[typing]
[children laughing]
[indistinct conversation]
Mike Are we watching this?
Yeah.
Okay, I feel like we have
to get a little closer.
We have to get a little closer.
We have to get a little closer.
Wait, is this
with the, like, Christie's people?
Yeah.
Hey, how's it going?
So we are in my living room
and there are a lot of cameras and crap.
And we're watching
the closing of the auction,
which closes in an hour and 18 minutes.
I mean, it's already at, like,
absolutely ridiculous amounts.
I don't see how there could really
be any pressure from here for it to go up.
So it's kind of like, good. I'm good.
I was always very into making art.
Even as a kid, I loved drawing.
And I'd always wanted to learn,
like, a 3D program,
the things used to make Pixar movies
and things like that.
And so I thought,
what if I did a render each day
out of a 3D program?
This was something that I did
because I loved it.
Nobody was paying me for it.
Money was no part of the equation.
I had been doing these pictures,
one every day,
since May 1st, 2007.
I hit the biggest milestone
in that project,
which was 5,000 days.
Finally, I saw a bunch of people
selling NFTs for prices
that it was sort of like
Well, I didn't think that could
be sold for any amount of money.
I thought the value of that was zero.
And so I really just dove in.
And I gave away
a bunch of pieces for a dollar.
And immediately, that first night,
one of them traded for $6,000.
And then one of my early
pieces sold for $66,000.
And it was like, what? What?
What in the f*cking?
Like, this is f*cking insane.
But nobody was talking about it
because nobody knew about it.
But Christie's took notice.
Christie's is set to become
the first major auction house
to sell a purely digital artwork
known as an NFT.
Now the work is a montage
by the artist Mike Winkelmann,
known as Beeple.
[Christie's] Hey, Mike,
want to say congratulations.
You're at 25,250,000. Crazy, man.
Shut up!
[Christie's] Just went to 35 million.
Jesus Christ. What the f*ck?
So f*cking crazy.
[Christie's] Somebody else will get crazy
and just bring it up to 50.
[laughs]
[Christie's] Every bid will
extend for one minute after.
[indistinct conversation]
It's at 50 million.
Oh, my God.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God.
I thought everybody was f*cking joking.
[laughs]
Jesus Christ.
[laughs]
Oh, honey.
I'm so proud of you.
Jesus f*cking Christ.
In the end, it sold for $69 million,
which put me at the third
highest selling living artist.
The person who is now
the fourth highest selling,
I'd never even heard of him.
It was just like, "Oh, you beat Richter."
And I was like, "Who is that?"
I don't even know who that is.
And so that's how much this was like,
so like, "What the f*ck
is going on" insane.
[Robert] The final bid, $69 million.
$69 million.
I think it's completely insane.
What you're seeing is pure crapola.
[man 1] NFT. [man 2] NFT.
[woman] NFT.
Or Nifty, I believe we've
been calling them.
[man] What is an NFT?
Non "whatable"?
A non-fungible token.
Some people are paying
tens of millions of dollars
to own a one-of-a-kind online collectible.
The greatest performing asset
in the crypto space are NFTs.
[man] Beeple's historic auction
had led to an expl*si*n
of interest into digital art.
[woman] It's this world
of infinite possibilities.
I mean, this was revolutionary.
[man] The first ever published tweet
getting a bid of $2.5 million.
[man] Art has always loved
sleeping with money.
[woman] Welcome to the future
of the internet.
This is what art collectors want.
Sorry, Van Gogh.
[Joe Lubin] With any new
breakthrough technology,
you have to help society understand it.
[man 2] It's early tech
and it doesn't all work right.
These things are valuable.
[Maher] I feel
like you're selling a picture
that I could also just find online.
[man 4] It's getting
a little weird out there.
[man 3] You could right click and save it.
[man 5] Fraud has found its way
to the red-hot NFT market.
[woman] It could certainly be a bubble.
[Andrew] It started
as a digital art movement
and it transformed
into one of the largest
financial collapses
in American history.
[man 6] It's going to get
bigger and bigger.
[man 7] It looks like something
out of Microsoft Paint.
This is not a new thing.
[man 8] We're in an uncharted
territory now.
Digital age is upon us.
This is their moment.
The artists are going to keep making art.
That's a little bit too bad.
Let's try another one.
[startup chime]
Okay, let's see if this disc
has any life left in it.
I hope so.
[laughs]
When I started working
with digital art in the 90s,
the digital art scene then
was just this kind of other world.
This early generation
of desktop computers, you know,
the Amiga, and then the early Mac,
you know, and the arrival of Photoshop.
All these different media types
of sound, of image, of video.
All kind of getting integrated
into this one appliance
was just galvanizing
this experimental community.
[applause]
Are you ready to paint me?
We'll do the hair.
So we'll go up to color, pick yellow.
[man] Andy is selecting from the menu bar,
which gives you all the features
of the paint system.
But by and large, a screen
inside of an art gallery
was still pretty rare.
There was nobody buying digital art
in the way that people bought paintings.
And for me, that was the nagging feeling.
I felt that there needed
to be an alternative.
And when I started thinking
about this idea
that ultimately became the NFT,
I was thinking about digital uniqueness.
That started my kind
of self-education process
around blockchain technology
and trying to just understand what it was.
Normally, in the digital world,
everything can be copied infinitely.
But blockchain creates digital scarcity.
With Bitcoin and Ethereum,
if I give mine to you,
I don't have it anymore.
And now you have it.
Everybody agrees on this transaction.
It's just incredible.
If this could work for money,
there had to be a way
that it could work
for digital art as well.
