In a world awash with acronyms, there’s one that has a particular power to make hackles rise, especially in the arts: NFT. Even spelled out – non-fungible token – it remains obscure, an unpoetic intruder from deep tech. Difficult to understand, difficult to access (unless you’re a so-called digital native), surrounded by jargon and hype, NFTs, for those who favour “real” art in the “real” world, are infinitely off-putting, a nuisance they hope will disappear. As one gallerist, speaking off the record, put it, “It has no f—ing relevance to art and it does my head in. The prices that are out there, it’s just such BS.”
That gallerist may well be experiencing a warm flush of schadenfreude now in light of the recent cryptocurrency crash. Amid the collapse, the backlash against cryptocurrencies – which some critics have labelled as nothing more than a Ponzi scheme – has been swift and severe. But does the crypto-crash signal the end of NFT “art”? That’s a wish that looks unlikely to be granted any time soon.
Popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs now sell for millions of dollars each.
“We’ve actually seen an uptick in sales since the crash,” says Michelle Grey, the Sydney-based co-founder of Culture Vault. The online platform seeks to sell “high-quality” NFTs rather than the more insipid examples circulating: notably the “bored apes” the international celebrity set has taken up with…
