Over the last couple of years, the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market was booming, and I couldn't scroll through the Twitterverse without seeing the many posts saying "GM", sharing their images and links to buy them as NFTs. After a huge crash in 2022, the NFT crew has finally started disappearing from my timelines, and good riddance to them.
To me, the whole cryptocurrency and NFT situation seemed like a massive con which I was keen to avoid. The whole crypto bubble was being thrown down our necks online at every opportunity, and you could not escape it. You would only ever hear about the major successes, and there seemed to be very little failures published. The most expensive NFT to one owner sold for $69 million! That's crazy right?
The average photographer or digital artist is highly unlikely to make that kind of money from NFTs, prints, or other methods. Many NFTs are now worth a fraction of the ridiculous amounts paid for them, and because of that, the market is dying. The lack of regulation in the crypto world makes the digital space a highly manipulative and dangerous place to do business with many scams, and personally, I would not touch it with a 10-foot pole.
Clearly, I have a hatred for this digital world, and my feelings don't just stop at crypto, but I also have a strong dislike for AI imagery too! I searched one marketplace and found these GIFs of Peanuts selling for over $1,800 each. For just one moment, sit back and ask yourself why you would buy this. What would you do with it? Aren't there better things to spend your money on?
Buy Prints
In my opinion, the best way to support your favorite photographers or artists, is to buy a physical print of their work. As a photographer, seeing someone buy a print of my work is a fantastic feeling and even more so that I know it will be hung up in the client's house for them to enjoy, where their visitors or family can enjoy it too. A physical print can add beauty to a household or office, it can create discussion, or even inspire. NFTs don't do this in a typical way. The only thing they seemed to inspire from the outside world was pure greed.
Call me old-fashioned or a grumpy old fart, I don't care. I prefer a tangible asset that I can proudly show off in my house on the wall, it has a physical value and can be bought or sold in a simple way. Simple really is the best sometimes, because it works. Why do we need to overcomplicate things by having a ridiculous format of technical mumbo jumbo to buy a token?
Greed
Maybe I am wrong? Tell me in the comments, but I think the only reason NFTs are minted is to be sold, then sold again, and so on, with the hope that you make more money than you paid for it. I mean, that is business in a nutshell, but the NFT world grew so quickly out of hand that many fingers got burnt. Some folks did become very successful selling their own creations in the digital marketplace, and fair play to them for making it work. However, in my opinion again, I'd rather do things in a more natural, traditional way.
NFTs and crypto are known to not be environmentally friendly, and this is in a time when we really should be doing more to help our world. I also mentioned how unregulated it is earlier, and because of this digital world being very speculative, it's just a risk that most people should stay clear of. Looking at the peanut example above, you could do so much more with the money. With $1,800, take a vacation, buy some camera gear, take a loved one out for an amazing night out or weekend away, create memories, help a struggling friend, the options are endless.
Blocked, not Blockchain
Every time I see the words "GM" on Twitter or other social media, it serves as a very quick reminder for me to mute and block them. Anyway, I digress. So, what are your thoughts on crypto and NFTs? Love them or hate them? Let me know in the comments below.
I was actually thinking that exact question the other day! Did they bite the dust with the bitcoin fad?
I hope this bubble has finally burst
NFT's may be dead but Bitcoin and crypto are still going.
The next big bubble to burst is AI.
There isn't any artificial intelligence in today's world; nothing remotely close. The capabilities of these systems are narrow, limited and wildly exaggerated. Plus, it's all based on cheating: it"s just producing mashups of the work of humans.
Eventually, this will all be pretty clear to just about everyone.
I think we need to distinguish some great applications here vs. the hype.
Great applications, my wife recently designed some boardgame pieces (not for sale, just for ourselves) with midjourney. I used chatgpt to generate some instagram post captions (not doing it anymore very often, but sometimes when you need some inspiration about what to write about a location or situation its a great help and can be used as a starting point to modify for your need).
On the other hand I see the same grifters that pushed crypto and NFTs into peoples faces, now turning suddenly into AI experts selling you their AI courses and prompts. And certainly I am looking forward to that bubble to burst rather sooner than later.
AI certainly has uses. I dont like AI imagery and certainly wouldnt call it photography however AI is important in other ways, such as the remove tool in photoshop uses AI on how to remove something from your image and replace it cleanly. I found using the remove tool so much more effective than using content aware fill or clone stamp.
Agree, I use it for SW development and it saves me a lot of time and boring work. As a result, I must say it makes my life a bit better! I don't like what AI has brought to photography though. Indeed the remove tool is nice but the drawbacks of AI for photography are huge.
it is scary what AI can do already and it's only going to get better, which for many people is bad news. Jobs, livelihoods etc are going to be ruined by it.
