With non-fungible tokens or NFTs becoming a new emerging part of the fintech economy, one of the next major recording artists to participate will, reportedly, be none other than Calvin Broadus.
The Los Angeles-based artist known colloquially as Snoop Dogg is due to shortly unveil an NFT sale of an artwork called “A Journey with the Dogg” in conjunction with Crypto.com April 2.
“I’ve seen the game change over the years from analog to digital and I’m always happier when the technology lets the fans get to connect with the artists,” the Dogg said in a press statement. “NFTs are an amazing innovation, and it is an honor to do my first drop with Crypto.com/NFT.”
Though somewhat uniquely attuned to fintech trends for his genre, Broadus is not the only individual artist to take note of the NFT’s emergence.
“Excited to announce that my first NFT drop is taking place on Saturday at 2:00 pm EST on @niftygateway,” tweeted award-winning songster The Weeknd recently. “The collection will feature new music and limited edition art. I developed the artwork with Strange Loop Studios.”
All of this indicates the NFT trend is catching on.
However, NFT’s have been controversial, especially on the investor side, where people are plunking down a lot of cash for a somewhat chimerical asset.
Many detractors point out that some of these licenses go to something that you could just view for free on YouTube, while others go a step further and highlight how NFTs are based on URLs and hashes that could easily go away due to changes in Internet domain registration.
Still, there’s an appetite for these types of assets, as shown by trend measurers at Christie’s and elsewhere.
“After a flurry of more than 180 bids in the final hour, a JPG file made by Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, was sold on Thursday by Christie’s in an online auction for $69.3 million with fees,” wrote Scott Reyburn March 11 at NYT, describing one such prominent NFT sale. “The price was a new high for an artwork that exists only digitally, beating auction records for physical paintings by museum-valorized greats like J.M.W. Turner, Georges Seurat and Francisco Goya. Bidding at the two-week Beeple sale, consisting of just one lot, began at $100.”
How long will this last? Is it a tulip mania? You decide.