BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS IT, AND WHY IS IT TAKING OVER THE CREATIVE WORLD?

Article written by Studio BLUP features writer Danielle Temeng 

If you haven’t yet heard the terms ‘cryptocurrency’, ‘Bitcoin’, or the latest craze ‘NFT’ recently, then it’s likely you’ve been living under a rock as search volumes for this coveted new term has skyrocketed just this year alone. With the number of weekly users across NFT platforms reaching an all-time high and surpassing 654,000 this month – sports collectible site NBA Top Shot making up the majority of this, the official Google search volume hit ‘100’ for the week beginning March 8^th, with that figure growing from a rating of 15 in mid-February (search volumes are between 0-100, with 100 being the maximum in each time period). As we delve into exactly what an NFT is, how to obtain one and how it’s being used in the celebrity, creative and sports worlds we will also look at the challenges, the cryptocurrency, and the decentralised finance world it faces.

An NFT (non-fungible token) is a digital asset that can represent any real-world object such as art and music, to trading cards or virtual horses, but can also present itself as an exclusive digitised art collectable (such as one of the most popular NFT projects – ‘Hashmasks’). The nature of these assets is that they are singular – their likeness can be replicated, photographed, or copied but they can never be duplicated due to their unique and verifiable structure. Built and residing on the Ethereum blockchain, these tokens, which also include the BLUP’s very own NFT, are limitless in value and derive such due to their authenticity, media attention and ‘hype’, with the most expensive NFT (‘Everydays: the First 5000 Days’ by Beeple) being sold for $69.3M in a Christie’s auction, this is followed by digitised collectable ‘CryptoPunk #3100’ at $7.58M.

Image Source – The Hashmasks Store

As cryptocurrencies and alternative financial products become household terms, it’s become easier than ever to obtain these coveted coins and tokens and is simpler for retail investors (you and I) to get involved in a side of finance that many have never been exposed to previously. As of today, retail investors occupy a little over 23% of the US trading market, according to The Financial Times, this is double the numbers seen in 2019 and can largely be attributed to more downtime in the pandemic to build an interest in personal finance, and the surge caused by the GameStop frenzy at the beginning of 2021. With a range of apps available at our fingertips, such as recently IPO’d Coinbase, which is the first of its kind to do so, investing in cryptocurrency has never been easier. But the buck doesn’t stop there – innovative financial tech sites such as OpenSea which dubs itself “the world’s first and largest NFT marketplace” allows the seamless display, discovery, buying and selling of NFTs and is the first port of call for obtaining NFTs, but doesn’t overshadow the growing area of sites which specialise in competitive sports such as the NBA, and even horse breeding and racing.

So, is this all just one big buzz then – a fun way to hold your invested money? And why is the creative world becoming so heavily invested in this relatively new and certainly “hyped” term? Let’s start by noting that the art world works primarily on three facets: originality, exclusivity, and hype; NFTs and their popularity work in the exact same way. With its one-of-a-kind nature, shiny newness, and co-signs from famed personalities such as Damien Hirst (who is to release his first NFT project ‘The Currency’) and Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter (who sold his very first tweet as an NFT at $2.9M) enhancing its validity, cryptocurrencies and its sub-sectors are incredibly in the spotlight right now. This makes it the perfect technological advancement to amalgamate itself into the creative and entertainment industries.

As exciting as this new advancement is, there are, of course, questions posed on the feasibility and security of NFTs and alternative currencies – as with any new financial product on the market. One question is the assurance of value over time, can this be guaranteed or is this just an over-inflation due to its current cult status? With cryptocurrency controlled by a decentralised finance system (meaning no central bank, no customer support, and no regulatory bodies) investors and governments remain sceptical as they figure out the long-term usability of these products, the overall safety of investments, and how to avoid projects and systems collapsing along with people’s hard-earned money. An example of this was witnessed last week with Bicton’s crash which wiped over $300 billion off the crypto market, all caused by one strategically worded Elon Musk tweet. In the same breath, one of Turkey’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Thodex, seemingly disappearing overnight with its 27-year-old CEO fleeing the country and losses of almost over $2 billion of user funds projected.

With the alternative financial market still booming despite its uncertainties, in this digital age advancements are yet to keep coming and expansions inevitable for the foreseeable future. To further understand the cryptocurrency & NFT space, overall, education is key. Do your research (understanding blockchain is a great place to start), invest cautiously and always seek professional advice with any new (or existing) financial product.

*Please note the above information is provided for entertainment purposes only and is in no way offered as financial advice; investment is risky, you can lose some or all of what you put in. Please contact a trained finance professional before you chose to invest your money.

