In my opionion, one of the most interesting Creative Scenes happening in the world today is these guys, the Bored Ape Yacht Club founders. This is the first serious interview I've seen with these guys, other than this early documentary by The Defiant. And just for the record, some of these founders were BMXers and skaters, into punk and hip hop, Miami locals back in the day. They mention that in the documentary. So they have a little action sports roots, as well, which is cool.
You can talk smack about NFT's, Web 3, blockchain, DeFi, and the whole crypto world. It's cool right now, most people are already on that bandwagon. That whole world is getting trashed right now. There were a lot of slimeballs, and just like the early internet, this crypto winter is shaking out a lot of the garbage in the crypto/blockchain/Web3 domain, which is healthy. But in the middle of this interview, they go into a lot of the amazing ideas and potential of all these technologies for creative people and entrepreneurial people. For all the lame stuff in the whole blockchain realm, there are also all kinds of amazing possibilities for creative people. This interview gets deep into these.
For those few of you who have read my idea of The Phoenix Great Depression, these guys, and people and other creative scenes like them, are the Phoenix part. Big chunks of our world today is still run by people with and old, 20th century, Industrial Age mentalities and that's breaking down, bit by bit, industry by industry, and being replaced by Information Age versions or new industries altogether. People and groups forging into new areas, technological, creative, and any other way, are building whatever form of society we evolve into, after the remaining parts of the Industrial Age die off, and we move closer to whatever the true Information Age, whatever that ends up being 10-15-20 years from now.
Nearly a month before its one year anniversary, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection has gone from an idea that "probably wouldn't work," to a business valued at $4 billion which "real" business people love to hate, and real celebrities own pieces of. This documentary by The Defiant above was made in June 2021, when the Ape NFT's were around $5,000 to $8,000 each. No one had any idea how crazy they would get then. Now BAYC NFT's run $318K and up. For jpeg's of monkeys, tied to the Ethereum blockchain! What sets BAYC apart from the dozens of other NFT projects?
"The art was inspired by our upbringing. We grew up in the cultural melting pot of Miami, where we skated, BMXed, and drank half our 20's away, in the parking lot behind the local punk bar, talking shit about music, movies, and books, our love of Miami, 90's hip hop, 80's hardcore punk, skateboarding, crypto culture." - "NOSASS," BAYC Co-founder (18:40 in the doc above)
You may hate crypto and NFT's, or love them. That's up to you. But this post is to let you know that Bored Ape Yacht Club is yet another highly creative business taking off that has some action sports roots, along with punk, hip hop, and crypto culture. I don't know about you, but it'd be cool to see Tony Hawk, Mat Hoffman, and other BMXers and skaters help them build a part of their metaverse. We'll see what happens.
Just found a cool interview with Nicole Muniz, aka vstrange. She's the CEO of Yuga Labs, creators of BAYC and now owners of BAYC, Mutant Apes, Crypto Punks, Meebits, and probably some other stuff. Cool interview on the creation, first year, and future thoughts for the Apes and Ape friends.
A metaverse worth actually exploring? Full of new gaming worlds and other cool stuff wander through? I'm not a gamer, but the Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse ideas in this new trailer actually look fun and interesting.
For a lot of us, the whole idea of a "metaverse," a new virtual world to explore with VR goggles, crossed into our awareness thanks to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. Here's their metaverse trailer, and it looks lame (and commercial) as fuck. Bits of it are cool, but not enough to make me want to put on goggles.
Then there are the metaverses that already exist and are being built as we speak. The Sandbox is much less corporate, and based more on the decentralized ideas from the crypto world. The idea is that you can buy a chunk of virtual land, and build whatever you want on it. A little more pixelated in the video, but lots of weird, creative people building all kinds of VR places. That sounds more interesting than the Facebook/Meta world. There is a land rush going on in The Sandbox to buy great pieces of virtual property right now. But it doesn't have me wanting to put on goggles yet. The same with Decentraland, the other main main metaverse being bought up and built up right now. Pretty cool, but it doesn't have me excited to go explore. Not yet. I think both of these two will get pretty cool in the future, but they're still a long way from mainstream adoption.
But Bored Apes... These crazy guys from Miami put out a series of 10,000 NFT's less than a year ago. They came out in late April 2021, when crypto and NFT art was surging in its first big wave of popularity. They came up with this little back story for the Bored Apes. The year is 2031, and these apes are rich from crypto, but bored, and just like to hang with similar people, in a weird little club out in the Everglades. The NFT's didn't move right off the bat, at a price of .08 Eth, about $130-$150 each. Then word got around the crypto world, and they got snapped up in a couple of days, about two weeks later.
Crypto Punks were still the OG NFT collectibles then, and the series that all other NFT collectibles/art were judged by. But the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) community became just that, a community. Crypto enthusiast business guys bought some, like Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuk. The prices rose into the tens of thousands of dollars each, then hundreds of thousands. Before long, a few celebrities started buying them. Steph Curry, Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, and others, joined the BAYC club.
The floor price, the lowest price for any NFT in the collection, kept rising. They came out with another series, the Mutant Ape NFT's. The BAYC floor price surpassed the Crypto Punks, and kept going. Now it takes about $300,000 to buy one of these NFT's, basically jpegs tied to the Ethereum blockchain.
Is this all insane? Yeah. But BAYC has kept going. They just bought out the O.G.'s, Crypto Punks and Meebits NFT series, from Larva Labs. They just airdropped their own crypto, Apecoin, to NFT owners. Now they are talking about building a whole new metaverse world, based on these three NFT series. In less than a year, this wacky idea by the crypto guys in Miami has become a business empire valued at about $4 billion. WTF is going on?
Is this a big Ponzi scheme? I don't think so. Yes, there are a ton of scammers in the crypto and NFT worlds, just like the "real" art world and business worlds. You have to due your homework and be careful when buying NFT's or crypto. But I think what we're witnessing here (if you're actually watching), is a whole new kind of entertainment business model forming, and BAYC is suddenly leading the charge. Most people thought the internet was a joke, 225-27 years ago. The retail behemoth, Sears department stores, laughed at little Amazon,com, the tiny online bookselling business, 22 years ago. Blockbuster video thought Netflix was a joke. You get the idea. We're in a period of time where old business and social models are being disrupted, and new ones are forming.
I think we are seeing a whole new world of blockchain tech-enabled entertainment businesses being born, and I think those Bored Apes have become the main group to watch to see where this whole new type of entertainment, gaming, and tech business may be going.