It's the case of be careful what you wish for and as the great Dr Malcolm in Jurassic Park said "They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think If they should."
I 100% agree with you! Sometimes though, I regret that I didn't invest 10k euros in bitcoins 10 years ago and just enjoyed getting 100k from nothing but speculation as a result... I might have been able to buy a big white 15k telephoto! In the other hand, I hate this system and it's a big waste of resources so I'm not sure that I would enjoy the money I would have got from it...
It's a tough one sometimes to comprehend. I think many of us, who didn't invest in Bitcoin etc have regrets that we didn't jump on at the time, but then again it could have gone the other way and we could have lost everything.
This is what's happening to most people now, with NFT's and new Cryptocoins. People get FOMO, chuck all their money at it, and then lose it.
Totally on the same bandwidth ! And how many peanuts could you buy for $1.800 ???
What surprised me was the numerous well known photographers who followed that silly trend. Concerning AI, the big problem is that only 5 to 10% of humanity is capable of discerning what real creativity is. The others are fascinated by easyness.
Absolutely!
Well, that's not entirely true, but you are entitled to your opinion.
The phrase "Buy prints" overlooks artists who specialize in creating animated works, which can only be displayed on screens. Art is a diverse range of mediums, and it extends beyond traditional art that can be printed or hung on walls. For example, Deekay puts himself out there doing what he loves. If not for NFTs, he would need to confine himself to an animation studio or a freelance job. There's nothing wrong with that, but why should we value paintings over animations? Imo art is art. NFTs have brought new value to digital art, which was previously not as highly regarded as physical 1/1 paintings due to concerns about applicability. NFTs have also caught the attention of museums and auction houses, leading to increased recognition and appreciation for digital art, along with the concept of digital ownership and scarcity. NFTs have also become more "environmentally friendly" since September, when ETH changed to PoS, removing excessive energy consumption.
Your Peanut example is also incorrect. 0.075ETH is equivalent to $142, based on the current 1 ETH price of $1800 at the time of writing this comment.
At the end of my comment, I just want to add: Is photography real art? Should photography museums exist? I mean, it's replicable and can be printed many times, so why would anyone pay so much money for a photo? Well, that's what people thought back in the day, haven't they? My recommendation is to look past silly monkey profile pictures and focus on what's good coming out of NFTs.
Is it a bubble? Hell yeah. But so is every technology.
Some good arguments there and apologies, you are correct regarding the peanut price. I googled the price at the time of writing and wrote the full ETH price so that is my error.
I'm certainly happy to be educated from the other side of the token as it were! I still think there is a lot to learn and a lot to improve in the whole digital world. Currently the concern is the many, many scams out there due to being unregulated, if issues like this can be resolved, the situation could be better for all involved
I completely agree with that. The true potential of NFTs will be realized when they seamlessly integrate with digital goods, and individuals won't even be aware that they own an NFT representing their digital possessions. NFTs should be seen as a powerful technology, similar to using AI for genuine improvements instead of just for the sake of AI. I recommend the "Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Tech" I believe it to be quite accurate when it comes to bubbles in technology.
It could help improve optimism and positive in the tech field by getting everyone to look more on the bright side. For example, as people can always make themselves feel better in the face of tech problems and other major issues by saying "at least this isn't as bad as NFTs".
Since people think about things in relative terms (comparing things wherever possible). a random circle placed on a blank endless canvas will be hard for someone to describe its size, but if you place a 2nd circle that is significantly larger, then all of a sudden, the first circle becomes small even though its size didn't change.
With that idea in mind, imagine creating the digital version garbage laced scum (AKA NFTs), then compared to that, many other bad things don't seem as bad anymore.
A problem photographers have with NFTs stems from the fact that social media companies have convinced us that photography is disposable and that our work is only good for "likes" and subscribers.
NFT photography only works when the image has value on it's own. It has to be good enough for a museum or an art gallery and be part of the art market. Photography shot for social media doesn't really work as an NFT and that's why most of what we've seen so far has been kind of "scammy." Basically, popular social media photographers usually fail at creating NFTs because their work becomes obsolete in just a short amount of time.
NFTs have to stand the test of time. They have to be like Ansel Adam's "Moonrise" in the sense that they have to stay valuable long after the photographer has died.
If you're the kind of photographer that wants to create perfect work that's part of the art market and outside of the domain of social media companies, then NFTs could be the best thing that ever happened for photography. It really is a state of mind because success is determined by art market longevity rather than immediate gains. Anybody that's using NFTs as a get rich scheme is going against the permanent nature of the medium and is most definitely a scammer. But photographers that treat it like a digital asset that's the equivalent of a museum quality print might find that the new technology is their best friend.