From animated cats and sex tapes to major albums, artists are using NFTs to sell their work. But why?
If you go by the headlines, there’s a trading boom in something called non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Grimes has sold $6m of art via NFTs; Kings of Leon will be releasing their new album as two types of NFT, and a 10-second digital artwork bought via an NFT for $67,000 in October last year has just sold for $6.6m. Twitter boss Jack Dorsey’s first tweet is up for auction as an NFT and may fetch as much as $2.5m.
To their advocates, NFTs track the ownership and guarantee the authenticity of art – and allow creators to monetise digital artefacts. To sceptics, they’re a bubble within a bubble, a speculative frenzy that shows how far from sanity investors have gone.
