NFT Technology : Why Digital Artists Also Need to Know How Blockchain Works

NFT quickly became a byword in the art and crypto worlds ever since digital artist Beeple made news for selling his digital art at Christie’s for $69 million. Actually, what Mike Winkelmann a.k.a. Beeple, sold to a high profile blockchain entrepreneur/programmer named Vignesh Sundaresan is a non-fungible token minted in the ethereum blockchain ledger. The latter paid 42,329 in Ether (ETH), which at the time of sale in March 2021 was worth $69 million.

Now here’s the thing, while NFT hype has sent many digital artists and creators scrambling to find out how they can have their digital artworks, many tech experts give advice that NFT transactions are not as simple as they seem to appear in TV news reports.

Understanding the Price Values of NFT vs. Price Value of Cryptocurrency

There’s a lot of intricacies involved in Nft technology and what artists or any one interested in selling digital assets should fully comprehend is how blockchain technology works. Mainly because NFT transactions transpire only in blockchain platforms and not in any of the traditional trading markets where exchange deals are directly monetized into fiat money like the US dollar currency.

The price or value of a non-fungible token is tied to the value of the cryptocurrency, which in Beeple’s case is the Ethereum. However, the price at which an NFT is sold is determined by how much a buyer would be willing to pay for owning the NFT. Understand that in an NFT sale, only the key to the corresponding blockchain code that minted the digital asset into an NFT, shifts ownership. The digital asset creator may also choose to sell his copyright license; or retain copyright ownership so he can collect some form of commission or royalty from future sales.

NFTs are traded via auction houses like Chritie’s or Sotheby’s. As opposed to the trading of cryptomoney like ethereum at cryptocurrency exchange sites, where the price value is dependent on the current index price for ETH.

This denotes that if today, Vignesh Sundaresan decides to sell the NFT covering Beeple’s digital art work at an auction site, Sundaresan’s asking price would not be lower than the 42,329 ETH being the payment he made in March 2021. At that time the ETH index price was roughly at around $1635.

Nonetheless, even if the final bid price for the Beeple NFT does not stray far from the 42,239 ETH acquisition cost, Sundaresan still gains from the transaction. That is, if he decides to immediately convert the proceeds from the NFT sale. After all, the current ETH price index ETH is pegged at at $3,168.

The doubling of ETH dollar values was a result of the phenomenal soar of cryptocurrency values that began in April 2021. Technically, Beeple’s NFT is now approximately worth at least $133,689,600 to Sundaresan. Likely more, should Sundaresan decide to sell the NFT today and immediately cash out his proceeds the way Beeple did.

What Digital Artists Should Learn from Beeple’s Phenomenal NFT Feat

In acknowledging that he is not a blockchain technology brainiac nor an expert at trading cryptocurrencies, Beeple immediately cashed out the proceeds of the NFT sale he closed at Christie’s

While the dollar equivalent of the March 2021 NFT deal was pegged at $69 million, Beeple actually received $53,000,000 million for his digital collage “Everydays – The First 5000 Days,” The $53 million cash proceed was the net amount of taxes and related fees paid to Christie’s and to the ethereum platform that minted the digital art into a non-fungible token.

How is the Music Industry Doing During COVID-19 in 2021

Fête de la musique, the day is an annual music celebration first marked in Paris in 1982 due to Jack Lang, the Minister of Culture in France, who declared the June 21 was the right time to ask communities to go outdoors and experience music.

Concert

 

Little did he know that a virulent disease would change the way this annual celebration would be perceived and make many like us rediscover our love for music.

A few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic became our reality, I revealed I used to be pregnant with twins.

I enjoy a decent beat similar to your average person, but my consumption was largely hooked into the radio stations I tuned in to during my morning commute to figure. When the pandemic reared its ugly head, my life and work were consumed by the news: how could COVID-19 spread; who was more vulnerable; what was the daily caseload within the country; were pregnant women more vulnerable? I’m nearly sure exactly when that turning point came.

The pandemic spread out a Pandora’s Box of fears for several like me, forever changing the way we approached life, lived out our daily routines, and even the way we consumed music.

 

ALSO READ: 3 Points That Proofs TV is Still the Best for Watching News

 

Business of music

The pandemic also remained unbiased within the way it changed the music on a macro level. The primary being live music, which makes up over 50 percent of total revenues and comes mainly from sales of tickets to measure performances.

At this point, they weren’t holding concerts to earn money in ticket sales but to lift money for COVID-19 relief.

Services like Twitch, Instagram TV et al. Streaming platforms also enabled new monetization methods, including memberships to artist channels that allowed early or exclusive access to content, similar to virtual gatherings and paid-commenting features. Even websites like, where you can find play-along chords of popular songs like “Happier Than Ever” by Billie Eilish, have been utilizing advertisements to monetize their site.

For the typical Jane, aka this writer, this changing tide allowed me to spread my taste in music. Suddenly, not left at the mercy of the local station, I used to be branching out and dipping my toe in sounds beyond the favored. Down the hole, we went with Spotify serving up the globe as our own personal stage with changing sounds, languages, and rhythms.

It’s a year later now and therefore the world is gradually returning to a semblance of normalcy.

This reporter has also returned to figure post-maternity leave, throwing herself once more to the sounds emitting from the local stations.