In 2020, it was Bitcoin. In 2021, it’s all about NFTs.
When the popularity of Non-Fungible Tokens began to rise at the beginning of the year, the general consensus was that this new element to the Crypto Boom would be nothing more than a flash in the pan. However, as we approach the halfway point of the year, the rise of NFTs shows no sign of slowing any time soon.
Since the wider public began to take an interest in NFTs, a slew of artists, musicians and celebrities have joined the ride. You may remember our guide to NFTs earlier this year, in which we discussed NFTs released by figures such as Grimes – an early adopter, the singer and artist is now in pretty good company.
Kate Moss recently hit headlines for the listing of an NFT titled Sleep With Kate – and no, it’s not what it sounds like. As part of a series of NFTs exploring ‘moments in time’, the supermodel created a short video showing her up close as she slept, which she then sold alongside two other videos, Drive With Kate and Walk With Kate.
The collection was auctioned online this week, with a portion of the proceeds being donated to female-led mental health support charity Gurls Talk. Whilst Kate’s NFT series can still be viewed in-part via her Instagram profile, the NFTs themselves have now been marked as sold.
Following the sale of the supermodel’s first NFT release, here are just a few of the other NFTs that have grabbed headlines since the beginning of the non-fungible boom.
Doja Cat’s ‘Juicy Drops’
Always one to do things a little differently, Doja Cat didn’t just release an NFT of her own – she launched a whole NFT marketplace.
Doja Cat’s Juicy Drops marketplace launched last month with a collection of Doja-themed NFTs, ambiguously categorised as Metallic, Flavoured and Mystery Drops – the latter being described as a Super Rare Doja Cat NFT. We don’t know a great deal about the content of the NFTs themselves, though we do know that the drops include photographs of both Doja and her cat, Raymus.
As of right now, only Doja herself has released an NFT via the platform, though we expect it won’t be long until one of Doja’s high-profile peers joins in on the Juicy Drops fun. This is one marketplace that we’d recommend keeping a close eye on.
Digital Drip
Considering that the idea behind non-fungible tokens is that they are used for the sale of items which exclusively exist digitally, you’d think that clothes, jewellery and other apparel would be near enough untouched by the trend.
Surprisingly, this isn’t the case. In the last couple of months, fashion labels have begun listing digital versions of their pieces for sale as NFTs. One such company is Clothia, who specialise in the sale of pieces from up-and-coming designers – and now in the sale of digital iterations of these items.
Clothia’s CEO Elena Silenok says that the rules regarding NFTs ‘haven’t been set in stone’ and believes there’s room to use NFTs in a wide range of different industries, be it ‘art, access or experiences’.
A report by Vogue suggests that fashion industry leaders may be about to get in on the trend, too, with Gucci having confirmed to them that it’s ‘only a matter of time’ until they release their own NFT.
Familiar Faces
The whole point of a meme is that the image is shared around, altered and recontextualised thousands of times, taking on a life of its own – so is there any point in ‘owning’ such a widely accessible image for yourself?
Apparently, yes. The current big hitters on the NFT market are the faces behind some of the most iconic memes of the 2010s – and we mean the early 2010s, when memes as we know them were entirely unheard of.
If you were online at any point between 2010 – 2015, you’ll be familiar with images such as Bad Luck Brian, Disaster Girl and Overly Attached Girlfriend. Now, having seen their likenesses used and abused online for a decade, the faces behind the memes have made it pay.
An NFT of the uncaptioned Overly Attached Girlfriend image, the subject of which is better known to her friends and family as Laina Morris, recently sold online for $411,000 – by far the most compensation that she has ever received for the widespread use of her likeness.
Furthermore, Zoe Roth, the now 21-year-old who went viral as a child thanks to a photograph of her smiling in front of a burning building, recently sold an NFT of the original image for a half a million dollars. She plans to use the money from the sale to pay off her student debt.
These are just a few of the ways that the NFT marketplace has been used since it started to achieve widespread popularity at the beginning of 2021, so there’s no telling where the market could be this time next year or further in the future.
Given how profitable the NFT market has proven to be so far, however, we’d recommend learning a little bit more about it….