Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and if you're a graphic designer,
illustrator animator, or just do anything in the art space digitally, you may have heard of NFTs or
Nifties. So in this video, we're going to go over what they are, and I'll show you some examples
and how much you could make, possibly. All right, let's get started. OK, so what is an NFT? NFTs are
non-fungible tokens, and for the purposes of this video, I'm going to be talking about them
from an art perspective. So it's digital artwork that's verified using blockchain technology.
It's the exact same technology that all the cryptocurrencies use, like Bitcoin, Ethereum,
Dogecoin, and all the others. This technology uses a network of computers to record transactions, and
give owners proof of ownership and authenticity. It's a way for digital artwork to have a
provenance, sort of a digital footprint that shows the origin of the artwork and the buying
and selling over time and how it ended up with its current owner. So an artist will make a digital
artwork. Let's say it's an animated GIF, and they'll sell a limited number on NFT marketplaces.
Once that limited number runs out, there are no more available, and this drives up the demand and
also the price. So when did all this get started? Apparently, according to a New York Times article,
this started back in the 2010s, but it really got popular in 2017 with CryptoKitties.
So let's head over to cryptokitties.co. So what are CryptoKitties? Well, I never actually heard
of them before doing the research to make this video, but apparently they are digital just JPEG
files that you can breed and buy and sell, and they're limited edition. And you pay for them
with cryptocurrency. Here in a second I'll show you some NFTs and how much they're selling for,
but the biggest sale in recent news was that by an artist who goes by Beeple, and his real name
is Mike Winkelmann, and he sold a digital file for $69 million. That is pretty crazy. So let's take a
look at that artwork first. Here's the artwork that sold. And this is called '5000 Days' or
something like that. This sold at Christie's Auction House, and it sold for 69 million.
And this is a collage of all the artwork that Mike Winkelmann has made in the last 5000 days, or at
least it was up to the point where he released this. And if you zoom in really close on this,
this is one of the images inside that collage. So you might be saying, OK, well, that's just a JPEG,
and I can download it on my computer or on my phone, and I'll own it...an exact copy of it, just
like anyone who paid that much money for it. So why are people paying this much money for it? Yes,
it's true that you can get an exact copy, but you don't own the real authentic work that's
been verified with blockchain technology. So it's a similar idea with the Mona Lisa. You could find
someone to paint a pretty much exact replica of the Mona Lisa, and none of your friends would
tell the difference. But the real Mona Lisa has a provenance: the buying and selling over time,
all the way up to the current owner, and that's exactly what the blockchain technology does.
All right, let's look at a couple other examples. Jack Dorsey, the cofounder and CEO of Twitter
is selling his first tweet as an NFT in a charity auction. And bidding had rates $2.5 million by
yesterday, and this is that tweet. And here's a flying rainbow cat with a pop tart body. This one
sold for about $580,000. You can also make other digital items into NFTs, like music albums. This
album by 3LAU sold 33 unique NFTs for a total of more than $11.5 million. The big sellers right now
are images, GIFs, songs, and videos. And just like everything else, supply and demand are driving the
price. Since NFTs are scarce, collectors want to collect them, and they're willing to pay a lot of
money to do it. Some people are also seeing them as an investment because, if the artist becomes
even more popular, that NFT is going to be worth more later on, and then they can sell it.
If you want to sell your artwork as an NFT, you can go to one of these sites:
Nifty Gateway, OpenSea, Rarible, Super Rare, Decentraland, and probably a whole lot of other
sites. So let's go to superrare.co. If we scroll down, we can see how much these are selling for.
This basketball image...someone just made an offer on it for about $177, $443 for this artwork, and
this one over here just went live. I'll click on 'Discover'. This image just had an offer for $443,
and this skeleton GIF also has an offer for $443. This Big Rock Candy Mountain image was bought
for $3500. Now you've probably noticed if you checked out some of those sites that most of them
are using Ethereum, which is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. And the way most of the sites work is,
the artist gets 85% of the initial sale and the site gets 15%. If they're secondary sales, meaning
the person who bought it decides to sell it to somebody else, the artist gets a flat 10% fee.
There's also usually a 3% transaction fee, and that's paid by the buyer. You'll have to check out
each site to see how their fees work. Now, opening an account to sell an NFT is pretty involved. So
if you want to check out how to do that, I have a video on the screen above that shows how to open
an account and sell an NFT on OpenSea, and the fee structure for them is a little bit different.
So it might seem a little bit crazy right now, but this is probably the direction that digital art is
headed. Who would have guessed that little pieces of cardboard with ink on them that showed baseball
players would ever be valuable, but there are some really, really valuable baseball cards out there.
Anyway, if you're a talented digital artist, you should definitely open an account
and give this a shot. All right, if you liked this video, and you want to see more videos like this,
please hit the 'Subscribe' button and the little bell next to it, and you'll be notified
every time a new video comes out. All right, I'll see you in the next video. Thank you!!!