NFTs give digital value to artwork, may signal way of the future

Non-fungible tokens, known as NFTs, have become a focus of debate in the digital art world. Coming from the same family of ledger technologies that give cryptocurrencies their edge, blockchain technology-driven NFTs are used as digital certificates to authenticate original pieces of electronic artwork. A recent "crypto" sale at Christie's auction house featured one item that sold for $69 million.

Paying this much for what is essentially a non-tangible arrangement of digital pixels that can be easily captured with a screenshot may seem far-fetched, but the concept of NFTs means that our perception of what constitutes sentimentality and value are changing with the times.

Owning a digital certificate of authenticity may be how artwork retains its value in the future.

The rise of digital art in recent years has proven popular with young people and artists alike, with the power of the internet meaning that great pieces can be easily seen by many without limits. The craze of authenticating, or "minting" original pieces of digital art is spreading to China, a country with a strong and proud artistic culture spanning back thousands of years.

Beijing will, on Friday, host its first crypto art exhibition, showcasing the best of NFT artwork. The first of its kind in the country, the exhibition titled Virtual Niche — Have you ever seen memes in the mirror will run for a week before moving south to Shanghai. China, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, is one of the largest art markets in the world, and the advent of NFTs is ideal for technology-literate collectors.

The term fungible in economics refers to an asset where units within it can be exchanged or quantified easily. Oil, shares or money are easily interchangeable. For example, a 20-yuan Chinese bank note could be exchanged for two 10-yuan notes.

Being non-fungible means that the asset has unique properties in itself. In practice this means that physical art is non fungible by its very nature. A painting by Vincent van Gough cannot be replicated in the same way in terms of value, even if the painting was painstakingly recreated stroke by stroke. NFTs, therefore, bring this concept into the digital realm, adding value to a universe where screenshots, downloading, and copying and pasting can all render digital content a little empty in meaning.

The NFT craze has not been met without criticism, however. Owners of NFTs would not be able to stop the artwork from being reproduced, and indeed it is often the case that such pieces will already have been distributed for years long before NFTs were conceived for them.

Others argue the environmental factor, that blockchain technologies such as NFTs utilize vast amounts of computer electricity, and like bitcoin, may be tarnished with the same concern of unsustainability.

Whether NFTs are something of a bubble waiting to burst, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, rtists around the world, who have had their galleries shut down during the pandemic, have found a potentially lucrative means of putting food on the table. As more and more of our daily activities take place virtually, ways we ascribe meaning to the physical world will become vital. NFTs may not be around forever, but they are a sign of how our future digital lives could look.

Barry He is a London-based columnist for China Daily.