The first blossoming flower of the creative economy are non-fungible tokens (NFTs). For the first time since the internet’s creation (Web 1.0), creative people are now able to secure their rights over their artistic digital works.
Anyone who has experience putting original content on the web will attest that as soon as it went digital, anyone and everyone copied it for free and without concern for the creator.
Large, networked Delaware C corporations made this a business model and reaped billions in profits by strip mining creators’ intellectual property. Consider YouTube, for example, and what little a person actually gets from the income stream. You would need millions of views to actually make a living from YouTube.
There had to be a way to secure original content on the Internet.
It finally happened.
In 2017, Crypto Punks hit the scene with Crypto Kitties NFTs (ERC-721) and everything changed.
Thanks to Blockchain, Creators Can Now Reap ALL Their Rewards
Crypto Kitties are a purring success: it represents a $40 million market, with individual Kitties selling for as much as $300k.
As silly (and unbelievable) as this may seem to many, there is true value in these Crypto Kitties. This technology has moved with lightning speed into other digital art forms, such as music.
Recently a few musicians banded together to produce music NFTs on Sound.xyz. This provides substantial income from hundreds of fans that would have taken millions of views to generate through Google, Facebook, or other sites. To put that in perspective, only the biggest names in music generate millions of views.
Thanks to blockchain technology, you can see the potential for all creators to reap the benefits from their intellectual property and interact directly with their fans, customers and investors in a way that was impossible just a few years ago.
Renaissance 3.0 will be larger than the previous two renaissances combined – and it will be at internet scale. As Bill Gates foresaw back in 1996, “Content is king.”
Finally, the content creator can enjoy the rewards for their creation thanks to blockchain technology and crypto currencies.
Welcome to the new world…It promises to be amazing!
Why Are Crypto Kitties So Valuable?
Markets are markets: they value scarcity, uniqueness, and utility.
So then why are Crypto Kitties so valuable?
Anyone can copy the digital image of a Crypto-Kitty and many copies exist, but only one person can claim ownership. NFTs (ERC-721) makes digital ownership scarce.
But what about uniqueness and utility? These are problems we’re hoping to solve with our first blockchain experiment:
Experiment #1:
What if we combine scarcity of ownership with digital uniqueness and investable utility? Mark Rockwood (http://www.markrockwoodphotography.com/) is a professional commercial photographer. Chances are you’ve seen his works in many catalogs, websites, magazines and on products over the past forty years. For those of you who follow my blog, Mark is my Santa Claus modeling photographer (yes, really).
For Experiment #1, Mark has agreed to take ten of his most exquisite, never seen before, pre-internet, Polaroid works of art and mint ten NFTs.
OK, So You Know What NFT’s Are… But – Polaroids?!
I bet you’re wondering: what are Polaroids?
From the pre-internet age, it is a chemical-based instant photography technology. A Polaroid photo has no negative, thus making it impossible to copy in the analog world. In addition, each photo contains serial numbers, making each one even more unique.
These exquisite works of art have never been digitized before and will be digitized for the first time in the blockchain as NFTs. The owner of the NFT will now own the immutable rights to the digital images and the physical analog Polaroid photos.
We Are Answering the Questions of Scarcity, Uniqueness, and Utility in the Following Ways:
Scarcity: the ERC-721 standard creates an ownership scarcity. Only one NFT owner and the ownership is immutable.
Uniqueness: creating an NFT from an already unique analog original such as a pre-internet, never digitized, Polaroid photo with serial numbers and artist signature makes it unique.
Consider an even more valuable piece of art: Leonardo Di Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It is the most desired and viewed piece of art in the world. As a piece of art, it is truly unique and extremely valuable. However, it has been digitized so many times that it’s not unique, desirable, or valuable in the digital world. I have a lovely copy of the Mona Lisa on my desktop. It was free.
Desirability & Utility: our experiment is to create a Blue Chip NFT that combines scarcity, uniqueness with utility (desirability). Let’s say you purchased the whole collection of ten NFTs each valued at 1 ETH each. This equates to about $35k to the artist. Fantastic!
As the new owner you have immutable rights to valuable assets represented in an NFT. Like any asset, the NFT can be collateralized, traded, converted, and sold, making it even more valuable. Your most likely use will be to use it as collateralization for cryptocurrency trades.
A Day in the Life of Blue Chip NFTs
Life is great. Your new asset has allowed you to make many profitable crypto asset trades.
Until…the one day you misjudge your market. You’ve lost your trade. The Blue Chip NFTs are sold to new owners to cover your losses.
As part of that sale, creator Mark Rockwood gets 2% of sale value and for all future sales, too. As the Blue Chip NFT trades ownership over time, 2% is always a cost of sale.
It is likely overtime pre-internet, non-digitized art NFTs will become even more valuable and the velocity of trading increases, making the creator’s rights even more valuable. Two percent of $30k sold once equals $600, which is pretty nice. Two percent of $3 million sold three times equals $180K. That’s great for the creator.
To Follow Our Experiment #1:
- First Blue Chip NFT description going on sale next month (2/2022)
- Name: Pear Bowl – BlueChip NFT Mark Rockwood
- Description: Pear Bowl by Mark Rockwood is a BlueChip NFT. Never digitized and pre-internet Polaroid art piece by renowned commercial photographer Mark Rockwood. Pear Bowl is a signed Polaroid photo with emulsification serial numbers F804103B1. Truly and forever unique in a digital world, it’s beautiful and desirable on its own right. It is being sold as part of a collection of ten NFTs of similar quality, uniqueness, and desirability.
- Collection: Photography
I’ll keep you updated with our experiment’s progress. Wish us luck! This should be interesting.
Oh, and if you’re a bank of any size and you want to improve your technology, I can help with that. See what Services I offer, and reach out anytime if you want to schedule an appointment to talk.