How to make that digital art
into this money-like thing
that could go from person,
to person, to person.
We've created a system
whereby a process that's created
that will establish
verification and provenance
over digital files, digital artworks.
Hey, are you interested
in some animated GIF art?
Am I ever?
Hey, you want to buy that?
Yeah, name your price in any currency.
[laughing]
20 bucks? 20 bucks sounds fair.
Sold. Sweet.
We have just transferred the digital title
of this work.
[applause]
[Kevin] It's pretty wild that the idea
would become this term
that everybody in the world
knew about in 2021.
[audience cheering]
Beeple.
Your work sold for $69 million.
[chuckles]
I absolutely think
that this $69 million sale
was in part a publicity stunt
for the entire crypto space.
Before NFTs,
what was the largest amount of money
you sold a piece of work for?
$100.
[Andrew] He's a perfect icon
for the NFT space
because of the type of humor
and iconoclasm that he has.
Like, this is not respectable art.
This is internet based art. It's meme art.
Some of them are weird.
Some of them are weird.
It was also not really related
to a lot of the histories
of art that people guard,
maybe some would say gatekeep,
in the market.
His arrival was,
for many traditional
art collectors, scandalous.
Why would anyone pay
$69 million for a JPEG?
[Small] Vignesh Sundaresan,
who is an Indian crypto multimillionaire,
was interested in this
for financial reasons.
Beeple was part of his marketing plan.
He was saying that the traditional modes
of valuing art and other things
in the world
has not caught up to how
we actually live our lives
in the digital realm.
He was planting the flag that,
yes, this is a new world
with a new value system.
There's going to be hundreds and thousands
of people from around the world
who are going to adopt this medium,
a digitally native medium,
to monetize art.
The sale of Beeple's Everydays
was a huge landmark
for artists all around the world
who suddenly realized,
"There's real money to be made."
I mean, it showed that the gatekeepers
were not anywhere near
as important as before.
And here were these incredibly,
incredibly newly-wealthy
crypto millionaires who came in and said,
"Your art has value
and you are the center
of this new universe."
The whole culture
in swimming was really toxic
and it was hard for me.
I wanted to just go off and do art,
but my parents wanted me to be
a swimmer and go to college.
When I had sold my first two NFTs,
they like drastically changed their minds.
[Jasti] My first piece sold for $30,000,
which was a lot for a 15-year-old.
The next day,
I had another two pieces sell.
It was more than my parents
made in a whole year.
My mom was kind of freaking out with me.
In Nigeria, we've been told growing up,
"Oh you can't be an artist.
You won't see money."
But I've sold NFTs to over 20 collectors.
Now my dad is happy, he's always saying,
"My daughter is a photographer, she's an
international photographer."
[Young & Sick]
I was just doing retail jobs
and making art at night.
I started making NFTs,
changed my life forever.
I didn't think I could be
a homeowner in my entire life.
[RAC] My auction today,
the current top bid,
is a little over 10 grand, I think.
[Fvckrender] So I sold
my first NFTs for like $6,000.
At this moment, I said,
"f*ck this sh*t, I'm not doing
commercial work anymore."
[typing]
[Chan] It was 1958,
the French artist Yves Klein,
already a very famous artist.
[music starts]
And he's best known
for his blue monochromes.
[speaking French]
[Chan] For him,
artwork is a frustratingly
imperfect medium.
Klein always understood
that the way his work
was bought and sold
would be an aspect
of the experience of the piece.
And he kind of perfects this
with this exhibition.
People would enter the gallery
and there was nothing at all.
Not a painting, nothing.
So Klein makes these works for sale.
Whenever you bought one of these,
you would get in exchange a certificate.
And each one is unique.
And crucially,
that certificate is not the art.
It is a token which indicates
you own the art,
but it is not the art.
So NFTs are an idea
that artists have been playing with
for decades.
And they're a huge step forward
in terms of what's possible for artists.
I am live on a different timeline
Mother nature wrote of the plan
Shifting paradigm
[music ends]
[woman] All right!
Let's do that one more time.
Try to stay right there.
Cool, no movement?
So really more like More head.
Yeah, more shoulders,
more head, more body.
But I'm loving the energy.
I'm feeling it.
Ready? [clearing throat]
Camera rolling.
Camera rolling.
My music videos are forms
of self-discovery for me.
[music]
I always see music videos
as these performance art pieces, right?
You're getting the music,
you're getting the performance,
you're getting the dance.
And I want people to understand
that these are art forms.
[rapping]
Even as a kid,
I would like walk down Flatbush
and like blast my headphones.
And be dancing
like in the street to myself
and imagining music videos.
So I guess it was always
kind of a need within myself,
even though the world
told me I couldn't be it.
I had all these label meetings
and they were trying
to box me in the same stories
that you hear about a lot of artists.
I felt like people just wanted
me to be this bubble pop rapper.
And my work was in activism.
This show is dedicated to you all.
It's about women.
It's about my mom fighting
through things with men.
And I feel like I have
to do that through hip hop.
I had a PR person at one point
try to give me diet pills.
And I remember taking them
and feeling like lost in my body.
I felt like I found love
with my art, finally.
And the world was telling me
that I couldn't be in love with this art,
and I couldn't be the artist
that I wanted to be.
So I told myself I wanted
to stay independent.
We were making music videos
and everything,
but no money,
just making with what we had.
Gorilla style, sh**ting wherever we could
with whatever clothes I had on my back.
I pretty much used my unemployment checks
to pay for everything.
And then one day, my partner, Jahmel,
came into the house and he was like,
"Yo, you ever heard of NFTs?"
