Damien Hirst, a contemporary artist known around the world, talked about similarities and differences between artwork and fiat currency as he prepared to drop 10,000 NFTs tied to his physical paintings. Speaking with Cointelegraph’s Andrew Thurman at his London studio in May, Hirst answered questions in a magic 8-ball fashion, by opening up one of the boxes containing hundreds of sheets of his The Currency artwork collection and reading a sentence off the back of the paper. Though the immediate answers were not always on topic — is Satoshi really a cliche? — the artist laughed at the absurdity continued …

American Express (Amex) has teamed up with popular neo-soul singer and songwriter SZA to enter the nonfungible token (NFT) market. The duo partnered to drop a set of 14 one-of-one edition NFTs, dubbed “Amex Unstaged x SZA: The Collection,” that depict moments from one of SZA’s recent concerts. Participation in the NFT sale was made available only to Amex users, with the first 10 dropped on Monday, and concert-goer's were given exclusive access. The remaining four were dropped earlier today and were made available to all Amex users. Each NFT was priced at $100 and all were sold out within …

Eagle eyed denizens of Crypto Twitter have spotted a mistake in the NFT of the web’s source code famously auctioned at Sotheby’s this week. The auction of “This Changed Everything” on June 30 with a $5.4 million sale and was offered by its inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The NFT dubbed consists of four elements: the original source code, an animated visualization of the code, a letter written by Sir Tim reflecting on his creation, and a digital poster of the full code. Despite the sale having a direct connection to Sir Tim, whoever it was that converted the original text …

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has sold an NFT of the web's source code for $5.4 million at fine art auction house Sotheby’s. The piece titled ‘This Changed Everything’ includes a time-stamped file of the source code's 9,555 lines, a high-fidelity image, a 30-minute animation of the code being written, along with a letter written by Berners-Lee. While $5.4M is a significant sum, it’s a far cry from the $69 million record set in March for Beeple’s Everydays and less than some observers had predicted. Delphi Digital’s Piers Kicks said he’d been expecting a sale …

Due to the past nonfungible token (NFT) boom, the crypto and art communities have been collaborating closely — maybe for the first time in history. In both industries, there is a lot of skepticism and misunderstanding. As we make our way out of the NFT bubble, what is expected to come next? This deep dive describes a long-term vision of the NFT and art market development that could appeal to both worlds. Stereotypically, crypto people discuss deals on Twitter and Discord, communicate through memes or abbreviations and challenge old school models with agonistic antipathy (Okay, Boomers!). In contrast, the so-called …

As nonfungible token (NFT) art continues to develop as an industry, a new trend is quickly emerging: physical NFT galleries featuring digital, nonfungible pieces of unique artwork. Most recently, the largest Bitcoin (BTC) event in history — the Bitcoin 2021 conference — featured a peer-to-peer pop-up NFT art gallery with artwork from over 30 different crypto artists. Teodora Atanasova, VIP relations manager and founding team member of Nexo — the company that backed the Bitcoin Art Gallery — told Cointelegraph that over 100 pieces of art were sold during the two-day conference: "This demonstrates the impact physical NFT galleries can …

What a difference three months makes. Back in March, there was a jubilant atmosphere when Beeple’s mega nonfungible token sold for $69.3 million. You didn’t have to look far to find bold proclamations that crypto art was the next bold frontier in culture — offering opportunities to fledgling creators and transforming the way we interact with masterpieces. Things look a little different now we’re in June. All-time highs for Bitcoin and Ether are a distant memory, and sobering figures published by Protos suggest that NFT sales have plummeted by 90% since their peak in early May. (Some have questioned this …

NFT art may be the current Next Big Thing in the cryptocurrency world, but as art, it’s actually somewhat limited to one broad genre: Digital art. This leaves out a fairly large chunk of the art world — paintings, drawings, sculpture, fabrics, pottery — the physical arts that live in three dimensions. That’s where AvatarArt by ByteNext comes in. The Singapore-based NFT artwork company is turning the biggest of those physical arts — painting — into 3D reproductions that are backed by the actual artwork. For each NFT, there isn’t just the blockchain-verified original image. There’s an actual painting in …

A new project is bringing NFTs and DeFi together to build a launchpad that will help creative artists and inventors tokenize their intellectual property and raise funds on a single platform. Built on the Binance Smart Chain, LEXIT’s platform does more than just turn works of art, music, books, video, collectibles, games, source code and inventions — any copyrighted or patented intellectual property — into nonfungible tokens. It also brings in decentralized finance (DeFi) to make those NFTs available to anyone via DeFi liquidity pools, LEXIT CEO Amir Kaltak and CBO Katia Zaitsev explained on a Cointelegraph AMA on May …

It’s fun to talk about nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, because they are the perfect example of how the impact of blockchain technology in people’s lives goes way beyond the financial market. As we could see in hundreds of headlines in the past few months, they have gripped the world’s attention because they are a new manner of interacting with culture, music, sports and the media. This article will clarify what NFTs are, how they work, how the NFT boom started, and why blockchain technology has made it possible for NFTs to create a new economy. Related: A cure for copyright …

Luxury auction house Sotheby’s made waves on social media on Thursday following the sale of one rare CryptoPunk. In a tweet from Sotheby’s, the auction said CryptoPunk #7523 — also known as “COVID Alien” — sold in its London salesroom for roughly $11.8 million. According to the auction house, this sale represents a new world record for a single CryptoPunk artwork. CryptoPunks, which predate the bulk of the nonfungible token (NFT) craze in 2021, are often small, pixelated depictions of people, apes, zombies and aliens. Sotheby’s announced the sale of the COVID Alien in late May as a “special, standalone” …

While the short-term market outlook for many NFT projects look uncertain, and multiple new releases struggle to gain traction, one gardening-themed drop may have set some records by selling 8,888 nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in just under an hour. Nonfungible token studio Zenft released a line of 8,888 unique bonzai NFT plants that quickly sold out on Tuesday, with the studio selling each digital tree for 0.08 Ether (ETH), or roughly $220 at the time of publication. The bonsais have augmented reality/virtual reality functionality, and their 3D design is a step up from previous pixelated, 2D projects. The studio celebrated the …