What is the future of monetizing art? And it is not just art as anything seems sellable these days. As the Igbo nation will say “uwa bu ahia”, and if the world is a market, we can trade (sure there are exclusions: Remember that line – “Who Will Buy My Wife?” in Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge).
In this piece, John Mc Keown looks into the new world of non-fungible tokens (NFT) and metaverse. NFTs make it possible for people to sell digital assets for big money: “‘The NFT market has witnessed a dramatic increase in value over the last few years. The market cap has increased almost ten times from 2018 to 2020, and in 2020 alone, its value increased by 299%”. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet NFT sold for $2.9 million. Go figure.
In an interesting twist on ‘virtual value’ a British artist, Damien Hirst, launched a series of 10,000 artworks and non-fungible tokens (NFT) to conduct an experiment that forces buyers to choose between possession of the physical artwork or its blockchain-based version.
The artworks have ‘banknote’ type security features – every artwork is signed, numbered, watermarked, and features an embedded hologram, making them very difficult to copy or forge.
Owners will have to decide whether to keep the NFT or the physical artworks, which are being kept in a secure vault.
Think about it: I can sell my old photos which I took while in the bank for $$ because they are in high demand now, for conferences and events. I get the frustrations: why can’t you take recent photos in suits? Will surely if you promise to put them in $NFT!
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Seriously, for Africa, does NFT provide a new opportunity to unlock big money out of tradition and art? And if you bring the new domain of metaverse, a high call unification of physical and digital, are we going to mint $millionaires from this? There are things to sell including this post via NFT! Be excited about the promises of the future.
Comment on LinkedIn Feed
Comment #1: Thanks for the push Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe. Simply put… a little Nigerian boy uses his resourcefulness, begs parts and materials here and there… makes a tipper truck as in the video.. I’ve seen another one here about a boy with a makeshift ATM.. Its a novelty to see such a small boy do this.. he collects small ‘dash’ from passers-by here and there.. he gradually gets older and the ‘cute clever kid’ novelty stops working.. what next?
Once a theme centric NFT marketplace is up and running, the first thing investors are hungry for is content to sell.
If this new world should come to Nigeria (or any African country), these lads will need new dreams. Forget hoping to be noticed by a scout for Man City, Barca or Bayern… the eye of the NFT marketplace scout is the new dream! ?
My Response: “Once a theme centric NFT marketplace is up and running, the first thing investors are hungry for is content to sell.” – good point. More than 9 founders have presented to me but non of the foundational platforms are under their controls. Why must it be Binance? So, I agree. I want one where the OS is local. If that happens, this will make sense.
Can an Africa NFT Metaverse fuel an Africa wide wealth explosion?
---
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.