And I was like, "Nah, what's that?"
So I had a music video
that I never released
called "ilikedat."
I minted it and it became
one of the first music videos
on the blockchain.
And just sat and waited.
And in 3 minutes, I got a bid
and I took my first bid.
And it was only for like $1,000,
but I was so excited
because that $1,000 paid my rent.
I think people want to own a music video
like they want to own vinyl
from their favorite artist.
[woman] Yes!
Oh, that sh*t fire.
What I'd do is come in
a little closer to me.
It feels really just good to level up.
Not Beyonce yet,
but we'll get there one day.
[laughs]
[Aversano] Photography is the easiest way
for me to connect with other people.
Hey, baby.
Let's get started.
The 5 of coins, the generator card.
So just add 2 to 3 colors you like
and also your mystic talents.
Whether it be
through refractions or lighting,
all these different conditions
of composition are involved.
Here we go.
Understanding the value
of the tangible, the analog.
This looks great.
Perfect.
I only take around like two
to 12 shots for the whole sh**t.
I don't do reshoots or redoes.
You'll see the mistakes.
Not every picture is going to be perfect
nor do I want it to be,
because it's supposed to be in the moment.
It's supposed to be real.
It's supposed to be authentic.
It's supposed to be life.
And not every day is perfect.
Being in college, about to graduate,
and my mother battling cancer,
it wasn't sudden,
because it was always expected.
But when it happened,
my mother passing away
during winter break
was devastating for me.
So the genesis of Twin Flames
actually started in 2016.
And I was healing from my mother's loss
and not following my own path.
There's a Polaroid show
in the Lower East Side,
and I saw a set of twins
walk into the gallery.
And in that moment, I'm like,
"Whoa, there's something here."
My mother had three miscarriages,
one during, before and after me.
And I was like, the twin survivor.
And I'm like, I'm doing a twin project.
So I started at Central Park
with those same twins.
From there, they introduced me to twins.
And then once I started posting it,
other twins were resonating with it
and friends of friends
were reaching out about twins.
And I traveled the world
photographing twins
to find healing,
to mend this hole in my heart
that I've had from losing my twin.
I shot 100 twins within a year.
And my debt creating this project
is around like $60,000 to $80,000.
I was barely able to pay rent or buy food.
I spent years figuring out
where this piece could live,
and there was no luck.
My reaction at first to NFTs
was, "What the f*ck is this?"
Everyone was talking about it.
You couldn't escape it.
And I think, "Wow,
it's not just for digital art.
"It's like, this could be for anything."
When I sold the first NFT,
it was priced at 0.55 Eth,
which was around $1,000 at the time.
I was very excited.
I was like, "Whoa, it's happening."
And then 20 more the same day,
25 the next,
and then 50 the rest.
I sold out the series,
like something I've been trying
to sell for years.
Sold out in 3 days.
People are actually responding to the work
that I've been putting out for 4 years,
that basically no one gave
a sh*t about up until NFTs.
And now I can pay off all the debt
that I've accrued creating this project.
I was able to like breathe
and not be burdened.
I pretty much broke even.
But then I started
getting secondary resale.
This has a built-in royalty system
that you don't see
in the traditional world.
When there's secondary sales
for works like Basquiats
or Warhols, they don't see any royalties.
But with NFTs, it changes
the whole paradigm of the art world.
The most important part
is the self-sustainability
that we've always been dreaming about.
When I went to art school
and I learned about Diane Arbus
and Mapplethorpe,
and it's like,
"Wow, like, I don't want to be
a commercial photographer.
"I don't want to sh**t for brands.
"I don't want to sh**t for Nike or Gucci.
"I want to f*cking be in a museum.
"How do I make art to be museum quality?"
And that's like literally a dream.
As a mother, as an artist
I'm afraid to be here right now in Cuba.
I've seen my artist friends, because
of what their work is saying,
being repressed, being imprisoned.
The way things are right now, I don't
want my daughter to grow up in Cuba.
If I could transport her, take
her out right now, I would.
In 2018, the state imposed Decree 349.
These are new images
of the police crackdown
against artists who protested
in Havana against the Decree 349
that puts even more limits
on the work of artists.
Many have been arrested
Decree 349 limits the exercise of art
that could in any way
oppose the Cuban government.
I believe that art must have autonomy.
It has to respond to its
historical or social moment.
Obviously, it has to have that freedom.
With this triptych
I am using the metaphor of
the body, of the sexual,
as a way to talk about socio-political
issues and power relations.
If you notice, these pieces have been
covered with packaging material.
This was the result of censorship
in a state-run gallery in Cuba.
They considered this
phrase too provocative
and I was not allowed
to present it like this.
So they made me censor the areas
that contained the political text.
I'll open it.
This was the other phrase
that provoked the gallery.
It says, "The lack of ba*ls to talk
about politics without metaphors."
I asked myself if I was willing to
present my work under censorship.
And I finally decided this
was the best solution.
I was reading in BBC of Beeple's sale
I immediately Googled, "What is an NFT?"
"How do I make an NFT?"
The triptych was the first NFthat I minted on the blockchain.
For the first time,
NFTs gave me the feeling
not only of creative freedom
but also economic freedom.
When I realized what I was earning
just from the sale of one or two NFTs,
that's when I saw that this could
free me from the Cuban state.
Blockchains were designed to be resistant
to government pressure,
and this has been justified
as a way of avoiding censorship,
as a way of avoiding
government restrictions
on people's freedom.
It's designed to promote
people's autonomy from government.
The idea behind blockchain
is to take ownership records
out of a centralized system
controlled by a government
and to have the records of ownership
maintained in a decentralized,
distributed way
by people around the world on computers.
