If you’re familiar with the crypto world, chances are you know about non-fungible tokens and their impact on the art world. If you’re not familiar with NFTs, today is a great day to learn about this highly lucrative marketplace that is quickly gaining popularity among artists, digital creators, and celebrities worldwide. If you’re an artist, you can stand to gain tremendously from understanding the basics of NFTs and how they can benefit your art.
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What are NFTs?
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are encrypted digital assets bought and sold on blockchain networks using cryptocurrencies. NFTs can represent real-world assets and can therefore be used in virtually any transaction. Though NFTs have been around since 2014, when they were first used on the Ethereum blockchain, they have since gained tremendous popularity for their use in the buying and selling of digital artworks. The main advantage of utilizing NFT technology is to generate scarcity in the digital marketplace. By uniquely encrypting each digital asset, your new NFT is now a totally unique and irreplicable digital item with its own inherent value.
How NFTs Benefit Artists
When an artist mints an NFT, they are encrypting the original code of their artwork file, their information as creator, and any other rules for the resale of that NFT. This allows digital artists to have more control over their intellectual property once it’s uploaded online. Questions of originality, value, and provenance of digital art have been solved with the introduction of NFTs. When minting an NFT, artists can also choose to receive royalty payments as the NFT is resold in the future, creating more financial fairness and equity for creators. But it’s not just digital artists who can benefit from this technology. Blockchains can encrypt any file type, meaning musicians, filmmakers, and other creators can also benefit from this technology. The diversity of digital assets on NFT marketplaces is a significant incentive for investors to participate in NFT collection.
NFTs can help musicians own their works without depending on record labels or other intermediaries who may otherwise take large percentages of profits or end up owning the rights to the music altogether. Music NFT projects can be viewed differently depending on how they are accessed, so the content can still be shared across the web, but the rights to the content and the original file will remain with the owner of the NFT on the blockchain. NFTs have the ability to ensure that musicians and other artists are more fairly compensated for their work than ever before.
NFT Hype
NFT sales jumped from $95 million in 2020 to $25 billion in 2021. This unprecedented growth shows the hype around this new marketplace. Traditional art markets were generally inaccessible and too expensive for average collectors. The NFT marketplace provides investors of all backgrounds and worldwide the opportunity to participate in the buying and selling of these digital art assets. Celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Justin Bieber, Steph Curry, and more are heavily investing in NFT collections or launching their own to stake their claim in the new art marketplace.
If you’re an artist or creator of any kind, you could stand to benefit highly from entering the NFT marketplace. Artists can easily mint and list their digital assets through an NFT marketplace such as FTX. Start investing in NFTs today to diversify your investment portfolio or protect your digital intellectual property.