Digital art auctions are growing in stature by the day. In a world where the mediums of art and tech collide, digital art is fast becoming the new trend to start gaining traction. In the first week of September 2020 NFT sales were over $1 million, with this figure approximately doubling in the first week of October 2020 (Non-Fungible).
Interest started gaining significant traction on July when the NFT art uction record was smashed with “Picasso’s Bull” selling for over $55,000. Following on from this, a Bitcoin-centric digital piece titled “Portraits of a Mind” by Ben Gentilli, (who works under the pseudonym Robert Alice), displays Bitcoin’s 12.3-million-digit code across 40 separate paintings.
The artwork is supported in each piece by a NFT token that provides provenance to the owner’s work and allows future buyers the ability to track previous transactions. This piece sold for over $130,000.
Delta Time, an NFT-powered racing game, has recently auctioned of an NFT representing 5% of Monaco F1 in-game track for $222,000. The Circuit de Monaco comprises 330 separate NFTs of different rarities that include Rare, Legendary, Epic and Apex. Rewards / dividends are earned from activity that takes place on a users land, in a similar concept to that of Decentraland.
Even celebrities have been cashing in on digital art, with Paris Hilton selling a drawing of a cat for 40 Ethereum.
NFT sales have not only just come around recently. If you can cast your mind back to September 2018 we have the cryptokitties boom at the pinnacle of the last cryptocurrency bull market. There were skeptics that were critical of the CryptoKitties craze, which seen a collectible named “Dragon” selling for $172,000. This was then followed on by a piece of virtual land on Decentraland selling for $215,000. These prices seemed crazy to some people back then, however large digital art sales are going up still and this shows that the trend is growing stronger. This continues to grow further as seen in the number of marketplaces and digital auctions that becoming available, allow consumers to purchase digital art.
The potential opportunities for NFTs is almost immeasurable. Although there will no doubt be some regulatory barriers along the way with aspects of NFT application, the record soaring sales are driving the the technology forward. Large venture capitalists such as Morgan Creek are starting to become involved in this space and this will only add to greater exposure of the potential benefits that NFTs can offer.
We are at the start of a very exciting and creative journey!