I first heard of NFT's in a magazine article I found on a bus, about 9-10 months ago. I finally got around to researching NFT's and the crypto world about 4 months ago. From the start, I just liked the Bored Apes artwork. Most of the others didn't do much for me, but the Apes had this sarcastic, funny vibe to them. They were not the coolest NFT's four months ago. But this group is charging full speed in this new and fast changing world, and I'm keeping an eye on them. If crypto or NFT's interest you, maybe you should, too.
Giancarlo here was a stock analyst, advising real world investors on gaming and gaming oriented companies in particular. When he dug into NFT's in late 2020 and early 2021, he decided to give up on stocks, and focus on the NFT/crypto space, and start this YouTube channel. He's a really smart guy, and in my opinion, giving some of the best info on how the NFT world works, how it's evolving, and may play out in the future. If you're interested in NFT's, art, collectibles, or crypto/digital art, definitely check out this video.
This video, "Why NFT's are the biggest opportunity of the decade," explains it. Giancarlo was a stock analyst, making his living studying the changes in the gaming world for major stock market investors. But once he dug into the NFT/Web 3.0/DeFi/crypto world several months ago, he sold all his stocks and began to focus on NFT's, crypto, and DeFi (Decentralized Finance). Why? Because he's sees how big this movement is likely to get, and how early in the evolution we still are. So if you want to start learning about NFT's, start here. This 19 minute video is the best I've seen on the long term prospects, it looks at where this crazy new technology is likely to go in the next few years. If you don't know what NFT's are, check out this post, then come back, and watch the video above.
About six weeks ago, I started digging into, and learning about the NFT world, looking for a better way to sell my weird Sharpie art, or perhaps some writing projects. I didn't own any crypto, never had, and didn't know hardly anything about that world. But I read an article about the musician 3lau, months ago, using something called NFT's, as a new way to sell his music. The article said artists were also using NFT's. So I finally sat down to learn what these NFT things are, and figure out if they could be an outlet for my creative work, that could help me earn me a better living.
It's 2021, the second crazy year of the Tumultuous 2020's, and the whole world seems to have taken LSD and gone nuts, while we all try to keep up. As a long time blogger now, 12+ years worth, it seems crazy to have to say this, but lots of people still don't seem to realize that you don't learn cutting edge, emerging technologies, by taking a course, going to college, or reading a book. Things are moving too fast for that. I'm working in one of the L.A. libraries right now, and I just checked their database. There's not one book on NFT's. Not one, not even an ebook. That's how new and fast moving this world is.
So to learn about NFT's, I went to where most of us learn a ton of everyday tech info, the "University of YouTube." I have also read and skimmed 40 or 50 or more news articles, led to them by "Google State" search results. These are the "colleges" for new, info age trends and technologies. The good news in today's world is that there are dozens of videos talking about NFT's out there, many by the people actually making NFT's, and by the big bucks trading crowd, who have been making tens of thousands of dollars, and even millions, flipping NFT's in late 2020 and 2021. When you go to YouTube to learn new technology, especially if there's money being made, there's a ton of hype videos to wade through. There are a lot of scammers, as well. The Hype machine is pumping like the dance music at a rave. It's easy to get caught up in all the B.S. that's flying around.
So this list of videos is my suggested playlist to begin your own deep dive into learning about the NFT world. There are people making tons of money in NFT's. There are also people (many of the same ones) losing tons of money on NFT's. This blog post is not financial advice (see my disclaimer, linked above), and is here for education and entertainment purposes only. NFT's are one of the riskiest investment opportunities there is, and you should never play with money you can't afford to lose. That said, there is something legitimate to this technology, and there are so many potential uses for it, that even the seasoned experts (that have been around 1-3 years), don't know where the NFT world is going. It's constantly evolving. That's enough preamble, let's get to the rest of the playlist.
This Wall Street Journal video is a good, solid, quick look at what NFT's are, and how they work. It came out right at the top of the first NFT art hype cycle, March, 2021.
The first big wave of NFT hype from outside the crypto art world started in mid to late 2020, and crested with Beeple's $69 million sale of "The First 5,000 Days" NFT, at Christie's. His real name is Mike Winkleman, and for 13 1/2 years he drew a piece of digital art, every single day, and posted it, for people to check it out. The NFT sold at the auction was a compilation of all those pieces. So Beeple had more than a decade of work into that big sale.
That happened on March 11th, 2021. This was the "auction hammer heard round the world" in the mainstream art world, for NFT's. While artists continually say they don't care about the money, they really do. OK, a huge number of artists would do some work with no money involved, but money pays the bills, we all need it, and this crazy sale got everyone's attention. Beeple's reaction is great, as that sale, of a work that doesn't exist in the physical world, became the 3rd highest price paid for art, by a living artist, in history. Artists have flooded the NFT marketplaces with work since. And yes, I'm working on my own art project to turn into NFT's, as I write this. NFT's give all working artists new options, and it's not just about one unicorn moment sale.
Gary Vaynerchuk cut his entrepreneurial teeth selling sports cards and collectibles as a kid. Then he took his parents' liquor store from $3 million in sales to $60 million, in 5 years, using Google Adwords and a YouTube channel. Then he started VaynerMedia, a digital (marketing) agency, and started other offshoots into sports. That business ballooned to over $100 million in revenue in less than a decade. Once he got into NFT's in early 2021, he soon did a 10,000 token drop of VeeFriends, using NFT's to build his following into tighter community. In this recent, 20 minute video, he explains why he went all in on NFT's in 2021.
In 2017, Larva Labs created a drop of 10,000 digitally generated, unique characters, called CryptoPunks, on the Bitcoin blockchain. People who knew about them could claim one, for about 11 cents in service fees. The Punks themselves were free. As I write this (12/30/2021), the lowest priced CryptoPunk will run you about $210,000, and the highest price paid for one is $11.75 million. And that is for what is basically a jpeg of a 24 pixel, little, weird face. This video explains the story of CryptoPunks, now considered the O.G. NFT's, and the biggest status symbols in NFT the world.
