Laura Gascoigne<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In April Lionel Messi put a signed pair of his adidas football boots up for auction at Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. Customised with the names of his wife and sons, they were the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgame-worn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 boots in which the Barcelona striker scored his 644th goal for his club, beating Pele\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s previous record of 643 for Santos. Perfumed with the player\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s DNA, they raised $175,000 for a hospital charity.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of cash for a pair of smelly old boots, but you can just about see how a stinking rich football fetishist might want to splash it to get close to his hero. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m assuming it was a he.) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s less easy to understand how a range of digital footwear designed by 18-year-old \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccrypto-artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Fewocious for a virtual shoe brand, RTFKT studios, sold out in seven minutes at the end of February for \u00c2\u00a32.2 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What did their purchasers actually buy? A \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnon-fungible token\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcNFT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 asserting their rights to flaunt the virtual merch on their online avatars\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 feet: basically, bragging rights. So central have bragging rights become to existence in the online metaverse that they command eye-watering sums in cryptocurrencies. A non-fungible Mars House designed by Krista Kim sold for the equivalent of $512,000 in March. You couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t live in it but you could show people around: it was the definition of a show home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lost already? Bear with me. My 2002 edition of the OED \u00e2\u20ac\u201c an actual book \u00e2\u20ac\u201c defines the term \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfungible\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153precisely or acceptably replacing or replaceable by another item\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in law. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcNon-fungible\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is a more recent coinage designed to sneak the idea of private ownership into a public network \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the Internet \u00e2\u20ac\u201c originally founded on the utopian principle of being free and open. A non-fungible token, as defined by Wikipedia, is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain, that certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For digital artists whose uploaded images could previously be viewed by millions without earning them a crypto-bean, the concept is a game-changer. In February an NFT for a 10-year-old cartoon meme, Nyan Cat, viewed over 180 million times for free on YouTube, earned its creator Chris Torres $590,000 in an online auction on a digital art platform, Foundation, launched just two weeks earlier. Naturally, traditional auctioneers were slavering for a slice of the action. In March Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s New York sold its first NFT, Everydays \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The First 5000 Days, for $69.3 million. Touted as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one of the most unique bodies of work to emerge in the history of digital art\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, it gave the buyer a lot of bang for his crypto-buck, representing the entire life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work of American graphic designer and animator Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Winklemann has been a busy little Beeple: between 1 May 2007 and 7 January 2021 he drew and posted a digital artwork a day for his two million Instagram followers, and Everydays is a collage of all 5,000. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t underestimate Beeple, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a talented guy: sharp, proficient and unbelievably fast. His satirical squib Mike Pence: Lord of the Flies appeared within hours of the vice-presidential debate of October 7th, 2020. Everydays is undoubtedly a tour de force, though whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a chef d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122oeuvre is another matter. Like Banksy Beeple is simply an illustrator with a gift for visual satire, yet his Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sale price now places him third in the most expensive living artist rankings behind Jeff Koons and David Hockney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hockney has dismissed Beeple\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s drawings as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153silly little things\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and claimed that NFTs are for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ICSs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c International Crooks and Swindlers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, but Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s have no problem with ICSs. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He showed us this collage,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Head of Digital Sales Noah Davis, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and that was my eureka moment when I knew this was going to be extremely important\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. For \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremely important\u00e2\u20ac\u009d read \u00e2\u20ac\u0153immensely profitable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, as the sale has opened up a whole new market of wealthy crypto-geeks who would never normally enter a physical gallery but have bags of funny money burning holes in their virtual pockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s announced that it would accept payment in the relatively new cryptocurrency Ethereum and, as it happened, the winning bidder \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who used the pseudonym Metakovan \u00e2\u20ac\u201c was later unmasked as Vignesh Sundaresan, owner of Metapurse, an NFT index fund that in 2017 raised $47.5 million on an initial Ethereum coin offering for which the tokens are now worth crypto-zilch. Small world. Like other speculators using the Ethereum platform to sell unregulated securities, metapump-and-dump impresario Sundaresan had found himself on the sharp end of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. So imagine his delight on discovering an unregulated market in which he can operate with impunity: art. The multimillions he splashed on Everydays were a small investment to secure the endorsement of Ethereum by Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. As the art historian Tina Rivers Ryan told Apollo: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Art is being instrumentalised to inflate the value of a particular technology just as much, and perhaps more, than the other way round.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or as the mafia puts it: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153One hand washes the other\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question is, are there enough rich crypto-geeks in the world to support this market? Two aspiring young international crooks and swindlers, Joe Kennedy and Jonny Burt of Unit London, are betting on it with the launch in September of what they claim will be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the first art world-led platform for NFTs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, Institut. Like Davis, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spied an opening for a quick crypto-buck. Why sell pictures when you can sell pixels? With the market growing 800% in the first four months of this year, faster even than Covid, they predict that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153NFTs are primed to be the leading emerging asset class for the new virtual economy\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 The future for artists, and the art market, has never been more exciting\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Yes, if you like flying through the ether by the seat of your pants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A major problem with NFTs for the eco-conscious is that their \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcproof-of-work\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 calculations involve banks of processors guzzling energy like there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no tomorrow to achieve a result formerly secured at the stroke of a pen. In July, when Damien Hirst inevitably entered the fray, he announced that his tokens would be launched on a new environmentally friendly ecosystem called Palm, connected to Ethereum but allegedly 99% more energy-efficient. Just as well, as there are 10,000 of them; Hirst has never done things by halves. Priced at $2,000 a pop, his mini-spot painting NFTs form part of The Currency, a project designed to challenge \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the concept of value through money and art\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, with a twist in its tail. Collectors will be given the option, before a year is out, of trading in their NFT for the original painting in enamel on handmade paper. If they keep the virtual version, the original will be destroyed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Anyone who buys The Currency will participate in this work,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d prospective buyers have been assured. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just about owning it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n My money\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on the originals winning out, though there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no accounting for the tastes of techno-geeks so averse to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcreal world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 paper they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather not wipe their bums on it. (With this market in mind, trend-aware bog roll brand Charmin has just brought out a new line in NFTPs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c non-fungible toilet paper.) Hirst is right: NFTs are the latest manifestation of the disconnect between art and money. But are they the ultimate manifestation? In the metaverse the other half are now living in, I fear not. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Laura Gascoigne In April Lionel Messi put a signed pair of his adidas football boots up for auction at Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. Customised with the names of his wife and sons, they were the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgame-worn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 boots in which the Barcelona striker scored his 644th goal for his club, beating Pele\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s previous record of 643 for Santos. Perfumed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[745,742,75],"class_list":["post-2685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","tag-archive","tag-comment","tag-laura-gascoigne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2686,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685\/revisions\/2686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}