Tag: NFT

The Beeple N.F.T. art illusion is real

The $69m Beeple N.F.T. art sale is being subjected to some MSM scrutiny.

The WaPo angle that the buyer MetaKovan may have profited from buying and tokenizing other Beeple artworks in advance of the major EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS purchase is not wrong, but neither is it news.

MetaKovan has outline as much himself in a blog post back in January, (and repeated again after the auction).

There is nothing much different here from how collectors pump up the prices of their preferred artists in the old art world.

Much has also been made of the fact that Beeple immediately converted his $53m share of the sale from Ethereum to US Dollars. But critics cannot have it both ways, claiming both that 1) the sale was just in funny crypto money which does not count, and 2) that the price is overvalued in dollar terms.

If anything it shows, as Gordon Gekko says in Wall Street: “The illusion has become real.”

As Beeple himself confirms to The New Yorker:

“Boom, 53 million dollars in my account. Like, what the f***,”

NFTs: The First 5000 Beeples

Worth reading Metakovan and Twobadour’s article outlining their motives for their record-shattering $69m digital art purchase:

Digital decentralization enables cultural decentralization. Anyone can create NFT art, anyone can buy it, anyone can see it, and anyone can be inspired by it. Dominant cultures have a tendency to imperialize, to centralize. We see the global Metaverse as an antidote to this tendency. There is space for many cultures, lifestyles, and ideologies. An opportunity to find your ‘tribe’, no matter where you’re from. And that is powerful. That is the future.

As the space expands, it becomes vital to have access to NFTs that carry a narrative, as well as financial upside. You can’t have one without the other.