CryptoArt

Bumped with this one the last day Crypto Art the following transcript from Mankind explain a bit what’s under the movement.

Transcript

Just like all cats are mammals, but not all mammals are cats. All Crypto Art are NFTs but not all NFTs are Crypto Art. I’ve made a video on basics of NFTs or non fungible tokens, you can go check that out. But today I’m here to explain the basics of what Crypto Art is, because Crypto Art is a digital artwork that is linked to a non fungible token.

Traditionally Crypto Art was related to the rise of crypto currencies like bitcoin and ethereum and had symbolism around that, but it’s now more loosely accepted as any digital art that has been tokenized on the the blockchain in order to associate digital proof of ownership.

So what does that mean? It means what we’ve taken for granted in the real world, that a physical painting can be authenticated and owned now has the equivalent in the digital world. This is huge because this has never been possible for digital artists in the past. A token acting as a digital certificate for a digital file securely held on a permanent network of computers now allows digital artists to sell their work like never before.

Crypto art is not just the digital file. It is the digital file backed by the NFT. So just like you can go online and find M. C. Escher ‘drawing hands’ and download it and print it, you would never try to convince anyone it’s the original, because you don’t own the letter of authenticity. The same now goes for digital art, everyone can see or download it, but only one can prove they own it.

The question of the value of owning a digital artwork now lies with the market. The market of collectors. Beeple sold this work for $1 and a couple of months later sold this one for $777k. Paris Hilton drew this picture of her cat and it sold for $17k. Justin Roiland the creator of Rick and Morty drew this sketch and it sold for $90k. Of course if you already have a fanbase, anything you sell will be worth more. But even small artists can find collectors that just like the art or want to support their work.

Pop art used to be disregarded as cheap and distasteful, Street art used to just be vandalism, and until recently, digital art was just for Instagram likes.

When you mint an NFT for Crypto Art you’re not giving away any copyright or rigths of reproduction. You are creating a new thing, a new product. That buyer can then enjoy it, and sell it whenever they please.

So where can you sell? There’s an ever changing list of places to buy and sell on the primary or secondary market so I’ll keep a list below in the description. I’ve also made a video on popular ones in the past.

Most Crypto Art sites currently use Ethereum to do their transactions so you need to be set up with an Ethereum wallet to connect and transfer to. You also need a little Ethereum to start with in your wallet to pay for minting or transaction fees. You can always transfer your Ethereum back out to your exchange of choice to cash out to FIAT or Dollars whenever you want.

In the future Crypto Art will just be called art. But at the moment, digital art is going through a movement led by changes in technology. The struggle of the artist will still remain, to create something with meaning and value, to find an audience or collectors. But the success of crypto currency in general has brought a wave of investors with big wallets to make a splash and bring eyeballs to the space with large transactions. The art world is a way to legitimize the space with creative thinkers, emotional ideas, entertainment and connection to culture that is worth investing in.

Early creators and collectors alike will be rewarded for their involvement in this movement.

What is NFT ?

NFT stands for Non Fungible Token.

Fungible means something is able to be exchanged or substituted and will hold the same value. It’s interchangeable like the dollar, gold, casino chips, bitcoin, ethereum or frequent flyer loyalty points.

If I lend you 10 dollars cash and you return to me two 5 dollar bank notes, I’m fine with that because even though they are different, they hold the same total value.

So non-fungile obviously means it’s an asset that can’t be substituted. It has unique attributes that makes it different from something else in the same asset class. Like a painting, a theatre ticket, a house, a video game skin, a trademark or a CryptoKitty which was the first real use case to take off on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017.

Some of these assets are physical and tangible and others are digital and intangible.

So NFTs are non-fungible tokens. ‘Token’ refers to a digital certificate stored on a secure distributed database called a blockchain.

NFTs are digital assets. Publicly verifiable intellectual property authenticated on a blockchain.

A popular place to currently browse a variety of NFTs is on http://OpenSea.io​

It’s an exciting space, I believe the NFT space will continue to grow in the coming years with some popular use cases being: Digital Art, Virtual Land, Gaming, Collectibles, Finance and much more.

List of Crypto Art Platforms

Youtube Reference Video