How Artists Can Navigate The Cult of Crypto and NFTs

In March 2024, Bitcoin reached a market cap of over $1,000,000,000. The global crypto and NFT community endured a bear market in 2022-2023 where many naysayers in the media proclaimed, “I told you it was a scam!”

Now crypto is reaching new highs in tandem with the next evolution of NFTs. Beyond jpegs and digital art, NFTs are expanding into major corporate brands as rewards programs, memberships and VIP experiences. One such example is the partnership between concert festival Coachella and OpenSea. They are offering a limited edition NFT as a VIP ticket and pass with access to hospitality tents, and premium seating NFTs are no longer monkey business. They are a big money business.

What has the trillion-dollar sector learned from all the bad news around the FTX collapse and the bear winter market?

My personal experience as an NFT artist and collector is that if you want to be successful in NFTs, it is a full-time job. It takes time and commitment like any worthwhile profession. To me, it’s about forming relationships, friendships, and community — not the superficial “Hey Twitter Fam” type. It’s about the creative journey, and not the destination.

It is also a cautionary tale like any forum where there is a lot of money. Be very careful out there. If someone sends me a link online, even someone I know well, I Facetime or call their number to find out if they are indeed contacting me, or if it’s an attempted hack.

During the height of the NFT bull run of 2020-2022, countless artists, musicians and photographers found a new doorway via NFT to break through and establish a profitable career. They found their own collectors and communities without the need for gallery owners, agents or museum curators.

NFTNYC is returning in April 2024 to the Jacob Javits Conference Center. They began modestly in 2018 with just a few hundred attendees in a hotel ballroom. Within three years, they experienced a rapid exponential growth hosting events simultaneously in Radio City Music Hall, The Town Hall and renting every billboard in Times Square to display NFT art. This year the use cases have expanded to include brands like Baltic Airlines, which is offering NFTs as a rewards program for frequent flyers.

NFT artist Patrick Amadon recently formed the 404 Arts Foundation, a 501c non-profit. They’re dedicated to “advocating for digital art and artists” with a mission to help promote a more inclusive and accessible digital art ecosystem. The foundation supports digital artists from diverse backgrounds, providing resources and platforms to ensure equal opportunities for recognition and contribution. In the fiercely competitive art world, imagine if Picasso helped emerging artists get support like this? It’s a generosity of conscience.

Many people in the space are anonymous like collector BatSoupYum. He joined a group of investors to create a fund for buying NFT art. It’s a get-in early risk. I have observed that while he owns several CryptoPunks, the highest-valued NFT series, most of his attention goes to undiscovered artists, thus giving them exposure and sales and helping launch careers.

The Rolling Stone Culture Council is an invitation-only community for Influencers, Innovators and Creatives. Do I qualify?

In interviews, Batsoupyum warns of a concerning trend. In 2024, people are chasing get-rich-quick projects like meme coins with names like DogWifHat and Pepe. This has similarities to the Gamestop frenzy of 2021, making early investors rich, only to crash down and burn the amateur investors left holding the bag. Others like the Etherrock NFT sales make me scratch my head. It’s a bland clip art jpeg of a rock. One recently sold for over a million dollars. Art has always been valued by scarcity, provenance, and the eye of the beholder like Duchamp’s Urinal, Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans, etc.

Bitcoin thought leader Michael Terpin has a forthcoming book titled “Bitcoin Supercycle.” Having been in crypto since the early days when everyone laughed at it as being vapor currency, he proved many colleagues wrong by becoming a millionaire many times over. Terpin has studied the patterns of the crypto cycles which rise and fall. Unlike regular stocks where there are leaders and laggards rising and falling wholly separate from each other, the NFT sector seems to jointly rise and fall completely in sync when crypto does the same.

There are also technological breakthroughs happening at a lightning speed so fast that some of what is written about here may be outdated by the time this article is posted.

SuperRare is a platform for artists and collectors that is more curated along the lines of Sotheby’s or Christie’s. The majority of NFTs use the Ethereum blockchain to mint NFT much like an iPhone’s IOS is the underlying technology running your phone’s texts, mail, and social apps. SuperRare is among a few pioneering companies to embrace Ordinals, a process for minting NFTs on Bitcoin, rather than Ethereum. By opening up new frontiers it further establishes this new technology to be accessible to more people.

Even with trillions of dollars in market cap, this emerging space is still looked down upon. Wikipedia has a section on what qualifies as a notable source to verify a person’s achievement. The main Web3 news sites like Coindesk, Cointelegraph, and NFTNow are according to Wikipedia, not notable sources like The New York Times, or Artforum. A person could be super famous as an NFT artist, yet find their accomplishments deleted by a pesky Wiki editor.

I am not a fortune teller. If I tell you what to buy or sell, just do the opposite. Those who are feeling the first thaws of crypto and NFT spring according to the data predicted by Michael Terpin and others are in for a feast. Be cautious and take it slow. When you see the next shiny meme coin rising astronomically in value and feel you are too late… just know that the world is late.

You might just be late to a party that hasn’t started yet.

The information provided here is not investment, tax or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation.