Beeple Mania

I remember reading about Crytpo Kitties in the NYT in 2018. How much are Crypto kitties worth today? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/cryptokitty-auction...

“Why would you spend $5,000 on an MP4?"

That's the $64k question. Who, exactly, is buying rare digital art? It doesn't seem to be traditional collectors, dealers or major institutions. But the same contingent of crypto "whales" speculating in alt-coin assets. A simple bot could even be employed to track auction prices and automate trades. In a sense its not dissimilar to inter-market dealing among art galleries. Without the actual physical objects.

Beeple's Opus

https://www.christies.com/features/Monumental-collage-by-Bee...

Yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine to try to wrap our heads around what's happening, and we can't help but feel that a lot of this NFT hype is based on FOMO and the craving for having something unique with high perceived value: like, everyone wants a Black Lotus, without having to wait 30 years to find out that there's actually people that have also some emotional investment into these items, and are willing to pay some big money to have a piece of that...

... yet apparently there are "Black Lotuses" everywhere, because people are making them left and right (not literal black lotus ofc).

And we left it here:

- are people mistaking something "unique" with something that's "rare"?

- is money really that much inflated?

- is crypto that much inflated?

- are these transactions being done among the same "kind of people", and it will reach a cap eventually with no one to dump these NFTs to?

It's like people want collectibles but seem to have decided to cut off a big part of what makes a collectible valuable. Everyone want's to get rich with the next big rare item, without having to go through years of cultural shifts.

For example, some MTG cards/sets represent a time and a place for many people, they were part of a culture. The rareness comes from the fact that a lot of these items had limited (some were literally alpha and beta versions of the game), and few endured the weight of time and life.

It's not because they have a unique id.

Cryptopunks represent the early move of the NFT... but is that such a noteworthy valuable thing? Maybe it is.

I'm not saying that Beeple isn't a good digital artist, he is. Neither I'm saying his art isn't worth what people paid for, probably it's worth it.

Yet, some how, can't help but feeling that something is off. Or it's just me that I'm just not getting "the thing"?

I have stories :-)

We held a Digital Art Conference down here in Brazil and we brought Beeple in for a keynote, and it was an amazing experience, he's super bright.

But yeah the guy is always dressed to kill, impeccably, almost too serious -- so it's quite contrasting when you see the real artist and his likeness compared to how wild his art is.

He also was quite curious about Renoise (a tracker software I was using to play live music at one point), and asked "What software is that?!". That was a fun moment.

I really enjoy his work. It's digital art that's meant to look digital in every way without trying being nostalgic to some era of computer art.