I’ll be first to admit that I don’t understand cryptocurrency or NFTs, or for that matter, algorithms and blockchains. But then again, I struggle to understand many tech-related things and simply accept that somewhere in the world there are people who do. I have a nerdy friend who positively drools at the very mention of Bitcoins and who has tried and tested every piece of software on the market as a matter of course. And given the chance, he will tell you all about it. So be it. He doesn’t in his turn go to the theatre, see performances or visit exhibitions let alone understand what artists do but he collects Star Wars memorabilia, has a Doctor Who pencil case and wears super hero t-shirts. We both accept that we have very little in common other than living on the same planet.

When I first heard about NFTs I was incredulous. The tight group of white male tech enthusiasts living in Silicon Valley, among other places, has invented another way of making money, in fact, of minting money using art. No doubt they were all brought up playing monopoly shortly followed by the stock exchange, which I also don’t understand. Oh, I can elucidate examples of speculation throughout history from Dutch bulbs to the South Seas Company underwriting a war with Spain, to Dotcom investment but they didn’t impact my world at all. I am no gambler and was brought up with a work ethic that lent itself to payment for honest labour. Perhaps I am out of touch with reality and always have been.

So Beeple sold his NFT for $69m, a work touted as potentially the greatest work of art of the 21st century which according to one pundit will be worth $1billion the next time it is traded if the NFT bubble doesn’t burst in the meantime. Now of course Beeple didn’t get all of the $69m by the time Christies [insisted on cash] and the tax man took its share – assuming of course that cryptocurrency is real enough to generate tax dollars that are actually collectible. However, apart from what would one person do with $69m given the example of lottery winners worldwide on the one hand, who may well spend it on holidays, yachts and booze, and tech billionaires [hoard it] on the other, how can any piece of art be worth that? There are no materials to account for, no framing, no postage and no gallery commissions. According to recent statistics though, the gallery system is facing poverty with sales of only $59m in 2020 so maybe Beeple owes it to the industry to support them with a loan or a bursary.

My overall scepticism was driven to new heights when I read the analysis of Beeple’s work by several people who had bothered to go through all 5000 frames of Everydays. He calls himself a digital artist and while I accept the notion of digital art from what I can see the 5000 frames are appropriations with a Trumpian preoccupation in the later stages. Some are Trump offensive and some just plain offensive. Art? Something tells me that it’s not. The greatest piece of art…….hardly. To call this anything of the kind is essentially to insult every artist who walks, or has walked, the planet. Even the NFT priesthood want nothing to do with it since all they are interested in is authentication, originality and the equivalent of a certificate that guarantees it. Art doesn’t come into it. A new way of selling art? All that is being sold is the token or certificate. A writer claimed that it will speed up the process of artist/gallery/buyer/commission/paying the artist. That may be true given how slow some galleries have been in coughing up anything in the way of money for artists. Once a ‘work’ is in the system and cosily placed in the blockchain, of course, the uniqueness of the ‘work’ will guarantee a profit is to be made with each new buyer. This isn’t about art. This is a marketing campaign and despite the NFT society wanting to remove the idea of gatekeeping on digital anything [currency, art] it is still a small group controlling the whole NFT enterprise and keeping it ‘pure’. When Damian Hirst moves on from sharks in formaldehyde to producing digital art that can be blockchained as NFTs, maybe the nomenclature of artist can be legitimately employed but whether it will do the art world any good is another matter. It may well make Damian Hirst rich and fulfill the great dream of not just notoriety but cultural longevity against all the odds but I’m willing to bet that all that history will record is one grey and saggy shark suspended in a perspex/glass case as an example of 80s indulgence and preoccupations with maudlin thoughts of the short life span allocated to all of use which at its end will obviate the need for all that accumulated wealth.

To add to the overall argument, it is worth quoting Kelani Nichole, who first priced and sold artworks in bitcoin in 2013 as the owner of the Transfer Gallery who said that ‘it’s absurdity at every level of implementation [the auction sale]. They, Christies, sold a JPEG. This was a $69 million marketing stunt.’ Behind this statement were two ideas.

In technology, as in art, what something is, is based on how it is done. Gathering a load of appropriated JPGS doesn’t qualify as art or NFTs. Then again, crypto-fluent observers judged that the Christies sale invalidated any claim that Beeple’s Everydays was an NFT in the first place. Christies effectively became the gatekeeper that is no anathema to the priesthood of NF purity. I’m happy to let them fight that out as with the legal fraternity weighing in on copyright issues to do with intellectual property. I really don’t care who owns Everydays or what they do with it.

Will I be joining the stampede to produce an NFT? Doubtful. Will any of this affect what I do as an artist? Assuredly, no.