Up to now, Blockchain has been the major issue, but since I’m assured that Ethereum is handling it, I’ll put it aside for the moment, willing to take it on trust for the moment, watching and waiting, listening for the latest news about Shard Technology replacing blockchain. Vigilant Always, I’ll continue to watch the progress of this project.
In the meantime, I’m taking a few small semi-furtive and very tentative steps into the world of NFT art.
What? You don’t know the difference is between ordinary NFTs and my hardware-stored Wallet Cards? Okay, let’s start at the top:
First of all, NFTs are all about money, and my Wallet Cards are all about the art.
In the case of a Wallet Card, you get a printable .jpg file, background material in the form of ebooks such as my scrapbooks related to various art events in my career as an artist.
I can also provide audio tracks, videos and all sorts of things, and what’s more, you can display the Wallet Card on an easel or mounted on the wall or placed on a bedside table.
YOU OWN THE FILES and you have the actual files on the Wallet Card, and what’s more, if you want to protect the collectibility of your Wallet Card, you can get it slabbed by a third-party collectibles grader.
Of course, it’d be a smart thing to copy the files off into your computer before you do that.
Now, with an ordinary Crypto Blockchain style NFT, you get just the blockchain address, that’s it. If you want to actually SEE the picture and make it into a metal print for your wall, you’ll need to download it from somewhere on the web, and the same with games, movies, anything with a big file.
In my Wallet Card I can deliver up to 128 GB of data. How about them apples?
So the differences are vast, and the NFT falls far short of my artistic expectations, but it’s not about the art, it’s about the money — think of NFTs as a sort of artistic lottery where there are very few actual winners.
Of course, you can make a decent living off of NFTs by selling them for anywhere from $25 bucks a pop up to a few hundred dollars.
It’s not uncommon to see a LOT of underbid auctions on OpenSea.io and with no reserve or a low reserve, there’s a chance to sell a whole bingy-bongy bunch of NFTs for a smaller amount than the $69 Million dollars you’ve been thinking the universe owes you.
So then why bother with NFTs? Simple.NFTs can make you INSTANTLY rich, and it can happen to ANYONE, with or without artistic talent.
It doesn’t take skills, it takes courage.
You want some motivation? Okay, here’s motivation enough to get anyone off the couch:
There is no other art market at this time. Galleries are dead, and mail-order is even deader.
The thing is, your work will most likely languish in the showcase and never sell a single one.
NFTs are not art. They provide you with a “Lightning Bolt” of improbability that your raffle ticket will hit the big one.
What are the chances of you getting hit by lightning? I can tell you that it’s far more likely that you will be struck by lightning than that you’ll sell one of your NFTs for a million dollars, but here’s the thing — you can TRY.
It’s like with the #Shorts — you probably won’t ever hit the million views mark, but you really do have an equal opportunity to strike it richly in the youtube “number of views” department.
On OpenSea, you get the chance to mint hundreds of NFTs absolutely free.
You only pay when and if the piece sells, which is likely to never happen in your case, unless you have a lot of well-to-do friends in your inner social circle.
Now, if you don’t mess with the auction by accepting offers before the auction closes, you won’t ever have to pay the transfer fees at all, from what I understand — and gas fees are on the way out, anyway.
So the idea is to cash in on the NFT frenzy, but also to keep your artistic senses, which means don’t follow the latest fad and fancy, just be true to yourself, to your own aims.
Now, here’s the deal — you’re basically being given the chance to pull the handle on the slot machine endlessly and free of charge until you hit a jackpot.
Why would you say no?
Here’s the opportunity that every artist dreams about — the chance to get your work out there and appreciated.
Artwork helps to calm and settle the space, but the artists need encouragement and support.
Actually, the support comes first.
The Greed Factor figures into this stuff greatly. Just as it always is, a booming art market is tied to some currency advantage somewhere.
In the 1980s, it was a 2:1 ratio of German and Japanese currency against the U.S. Dollar, and you could buy an artwork in one country where your currency doubled in value just by entering the country, and take the artwork to another country where it could be sold for double what it would bring in the United States.
