Will NFT hyper-investing bring a new ‘dot com’ style boom and bust?

Yesterday I read a news item, how in New York in March this year, a man sold his ‘flatulence’ for $85. The headline read:   ‘NYC man sells fart for $85, cashing in on NFT craze’

When I looked into this story a little deeper, I realized well, he had not actually sold the polluted air that had escaped from his body, but rather had sold an audio capture of a series of these supposed ‘remarkable’ events.

“If people are selling digital art and GIFs, why not sell farts?” said Alex Ramírez-Mallis (Film Director turned Flatulence Vendor)

Now this may sound a little bit crazy… but who is the most crazy? Me, for writing about it? the media for reporting on it? Alex Ramírez-Mallis for birthing this idea? or perhaps more than any, the person who paid money for it?

Because up to that, what we had, was a borderline certifiable individual with an audio file of the movement of stale air through an orifice. Then something happens which is a game-changer. Somebody, somewhere, paid money for it… exchanging a financial instrument for it, legitimizing it as having some inherent value.

History has shown us that what would pass for insanity in one era can pass for business pioneering in another. Fifty years ago, if you told someone you were going to purify water and put it in bottles, and sell it, they would have asked you ‘are you ok?’

Go back another few hundred years, if one ‘commoner’ in Europe suggested to another to take a leaf, roll it to a pencil like shape, stick one end between the lips, and set fire to the other end, for sure, that wouldn’t fly. Then one Walter Raleigh sailed to the Americas, and brought leaves from Amerindians back to England. This otherwise bizarre activity became ‘normalized’ in the smoking of cigars and later cigarettes. Diego Columbus is generally viewed as the first European Explorer to have encountered the leaf.

Even going back to the ancient perception of ‘precious metals’ being actually precious, they had very little application beyond being naturally occurring since they have a low level of chemical activity. Early use in civilizations before coinage was mostly jewelry, body adornment and other ornamental application. They were not useful for tool making as they were too soft, highly susceptible to wear, were easily bent out of shape, and couldn’t be made to hold a sharp edge for any useful period. They later gained industrial application with the invention of electricity, advances in thermodynamics, electronics, and the advent of superconductors.

They are not common in the composition of the Earth’s crust, with Silver ranked 68, Platinum 74 and Gold 75 out of a total of 94 elements organised in ascending rarity. The perception of value probably rose in ancient civilizations when demand for ornamental use exceeded supply as easily accessible open seams became exhausted.

So as I look at the history of ‘value madness’ becoming normalized, then for Alex Ramírez-Mallis, for now I will just hold back on that (very tempting) thought…. ‘dey craze-oh’!

As I look at crypto currency, which was originally conceived as a transaction tool, but has been since leveraged by those looking at speculation and asset diversification, it is probably (generously) fair to consider Alex Ramírez-Mallis’ creation, while digital, a speculation and investment asset only, and in an EXTREMELY broad sense, digital art.

When we look at some of the most famous paintings in the world, by people like Leonardo da Vinci,  Vincent van Gogh,  Pablo Picasso,  Johannes Vermeer,  Sandro Botticelli, Rembrandt and others, we have canvass based paintings that can be stored in museums or private collections, but don’t take a huge amount of effort to transport, which increases ease of saleability and change of ownership.

However, as the boundaries of ‘Fine Art’ became expanded and different artists began to push the envelope of expressive norms, different works were created where capturing value became more problematic.

Banksy, a British Graffiti Artist rose in the 1990’s to secretly produce extremely high quality stencil work on walls, bridges, underground train tunnels and some public infrastructure.  His work created visual political and social commentary. Early works were dismissed as defacing public property and were steam/detergent cleaned by public servants. Eventually the quality of Banksys’ artwork fused with the timely grasp of the public pulse began to resonate. As he was perceived to have value, some efforts were made by property owners to preserve works by removing the wall or structure they were painted on.

Banksy sang current affairs protest songs using paint for a voice.

But Banksy wasn’t easily bankable!

Now we come to an example more closely linked to Alex Ramírez-Mallis’ efforts at gas release: Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ (sometimes called ‘The Unmade Bed’). The work claims to represent a four day period in Emin’s life recovering from a relationship breakdown. The centrepiece is a disheveled bed, while the piece is completed with discarded underwear, empty vodka bottles, and various other rubbish and detritus consistent with an off-balance individual in a room for four days.

The piece, or more or less ‘exhibit’ was created in 1998, shortlisted for the Turner Prize,  and exhibited in the Tate Gallery. It was then bought by Charles Saatchi for £150,000 and exhibited in his gallery. In 2014, it was bought by German count Christian Duerckheim for £2.5 million ($4.3 million) at Christie’s London.

A British expert, Martin Kemp, having viewed the exhibit several times, claimed the bed had never been slept in. He cited the condition of the beds’ pillows and bed-sheets were not consistent with a person having slept in it.

Kemp is an expert on Leonardo da Vinci and a professor emeritus of art history at Oxford University. Speaking to the Times, he explained: “Look at the various incarnations of My Bed and it’s clear that the detritus of Emin’s legendary four days in bed has been reconfigured a good deal… It’s not just some things not arranged scrupulously, which is fine. They’re actually different items.”

Emin did not dispute Kemp’s claims. but suggested over a four day period under such circumstances, the room occupant would bring constant change, so faithfully reproducing the exact configuration for every exhibit would actually detract from its realism rather than reinforce it.

