What is NFT art and who is ‘riding the crypto wave’? Elon Musk’s girlfriend Grimes and billionaire Mark Cuban are in on digital art as sales soar into the millions
- Auction house Christie’s recently listed its first digital art sale and first auction accepting cryptocurrency, specifically Ether (ETH)
- NFT, or non-fungible token, sales have earned artists like Beeple millions, and seem set to transform the art world the same way streaming affected music
NFT art has suddenly dominated headlines across the world, and its impact on the “traditional” art scene may be here to stay.
And now mainstream players like Grimes and Mark Cuban are also getting in on the NFT scene.
“I have a feeling it’s only going to get a lot bigger,” Trevor Jones, an artist who has an educational background in fine arts with a focus on drawing and painting, said. “Ride that crypto wave!”
Jones, who has been a full-time artist since 2015, considers himself a traditional painter, but has been interested in the intersection between art and technology for the past decade, including exploring the NFT art space since 2019. In homage to his training, all of Jones’ NFT work still begins as a traditional physical painting. And so far, this formula has been finding him massive success: his artwork has been selling for between US$40,000 to US$180,000 each.
This digital art market is only getting warmed up and it could quite easily take over the US$67 billion (physical) art market in the not too distant future
And last month, he sold 4,157 pieces of his “open edition bitcoin Angel” in seven minutes for US$777 each, amounting to a total US$3.2 million.
Despite his background of traditional art, Jones predicts this wave of NFT artists could defunct the long-standing art market.