But governments do a lot
of things that people like,
as well as things people don't like.
And some of those things people like
are preventing massive abuses,
and harassment, and frauds.
All of these things that we turn
to the legal system for
become impossible when these things
take place on the blockchain.
[Loish] I love to make digital art
that has an organic and natural feel.
Even though it's digitally created,
it still feels like traditional
or handmade in a way.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Loish and this
is my little home office
where I spend most of my time working.
I was able to build a following
by posting my art online.
From that I was able to kind
of build a career for myself.
When a friend of mine told me about NFTs,
I did some research
and looked into it more deeply.
I was not hostile towards this technology.
I just thought like,
"Well, it's not for me."
So I opted out of NFTs.
But then within no time,
I found my work uploaded
to various NFT marketplaces
and being sold as NFTs
without my permission.
I searched my own name
and it gave, I think,
over a hundred results of counterfeit NFTs
with my name on them, with my art.
I found that the process of getting
these counterfeit NFTs
taken down was really difficult.
I was just infuriated
because I felt like
there was no recourse for me.
I also saw that happen to many,
many artists that I know.
A lot of my anger came from the fact
that the technology had been promoted
as being beneficial to artists.
[Grimmelmann] Technology
can empower artists,
but technology
can also disempower artists.
If somebody rips off an artist's work
and mints NFTs of it,
the artist really can't do anything
to get them
taken down from the blockchain.
Artists both gain and lose.
So after Beeple
sold his work for $69 million,
I had the expectation that the NFT world
would continue to focus on art.
However, it quickly became clear
that the center of the NFT world
was not, in fact, art.
It shifted over to a medium
called profile pictures, PFPs.
This started with the CryptoPunks,
these 8-bit characters
that people would use
as their profile pictures.
For me, what I think
really changed the game
was the rise of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
These PFPs are algorithmically generated
with certain attributes,
like if one monkey has a pirate's patch
and another doesn't,
maybe the one with the eye patch
is more rare,
and because of that, it has more value.
And it quickly
becomes not about art at all,
but an image that is a financial token.
And so then you have the rise
of this whole community,
they call themselves "degens."
[Gino] There's really
two different main NFT worlds.
You've got your fine arts sector,
which is Beeple, Justin Aversano,
people that drop art projects.
Then you have the PFP sector.
So most day traders
will play around in this playground.
What's really important when trading
is to follow the volume.
So there's been 20 sales
in the past 5 minutes.
For me, if I'm looking to flip,
if I'm looking to trade,
I'm going to look at a project like this.
Is it undervalued?
How many owners are there?
This mutant changed my whole NFT life.
It's a super rare mutant.
I sniped it for 6.5 Eth
and then I sold it
a month later for 16 Eth.
Then I took this 16 Eth
and I bought 3 more mutants.
And then I obviously used that
to kind of trade my way up.
I made about 30 grand in a month.
[man] You said that you used
to have a gambling problem?
[Gino] Yeah, I had a huge
gambling problem.
This definitely plays into that addiction
that I used to have.
[Adam] I have my ape, I have my Squiggles,
and I just bought a Beeple.
It's like $65,000.
I'm kind of like the OG art collector.
I actually spent
quite a bit of time with Warhol
and Basquiat.
So the reason I bought a punk
is because it's like Warhol in the 60s.
Paintings, sometimes they're easy to sell,
sometimes they're not.
But nothing is as fast as the NFT world.
The more it trades, the better it is.
Whereas in the art world,
the less it trades, the better it is.
It's much more of a trader's market.
Are NFTs art? Are they money?
Are they everything, nothing?
It's probably everything.
There's my doodle.
My little dead fella.
She's got a band aid on her nose.
So I bought it in January for $150,000.
At the time, it was the most amount
ever paid for a crypto punk.
And I'd say today, now,
it's probably worth
somewhere between $12 and $15 million.
People have decided that artwork
is worth millions of dollars.
Coins, baseball cards,
clothing, streetwear.
How is it any different
than any other collective delusion
that exists in the world today?
My collection is worth somewhere
between $68 and $110 million.
It's a lot of NFTs.
[Shin] Because this world
is also about money,
you attract people that want
to make a quick and easy buck.
I'm walking through the club,
showing girls my Mutant Apes
and my Clone X's now,
instead of, you know,
having a fresh Jordans.
Little conversation starter right here,
like, "How much was your Honda Accord?
"Because my digital picture
"right here cost about $100,000.
"How you doing?
"Can I buy you a drink?"
[chuckles]
[man] Are you concerned
about the number of scams
in the NFTs space?
Oh, gosh, yes.
The complexity and breadth of the scams
that are starting to take place,
I mean, it's devastating.
There's so much money being made,
it's inevitable that we're going to see
these sort of actors coming in.
[Topshotkeif] I was making
so much money from NFTs.
I quit my job.
I started with Cool Cats, then Doge Pound.
I saw NBA Top Shot, and I was like,
"Oh, wow, maybe I can make it big here."
Every week, I was just
maxing out my credit card,
and I was always flipping.
So I just rolled all that money
into World of Women.
Logan Paul starts hitting me up
wanting to buy it.
I just kept rolling it,
and then the next thing was a Bored Ape.
Then I ended up buying another Ape
that completed the perfect set.
I turned it into north of $500,000.
So then I bought these NFTs
called Goblin Town.
I click on the Twitter.
It was a fake Twitter, I didn't know that.
Click "claim," nothing happens.
So I looked at the URL.
Couldn't tell, but the I was an L,
or maybe vice versa.
