“What the Heck Is Cryptoart?”
I get this question a lot. Here’s my crack at a nutshell answer.
On 1 January 2020, at the casual invitation of my friend Lenara, I jumped into the world of cryptoart. It’s since taken over much of my time, neatly dovetailing with — and keeping me insanely busy during—the global COVID crisis. But I’ll tell you my own story another time. The purpose of this post is to offer a quick and easy introduction to the concept of cryptoart.
Here’s as simple an explainer as I can muster. (For any cryptoartists reading this—this article is meant for the entirely uninitiated. Feel free to add what you think folks need to know in the comments.)
1.It’s a way of introducing scarcity and value to art in digital form. Imagine: Picasso paints a canvas and signs it. Because it is scarce and unique, this canvas is worth millions. Meanwhile, the same image recreated as a limited-edition fine art print is less valuable, a postcard in the gift shop even less, and endless reproductions of the image on the internet obtainable for free.
Digital art is endlessly multipliable without loss of quality. Cryptoart works by adding a unique and indelible signature to a digital file, called “tokenizing” or “minting” it on the blockchain — a technology that acts like a permanent ledger or registry distributed…
