These digital certificates of authenticity, which share the same technology as cryptocurrencies, have made crypto art and new business models flourish.
Three letters, an acronym, have become one of the terms that has burst with more force in this 2021 that is about to end. It is a question of NFT , Non Fungible Token or Non-fungible Tokens, in Spanish, which comes to be a digital certificate of authenticity that through blockchain technology , the same that is used in cryptocurrencies , is associated with a single digital file.
On paper, the operation of the NFT is straightforward. An image, a video, an audio, a text or a certain compressed file obtains an identifier in which the name of the author, its initial value and its sales history, among other metadata, are registered. This non-expendable good – it cannot be duplicated, nor consumed with its use, nor can it be replaced by something else – this year has unleashed a veritable fever in the form of crypto art .
Yes, the sale of NFT is a new way to (try) to make money easily in the online world , but the truth is that there are many artists, influencers, celebrities, companies and organizations that are riding a wave that, In 2021, it has generated more than 3,000 million euros .
An exact date can be set when the NFTs entered a new era. It was on March 11, when the JPG file ‘Everydays – The First 5,000 Days’ , created by artist Beeple ( Mike Winkelmann) was sold for $ 69.3 million. (57.8 million euros) for Christie’s auction house in New York.
FROM A ‘TWEET’ TO A VAN GOGH
From then on, the news about pieces of crypto art multiplied throughout the world. Without leaving the month of March, a columnist for The New York Times soldan item for $ 560,000 ; an internet user bought a Cristiano Ronaldo digital card for 240,000 euros ; Jack Dorsey , co-founder of Twitter, sold his first tweet for $ 2.9 million and someone purchased a digital portrait made by the robot Shopia for 650,000 euros at auction.
Already in April 2021, the protagonist of the famous Disaster Girl meme earned $ 500,000 from the sale of the original file. In May, Larva Labs sold nine Cryptopunk heads , digital creatures designed in 2017 by the pioneering NFT startup for $ 16.9 million . In July, Berners-Lee made $ 4.5 million from the sale of the original WWW archive , which he developed in 1991. And, as early as September, Russia’s main museum, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg , raised nearly half a million dollars a year. auction NFT of works from his collection, specifically a Van Gogh, a Kandinsky, a Da Vinci, a Monet and a Giorgione .
Thus, in just a few months the market for digital collections has been installed with a considerable volume of business. There are opportunities for all tastes and pockets. The youtuber Willyrex , for example, will sell his own NFT collectibles for prices that will reach up to 2,000 euros per digital object.
FROM CROMOS DE LALIGA TO A YACHT
For its part, the NBA has raffled off great plays in the history of North American basketball in virtual sticker packages with prices between 9 and 299 dollars, creating a new business model. Without going any further, LaLiga has recently reached an agreement with Sorare , a company owned by footballers such as Gerard Piqué, Antoine Griezmann and Rio Ferdinand , to distribute the players’ NFTs and thus open a new revenue stream for the clubs. And brands like Marvel are also developing their own certified archives.
In fact, Nicolás Julia, co-founder of Sorare , defends that the NFT business is not a bubble: “There has been a rebound in interest and, although there may be a temporary overexcitement, the NFT trend is not. Like most of innovations, there may be a bit of foam and euphoria on the market , but that’s about it.”
The metaverse deserves special mention , the new parallel dimension in which tokens can end up imposing themselves as a business with incalculable potential. Not surprisingly, a few weeks ago, $ 650,000 was paid for the Mataflower , a digital yacht made with bits and bytes , in the Sandbox multiverse. Meanwhile, in real life, galleries and auction houses continue to delve into the world of NFTs: Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills will bring out a Gibson ES-335 guitar by Ketih Richards at an imminent auction, accompanied by a clip in which the rolling stone stamps its signature on the instrument. Today it is impossible to see the limit of non-fungible tokens.
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