Make some popcorn for this one, this is a full length documentary, and well worth watching. And yes, it was uploaded on "Beeple Day." This movie, and the Giancarlo video at the top of this post, go into the greatest depth at looking into this whole NFT phenomena. It's a movie, and it was made in the midst of the Great NFT Art Wave of early 2021, just before the Great Gas Wars began. The Defiant crew have made several great videos, and tons of weekly videos, about all aspects of crypto, DeFi, blockchain, NFT's, and the whole related space. They are one of the best sources to check out regularly. Watching this documentary will leap frog you ahead of those new posers who just got into NFT's 20 minutes ago. I'm being a bit facetious, but that's pretty much how fast this NFT world moves. Blink and you'll miss something. So make some popcorn, and watch this film.
This is another great documentary about NFT's, this one focusing on the art side of the NFT landscape. It's clean, really well produced, and another good video to round out your basic understanding of this fast changing world, and how it's evolved with art.
After the Beeple Christie's sale, and the CryptoPunks beginning to sell for hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars, many teams went to work to do "drops" of NFT's, often at or near the 10,000 token precedent that the Punks set. There have been dozens of different token drops in 2021, but one odd group, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, rose above them all as the standout NFT drop of 2021. This documentary tells their story, trying to find the answer of what set the Apes apart from all the rest.
Dapp University is another great YouTube channel for info on all things blockchain. He goes back, much further in the crypto history than the other video producers on this list, which is what I was looking for for this final video on this post. The other aspect I wanted to touch on was the future of Ethereum.
The whole blockchain technology began with Bitcoin, and most people have some sense of that. But Ethereum, the next major blockchain, brought "smart contracts" into the picture, which give the blockchain all kinds of new applications. Contracts of all types, tied and time stamped, into the blockchain, are possible with Ethereum, and the blockchains built since. Most NFT's, so far, are tied into the Ethereum blockchain. But there are transaction fees, called "gas fees," that go to the Eth miners, whose computers actually verify each transaction into the blockchain. These fees have become larger and larger, from a few dollars, to possibly hundreds, when the system is super busy, on top of the price paid for NFT's. This is a major issue with minting NFT's on Ethereum, and a selling point for more recent blockchains, using different protocols, with much lower gas fees.
It's important to note that this video was recorded on June 21, 2021, after the initial "NFT art" bubble popped, and when both interest in NFT's, and in Ethereum itself, dropped significantly. Even then, when 1 Eth equaled about $1885, and the hype had fallen, he was still very bullish on Ethereum itself. That's important to note.
Since then, NFT mania went into a 2nd major (read: drawing people from OUTSIDE into the crypto/NFT world) hype cycle, Ethereum went up to about $4,800 per Eth, and has settled back to about $3,800 as I write this. So after this video, when NFT's looked dismal, they took off again. The Google Trends search for "NFT" just peaked again, much higher, around December 12-18, 2021.
Having seen the hype cycles (about ten year trends) in action sports, like BMX, skateboarding, and snowboarding, over 30 years in my personal experience, I think a similar, bouncing long term uptrend, is where NFT's may be headed. But the boom/bust cycles happen in weeks or months, not years. That's my personal opinion, and time will tell if I'm on the right track there.
But the consensus I've seen is that Ethereum gas fees are too high, and it uses a lot of energy (not nearly as much as all those future electric cars will), but Ethereum seems like it's here to stay. Which other blockchains grow to rival it in the NFT and smart contract space? That's anybody's guess at this point.
So for any of you whose interest has been piqued about NFT's, this list is a great beginning to your own deep dive of learning about all things NFT. It's only a beginning, but it's a solid beginning. We will all see what the future brings, both in the NFT/crypto/blockchain world, and in our crazy, everyday "real" world, that's moving nearly as fast. Good luck in this emerging world, and I hope you find cool projects in your future.
Can you make obscene amounts of money flipping NFT's? Yes. Can you lose obscene amounts of money flipping NFT's? Yes, you can. Can I verify Alex Becker made the $832,000 he claims in this video? Not quickly. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, because in late 2020 and 2021, a whole bunch of people from the crypto world have made thousands, and sometimes, millions of dollars, flipping NFT's. Plus, all of the transactions are on either the Ethereum blockchain, or another one, so they could be verified with some research. If you don't know what an NFT is, find out here.
When you hear about NFT's, non fungible tokens, and actually start looking into them, you first hit a barrage of hype. Hype... and ridiculous amounts of money that many people have made flipping them. If you search "make money with NFT's" on YouTube, it's likely a Gary Vaynerchuk video will be at or near the top of the list, because of his huge web presence. If you know who Gary Vee is, you'll likely know his roots are in selling baseball cards as a kid, and garage sale flipping later on, and soon learn he's all in on NFT's. If you don't know who he is, you'll see a cocky, brash New Jersey guy who you'll think is just hype, and maybe blow off the whole NFT concept as hype. The same goes with the Alex Becker video above. The first time I watched this, I thought, "Who is this clown?" Is this NFT stuff all a bunch of fucking hype? When you get into that video above, you begin to realize he knows his stuff.
If you start with the "NFT art" search, you'll run face first into Beeple's $69 million sale of his piece "The First 5,000 Days." That's the flag in the stratosphere screaming that NFT's are "real art." Or at least real expensive art. Your first question might be, "What the hell is a Beeple?" That will be followed by, "Wait, some dumb fucker paid $69 million for a piece of art that doesn't even physically exist?" It just doesn't make sense at first... or even at second glance.
Then the jargon hits you with more insane prices attached. Multi-million dollar Crypto Punks, Rare Pepe's, Crypto Kitties, some person called Fewocious, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Stoner Cats, Vee Friends, Doge Pound, and on and on and on. Yes, people are paying hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions of dollars, in crypto, for weird jpeg and PNG files, of art that doesn't physically exist. And it's not just 12 bored billionaires buying these, there are maybe 40,000 or more actively in the game, and many more getting sucked in by all the hype.
Then before the hype machine calms down, celebrity names start flying at you. I already mentioned entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, Mark Cuban is also in deep in NFT's and crypto. Then come names like Mila Kunis, 3lau, Logan Paul, Steph Curry, Post Malone, Jimmy Fallon, Tom Brady, Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart, and many more. The NBA raked in over $100 million in 2021 with their Top Shots NFT series. Dig a bit deeper and you'll find that Paris Hilton owns 150+ NFT's already. She's been into crypto since 2014 or something. WTF? Paris Hilton? Even in our action sports world, Tony Hawk just had his second big NFT drop, working with Draft Kings and Autograph.
Somewhere... out there on the open sea, there's this island where all these famous people and crypto billionaires buy these NFT things, at a broken down yacht club. Then they go into some sand box in the metaverse and smoke cyber joints with Snoop Dogg or something. Something like that. What the hell is going on?
