Replicable JPEGs Now an Asset Class
Nothing perhaps better encapsulates the mad libs year we lived through than the rise of the NFT. (Insert meme) sold for (insert dollar amount equivalent to working many years at minimum wage) to (insert random string of numbers and/or crypto villain) became a tried and true template.
The year began with a Nyan Cat GIF selling for $587,000, continued with a Beeple JPEG (it’s not even animated!) selling for$69 million, and has somehow ended with people paying hundreds of thousands for shitty drawings of bored apes. Gizmodo staff writer Tom McKay sold a tweet of his cat, too. (At $50, it was a relative bargain for such an excellent cat.) In between, we were treated to a slew of climate, copyright, and What Is Art, Really discourse. Could good things come out of NFTs? Sure. But the current dominant aesthetic and investor class snapping up NFTs leave a bit to be desired. Gawker published what may be the single clearest sentence about NFTs earlier this month: “It’s as if the whole discipline of photography consisted of pictures of George Eastman with his shirt off holding a samurai sword.” Which honestly, how is that not an NFT yet? Would right-click the shit out of that.
