On March 11, 2021, Christie's first NFT auction of digital artist Beeple's NFT work "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" in NFT form for the first time in its history, with a reserve price of $100, was finally sold for $69.346 million, jumping to the third highest price of works by living artists, and allowing the concept of NFT to break out of the circle, setting off a heat wave of NFT crypto art around the world.
Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Beeple's NFT
NFT, full name non-Fungible Token, translated as non-homogeneous token, is a digital asset encrypted by blockchain technology, with unique and indivisible characteristics. Digital artworks, which are blessed by NFT encryption technology, suddenly overtake in curves, becoming a market flashpoint that breaks the monopoly of traditional art forms and expanding a new field of art collection.
And the rise of NFT is not limited to the art circle, business giants, celebrities have tested the different ways of NFT, virtual sneakers, NFT game cards, NFT music albums, Twitter messages, wonderful moment short videos... NFTs almost appear in various news in a blowout, forming a hot situation of "all things can be NFTs". According to statistics, the size of the entire NFT market did not exceed $42 million 3 years ago, and by the end of 2020, the market value of NFTs increased by 705% to $338 million. Sales of artworks using NFTs reached $3.5 billion in the first three quarters of 2021, an almost explosive increase.
The rise of the NFT is not limited to the art world
Some people believe that the emergence of NFT technology will be a comprehensive release of the creative power of artists. A whole new market for digital art collections, which cannot be estimated in size, has also emerged. Even at the investment level, NFTs make art a digital asset that can be purchased on a share basis, and from the technical level, it solves the implementation of "art finance" and "art securitization" that has been controversial in the past. This is one of the reasons why international players and investors are so sought after the concept of NFT today, and one of the reasons why the NFT art trade is so active.
But one thing that needs to be sobered up is that no matter how much the concept of NFT crypto art is hyped up, NFTs are technology, art is art, and it is the part of art that really determines the value of the artwork. As Beeple puts it: "If all NFTs were gone tomorrow, I would still be working on digital art." (Zhou Peiwen)