It all sounds to ridiculous. Too ridiculous. That's why I've spent the last six weeks digging deep into this world. I dove down the rabbit hole and wandered all over the freakin' place. But the tunnels keep going in all kinds of different directions. Blockchains and smart contracts are the backbone if it all. Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, and other cryptos. DeFi, which stands for Decentralized Finance, a new wave of banking-type systems and technologies and platforms. DAOs, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. That's a member owned organization with no one really running it. Wait, isn't that what the Federal Government is half the time? Crypto art. Token drops. Gas fees. Community. Eth. Punks. Apes. Kitties. And there are a whole big group of personalities, many with their own YouTube channels, spewing their thoughts on all these constantly evolving topics.
It feels a little bit like Oz, as in Dorothy and Toto and the Wizard of. Is there anything behind all this hype?
Yes, there is. Blockchains are a running, unbroken, openly recorded, decentralized series of transactions. They are, so far, unhackable. They make crypto "currencies," like Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, and others possible. The Ethereum blockchain was engineered to allow "smart contracts" into these transactions. An NFT is one of those smart contracts, tied to a digital file. That file can be a piece of art, a photo, some text, a song or piece of music, a contract (like a real estate or car sale). Once that transaction is tied into the blockchain, that file becomes the official one. And that makes it rare.
That's an NFT. And rare things can be collected, sold, and traded. We can all pull up a photo of the Mona Lisa on our phone or laptop. You can buy a copycat Mona Lisa painting for $60 or so. But there's only one real Mona Lisa painting. That's rare, and it's worth a shitload of money because it's rare, old, and painted by Da Vinci. The NFT technology makes one particular digital file rare, sets it apart from all the copies out there, and that changes the game in all kinds of areas.
Art and collectibles are the beginning. Your tickets to a football game or concert could be NFT's soon. You driver's license or passport could be one some day. You could sell your car or house with an NFT contract, in a day or two, before long. You could buy "skins," weapons, or upgrades in video games that are NFT's, and then take them into other video games, because you actually own them. Music is already being sold as NFT's.
NFT's are a new technology for contracts, basically. The can make one digital file "The One." And that it going to change all kinds of things in our world in the next several years. That's the technology, the "real" thing, behind all the NFT hype. It's a crazy realm, it's moving very fast, and there's already an absurd amount of money circling around this world.
Are you old enough to remember the first video game? I played Pong for hours as a kid, about 1977. How about the first VCR? First car phone or cell phone? First personal computer? The first home video camera? Your first time on the internet? The first CD or DVD? Your first time on Napster? Your first time on social media? Your first time watching a YouTube video? Your first smart phone with a camera so you could send dick or boob pics? Gang changers. NFT technology is one of those things. It will change a whole bunch of "games," art and collectibles are just the start. You'll have to learn it at some point, like a software upgrade or new social media platform. In this series of posts on this blog, I'll share what I've learned so far. You can figure out it it's time to learn more or not. But now you know, there is something behind the NFT hype.
Oh yeah... guess who made the very first Old School BMX NFT for sale. I did. It's on Rarible if oyu search "Steve Emig The White Bear." One Eth, about $3,800 right now, plus gas/minting fees. I don't expect it to sell anytime soon. But someday it might...
This is the intro video for Tony's Last Trick Ever NFT drop. The drop is happening as a write this, it started half an hour ago. Working with Draft Kings and Autograph, they are dropping 16,600 NFT's, each a digital "container" which can be opened to find out what specific NFT buyers got, on 12/21/2021. Just for the record, that's a $664,000 NFT drop, providing they all sell, and they should. Not a bad afternoon's work. To the best of my knowledge, this is only the second big NFT drop in action sports.
If you have started checking out this blog again, since I've come back to it, then you know I've been learning about these "NFT things." On the surface, or to most people my age and older, they sound absurd. "OK, so let me get this straight, people are paying $3 million in crypto for a jpeg file of a funny looking ape, which doesn't even exist in the physical world?" Yep. That's what's happening, on the high end of the spectrum, anyhow.
OK, very few people are paying millions of $ (actually Ether usually, or some crypto), but tens of thousands of people are paying $40-$2,000 worth of crypto for either "digital collectibles," or digital files of someone's artwork, as well as gaming items. Yes, that's nuts, in a sense. But paying $100,000 for a tricked out 1964 Chevy Malibu is also nuts, and people are doing that, too. People have been paying $1 for songs on iTunes for 20 years now, and those don't exist in the real world. Gamers have been paying for cool weapons, added features, to skip missions, level up, or to get "skins" in games for years now, as well. And now most people stream movies and TV shows, we don't own the DVD's or VHS tapes. So part of our whole technological "progress" in the last 25 years is buying shit that doesn't physically exist. Most people do that at some level already.
NFT's, aka Non Fungible Tokens, are digital files tied to a blockchain transaction, which can prove one digital file is the "only one," or one of a series. Among many other uses, NFT's work really well to sell digital collectibles, and for artists to sell a digital version of a piece of art, whether it's digital art or physical art.
Over the last 3-4 weeks, I've learned the basics of NFT technology, and realized, "shit, this is for real, and it's going to be around for a while" (unless us humans start World War III or something stupid like that). Then I realized that there's anabsurd amount of money being paid for some of these things. Crypto wealth is not the whole point, but it beats doing a drawing that takes 45 hours, and then shipping the original to someone for $150 plus shipping costs. That's what I've been doing for 5 years. Fun, but very unprofitable. Also, NFT's allow artists and creators to program a royalty payment in the transaction, because of smart contract technology. So if a piece does sell for a crazy price down the road, the artist gets a cut. That's real cool, from a creative person's perspective.
The next thing I realized in my intense research is that only a tiny part of the overall population is into NFT's right now. But this technology is growing and evolving at light speed, and new uses and ideas are popping up all the time. This is opening up new markets. NFT's will be something virtually everyone deals with in 2-4 years, maybe sooner. So for all those reasons, I'm diving deep into this world. I've already created my first two NFT's, both at really high prices, just to learn the basics, and get a handle on the process. I have several more ideas stacking up in my head already.
