Living from art is possible

Bloomberg Ideas Line — We’ve all heard that most artists find it hard to make a living from art. These creators who have given up a “traditional” way of making a living to focus 100% on their creative work. If we only refer to visual artists, it is a very competitive world in which only a few manage to be successful in life, if at all. For those who achieve it, this recognition does not translate into benefiting from the appreciation of their first works, which they sometimes had to sell at very low prices in order to support themselves.

Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, is a Wisconsin family man and artist who used to drive a Corolla. But in 2021 it made headlines when his play “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” sold for $69 million at Christie’s. It is a work created from a collage of 13 years of everyday paintings. The buyer, who owns the third most expensive piece of art auctioned at Christie’s, paid in Ethereum and did not get a physical sculpture, nor did he get a framed painting, he got a non-fungible token (NFT), which is essentially digital proof of ownership within a smart contract on the blockchain.

NFTs are being incorporated into traditional markets, as there are more and more retail investors in this sector and more artists who benefit from this trend. One of the main projects is a collection of 10,000 “monkey” avatars known as the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) that has a market capitalization of more than $3.6 billion, according to CoinGecko, a cryptocurrency data aggregator. Like Beeple and BAYC there are many, many more.

Do NFTs allow artists to make a living from their art?

Any terms you want as the creator, including copyright, can be incorporated into the smart contract of an NFT. As an artist, the rule is that you get 90% of the proceeds from the original sale and 10% of the royalties from secondary market transactions.

Let’s use Beeple again as an example. He sold his work Crossroads for US$66,000 and made US$59,400. The work was then resold for $6.6 million and he received $660,000, more than 10 times what he got from the original sale. With NFTs, the creator constantly benefits from the maturity of his work over time, making it possible for many more artists to make a living from his work.

The most popular secondary market for NFTs is OpenSea, but there are many others such as Aorist, Nifty Gateway, and Rarible.

It is important to note that NFTs are not a magical way to create value. Value is created by the market’s appetite for the part(s) and the utility it brings to buyers. What NFTs do bring is a paradigm shift by ceasing to believe that things only have value if access to them is restricted. NFTs are, again, just proof of ownership and the more something is shared, the more valuable it becomes.

Women bring gender equality to the NFT space

Although the crypto space has traditionally been occupied by men, art NFTs that have a large creativity component make it more attractive to women. In the US, for example, there are projects like World of Women y Web3Equity in Miami who support women by educating them on Web3 and giving them an active voice. One of the ways that Web3Equity does this is by selling its own collection of NFTs designed by a local artist known as Superama. Each NFT purchase serves as a membership to Web3Equity, which hosts Web3 educational events primarily for women.

And this is not just happening in the US. In Latin America we also see some interesting NFT projects and efforts to get women involved. Xolos Crew in Mexico has designed 5,000 NFTs that show the Mexican culture and the NFTs of the Day of the Dead They sell tokens that celebrate a famous Mexican holiday that honors those who have died. In Brazil we see Continent DAO which is creating public service NFTs to identify and invest in social WiFi projects with the city of São Paulo. On the social side, we see Web3 Familia, whose mission is to get 1 million Latinos on Web3.

NFTs allow artists, both in the US and in marginalized countries, to monetize their art and live off their passions.

Beyond artistic NFTs

Art NFTs are just the beginning and a great way to democratize access to space. But this “proof of ownership” technology will unlock solutions in different sectors and will be the basis of applications that we have not yet imagined. NFTs can be linked to just about anything, including property deeds, diplomas, data, vehicles, concert tickets, movies, identity, and now it’s up to builders to show us what the future holds for NFTs. .

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Laura Gaviria Halaby and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the SoftBank Group. The content should not be taken as investment advice.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial boards of Bloomberg Line, Falic Media, or Bloomberg LP and their owners.

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