NFTs aren't new, but they're newly popular. In the last few weeks, Jack Dorsey received an offer for his first tweet ever for $2.5 million and a JPG file sold for $69.3 million.
When I first heard about NFTs, I remember thinking, People are so bored in quarantine that now they're wasting millions of dollars on things that literally don't exist.
But NFTs are more complicated than this. Many people are now getting vaccinated and taking small steps towards normalcy. A pandemic fad doesn't seem as plausible as it would have a few months ago.
One clear enabler is the accessibility of Ethereum, the cryptocurrency most NFT marketplaces run on. In the past 3 months, the price of Ethereum has gone from less than $600 to almost $2000. People are using the cryptocurrency more, which makes purchasing NFTs easier.
Moreover, the timing could not be better. People are increasingly looking for ways to enable inclusive innovation, and NFTs offer that. Ameer Carter, a Black artist more popularly known as Sirsu, described how NFTs give artists "creative immortality.”
Art has historically alienated Black creatives, which made it hard to for Carter to make a living. On the other hand, crypto has historically been more inclusive because it's a newer industry.
The NFT marketplace “is a much more open and accessible platform.” Carter said. “And so my goal is to help really give [underrepresented artists] that type of visibility and empower them to be creatives. My mission is to remove the starving artists stigma. I don’t believe that creativity is cheap. I believe that it is rich. And it enriches and it gives us the reasons why we live in the first place.”
Because of its use of blockchain technology, NFTs (in theory) allow artists to receive payment for their work even when it is resold, as the ledger tracks the art’s movement. This creates an inherently more inclusive space for creatives.
Whether or not NFTs make the mainstream cut, they could pave the way for a future of innovation where original creators are valued and smaller creators are able to sustain themselves without working 3 jobs. In a creator economy, NFTs are only the start.