Back to Tony Hawk. He's the biggest name, to average people, in the action sports world. You can argue, but nearly everyone knows of Tony at this point. Tony has always been a gadget guy, and an early adopter trying out new tech. He's also super smart, a good businessman, and has been into buying Bitcoin for "about ten years" according to an interview from last spring. The price chart I found goes back to 2014, when it was $327 per Bitcoin. Ten years ago, it was a lot cheaper. So whatever Tony bought back then, if he kept some, has made a serious return on his money. It's $47,500+ per Bitcoin now.
All that NFT talk out of the way, I think Tony's idea of retiring 5 tricks, and getting good video of the last time he pulls each them, then working with Autograph and Draft Kings to make it a cool NFT drop, is a cool idea. On the business end, they all make a good chunk of money. For Tony, he can say, "I'm not wrecking myself trying varial 540's or frontside Cabs anymore." For collectors, I think his NFT's will hold up better than some others, like Simone Biles's NFT's, over time. But it will take years to see on that.
I'm writing this post just getting word out that Tony Hawk, someone everyone from the Old School Action Sports world actually knows, or knows of, is doing a cool NFT project. I hope that will get some other action sport people looking at this technology, and looking for good, solid, legit ways to put it to use. Like using NFT's to fund a documentary or a new video project, or maybe as a fundraiser for someone after a serious injury, or just to make some decent living money as an artist. I think there are a ton of really good uses for NFT's, as well as the shady uses some people are trying. Action sports people are a creative bunch, and I think once the basic idea of NFT's seeps into action sports culture, I think we'll see a bunch of cool NFT's come out, a part of many amazing projects. That's my hope, anyhow.
If you've read my blog for a while, or follow me on Facebook, you've probably seen this photo before. It's a wall ride over my sister Cheri's head, at the Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach. This is a still from my 1990 self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first Old School BMX freestyle NFT ever created. #steveemigNFTs
I became a taxi driver in 1999, leaving my good paying Hollywood lighting tech job, after an injury. I've struggled in and out of homelessness ever since. After leaving taxi driving in 2007, which was dying due to new technology, getting a "real job" became impossible. I drove a cab againfor a year while in North Carolina, in 2011-12. After my dad's death, I wound up living with my mom, who I never got along with, in a tiny apartment, in a small town, in North Carolina.
In late 2015, I stepped up my Sharpie scribble style artwork, and began to sell my drawings online, just trying to make a little spending money. For about 5 years, I scraped by, though homeless much of the time, making money from my drawings. My large drawings take about 40-45 hours to draw, and after a while I could sell them consistently for $150-$200. So I have been a "working artist," but I was only making about $2-$4 an hour doing it. It's hard to get back on track financially making that little. It's pretty much impossible. Like thousands, maybe millions, of other creative people, I was looking for a better way to make a decent living from my creative work in today's rapidly changing world.
I heard about NFT's a few months ago, in an online article about a musician. They sounded interesting, but I didn't have much time online each day, so I never dug into seriously researching them. About a month ago, I found a library that's actually open, one of the few in L.A. County, where I can plug in my laptop, and work all day long. I started listening to some Gary Vaynerchuk videos again, among others, and he had several videos about NFT's. I watched two or three of his videos, and got seriously intrigued. Then I dug deeper, and I've probably watched 80-100 hours of YouTube videos, and read 20 articles, about NFT's, in the two weeks since. Yesterday I made my first two NFT's, and both are at ridiculous prices, intentionally, but available for sale on Rarible.
So what's an NFT? That's where most of society is right now, unaware of these things, or not sure what they are. "NFT" stands for Non Fungible Token. Simply put, it's a blockchain transaction tied to a digital file (photo, art, meme, music file, video file, in-game accessory, etc), and it's the only one tied to that transaction. So that makes it a digital item that's rare. NFT's, based on blockchain smart contract technology, make it possible to have a "one of a kind" digital piece of art (or music, photos, etc.). And rare things can be collected, flipped, traded, and sold for ridiculous prices, like old BMX bikes, baseball or Pokemon cards, classic cars, Coca-Cola memorabilia, or any other collectible. The crypto collecting began with Crypto Kitties, Crypto Punks, and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
So while you can copy that wall ride photo/meme above, only one actual NFT of it exists. Since hardly anyone in action sports has created NFT's, only 2 or 3 New School BMX photo NFT's exist so far, and my NFT above is the first Old School BMX NFT, which will could make it highly collectible... at some point. That's why I put it up for 1 Eth, or one unit of Ethereum, a little under $4,000 at the moment. Crazy, huh? It will only sell if I put out a cool collection of other, similar NFT's, and get some collectors, or flipper/traders, interested. Until then, it will just sit at that price. The next NFT's I do will be in the $40-$150 dollar range (+ gas/minting fees).
What the NFT technology does for artists, is it let's us sell a digital form of our work, and even add a royalty in the smart contract. So an artist can make more money up front, by creating their own NFT's, and can get a royalty payment anytime that NFT is resold....ever. When traditional art, like say a painting by a really famous artist, sells for millions of dollars, the artist doesn't get any of that, in virtually all cases. That's one big issue of art throughout the ages.
So NFT's, and the NFT marketplaces, and the whole crypto world they came from, now allow artists of all kinds to put work out there for sale, in a rare digital format, and hopefully make more money, and get royalties from that piece when it sells again. That can potentially allow a typical working artist a much better chance to make a living from their work, if they're willing to learn the NFT technology, and do the promotion involved to get their work seen an appreciated by collectors.
It took me about two days of research to figure out NFT's are for real, and get past the issue that people are actually paying money, sometimes millions of dollars, for something that doesn't physically exist. That's a head trip for most people, when they first hear about NFT's. But people have been buying song downloads for about 20 years now, and those don't physically exist. Gamers have been buying cool in-game weapons, skins, and other items in games, for several years as well. So there is definitely a market for digital goods. That market is tens of billions, already, in the gaming world.
So I decided to go all in on this idea, and start producing my own collectibles. I'm going to start putting out collections of NFT's, starting with video stills and photos, as a way to earn money to get my life back on track financially. Hopefully, after that, I can work on doing the long list of creative projects in my head, and those I'll dream up later on. I'm looking at these as "digital collectibles," though I do want to do NFT's eventually with mt Sharpie artwork, and perhaps other "art."
The NFT world is still really new, only going back to about 2017. For you Old School BMX freestylers out there, it feels a lot like 1984-85, when we could go to an AFA contest, which were new, and see 50 different riders doing brand new tricks we hadn't seen before. There are just new ideas popping up daily in this space. NFT's are an offshoot of blockhain technology, enabled by smart contracts tied in the blockchains, Ethereum being the main one right now. It all started in the crypto art world, and the crypto rich were the first collectors, and still the main ones.