And I'm like, "Oh my gosh."
My heart dropped.
It was hard to breathe.
I called the police.
Obviously, the police had no idea
what I was talking about.
$500,000, one click, all gone.
[Grimmelmann] If somebody hacks
your wallet and steals the NFand transfers it
to themselves on the blockchain,
there's basically nothing
the legal system can do.
The legal system
doesn't control the blockchain.
People in other countries
will laugh at the court order
saying that this should
be transferred back to you.
That art NFT is gone. It's gone forever.
- Let's go to OpenSea now.
- Ok.
Is that Princess Violet? What's she doing?
What changes are you going to make now?
I don't know. I'm thinking.
NFTs give you the freedom to
express yourself artistically
whatever your style might be.
Let's see your drawings.
This is Claudia.
This one's called "The Sunrise".
For many Cuban artists,
it has been a space of liberation.
But the blockchain is not the absolute
path to freedom that it's made out to be.
Censorship also exists in NFTs.
For being Cuban or Iranian or Russian,
you can be censored by
platforms for political reasons.
This piece is called The Stalker.
It's based on a moment of a
lot of tension here in Cuba,
a massive increase in harassment
of the people by state security
like a patrol car
downstairs monitoring you,
or when you're on the street and
a person appears and calls your
name and asks what you're doing.
This character here studying in his room,
represents the person being harassed, it
could be the artist, the intellectual.
And this character logically
represents the security of the state,
the feeling in recent years here in Cuba,
that they know everything you are doing.
It is a vicious circle
that generates chaos.
I had it hosted on OpenSea,
the biggest and most important NFmarketplace platform right now.
Until they blocked me
a month and a half ago
where I lost all the works
that I had hosted there.
And currently when I try to
enter, I get a 404 error.
OpenSea is the biggest
NFT platform right now.
But the problem is that
it's an American platform,
based in the United States,
and Cuba and the United States
have many political conflicts
that produce this type of contradiction.
You could list an NFon other marketplaces,
but Opensea is basically
the dominant marketplace
for buying and selling NFTs.
This seems to happen every time
something new happens in blockchain.
Every time they catch on, it involves
some really centralized system.
Even in a system that is supposed
to be completely decentralized.
The platforms that talk about
decentralization - that's just marketing.
Decentralization is a
very spectacular concept,
but the truth is that we are human beings
who are manipulating all of this,
and human beings are political.
[Latasha] My music is activating
folks to listen,
to hear something different
about the black experience,
about black womanhood.
I'm loud and big and all of myself.
And I found during NFT NYC
that that wasn't really
what people were ready for.
We did a show, and I only
got to do one song.
And the coordinator
at the event shut down our music
and told them that they didn't want
any more hip-hop performing at that venue.
What's up? Hold on.
[people shouting]
And that's something that hip-hop artists
deal with for years.
Along with my performance
being shut down at NFT NYC,
we didn't get invited to a lot of spaces.
And when we would pull up,
we would see mostly degen, white male,
rich folk getting into
the party, and us not.
It reminded me of the way I felt excluded
from the music industry.
I knew that this technology
had this beautiful potential,
and so I didn't want the same gatekeeping
in the NFT space.
Everybody say, "Web3"
[everyone] Web3
[indistinct conversations]
It was because of one of my first NFTs
Art has, like
So I started these seminars for artists,
helping them understand what NFTs are
and all the different platforms
available to them.
You could mint your own pieces
and you could mint from a collection.
So you're going
to go ahead and press plus,
and then you're going
to go to "Mint New NFT"
And that grew massively.
Like, we started with like 30 people
But the thing I really was tired of
was the middleman.
It grew to like 100 people a seminar,
which was beautiful to witness.
[man] Can we all give it up
for Latasha one time?
[audience cheering]
[Latasha] The industry was hard on me.
I went through tough times,
like homelessness,
and all kinds of sh*t.
And then one day my babe was like,
"I got this thing called NFTs."
[cheering]
We not going to act like this
is all savior and sh*t,
but it was an opportunity
for me as a black woman
to start to create equity,
to start to have some financial
currency to give out, to spread.
And it's a blessing to witness.
And, like, ever since
I got into this space,
I feel so alive.
I really f*cking feel alive.
[cheering] Let's go.
[music starts]
[sings]
So there was a several months stretch
there where NFTs seemed
absolutely invincible
and there's this new type of respect
that's flowing into the NFT space.
[Sinclair] NFTs have expanded
the scope of what I'm able to do.
When the article came out,
I ran up to my parents' room
and I woke up my mom.
01:46:11:17 I'm like, "Mom,
look, I was in Teen Vogue."
[applause]
You're an accomplished, celebrated artist,
but this is a whole different level.
[Sinclair] I feel like
I have become the person
that I've always wanted to be, you know?
[children talking and laughing]
[Yusuf Twins] We want to give
back to the community.
So we've been able
to set up an art initiative,
which is going to be focused
on giving back art supplies
to school students.
So which one of you wants to be
an artist in the future?
The proceeds from NFT art sales
has made it really, really possible.
Have you ever had your hair
- flat-ironed before?
- No.
We told your mom to get used
to having a glam squad.
[giggles]
[Jasti] All this success
has been pretty great.
My mom used to be a teacher,
but she quit teaching
and became my manager full time.
Hey dude, tie your shoes, please.
Can you tie it?
Managers don't tie shoes.
Moms tie shoes.
[applause]
It's just crazy to be
anywhere near where I am now.
[buzzer sounds]
I was thinking about you, man.
I summoned you.
I know.
[sighs]
When we first met you, I was like,
we got to f*cking take
our sh*t up a notch.