Article written by Danielle Temeng (@__daniafia)

Want to write for theblup.com? Contact talent@studioblup.com

A self-contained metaverse featuring everything from 2D images to 3D experiences.

The latest innovation in the digital collectible market is a whole digital museum in the form of an NFT.

The Museum of Digital Life (MoDaL), created by XR studio Delta Reality, is a self-contained metaverse. The virtual museum, at the time of its launch, currently holds 12 art pieces within its digital confines. This includes 2D images and videos, and 3D interactive objects and experiences. A collective of artists and engineers came together to design the space. MoDaL is a blend of the artistic and the technological, in one virtual environment.

“Digital art and NFTs have an enormous undiscovered potential, so in creating MoDaL, we wanted to show that by pushing the limits of both technology and artistic expression,” says Darian Skarica, Delta Reality’s founder. “Our goal was to show just how vast the scope of digital art is. That is also why we created it as an NFT of MoDaL, to make sure it has life of its own and grows with every change of hands”.

The “growth” stems from a fundamental feature of MoDaL: it’s an ever-evolving space, one that will continuously fleshed out with new works of art, animations, and environments.

At first glance, the museum is truly a digital haven. There’s a contemporary minimalist aesthetic, compounded by glowing forests, integrated gardens, and polychromatic works of animation — a pretty far cry from the museums most of us are used to.

If you buy the museum, you would have access to all the project files, assets, and codes within MoDaL. The future owner won’t be able to autonomously modify or add onto the metaverse, but have the chance to do so with Delta Reality. A chain of collaboration will occur with each sell.

So what can you do inside? Well, the digital museum functions as a space that can be explored at will. You can also interact with other guests inside.

MoDaL is up for sale on the Delta Reality website.

Sold for $4 million in a complex deal involving crypto.

Seven years ago, the Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” was created as a protest against the devaluation of music in the digital era. Before long it got caught up in a tale of capitalist villainy when it was purchased by Martin Shkreli, the price-gouging young pharmaceutical speculator who was later convicted of securities fraud.

“We’re about to put out a piece of art like nobody else has done in the history of music…This is like someone having the scepter of an Egyptian king.” — RZA, The Abbott, head of the Wu-Tang Clan, 2015

The two-CD, 31 track album was conceptualised and then produced by Cilvaringz alongside RZA in secret over the course of six years starting in 2007 and includes every member of the Wu-Tang Clan, sans Ol’ Dirty Bastard who died in 2004. Once completed, they pressed a single copy to be  encased in a leather covered box with an interior nickel/silver-plated “box-within-a-box-within-a-box” made by British-Moroccan artist Yahya. Ownership of this monument is accompanied by strict legal repercussions against any improper digitisation and/or distribution of the work.

As told by Chief Pleasing Officer of PleasrDAO Jamis Johnson, ‘The history between inception and the present of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin reads like pulp fiction. Martin Shkreli, aka “Pharma Bro” and prominent internet villain, purchased the album anonymously at auction in 2015 for $2 million – making it the most expensive work of music ever sold. He threatened to destroy the album and allegedly used the jewelled CD case as a coaster. Shkreli, notorious for hiking the price of pharmaceutical drugs, was eventually found guilty of fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison. In 2018 a court ordered the forfeiture of Shkreli’s assets which included Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The album sat in a temperature controlled vault in the basement of the Department of Justice, until now.’

Although “Once Upon a Time” predates the recent craze for NFTs — “nonfungible tokens,” or digital items created using blockchain computer code, preventing them from being duplicated and allowing their provenance to be tracked — the PleasrDAO’s goal of recapturing the value of artistic scarcity in the digital age has led it to become seen as a kind of precursor.

‘The album itself is kind of the O.G. NFT,’ said Jamis Johnson who was proudly wearing a Wu-Tang T-shirt.

To tie “Once Upon a Time” to the digital realm, an NFT was created to stand as the ownership deed for the physical album, said Peter Scoolidge, a lawyer who specialises in cryptocurrency and NFT deals and was involved in the transaction. The 74 members of PleasrDAO — the abbreviation in its name identifies it as a “decentralised autonomous organisation” — share collective ownership of the NFT deed, and thus own the album.

‘Thirteen years ago, I had an idea everyone said was crazy. I started producing this album on a moonshot and after some hard early yards, it took on a life of its own. The Clan made it real, Martin made it notorious, the Feds made it legendary and PleasrDAO brought it full circle.’ — Cilvaringz, Producer and Conceptualizer of ‘Once Upon A Time In Shaolin’

A lot of things in life are temporary, fleeting, impermanent. But remember this – just like blockchain, Wu Tang is forever.