Then in late 2020 and the Spring of 2021, NFT's exploded into the mainstream art world, with the insane $69 million Beeple "5,000 Days" NFT sale at Christie's. Now there are collections of 10,000 character-type and gaming related NFT's dropping almost daily, and hundreds, maybe thousands of new and established artists putting out NFT's. So there's actually too much art for the number of active buyers, at the moment. But I think that won't last too awful long. There will be another big wave of crazy art sales before too long, I'm sure.
But it's still just crypto art projects, crypto finance, and artists in NFT's right now. There's very little photography, there's not really a lot of music, and things like action sports art/photos, and many other future uses, haven't really happened yet. But they will. NBA Top Shots is one of a handful of mainstream sports NFT projects, and they raked in about $100 million. Soccer/futbol is getting into it, as well as people like Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mila Kunis, Logan Paul, and a bunch of others. Paris Hilton has over 150 NFT's in her collection. For real.
This technology has so much farther to go, in hundreds of different directions, that by this time next year, everyone will be talking NFT's, and be looking to flip, trade, or collect them. That's why I'm going all in on this idea. It's a huge opportunity for creative people, as well as gamers, influencers, financiers, traders, athletes, real estate brokers, the whole metaverse arena, and much more. This technology will be used in so many ways, that most of the world will be getting into aspects of it in the next few years. Including the Old School BMX collector guys (and a few gals).
So that's why I'm spending so much time in this blog talking about NFT's, and now beginning to create my own. This is a form of creative work that can earn me a decent living, in time, get me off the streets and into a decent apartment, and eventually fund future creative projects, like maybe The Ultimate Weekend II idea, or a cool indie art show, among others.
And I put it up for sale for 4.343 Eth. That's about $17,341 right now. Do I think this will sell? Nope, not a chance. That was my point. You only get to make your first NFT once. If you become a name in the NFT world, then that NFT becomes highly collectible, and valuable. Most people ask a couple of hundred bucks or less for their first NFT. But I'm an actual homeless guy, who has made my own NFT's, and I do some pretty cool art, and take decent photos. My story is a pretty crazy one. If I can get myself off the streets, and I do some really cool work for a year or so, then, and only then, will this NFT be worth buying by a collector, maybe.
Until then, this is me planting my flag in NFT Land and saying, "This is a cool technology, I have a lot of ideas, and I plan to be here for a while." A lot of people, artists, gamers, influencers, celebrities, and profile pic projects, are just trying to become "The next Beeple," and going for a quick cash grab. Others are doing really cool art, or evolving in this world, exploring new ideas. I see a lot of cool ideas to use NFT's for, and I plan to just keep plugging away until one of them takes off, and make this crazy panhandling sign NFT worth somebody's money.
So that's my new direction. There will be A LOT of NFT talk in this blog now. But there will still be Old School BMX tales, action sports, other art, my views on our world and where it's headed, and anything else that seems interesting to me. Thanks to everyone who's responsible for one of those 130,000+ page views so far on this blog, I'll try to keep it interesting for a long time to come.
Art Basel Miami was a huge art week series of events that just happened last week, December 2-4, 2021. The hype in the big money art world, and in the business media going into the week, was all about NFT's, Non Fungible Tokens.
NFT's, Non Fungible Tokens, became the new hot thing in the big time art world last Spring, with Beeple's $69 million sale at Christie's auction house turning everyone's head. Wait, a digital file, authenticated by a blockchain transaction, that doesn't exist in the physical world, just sold for HOW MUCH?!?!?! And what the fuck is an NFT, exactly?
That's what I've spent the last two weeks learning about. As an artist who got good at selling things that take a long time to make, but didn't sell for enough to pay rent, these NFT things intrigued me. Basically, an NFT is a transaction on a blockchain, usually Ethereum, that authenticates a digital file. So "There's only one official NFT of this digital piece of art (photo, song, video clip, etc.)," and that makes it rare. Somewhat like the Mona Lisa, everyone can look at a photo of it online, or buy a poster, but there's only one real Mona Lisa painting. Now blockchain technology can make a digital file "the only one." Or one of a limited series. That makes it scarce, and scarcity can make these things potentially valuable.
NFT's came out of the crypto world, they are a blockchain technology, a smart contract, but different from crypto currency like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Digital and crypto artists were naturally the first to use them. Now digital art and collectibles, like Crypto Kitties, Crypto Punks, the Bored Ape Yacht Club characters, are "old school" NFT's, and though they don't exist in the real world, they sell for hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. The whole NFT phenomenon is only about 4-5 years old, and it really caught the art world's attention last Spring (2021). So Art Basel Miami last week was the first huge art event since NFT's rose to major attention in the mainstream art world. The video above shows a bit of what happened with NFT's there.
Like I said, I've been diving deep into learning about these things for a couple of weeks now, and I definitely think NFT technology will be around for a long time to come. The cool thing for artists at all levels, is that once you learn the basics of blockchain and Ethereum, you can make NFT's tied to your artwork. You can do this yourself, or work with a gallery crew who are working with NFT's. There's a ridiculous amount of money from the crypto world behind these things, and a whole new group of crypto art/collectible investors who are looking for new "drops" of NFT's, and emerging artists to invest in and collect. So even though art is "not about money," artists flock when there's big money to be had, myself included this time.
The bad thing about NFT's is... that everyone can make them, so there are dozens of projects and hundreds of artists dropping NFT's already. It's still clunky to buy them, gas fees on Ethereum cost $30-$200, and you still have to promote the heck out of your art to get noticed in the crowd. Most of those being made now are NOT selling, or not selling for large amounts of money. But if the crypto collector crowd likes your stuff, prices can go from $150 to $15,000 in a week. I'm not kidding. But the technology is still so new, and opens up so many possibilities, and is so fast moving, that pretty much anything is possible. No one is sure how many different uses there are for NFT technology, new ideas are popping up daily.
While the hype going into Art Basel Miami 2021 was mostly about NFT's, the vast majority of art sales are still traditional paintings, sculptures, and the like. But it appears the mainstream art world thinks NFT art will be a part of the scene for quite a while, and a lot more people got exposed to the idea of collecting digital art and collectibles, last week in Miami.
