Non-fundable tokens (NFTs) are the hot topic of the market. Lots of media attention has been focusing on the specific example of Mike Winklemann, whose composite jpeg artwork sold through Christie’s for USD 69.3 million, the third highest price paid for a living artist.

[3:03] This as a green, very new market, said Anton. He first heard of NFTs at an Asian conference in 2017 and saw them as an interesting idea within the art world trying to tokenize existing physical art and sell it to the crypto community. The Winklemann sale can be viewed as a guide to embrace the digital way of doing things. It’s not such a great surprise that digital art could be marketed and sold in this manner.

[4:39] “I definitely think when we relate to this example that the price was very high, especially in the light of how we in the crypto world perceive price. We perceive price as something where you can freely trade it at any time and there’s liquidity for it. In this example, there is no liquidity for that particular art form and you can’t buy and sell it for a particular market cap. We need to be aware that the price in this particular auction is not the one that will be used when we talk about trading tokens in an exchange,” said Anton.
Over time, it will become more apparent that these assets are not liquid assets or liquid tokens. It won’t be easy to buy and especially sell at those price points.

[6:01] You can trace it back further to colored coins, the original idea of crypto representing different assets on the blockchain, which gave rise to things like Tether. We also saw Rare Pepes, collectable cards built onto Bitcoin blockchain, so this is a rehashed concept of something we’ve seen before, which has now reached critical mass and seen an explosion of interest. It as an area that has huge potential, but still flawed, noted Paul. It remains to be seen whether these platforms issuing tokens are going to stand the test of time.