My NFT resold for 505 Eth.
Which twins?
It was number 49.
The one of the twin looking in the mirror.
Oh, yeah.
[man] You're an NFT hero.
I'm about to go to Christie's after this,
like for a meeting.
- I'm having an auction there, on the 6th.
- [man] Twin Flames?
- Yeah.
- [man] Dude.
It's finally going to where
I always envision it to be,
and it comes with an NFT,
and it's like, it's always been like,
remember how hard I was pushing
Twin Flames before NFTs?
[man] You were stressed about it, man.
- And now
- [man] "Sell this to somebody."
NFTs was the catalyst to making my career,
and the entire collection really take off.
So come see these Robert Franks also.
The Americans.
I mean, this is also iconic.
Absolutely.
This is probably the most,
is the book cover.
It's Exactly.
Do you know how exciting this is?
I'm f*cking in this place,
and we're having this conversation.
We're talking about my art
alongside all these people.
- Totally.
- Dude, this is like dream come true.
Don't wake me up.
So let's see
what's happening down here.
[Aversano] So what is this going
to look like?
[man] So we're going to do
4 rows of 23 prints each,
which is 92,
and then there's 7 works left over.
So the horizontals have one more vertical
next to the Diane Arbus
of the child with toy hand grenade.
You're going to see the NFand then you're going to be blown away
by this massive grid-like installation.
[Aversano] Christie's photographs
department in New York
is pleased to announce a live auction
featuring Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus
and Robert Mapplethorpe
alongside contemporary artists
such as Adam Fuss, Hiroshi Sugimoto
and Justin Aversano,
who will be offering
the first photography NFto be sold at a major auction house.
[hammer hitting]
Hey, what's up, dude?
I'm literally standing
watching them install
my f*cking big-a*s project
on this wall, dude.
[laughs]
I'm about to cry.
[sighs]
[with a broken voice] Holy sh*t, bro.
This is crazy.
This sh*t is crazy.
I f*cking did it, man.
Hey.
[man] Here's the man right here. Whoo!
Dude, let's f*cking do this.
Yeah. [laughs]
[woman] Excited, nervous, all of it?
I can't be nervous.
I just have to be excited.
You got to hold the hold the energy.
I'm going to hop inside real quick.
I love you, bro.
We're f*cking doing this.
You feeling good?
Yeah.
Dude, this is getting wild.
Good morning, everyone.
It's fabulous to see all of you here.
Thank you so much.
We're excited to open the sale today,
we have the first in the NFT space
here at Christie's.
This is of course the beautiful,
sublime and haunting work
of the artist Justin Aversano.
[Aversano] Yeah!
[applause]
Twin Flames 83,
which is an non-fungible token,
and then the documentary series
of 100 prints
that accompany this lot.
Christie's will be accepting
payment in Ether,
and we already start here, 70, 80, 90,
$95,000 is already here.
100,000 straight away.
100,000 110.
120 130
$400,000.
Bid Derek, 420.
Still ahead of the telephones,
and it might be there.
700.700.
[man] 800 bid.
$800,000
900,000.
You're going to go with 900 dollars.
Any more bids for us?
[murmuring]
The gavel's
It's going up.
It's coming down at $900,000 to you.
Thank you.
[applause]
[man] Nice job.
[Aversano] It's always been a journey
to be somebody in the art world,
to not just make money.
That was never my goal.
I wanted to heal from losing my mom.
And I'm grateful for that.
[Beeple] This is our new 50,000 square
foot factory space,
where we can sort of like, bring in people
and have different experiences
through digital art.
Every time I, like,
come here in the morning,
it's like mind-blowing to me,
and I feel just insanely lucky.
After my sale,
I spent a lot of time thinking.
What gives anything value?
What gives a Picasso value?
What gives Van Gogh value?
What gives a Jackson Pollock value?
It's because they did something new
that somebody had not seen before.
So this is Human One.
It's one physical piece here,
and there's an NFT with it as well.
What's very interesting about this piece
is it continues to change
and evolve over time.
That's something
that static traditional art,
a painting, a sculpture,
something like that, can't do.
In the NFT community,
there's obviously people
who are doing things,
who are true artists,
who are using this medium
to do thoughtful things
that, again, have never been done before.
But I'm seeing a lot of things
that I do not think are going
to hold value long term.
People really need to be very careful
about what they are investing in.
Is this a true artist
who has artistic integrity
or is this something
that is some speculative pump
and dump bullshit?
[applause]
That's mine. This is an ape.
It's really cool.
The hat, the shades.
This is my ape.
One of the peak moments of NFT culture
that also serves as maybe its low point
is the Jimmy Fallon/Paris Hilton interview
where they hold up their Bored Apes
and talk about how much they love them.
Dude, look at this.
They look like they could be friends.
They're buddies.
[applause]
It was one of
the most bewildering interviews
I've ever seen in my life.
Everyone gets an NFT? Yes, everyone.
Everyone gets an NFT tonight.
[Chow] And so then from there,
you see Snoop Dogg and Eminem
appearing as Bored Apes,
all these stars
Guess what? I'm making my own NFT.
getting into the NFT game.
And then I decided to deep dive into NFTs
and created Stoner Cats.
I recently decided to retire
5 of my signature moves
and offer them as NFTs,
so they'll live forever.
I am doing NFTs, if anybody's interested.
[Mayweather] We just launched
Mayweverse NFT.
The numbers is crazy.
[Snoop Dogg] NFT, NFT, NFT.
Conversation starter.
This is a great business move.
[man] I always thought
it was like, for celebrities.
They're the ones who were
mainly making money off of it.