NFT's are definitely changing the game in the mainstream art world, and a new group of art collectors, NFT collectors, is emerging. So if you're an artist, or collector, NFT's are definitely something to keep your eye on.
This recent documentary about the NFT/CryptoArt movement is only a couple months old, which is good in this fast moving movement. The New York company Adorama put this out, and it's a very well produced, solid overview of what the NFT (Non Fungible Token) technology has made possible in the art world. If you're an artist, photographer, writer, or musician who wants to learn more about what NFT's are, and how they're being used in art so far, check this doc out. It's under an hour long, and a great place to begin learning.
For those of you who know this blog as an Old School BMX blog, mostly, you've noticed that I'm suddenly writing all about this "NFT thing." Yeah, I started diving into learning about this technology a couple of weeks ago, seeing if there is something in it for small time artists, like me. I'm still going hard with the research.
Yes, when you google "NFT's," most of what initially pops up are the crazy prices paid for JPEG's or PNG's of pixelated zombie looking things, funny apes, and Beeple's $69 million auction price for a digital collage called "The First 5,000 Days." I just found another article about Christie's Auction house selling over $100 million in NFT art this year. Really. And none of these art NFT's are tangible. It's fucking weird. That's the crazy side of the NFT/crypto art movement.
But is there anything in this technology for a typical Esty-type artist, photographer, writer, musician, or designer? Yes, I'm glad to say there is. Here are the basics I've learned so far.
One: NFT's are a digital file tied to a blockchain transaction, which gives proven ownership. That little thing is the magic. It makes that one (or a series) of pieces of digital art rare. And in art, rare stuff can sell for higher prices.
Two: Pretty much any digital file of art, photo, video, writing, or music, (up to30 megabytes, I think), can be "minted" into an NFT.
Three: This whole movement came out of the high tech/gaming/crypto world, which means there's a fucking shitload of money around NFT's and crypto art.
Four: The price of entry is to1) get some crypto, Ethereum in particular in an exchange, 2) open a wallet, and 3) join one of the marketplaces, like OpenSea, Axie, Super Rare, Rarible, Nifty Gateway, Foundation, or the others that exist. Then 4) Most important, do a whole bunch of research to learn about how things work. Google or YouTube your questions, and dive in.
Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, (who dropped a series of 10,000+ NFT's called Vee Friends, in May), says to do your "50 hours of initial research" on any new thing. Then decide if it makes sense for you, or not. That's real good advice.
Five: Take a piece of your creative work on a digital file, and "mint" it into an NFT, which takes services fees and a "gas" (blockchain) fee, and show it off in the marketplace you chose.
If you do that, will your artwork NFT sell? Probably not.
Like selling art and creative work anywhere, you, or someone, still has to PROMOTE and MARKET your work to gain interest, and get sales. If you already have a following, you need to see if any of them are into NFT's already. Most average people are not. It's still a very new and emerging thing.
If you don't have a following, you need to begin building one. The main market for small creator NFT's (and the big series drops) may be a few of your current patrons, but more likely will be a whole lot of "traders" or "flippers." These people are buying and flipping NFT's like day traders in the stock market, or sports card/collectible traders. They want to find new projects that have potential to grow, and they want to buy your NTF's CHEAP! Cheap is $150 to $200, maybe $300, or less in NFT land. These traders want to buy into your work, and resell it quickly for a 10X or 20X gain, that's 10 or 20 times what they paid for it.
So if your NFT costs you $80 to mint, and you sell it for $150 to a trader, that trader wants your work to get popular, and take off, they're in it to make money. They want to resell your NFT art for $ 1,500 or more (paid in Eth aka Ethereum, usually). In this scenario, you, the artist, make $70, the trader makes, $1350, and a bunch of traders learn you exist, and will pay more attention to your next pieces minted.
To most artists, that sounds like a shitty deal. And for one piece, it is. But if you continue, and you do multiples of you pieces, (a series of 3, 10, 50, 100), then you can begin to make some decent money on future NFT's. That's the basic idea. Yes, it's possible you could do a series, and they could get noticed and take off quickly. But more likely, you'll have to spend a bunch of time online promoting your work to people who have a sports card trader mentality.
So if you want to jump into NFT's and sell one NFT of your epic painting for $5,000, that's not going to happen. Unless your physical paintings already sell for that kind of prices, then it might. Most small time artists, I think, will either try selling NFT's, and fail, because they aren't willing to do the marketing or promotion necessary. Then they'll post somewhere saying "NFT's suck!" and stay on Etsy or in their own Shopify store selling pieces. Hey, that's fine, NFT's are not for everyone.
The artists and creators who are willing to sell for low prices in the beginning, to do steady promotion, and build a following over time, have a much better chance of success somewhere down the road. For people willing to learn this world, and do the work, there's a good chance of being able to create whatever you want to create, and make decent money at it, at some point. There are a lot of people from the crypto world doing this already, it seems. That's the upside of the NFT/crypto art scene, as far as I can tell at this point. When somebody's art NFT's take off, they freakin' LAUNCH. Ask Beeple. But his "5,000 days" collage of sketches took him 13 1/2 years to compile. So he definitely paid his dues.
So that's what I've learned so far. If you're willing to seriously market your creative work, NFT's may be really cool for you over several months time. If you're the typical artist that just puts a piece or two out there, puts two Instagram links, and hopes to make big money, don't waste your time with NFT's. I hope this was helpful for some of you.
Oh, and Twitter and Discord are the main social media platforms for NFT/crypto art. I'm on Twitter: @steveemig43 .
Investing in Stocks, commodities, NFT's, aka Non Fungible Tokens, and other investments that may be written about in this blog, are high risk activities, and you can easily lose money. Please do your own due diligence to learn about this technology, crypto art, and any other potential investment made in this blog. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only, and nothing I write or say should be taken as advice. Consult experts in any area needed before making investments.
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The views expressed in this blog are my own. The authors, speakers, or other sources I share or quote in this blog are those of the individuals, and my use does not mean they endorse my views and ideas. I consider myself a futurist, someone who studies and analyzes trends in economics, society, business, and other human endeavors. I express my opinions on how these trends and forces may play out in future months or years. I do my best to give what I see as the most likely future outcomes, but there are always many other factors which may change the course of events as we move forward in time. Please use your own best judgement, and that of experts you trust, to make any decisions regarding future business, investments, financial or other decisions.
