Will NFTs Kill Traditional Art?
There are many predictions made every year. Most of them fail. Some of them turn out to be correct. Hence, we can speculate as much as we want. Speculation is one of the core necessities of civilization. It drives markets up and down, impacting the livelihoods of millions across the world. Some of us live and die by the markets. We like to understand market psychology, fundamental and technical analysis of different assets. The global art market is worth approximately $1.7 trillion dollars. Hence, by such standards, the NFT market looks small by comparison. It is less than five percent of the total at the moment. Hence, there is plenty of room to grow. Digital art has just gotten started with the help of NFTs. Without NFTs, digital art has no value. Likewise, NFT art is set to explode in popularity once the masses understand the benefits of it
Why do People like Art?
We can think that humans are social creatures who love stories. Hence, we understand the world around us in the form of stories. We’ve been selling one story after another since the time of the birth of human civilization. Stories are essential to give our lives meaning. Without them, we feel without direction in the world. Science has helped us reduce the sense of uncertainty inherent in the world.
Hence, people want to create stories, ascribe economic value to them, and exchange them. With accounting and writing, humans can coordinate in numbers, use the earth’s resources and increase our numbers. We have a lot of resources on our planet. We value metals like gold, silver, and copper. The earth has given us many things of value.
Similarly, we value ideas and stories in the form of art created by other people.
Why do People like NFTs?
The emergence of the internet has supercharged our evolution as a species. Not only have we climbed towards the top of the food chain, but we have also managed to exceed our own expectations. We’ve merged the telecom infrastructure with computers and began coordinating with each other on a global scale. The blockchain has supercharged the evolution of the internet. NFTs are merely a manifestation of this phenomenon.
At the end of the day, we like to think of anything in terms of its future utility. Think of NFTs as representing your ownership of a range of tradable property-based rights in both the real and virtual world. This was something that was never possible before. For instance, imagine you can travel across the world in digital form through verifiable identity for any purpose. This unlocks a range of possibilities using smart contracts that execute automatically.
Property rights and lack of it are real-world problems that can be solved using blockchain. Likewise, we value NFTs because they represent verifiable ownership rights on the internet.
The Future of NFTs
There are many ways to think about the future. You either predict it to position yourself well or create the future yourself. The third option is that you do not think about the future. Instead, you are completely involved in the present moment. It’s the same if we want to think about the future of NFTs. On one hand, there is talk that NFTs are going to revolutionize commerce on the internet. On the other hand, there is talk that NFTs are scams and Ponzi schemes. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
We’re just starting to see developers and founders expand the realm of what’s possible to do with NFTs. The emergence of new technologies is followed by a sudden reversal in expectations because there is a gap between reality and incessant hype about the future. It is a matter of time till we see more break-out successes among NFT projects. Till then, NFT art and gaming will lead the way towards mainstream adoption.
The gaming and art markets have embraced NFTs because it makes sense to use the internet and build a participant-led economy. We can expect these two to lead the market forward in the foreseeable future.
Is Traditional Art Dead?
Plain and simple no. Traditional art will not go extinct anytime soon.
For centuries and millennia, art has provided cultural value and meaning to our lives. All art is a story. Stories are how we humans connect and relate with each other. Thus, physical art will continue to have value in a volatile world where our existing economic system faces challenges on all fronts.
What NFTs will do is increase the total number of artists and creators in our world. The internet-enabled millions of people to learn and become artists. With blockchain technology and NFTs, expect the total pool to only increase in the years to come.
Conclusion
As the world tries to find new avenues for growth and repair age-old inefficiencies in production and distribution, blockchain technology offers new hope. By baking in payments into the internet layer, we do not need third parties and intermediaries to coordinate the value exchange. This was something never possible before. By connecting creators with consumers directly, we can reshape the global economic order.