And I read stories about
how kids were making 17 grand
in a day off NFTs.
So I was like, "If a kid's doing it,
I could do it." You know?
And then a number of brands
started to kind of get in on this mania.
During the Super Bowl,
Budweiser did an ad that featured NFTs.
[man] Today, Pepsi announced
the groundbreaking
Mic Drop NFT collection.
Just a few months before,
the center of the NFT world
had been Beeple,
who was iconoclastic
and thumbing his nose at institutions.
So as celebrities and brands push NFTs
onto the public
I'm going to NFT it.
[Chow] more and more money starts to flow
into crypto exchanges, like FTX.
I'm trading crypto.
One cynical way of looking at this
is that the NFT art boom
was part of a very calculated strategy
by crypto mavens
to make their product more interesting
Fortune favors the brave.
and palatable.
I'm never wrong about this stuff.
to a mainstream audience.
Never.
Crypto or digital currencies
have now lost $2 trillion in value after
[Chow] When the market started to decline,
thanks to many factors
[male reporter] Ukraine at w*r.
Fe[male reporter]
The supply chain bottleneck
rattled the global markets.
crypto became in this risky asset class
that typically fares
very badly in recessions.
One of the largest exchanges
in the world, FTX,
collapsed this week
after a chain reaction.
[Chow] There is a bank run,
and it turns out
FTX does not have the money
sitting in a vault somewhere,
not by a long shot.
This was old school,
Bernie Madoff style fraud,
but the whole crypto world bore the blame.
Fe[male reporter] NFTs have been
dropping in value,
having lost 92% since the peak.
[Chow] When one fell, the other fell,
and billions of dollars of market cap
were erased within days.
If you own a non-fungible token
or NFT, you are so funged.
We're coming off of a year
where it felt like
everybody was minting something.
When you talk about NFTs as a whole,
where is the value?
I've invested
like half a million dollars in NFTs.
Last week I was up a quarter million
and as of now, I'm about even.
I watched it go
all the way up to, you know,
like 3x of what it was
and then now it's down to like 50%
of what I initially kind of put it in.
I'm not sleeping on the streets yet.
I was in a high peak and I fell right off.
It was just kind
of psychologically traumatic
to see the balance
of my portfolio go down.
You know how they say,
"play with the money that you could lose"?
I didn't listen to that. [laughs]
sh*t, bro. Like
I don't know. I need to come up
with a different way to pay rent,
that type of thing.
I've heard some gnarly stories.
I've seen some
I mean just
"Oh, my heart." You know?
My NFT portfolio was 7 figures.
It is no longer seven figures [chuckles]
You have to be kind of crazy
to trade NFTs in general.
99% of projects were trash,
and everyone just got f*cking annihilated.
The space wasn't ready for mass adoption.
A lot of people were greedy,
myself included.
This microcosm of the NFT/PFP community,
these profile photos
where people are buying and flipping,
we created the mess we're in.
I hate to say that.
[man] The NFT market had become
the greater fool theory.
There will always be a guy to pay more,
until that guy doesn't exist,
and then the musical chairs game stops
when the music stops,
and one person ends up without a chair.
[Gino the Ghost] Are NFTs dead?
No, NFTs aren't dead,
but a lot of people's hopes
and dreams are for the moment,
for sure. [laughs]
[Chow] So when you have
the same people who were buying NFTs
go into debt
or lose 5 or even 6 figures
from their bank account,
the amount of money
going back to the artists
has suddenly dried up.
[Latasha] I feel for the folks
who came into the space for a quick buck.
For my own sake, I was prepared and ready
for the bear market.
Let's upload this video.
Let's pray that it's not too big.
[rap music playing]
Should this just be that part,
Joy Ride Two?
Today we decided to sell
this one music video
a hundred times to my community
for $160 or 0.1 Eth.
All right, squad!
We're about to upload.
We're about to upload.
We're about to upload.
91%. 91.
Almost there. 91.
It's still on 91. Oh, my God.
[Latasha] We would need
to sell 10 Eths to make back
what we paid for the music video.
Let us pray.
In a bear market, that might be tough.
This is a monumental moment.
It's our first open editions
for Lighthouse Family.
This is a big deal.
Pull up and show the world.
Show the future.
[woman] Open your wallets!
[laughs]
Love y'all.
Bye.
Yeah, we just got 11 NFTs sold.
All right, we have one Eth, 1.04500 Eth.
Let's run it up.
We've really found community in NFTs,
and that community equates
to so much more abundance
than just monetary abundance.
I'm witnessing abundance
through how artists work together.
I'm witnessing abundance
on how like people connect
with each other.
That is bigger than just an NFT sale.
[Aversano] In the bull market,
everyone was so generous and happy
to buy the next new project
and being early on artists
and supporting artists they love.
So it's very surprising and disappointing
to see what's been going on
with market places.
[Grimmelmann] The last year
has been confusing for everybody.
Artists who've been looking
for resale royalties for years
get this promise.
Then the market crashes,
and the market places are incentivized
to keep the volume of transactions going
and so they cut artists out.
[Aversano] Okay, let's do this.
Just giving it some texture,
it's one little
It makes sense for PFP collections
and other collectibles
of wanting to take royalties away,
but when you take away artist royalties,
it's someone's life you're playing with,
and someone's work,
and someone's emotions and expressions.
I just think we need to be
more self-sufficient
and not rely on these market places,
because they're not honoring the artists.
The lesson I learned here
is just don't change
anything about yourself
for the market, for anyone else.
Create what's true to you,
and I'm still making art.