Is this the best NFT film ever made? Well, it's shot on video, so technically it's not even a "film." But who cares? WTF is an NFT? It's a Non Fungible Token, basically a digital file linked in a blockchain, usually Ethereum, making it a one of a kind, or one of a limited series, that's digitally verifed. Who cares? The traders and flippers making tens of thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars flipping them. That's who cares. And a lot of other people, as well.
I've spent the last five years as a "working artist," using one of the worst ways to make money with artwork in today's world. It's been a learning experience. I started, literally without a dime to my name, in November of 2015. I wasn't known as an artist. But I had this unique way of drawing I called Sharpie Scribble Style. I stepped up my art game, put a couple of drawings on Facebook, and began selling them, starting at about $20. I've sold around 90 original drawings in 5 years. The problem has been that my large #sharpiescribblestyle drawings take 40-45 hours to draw, and I can charge about $150-$200 each. So I survived by doing art, mostly while homeless, drawings cool pictures for about $3-$4 an hour. That's a big part of why I'm still homeless. Yes, art is not supposed to be about money. But it's hard to draw when starving, and with no place to work. Money is a part of life, I couldn't find ANY "real job in North Carolina, when I started, so I went full bore into my Sharpie art. Now I'm known as an "artist," but also known for being homeless. I can't sell street cred, it's time to figure out a decent way to make a living in today's world.
I started hearing about something called NFT's over the last several months, and recently started looking into it. Are these art? It depends who you ask. But they are creative projects, artsy digital collectibles in many cases, and I'm a highly creative guy, so I kept learning more. If you want to learn about NFT's how they tie into art and creative work, what other potential they have, then watch this 82 minute movie. You'll learn more about this crazy tech/creative trend in an hour and a half than anywhere else.
After that you should know if they may play a roll in your life. This movie gets past the insane money being made, and looks under the hood at the NFT craze, phenomenon, or whatever you want to call it. Personally, the more I dig into this these things, the more interesting they become. Maybe after the first of December, when I have a few more bucks to work with, I can create a couple, and see what happens.
Like millions of people, I'm a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, I've been following his content for maybe 3 years now, I think. In this video he gives a fairly quick, 8 minute take on where NFT's (Non Fungible Tokens) were, back in February.
With my current, sketchy lifestyle, it's been nearly impossible for me to take in large amounts of information, for most of the Covid period. As a homeless guy who actually does some kind of "work" every day, like art and content creation, I struggled to get any decent amount of time online to learn. The little bit of time I had, 1-2 hours a day, was mostly keeping in touch with people social, and quick blog posts, content creation. So I didn't listen to much of what Gary, and many others, were doing, for several months.
Over the past few months, in the limited amount of media I did consume, I started seeing the term "NFT" in relation to artists and musicians. I knew it was somehow tied to Ethereum, but didn't have time to dig into it, and learn anything about it.
NFT stands for Non Fungible Token. Let's start with "fungible." Money, for example, is fungible, one dollar is worth as much as any other dollar. You can pay for lunch with dollar bills, coins worth a dollar, a dollar in your debit card account, or a dollar in your Apple Pay account. Any dollar is worth the same, that's what fungible means. That's a big part of the point of money.
Now one big problem for creative people, of any kind, in the digital age, is that we all can share digital files. A book, a song, a piece of art, a photo, a video clip, whatever, we can all make copies, and share the copies, and millions of copies could end up being made. Nobody gets paid, and most are pretty much worthless. Creative people, and businesses, lose lots of money because of this.
So someone figured out how to take a digital file, let's say a scan of one of my drawings, and "mint" it, tying it into a blockchain, mostly the Ethereum blockchain. Because there is only one file tied to the blockchain in that transaction, and anyone can check that, suddenly it's "scarce." It's an original. When you do that, mint a digital file into the blockchain, that's called a Non Fungible Token, of NFT, for short. You can make NFT's out of art, photos, music, video clips, contracts, things like ID, any digital file. And people can prove, "that's the REAL one." You need to make them out of your own work, that you own, or else you get into copyright trouble.
This started among tech geeks in 2016-2017, and different projects started to happen. Crypto Kitties was one of the first. Crypto Punks, a group of 10,000, unique, 24 bit characters, was another. That one was actually tied to Bitcoin. Another early big one was Bored Ape Yacht Club, funny looking apes in clothes, all with different features. The Crypto Punks were given away, for something like 11 cents in fees. People did what people do, they collected them, traded them, and started selling them, and an aftermarket developed. Even though these are just files, the blockchain tie makes each unique, and potentially valuable, and this year they've been selling for downright ludicrous prices.
One of the 10,000 Crypto Punks sold for $530 million. Again, they were free, with an 11 cent service charge, in 2017. One of the Bored Apes sold for $3.4 million. A Crypto Kitty sold for over $3.4 million. Digital graphic designer Beeple, (who says he's not an "artist") sold a compilation of 5,000 of his digital sketches, for over $69 million in March. You get the idea. If you think the real estate market is crazy, it's tame next to the high end of the Crypto Art/NFT market.
The NBA did an NFT project called Top Shots, and raked in over $100 million. Gary Vaynerchuk did a launch of 10,000 NFT's, based on his own doodled characters. He made about $20 million, instantly formed a huge community of his followers, and then sold 5 of the original sketches in a Christie's auction for $1.2 million. So that's the insane side of the NFT boom, the 2021 NFT Art/Collectibles market.
On the much more sane side of things, a whole bunch of artists and musicians have minted NFT tokens of their work, and put them up on several market sites, kind of like eBay for NFT's. Most sell for $40 to maybe $300, plus some fees, when they sell. They pay (almost exclusively) in Ether (Ethereum crypto). You have to buy crypto, get a wallet, and then sign up to the marketplaces, to create, buy, sell, or trade NFT's. But there's a lot of that going on.
NFT's have a whole bunch of other potential, as well. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Shark Tank guy, is stoked on NFT's. He sees a future where they may be the standard type of concert or sports event ticket. You may get bonus, digital stuff, with your game or concert NFT. They could be used for ID's, passports, and things like that some day. You can take your NFT into vitural worlds, there are actually virtual art galleries displaying NFT'sright now. You know that Metaverse thing Mark Zuckerburg is talking about, these are part of that concept.
So that is a basic look at the emerging world of NFT's. I've been digging into this world for about a week now, to see if it makes sense for any of my creative work. We'll see where that leads. If any of this interests you, watch the video above, check out the links, and you can find a ton more info on YouTube.
