James Bowden, Lecturer in Financial Technology, University of Strathclyde, and Edward Thomas Jones, Lecturer in Economics, Bangor University.
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Sotheby’s has become the latest establishment name in art to dive into NFTs (non-fungible tokens) through its collaboration with anonymous digital artist Pak and NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway.
The auction house sold The Fungible Collection, a “novel collection of digital art redefining our understanding of value”, for more than USD17m.
Some pieces, such as “The Switch”, a monochrome 3D construction that is going to be changed by the artist at some unspecified moment in the future, received bids well in excess of USD 1m.
For the uninitiated, NFTs are tokenised versions of assets that can be traded on a blockchain, the digital ledger technology behind cryptoassets like bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH). Whereas one bitcoin is directly interchangeable with another, meaning they are fungible, NFTs are the opposite because the underlying assets are unique in some way and can’t be exchanged like for like.
This uniqueness enabled Christie’s to sell digital artist Beeple’s “Everydays” NFT in March for an eye-watering USD 68m. For those that don’t have that sort of money, NFTs are also being used for trading collectables like baseball cards and computer gaming items like swords and avatar skins.
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