Here’s Who Has Jumped on the Booming NFT Train

At the beginning of the year, the idea that a tweet can be sold as a digital good would have sounded preposterous. However, on the first day of March, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter,  decided to sell his first-ever tweet from nearly 15 years ago: “just setting up twttr.”

Immediately, what might have been considered a joke from a sci-fi novel became a reality. Through a platform called Valuables, Jack put up his tweet as an NFT, or “non-fungible token.” As of March 6, the highest offer for Dorsey’s tweet was $2 million, from tech entrepreneur Justin Sun. But by the end of the same day, the highest offer stood at $2.5 million. 

You might begin to wonder why anyone will part away with millions of dollars just to own a tweet. But here’s the funny part, the NFT market is booming and Dorsey’s tweet is just a tiny part of it. 

NFT Market is Soaring

If you’re not sure what’s going on, NFTs or Non-fungible tokens have been around for years. They’re distinguishable from other forms of tokens or cryptocurrencies because they’re non-fungible, meaning they’re entirely unique from other digital tokes—unlike Bitcoin, where 1BTC is equivalent to some other 1BTC. Each token minted is unique. The tech allows buyers to purchase digital goods like artwork, music, images, and videos minted in the form of digital tokens tied to the Ethereum blockchain. 

The market for these kinds of goods has been growing immensely. In 2020, over $250 million in NFT volume was traded. The recent boom saw the traded volume skyrocket. According to NonFungible, $189.5 million worth of NFTs has been traded in the last 30 days. During that time, a total of 130,802 tokens were sold. 

And with the growing buyer demand seen in NFTs, a growing supply has also been noticed.

List of Celebrities Active with NFTs 

Because NFTs are an integral part of the crypto-world, it is expected that a boom in crypto will affect their adoption. To understand the magnitude of this adoption it might be better to divide the digital goods into categories and give examples of those who have sold them. 

Popular Art NFTs

For artists and painters, the use case of NFTs has been very captivating. Forgery and the spread of fake art are curtailed. And importantly, artists get paid. Here are some artists who have jumped on the train: 

As Nyan Cat turns ten this year, the artist behind the one-of-a-kind edition of the iconic GIF, Chris Torres, put it up for auction. By the end of the auction, he made around $600,000. 

José Delbo, an artist who illustrated the comic book series, Wonder Woman during the 1970s made $1.85 million selling his drawings in an auction. The most expensive piece among the illustrations sold for $136,000. 

Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, recently sold a $6.6 million video artwork on Nifty Gateway, a virtual marketplace for NFTs. The sale was 1,000 times the $66,666 it previously fetched when it first went on sale in October. Winkleman’s “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” has gone up for sale on Christie. This will be the famed 254-year-old auction house’s first digital art sale. As of March 9, the piece was sitting at $9.7 million. The auction is set to conclude on March 11.

Trevor Jones, a traditional artist who has been a full-time artist since 2015 told Business Insider that each of his artwork has been selling for between $40,000 to $180,000 each. 

Music Being Sold via NFTs

The use case for music is quite different. The drop in income from streaming has prompted artists to find new ways to sell their work. NFTs offer a new and interesting perspective. 

Grimes cashed out big on the NFT gold rush. A series of ten digital works of art—some were one of a kind and others with thousand copies—went up on Nifty Gateway on February 26. They sold for about $6 million. The highest selling piece was a unique video called “Death of the Old.” The video shows flying cherubs, a cross, a large sword, and glowing light set to an original song by Grimes. It sold for $388,938. 

3LAU’s auction for the unique NFTs of his Ultraviolet album sold for a total of $11,684,101. 

Soulja Boy, the American rapper sold five of his tweets as NFTs earning him a few thousand dollars. A tweet that read, “I was the first rapper to release a NFT” sold for $200. 

American rock band, Kings of Leon, have also announced that they will be releasing their new album as an NFT, making it a crypto collectible. 

High-Profile Gaming and NFTs

In 2010, virtual real estate by the name of Club Neverdie in the online game Entropia sold for $635,000. Ten years later, not much has changed. 

Atari, the entertainment software company is planning to start an online casino next month. The casino, which is developed in partnership with Decentral Games, will include Atari-themed games and Atari NFTs. The company hopes to make around $150 million in 2021 from bets. 

The Future of NFT Adoption

It is clear that the adoption of NFTs is soaring at a surprising pace. It’s a robust yet reliable tech that handles the ownership and transfer of digital assets. This is why big brands and individuals like the NBA, Mark Cuban, Lindsay Lohan, Nike, and even Taco Bell have adopted digital tokens. 

What we may see in the next few years is the continued adoption of NFTs as artists, musicians, sportsmen, and brands find alternative and lucrative ways to get paid for their work.

Do you think that NFT will soon become a substantive subset of the digital asset economy? Let us know your opinion in the comments below.