by any currently living artist, after Jeff Koons and David Hockney. NFTs are having their big-bang moment: collectors and speculators have spent more than $200 million on an array of NFT-based artwork, memes and GIFs in the past month alone, according to market tracker, compared with $250 million throughout all of 2020.

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