Nevertheless, we can see that there are preservation risks for work produced under Banksy and authenticity challenges in the case of Emin.  And the case of Alex Ramírez-Mallis ? Well lets leave aside the absurdity for the moment, on the grounds of as previously explained, the history of ‘value madness’ becoming normalized. What about the risk to the investor that Director Alex Ramírez-Mallis won’t just go off and create a ‘Flatulence II the sequel’? Also, there is no unique biometric associated with flatulence audio that is in any way comparable with finger-prints, or optic scans, or even voice analysis. What’s to say ‘pirated’ versions can’t be created by completely different individuals?

Well, before any ‘Yahoo Boy’ reading this thinks they are on to a winner, sound checks their smartphone audio recording, and begins cooking up a big plate of moin-moin, there is the relatively new digital authenticity saviour – NFTs – Non-fungible tokens.

…’We sold yesterday, a digital work of art, for a  record price, using blockchain technology, which provides the proof of authenticity .. of the work.. It was an… amazing moment.. in the art market, the last one I remember like this was four years ago, when we sold the Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi for a record price…

It’s important to understand that these art communities… did exist before’…. Guillaume Cerutti, CEO, Christie’s. (cue Banksy and Emin!)

‘So what are NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) ?

In the simplest terms, NFTs transform digital works of art and other collectibles into one-of-a-kind, verifiable assets that are easy to trade on the blockchain.

Although that may be far from simple for the uninitiated to understand, the payoff has been huge for many artists, musicians, influencers and the like, with investors spending top dollar to own NFT versions of digital images. For example, Jack Dorsey’s first tweet is now bidding for $2.5 million, a video clip of a LeBron James slam dunk sold for over $200,000 and a decade-old “Nyan Cat” GIF went for $600,000′ – CNN.

Pivoting back to cryptocurrency, and the ban imposed on its use in Nigeria, it is now well published news that the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele has since assured Nigerians that digital currencies will have a place in the country.  “We are committed in the CBN and I can assure everybody that digital currency will come to life even in Nigeria.”

The playbook seems to be borrowing from the Chinese one, though it’s important to recognise Nigeria imposed its ban in February, while China imposed theirs earlier last month. The move by CBN may just be an effort to disguise a decision that was initially abrupt and rash, through the appearance of alignment with a few other nations. It is likely that the Chinese will bring the e-Yuan to market before Nigeria has done anything meaningful, despite Nigeria having a three month head start in being ‘digital instrument’ free.

In 2020, crypto marketplace Paxful reported that Nigeria had the world’s second-largest Bitcoin by trading volume. In the last five years,  Nigerians have traded 60,215 Bitcoins, or more than $566 million USD.

The juncture we have reached, this advent of the collective of digital instruments, be they cryptocurrency, sovereign digital currency, or  NFT digital assets, causes me to cast my mind back to the end of the last millennium and the ‘dot.com’ boom and bust. For a period, the market was insane. Float something on the market and just register it with an ‘e-‘ as a prefix or a ‘dot com’ as a suffix and it flew on the thinnest of business cases. These things are like fashion, or hairstyles, or song cover versions – it can sell again, packaged slightly differently, as long as there are a new generation of gullible individuals ready to take the fall!

When the digital/blockchain trade space opens up again for Nigerians, it is likely there will be a collateral interest in NFT’s as well as currencies, and this may become a concern.

Elon Musk fell out of love with Bitcoin, apparently unimpressed with the amount of ‘climate changing’ energy being used by the Bitcoin Mining Community. (Though we can predict, this is not his endgame!) The fallout was dramatic.

But here’s the thing – all common instruments of value exchange can be criticized on their corporate citizenship or environment credentials.

Paper currency can be criticized for impact on forests.

Credit/Debit cards can be criticized for the use of fossil fuels for plastics.

Smartphone ownership can be criticized for the common practice of child labour in cobalt mines.

So if Musk came out tomorrow and claimed to be distraught over the state of the world, and said he is doing three things: smashing his phone, cutting his cards, and refusing to deal with paper money moving forward and invited the world to follow his lead… would we?

Probably not.

Therefore, the ‘Musk’ factor being equal, and the arguments being similar, Bitcoin must have some vulnerability the other transaction tools do not.

NFTs are a parallel debate. It’s just the dot.com craze dressed up differently, twenty years down the road.

It would have been nice to have some form of digital transformation of Banksys’ lost earlier work. As for Tracy Emin, well, I’ve had my own share of relationship heartache, and I’m perfectly capable of messing a bed up, rather than spend over four million dollars I don’t have, on one messed up by someone else.

Sometimes rubbish is just rubbish even if there is blockchain technology providing the proof of authenticity that it is rubbish.  Sorry, Alex Ramírez-Mallis, blockchain authenticated audio of stale air…

It’s still just stale air!

References and Acknowledgements:

• https://www.coindesk.com/nigeria-strategies-blockchain-adoption
• https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/17/business/what-is-nft-meaning-fe-series/index.html
• nypost.com/2021/03/18/nyc-man-sells-fart-for-85-cashing-in-on-nft-craze/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust
• https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/most-famous-paintings/index.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy
• edition.cnn.com/2014/07/01/us/unmade-bed-art/index.html
• news.artnet.com/art-world/expert-says-tracey-emins-my-bed-is-not-the-real-deal-209006
• nairametrics.com/2021/05/25/breaking-cbn-governor-promises-digital-currency-will-come-to-nigeria/
• https://www.treehugger.com/what-you-should-know-about-cobalt-your-smartphone-4858237