It all started with a big bang!!! and then our planet earth gave rise to life. Starting from simplest to complex. The most complex structure nature ever produced was a human being. A restless and voyager species. Human also evolved from simplest way of life to the complex. From caves to mansions, covering himself from leaves to Dolce & Gabbana, eating herbs to sushi, and barter exchange to online transactions. Creation and inventions are going on and on; sometimes in a positive direction and sometimes not. However, there were few developments where he got confused. But his eagerness does not let him stop.
Man started carving on stones with simple tools and produced simple art. Then he invented paper and pencil. Artists started capturing their emotions, feelings, and passions on paper with marvelous colors. Adding colors to art made it look more alive. Man continued to evolve and produced Leonardo and Picasso. Leonardo produced Salvatore Mundi worth half a billion dollars. Picasso produced Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust worth more than 150 million dollars.
After creating masterpieces, this restless species got even more confused. What could be next? Man had to create something, be it good or bad, does not matter. But he was starving for change. And he did it.
He created the creepiest art and made it more expensive than the original art. Nowadays, we call it NFT’s, Non-Fungible Tokens. An NFT is a digital asset that can come in the form of pictures, video, or anything digitally created. It is a non-fungible token, which means that it cannot be exchanged. They are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a block chain and cannot be replicated. Whenever anyone does a deal in any NFT or purchases it the NFT remains unchanged, only the name of the purchaser gets added, which means only the ownership gets changed.
Its sales started with Terra Nullius, the first NFT on the Ethereum blockchain with a mint date of August 7, 2015. In late 2017, total NFT sales started to boom, going from 100 sales per week to averaging around 15,000 to 50,000 sales per week. There was a second spike two years later from late 2019 to early 2020, when sales went up to 30,000 to 80,000 per week. However, in 2021 sales have dropped back to the normal range, between 15,000 and 50,000 sales per week.
On 19 February 2021, an animated Gif of Nyan Cat meme sold for more than $500,000. A few weeks later, musician Grimes sold some of her digital art for more than $6m. Twitter's founder Jack Dorsey has promoted an NFT of the first-ever tweet, with bids hitting $2.5m. Christie's sale of an NFT by digital artist Beeple for $69m.
Now, the total value of trade for NFTs is expected to be worth around $40Bn in 2023 alone, an amount that is approaching the total value of the entire global fine art market. I would say it has become one of the most expensive junk of today that has been sold for millions of dollars. People buy it, does not matter, how creepiest it is.
Artwork always remains a single copy, a unique picture, or text. In NFTs, the artist retains the copyright ownership of their work and can continue to produce and sell copies. But the buyer of the NFT owns a "token" that proves they own the "original" work. It’s like a celebrity who sells his autographs, doesn’t matter how many times if people are interested.
You don’t need Leonardo nowadays. To create art, you need a computer geek and a unique idea that you can sell. Starting from most brilliant to creepiest, but it should be unique. Nobody can stop you from creating digital art; fixing its price of your own choice, and then letting the market to decide its future. Every person who can create the digital art like graphic designers, character animators, VFX artists etc. could definitely work in this. Because it’s a trend and “Trend is your Best Friend” In a trend, the early bidders obviously have an advantage, so it’s the right time if you want to create something digitally.
I called it Expensive Junk because while going through the NFTs, I saw an account named Expensive_Junk. Simplest art, but with an idea, nothing is worthless in this world. It is not just selling the art, actually, it is selling the idea. And this new world, I would not be surprised if I see it worth millions of dollars in the future. Art on walls and stone tablets lasted centuries and on paper also. And digital art has just started. It would also rule for centuries. This is just the beginning.
So what are you waiting for? Plunge into this emerging art. Create a masterpiece or junk. It’s up to you. Nobody is going to stop you. If you have a unique idea, materialize it. And with your fingers crossed, you can earn millions of dollars if you are lucky enough.
