Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, made history in March when he sold his NFT titled “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for more than $ 69 million at an auction at Christie’s.
NFTs, or invisible tokens, are special digital assets, consisting of jpegs and video clips, which are represented by code recorded on the blockchain, a decentralized digital ledger that who records transactions. Each NFT can be bought and sold, just as a physical asset, but the blockchain allows the ownership and legitimacy of each to be tracked.
As a medium, NFTs are becoming very active. Nink Winkelmann – a jpeg file of digital collage with 5,000 daily futures images he made every day from May 1, 2007 through January 7, 2021 – made him a very wealthy man. (The buyer was Vignesh Sundaresan, who founded the Metapurse NFT project.)
But there’s one key thing about buying NFTs, including the sale of its eight-figure NFT, which most people misunderstand, Winkelmann tells CNBC Make It .
“I think people don’t realize when you buy, that you have the brand [or NFT]. You can display the token and show yourself the token, however, you do not own the copyright “to the art represented by the token,” says Winkelmann, 37.
Just like “if you buy a [physical] painting, you bought the picture, “he says.” You didn’t buy the copyright for that picture. And so, it’s very similar to those signals. “
The NFT “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” was sold at Christie’s Winkelmann, for example, incorporating a large jpeg file and Ethereum blockchain code, but did not include copyright ownership of the art .
In fact, on Monday, Winkelmann sold one of the individual images in “Everydays” called “Ocean Front,” which he created on 4,344 days in March 2019. He sold for $ 6 million on Nifty Gateway market NFT ( where money went to the Open) Earth Foundation, a non – profit organization that aims to develop an environmentally friendly digital infrastructure).
Sundaresan, the NFT buyer from the Christie auction, would not be allowed to sell any of the individual images. On the other hand, Winkelmann, as the copyright holder, reserves the right to continue to sell the images (or “shares” as they are called) from his work, for a profit.
“That’s what’s hard to understand about this,” Winkelmann says.
While it may be weird or wise to just buy a jpeg, “honestly, at the end of the day, if someone pays for it, you can sell it,” says Winkelmann.
Even without copyright ownership, Winkelmann still sees NFTs as a valuable asset, as interests between the artist and the buyer align, he says.
“I want to see theirs [NFT] go up in value and they want me to see success as an artist because it is a win. We are on the same team here. “
Overall, “I’m very, very bullish on technology and space in the long run,” Winkelmann says. “I just think people have to be careful right now because it’s in a hurry and it’s so new. It’s very speculative.”
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