Even as the global NFT market now equals the entire art market in value, we're only seeing the beginning of this sea change in the way art is created, sold, and enjoyed.
In March 2021, Christie’s sold Beeple’s "Everydays – The First 5000 Days" for US$69.3 million. Overnight, art NFTs became a sensation and Beeple became the third-most valuable living artist after David Hockney and Jeff Koons. In 2021, Christies auctioned over US$150 million worth of art NFTs, and the global NFT market—including art and non-art—ballooned to UD$40 billion, equivalent in value to the entire global art market.
NFTs are revolutionising how digital art is sold.
Empowered by blockchain technology, NFTs are revolutionising the ways digital assets can be transacted. A digital asset, usually in the form of a simple file, can be easily copied an infinite number of times. However, when minted on the blockchain as a non-fungible token, it becomes possible, with a very high degree of reliability, to establish uniqueness, trace provenance and current ownership, or even to capture ongoing royalties for the original artist.
Decades after digital art emerged, its access to commercial markets is today transformed by revolutionary technological advancements, namely blockchain technology. Art NFTs join a larger world of NFTs, which is comprised of anything from sports memorabilia, to all digital assets supporting tokenised ownership. The enthusiasm seen in the past months for Web 3.0 and all the emerging ecosystems related to it, likely signals just the beginning of a new revolution going far beyond the sensational sale of Beeple’s collage only a year ago.