NFTs: How Do They Improve The Marketing of ‘Artworks’?
Answer: they don’t
When all else is said and done, an NFT is basically only a ‘cataloguing gimmick’, a digital ticket or catalogue card, listing (or associated with), an artwork (or other object) — but not even remotely offering a solution to the problems of marketing, authenticity or ownership.
(Basics: what is an NFT ? NFT stands for ‘non-fungible token’, which is a piece of cataloguing data stored in a blockchain (and linked to cryptocurrencies like Ethereum) and which, once recorded, cannot be altered. It amounts to something like a unique digital listing in a digital sales ledger which, underpinned by an open-access blockchain, is theoretically incorruptible. The digital listing points to — or is associated with — a quite separate object in the digital or physical world. All this is just a very complicated way of saying that an NFT amounts to a digital ticket linked to an item housed elsewhere in a ‘gigantic open-access left luggage storage facility’.)
This short article assumes that you might have been misled — as I was — into thinking that NFTs are going to revolutionise the marketing of artworks on the internet, specifically by offering them for sale, supposedly seamlessly and efficiently, in some sort of transparent new ‘digital arena’, and in the process somehow bypassing the…