That’s how it worked back then. Today, things are different. It’s the CRYPTOCURRENCY market that’s driving some part of the art market, notably the art that is expressed in virtual reality — in short, VaporWare.
Most people today are totally blissfully unaware of cryptocurrency, and couldn’t care less, but they soon will, when there isn’t any paper or metal or plastic money floating around anymore.
It’s far too easy to counterfeit a $20 bill these days. It’s actually LESS risky to have your cash held as cryptocurrency in a bank’s electronic vault than it is to hide your dollar bills in or under the mattress.
In addition, if you look at Ethereum’s chart, you’ll see a rising tide of interest in it among the buyers of cryptocurrency — it’s gaining favor, and even more so now that it has a major art market tied directly to it, giving Ethereum holders a Place to Shop.
That is the key, and right now, there’s little else to buy with that stuff, so artists have it good for the moment, but that won’t last — I have the entire weight of history on my side in that wager.
So there’s a real possibility that you could actually sell one of YOUR stupid art pieces for a million bucks.
It’s not an impossible dream. It CAN happen. It HAS happened to lots of kids starting out in the art market on a digital budget. If they can do it, so can you, if you believe in yourself.
That’s always the bug in the ointment, isn’t it? No matter where you go, there you are. So you might as well dig in and get to work.
Start rummaging around in your stored graphics for some images, and if you don’t have a supply handy, generate some or find some online that are copyright-free, but beware of phishing sites that want your data. Tread carefully and be alert.
I prefer my own sources for images — that way, I know there’s no copyright issue coming from out of left field.
Okay, go to my workshop and learn the easy way to post your NFTs on OpenSea.io and possibly strike it rich by doing so.
You’ll need an interesting title and description, but your work doesn’t end there. You still need to get out there and HUSTLE, meaning social media needs to be tickled once again.
Your work will only sell at first to family and friends. It’s up to YOU to see that this is not a permanent condition.
If you can gain the attention of the powers-that-be, you can get some traction in art sales, but if, like most of us, you’re not “news-worthy”, you won’t make the headlines, and thus you won’t have the traffic to your sale page.
I have a solution for that — but you’ll need to get famous first. See, that’s the Catch-22 about it — you can’t get famous until you’re famous, and you can’t be famous unless you’re already famous.
Don’t try to figure it out, just drum up some business.
If you can manage it, be controversial, but that doesn’t work very well when there’s no one around, does it?
Money drives the art market, and if people become convinced that your NFTs are going to go up in value, they will buy.
So, gosh, it seems simple from there, doesn’t it? All you need is to convince them that your artwork is going up in value … but isn’t there a law against that?
You bet there is. You can’t claim any investment value for a work of art, period, and that includes Rembrandts and Van Goghs and Renoirs, because nobody can predict the art tastes and values a century down the road.
There may not even BE any art around, if certain iconoclastic religious fanatics come into power in the West, which looks more likely every day, and I’m talking about American Born-Again Christians mostly, although every religion has its weirdos, including us.
Don’t get caught up in the frenzy of organic life — people just love to fight and to gamble, which is why the NFT is so popular — it’s a way of getting rich quick, without putting out hardly anything except a little time and energy.
Look, if you wanted to sell a painting for a million dollars on eBay, you couldn’t. They have a limit to the amount you’re allowed to ask for in any given month, and although you can build that limit up, it’s a slow process amounting to years.
I’ve been all through that, and I’m not going for it — and furthermore, eBay is a LOUSY place to sell art. There’s so many fakes you can’t find the real stuff in the crowd of crap.
So where do you have a venue? And we already know that digital art will outsell material art this next year.
I say “Get Thee to ocean-spray!” — no, make that OpenSea.io — and put up some things and see what it’s like to be a living artist.
You no longer need to pass an art exam in some art academy to be a world-class artist. Just plain do it and get out there with it, on social media, in youtube #Shorts and on OpenSea.io — get out there and take the knocks.
Make a commentary on your world. Open a pathway to other worlds. Open the heart of the viewer. Make the Soul sing. Create a window into Eternity.
That’s the job of an artist. Are you up to the job?
So make a NFT and put it up there and sell the heck out of it, and get yourself rolling with the energy of the universe, go with the flow and mutate with the flux!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby