While the planet is struggling with a pandemic, the field of contemporary art, like slots online Canada casinos that are flourishing now, has gone online. The virtual world has become for her not a forced refuge, but a platform for development and innovation. So, now all the attention of art connoisseurs and collectors is focused on NFT-tokens or virtual digital units in the blockchain network. Is the role of NFTs in the art market that significant, and can they change it once and for all?
Understanding What Crypto-Art Is
NFT-tokens are a kind of digital certificate, which confirms the right to own a virtual asset, be it an image, a video, or audio. Virtual objects could be bought before the appearance of NFT, but before NFT, there was no record of the data of the rights holder – now it is openly stored on blockchain platforms. Even after an NFT object is sold, it remains on the Internet: anyone can download it, print it out, and, for example, hang it on the wall, but the original belongs to the buyer.
Everybody is selling tokens right now: first, the blockchain company Injective Protocol burns a live painting by Banksy to turn the performance into a digital object, then Edward Snowden sells his token for 5.5 million dollars, and the singer The Weeknd announces his new song in the NFT format. Thanks to tokens, it’s easy to make a fortune in seconds: singer Grimes made almost $6 million in 20 minutes, and artist Beeple made $69 million for just one painting.
The Boom in the Crypto-Art Market
On the one hand, the boom in the crypto-art market is a legitimate event both in terms of technical progress and coronavirus limitations. In addition, the NFT-market makes life easier for artists: they do not need to work through intermediaries anymore to sell their works – all they need is to have an account on a special resource and to pay a small commission for the service, which is especially beneficial for beginners. Such an initiative also makes it possible to better monitor compliance with copyrights and stop the distribution of pirated material, and streaming services can license films and serials more quickly.
First, this kind of art is vulnerable to server failures and fraud attacks. For example, many artists have been attacked and had their works in the public domain illegally assigned NFT codes. As a result, scammers stole numerous art objects and began actively reselling them. Second, although blockchain platforms themselves pay special attention to copyright, this process has not yet been regulated at the legislative level in many countries. Also, purchasers only get the right to dispose of the token, but the creator still holds the copyright. In short, there are significant changes in the legal field, but the final unification of all norms and rules is to be worked on and worked on.
Crypto-Art Has Found Its Niche in the Art Market
However, the conversation about NFT-tokens is more interesting. The excitement around virtual art objects reflects an important feature – people are willing to pay not for the content, but for a certificate of authenticity, which is characteristic of the entire art market. A case in point is Peter Paul Rubens’ painting “Portrait of a Lady”, which for almost 140 years was considered to be the work of his student: after the discovery of the true authorship of the painting, its price skyrocketed by 40 times. Now the identity of the creator and the buyer prevail over the work of art, while it is secondary and, like crypto-art, can be copied and reproduced tens of millions of times with the consent of the rights owner.
In addition, the boom on the NFT-market testifies to the urgent problem of copyright regulation on the Internet, where against the background of the rapidly increasing number of users and content, uniform and working mechanisms are needed to struggle against pirated content. The popularity of streaming services for watching movies and listening to music is another step on the way to licensing Internet materials and finding a compromise with the interests of users, who are used to using torrents. At the same time, there is no fear that the World Wide Web is turning into a particularly controlled place with anti-utopian rules and orders – probably the Internet will remain free, but with certain reservations.
But this is a talk about the future, but for now, already this year the market capitalization of the NFT can increase 3-4 times in comparison with 2020. And this is another argument to pay attention to the new art-sphere. After all, in 2021, the virtual world sometimes becomes much more real than the offline world – especially in times of social distance and masked mode.