[steps echoing]
The collapse of the NFT Market
was something we expected in any moment,
like any bubble it blinded everyone.
When it went from being
about individual art,
into a boom of collectibles
I believe we all knew that in some moment
those heights were going to come down.
Seeing that the decline in the
cryptocurrency market was getting worse,
I decided to withdraw my earnings
and put it towards my life and my plans.
The decision to leave Cuba
is a desire that I've carried
with me for a long time.
It's about freedom from living
continually under censorship,
without freedom of expression.
So in the next few days,
I'm leaving Cuba for Spain.
The money I earned from
NFTs was an important part
of proving that I had the necessary funds
required for the immigration process.
I'm very nervous,
I have never left the island.
But my immigrating is about
giving her a better future,
a better place to live
a life with dignity.
So thinking about whether
NFTs liberated me
With everything, I see things in
shades of gray, not black and white.
Yes, they liberated me. Yes and no.
Investigating power
and privilege in the art world,
I find that the question of gatekeeping
is really a psychology on both sides.
The people that have the power
don't think that they have it,
and the people
that feel like they're powerless
actually have more power than they do.
I think NFTs are one
of those key moments in history
where they provide
a horizon of possibility
for artists to realize
that they really do have power
that they could use.
[Yusuf Twins] The whole
NFT crash happening
has given me that time to reflect.
I've been able to focus more on the art
apart from just making sales.
The NFT space really brought
a lot of financial freedom for us
and so allowed us
to help a lot of young people in Nigeria.
I don't think I'll be able
to do some of these things
if I haven't discovered the NFT space.
[Jasti] My mom went back to work,
but she still helps me out
and manages stuff.
I've definitely been focusing
a lot more on being a teenager
and getting good grades,
and I'm very grateful
for the opportunities that I had
in the past few years.
I was able to develop a whole new style
and I'm going to keep doing NFTs.
[Sinclair] My life has changed
entirely because of NFTs.
I had to spend more time
building up my own art
and my own style.
In the NFT community,
I've had something
that I've never had before,
which is to be fully accepted.
Like, how wild and also great it is
that we're now stepping into a new era
where digital artists
are getting the type of recognition
and this kind of fame.
[Beeple] We are now
at the studio opening here
two years from the Christie's sale
that [chuckles]
definitely changed changed my life.
And it's been an [laughs]
an interesting two years.
It's been an interesting two years.
[woman] The room just isn't open yet,
but you can all step in.
Okay. This is freaky as sh*t.
This is freaky as f*ck.
Uh, yeah, I think these seem very good.
Did we have a scarf on the Picasso?
That looks good. Okay, nice.
And so when are they going out?
7:45.
Okay, perfect. Perfect. Awesome.
Thank you, everybody.
This looks f*cking sweet.
Amazing, amazing.
I think traditional art
is still quite skeptical
about NFTs and digital art.
I don't think it needs
to happen just at a computer.
I think that's actually like the laziest,
most boring way to experience digital art.
I'm trying to push forward people's ideas
of what you can say with this.
Now we are about to do the Everyday.
[man] For how many people?
500 people are out in the studio now.
[man] Let's go!
[applause]
[woman] Oh, my God, Mike!
[Beeple] The pieces of paper
with red dots on them,
those won an NFT.
[audience cheering]
[audience chanting]
[cheering]
[Beeple] What is something
that's going to last
for a hundred years?
It's got to be a real new idea
that actually changes the way
people think about art.
When you've been dead for 50 years,
the hype train is very much over
and you better have f*cking done
something that is new and innovative
that will stand the test of time.
And I'm trying to do that.
We'll see a hundred years
from now if I've done it.
So you want to know
if NFTs are a flash in the pan
or if this is something
that's going to have a lasting effect
on the art world.
Talk to a curator
at the Guggenheim who says
that they're looking
to put their entire collection
on the blockchain,
or go to MoMA.
[Anadol] This is not just
a piece of art on a wall.
It's a piece in a blockchain
that has been collected
by more than 5,000 people
across the world.
[Antonelli] The blockchain
will remain forever, I hope.
And I think it is an evolution
in the way we look at art.
[man] It's just such a natural desire
to want to leave your mark
on some structure that is going to exist
for years and years and years.
Blockchain just brings in so many ideas
about possible future aspects of society
that are worth thinking about
as an artist.
[Tolokonnikova] We minted a performance.
It's the first ever art protest
action minted on blockchain,
and we raised money
for reproductive rights.
NFTs can be more than just flipping JPEGs.
[Murakami] This is a revolution
in the way people think about value,
and NFT art has become a symbol of it.
The current form of NFTs
will completely change in five years.
If people are thinking
that this trend is over,
I would say that you can look back
at the early dot com bubble.
At some point after that bubble,
this technology is being used
in a more mainstream way.
[Grimmelmann]
The scandals and controversies
of the last year
have helped bring the worlds of blockchain
and law closer together.
The legal system can do more
to integrate NFTs sensibly.
At the end of the day, we have to ask,
are we going to protect
the artists wherever they are,
whatever systems they're using?
[McCoy] The thing that
I've always find fascinating
with this technology,
we're recreating the world in miniature,
the whole range of human emotions
and human actions.
This incredible altruism
and then this incredible greed.
That's the world,
and you see it laid out
right in front of you.
[indistinct chatter]
[laughter]
Okay, got this.
There we go.
[birds chirping]
Don't play no games
I don't know what you want me to say
You're crazy to think I'm dumb
Da-dum, da-dum
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Minted (2023)
Moderators: Maskath3, GabrielAlejo2341, sidolanters, Maskath3, sidolanters, GabrielAlejo2341