The technology was coinvented by an artist-digital artist Kevin McCoy-as a way of monetizing digital artworks, and unveiled in 2014, at the New Museum in New York, as part of Rhizome’s Seven on Seven conference. Unbeknownst to many, the traditional art world is woven into the history of NFTs. Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Sotheby’s Kevin McCoy’s “monetized graphic” Quantum (2014), a proto-NFT, was included in Sotheby’s Natively Digital sale in June 2021. The serious artists stick around and become bigger and better,” New York dealer and collector Alberto Mugrabi, whose collection includes Warhol, Basquiat, and now Beeple, told ARTnews.īut for many collectors, the question remains: Are the heavy hitters in the NFT space even artists? And are NFTs art?
It happens in every period that the market shrinks, and a handful of artists succeed and move forward. In fact, the entire NFT ecosystem thrummed with the same message: this is the moment to separate the speculators from the true believers.
But those in both the art world and NFT scene put on a brave face: if one’s involvement with NFTs was about art and not a cash grab, then the market should be of no concern. Established artists were preparing for drops. Galleries were launching NFT platforms and taking on NFT artists. None of this would have rattled anyone in the traditional art world if NFTs hadn’t, over the previous year, made a steady incursion into its hallowed halls. In mid-July, OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, laid off 20 percent of its staff, its CEO affirming to anyone who hadn’t yet gotten the memo-or didn’t want to believe it-that we’d entered “crypto winter.” By mid-June, when the art NFT community hit Art Basel in Switzerland, the global crypto market had lost more than 60 percent of its value, with Bitcoin dropping below $20,000 for the first time since late 2020. The world was suddenly a different place, and the major cryptocurrencies didn’t bounce back they kept sliding. The next morning, an ominous chorus of news alerts rose up from iPhones: Russia had invaded Ukraine. The crypto market had been fluctuating for a year-what went down would come back up.
(As it turned out, he needed his Punks as backing for an $8.3 million loan, which apparently more than made up for the fees associated with the rug pull.) By the time of the afterparty-afterparties being de rigueur for pretty much anything in the crypto world-everyone figured another sale would come along soon to reinvigorate the market. 0圆50d himself framed his decision as a recommitment to his collection, tweeting, “nvm, decided to hodl”-crypto vernacular for “hold”-accompanied by some memes about rugging (i.e., pulling out the rug from under) Sotheby’s. So when the anonymous seller of the Punks, who on Twitter goes by the handle 0圆50d, pulled out, people waved off the mounting anxiety. Those in the NFT scene were hoping the dip was just another hiccup in a market that had rallied back from worse over the course of 2021’s golden year for crypto. Only months before, in November, Bitcoin had soared to almost $70,000, a new high for the currency that provided a proxy for the entire crypto market but by late January, it had dipped to $35,000. The sale was expected to inject some much-needed energy into a market that had become unexpectedly limp. By Buying Frank Stella’s New NFTs, You Get the Rights to 3D Print His Art
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