EVOLVING DIGITAL ART MARKETS
I like art a lot. I'm not an "art snob" and I don't personally own any particularly valuable art. However, I have always really appreciated how great art allows everyone to respond to it in their own unique way. Whether it's music, painting, sculpture, graffiti, film, literature, dance, photography, theater, or performance art... there is something important about the potential a piece of art can have to profoundly effect each individual in a unique way. The uniqueness of that experience determines the potential value of a given piece of art. Some of the world’s most famous works of art, like DaVinci’s “Mona Lisa”, are priceless one-of-kind physical objects, like a painting or sculpture. However, a piece of art can also take the form of a less scarce medium, such as a digital audio music recording, which is easy to acquire and reproduce. Many of us remember the old Napster days in the late 1990's when the issue of digital music piracy on the web first rose to the public consciousness. The music industry has been forced to adapt in response to the technology of the time. This meant that artists were required to play more live performances in order to continue to provide value and monetize their intellectual property in ways that might offset and negate the new wave of digital music piracy.
WHAT GIVES ART MEANING?
The NFT market is reminding us again that there are an unlimited number of ways to capitalize on that one particular way... the truly unique way... the non-fungible way, in which a piece of art effects an individual. The best art sifts through an infinite number of lifetimes and experiences and reaches a person in a unique place and time, to which it has significance. While art ascribes meaning to the experiences of the individual, the experiences of the individual so attribute value to art.
In my recent post, The 5 Stages of NFT Acceptance (The Non-Fungible Grief Cycle), I discuss my experience discovering the extraordinary potential NFTs have to disrupt digital content markets. I'm very new to the world of NFTs, so I'm just beginning to explore places like OpenSea.io which boasts itself as "The Largest NFT Marketplace", with the subtext, "Buy, sell, and discover rare digital items". I haven't bought or sold anything there yet, but I just stumbled on an incredible digital item that is blowing my mind.
WHO IS BANKSY?
I was scrolling through OpenSea.io to get familiar with the platform, when I decided to sort the list by average price to see the most (and least) valuable items listed on the auction. There was something called 🔥 “Burnt Banksy” at the top of the list. I was intrigued because I've always been interested in Banksy's art. I'm not sure we share the exact same political ideology... but that's not what Banksy's art is about for me. I really enjoy the juxtapositions of power and authority. I love the symbols of love and peace in a sea of violence and hatred. Those messages which should appeal to the best in humanity, and which are mostly meta-political in nature, are some of my favorite images. If you don't know much about Banksy, you should pause reading this and go and research his epic revolutionary anonymous guerrilla street art on Presearch, the decentralized search engine.
These are some of the more iconic Banksy images. The works all have a similar theme and aesthetic, but the way in which they are covertly and anonymously inflicted on their unsuspecting canvasses in the middle of the night, is what gives them a lot of value to me. I think the idea that someone can still evade detection in the age of the surveillance state is pretty impressive. I think just that alone is an interesting facet of Banksy's work. The artist has performed installations across the world in some very public locations. And yet, just like Satoshi Nakamoto, Banksy has never been indentified. What if we discover that Banksy IS Satoshi Nakamoto. 🤯
WHAT IS A BURNT BANKSY?
Other aspects of Banksy's art also make it extraordinarily rare and difficult to own. The fact that it is generally applied to masonry walls on public properties is an impediment to ownership and transferability of ownership. There are many headlines about Banksy works being cut out of walls and sold for millions... which seems to partially defeat the artist's intent. However, the fact that the works are valued in this way and attention is brought to them because of this sort of frenzy, has actually leveraged the artist's local individual works to create a larger worldwide collection of images depicting a greater body of subject matter. Naturally, I was really curious when I saw that 🔥 "Burnt Banksy" was at the top of the average price list on OpenSea.io. I immediately wanted to know more about this. I had to know what sort of Banksy NFT had sold for 228.69 ETH (over $400k). What I found was sort of awesome but also a bit terrifying.
The NFT that had sold for this crazy price WAS NOT a Non-Fungible Token representing ownership of Banksy's "Morons" original. It WAS, however, a Non-Fungible Token representing the destruction of the original... the literal 🔥 burning 🔥 of the original (I think it was actually a signed original print, but you get the idea). From here it just gets crazy. I started scrolling down the trading history section for this “Burnt Banksy” NFT’s auction page and observing the insane bidding war that recently took place over this digital asset (which represents the destruction of a physical asset). My mind is blown. But I can't help but imagine how Banksy must be feeling about this. The 🔥 Burnt Banksy crew really chose the right piece of to do this with. Banksy's "Morons" depicts an art auction with a framed canvas with text reading, "I can't believe you morons actually buy this shit."
The 🔥 @BurntBanksy twitter page banner (in Banksy style graph) reads, "yes, we actually burned a banksy". It's crazy. So these guys actually acquired a Banksy print and set it on fire so they could mint it as a Non-Fungible Token? Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly. But, no, they have included a certificate of authenticity. So maybe this is exactly what it looks like. Absurd.
THE BURN WITNESS
It goes further, friends. Apparently, there is even a 🔥 “burn witness" NFT for the "morons" 🔥 Burnt Banksy NFT minting. There's no telling how far this can go now. I'm imagining large galleries filled with live audiences watching the destruction of physical art and the creation of digital art. These "NFT minting sessions" will consist of audience members paying for admission to view the destruction of a physical piece of art. The price of admission will include a unique 🔥 "Burn Witness" NFT. Minting NFTs for distribution to event attendees is already an interesting idea with a growing number of practical applications. Digital tickets for live performances of all varieties will be adapted to allow attendees to claim a unique event attendance NFT. Why not do the same within the art community with 🔥 "burn witness" NFT minting sessions?
In-person attendees or live-stream viewers of a 🔥 "burn witness" NFT minting session would be the last to view a piece of art as it is physically destroyed. They can also become the first to view the digital representation of the burnt piece of art during a live NFT minting. These are just some of my conjectures about how these ideas may be applied in future, but the point is that 🔥 @BurntBanksy represents something truly terrifying. We are observing the incentivization of the destruction of rare and precious physical items in favor of their digital representations as Non-Fungible Tokens. The distinction between digital and physical value is becoming so far removed that we are beginning to see digital and physical realities invert.
THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE AND DESTROYING THE REAL LIFE BANKSY
Possibly even more crazy is the first tweet you see at the top of the 🔥 @BurntBanksy twitter page right now, "next idea: actually burning banksy". See where this sort of depravity leads us? We're burning the things we love in the real world to give them value in the digital world. That's crazy enough. But now we're joking about torching artists to make their works even more valuable? Is there no end to the insanity? It's like the classic story of the sorcerer's apprentice. Burnt Banksy has all these brooms filling the world with water and they threaten to drown the master sorcerer while he sleeps. A catastrophic chain of events is igniting and it feels like only a Banksy, Satoshi Nakamoto, or a Dread Pirate Roberts needs to step in and set things right before we all drown below the tide of this NFT enchantment.
THE IRONY OF DESTROYING SOMETHING TO MAKE IT MORE VALUABLE
Wouldn't that be perfectly horrific if Banksy's identity is finally uncovered after all these years... by a rabble of crazed NFT investors looking to set Banksy on fire to increase the value of their 🔥 Burnt Banksy NFTs? That would be such a poetic way to go, after decades as a revolutionary street artist heroically drawing the world's attention to the evils of profit-over-people. It's truly terrifying. It's as though the digital realm is beginning to devour the physical realm. Now some of Banksy's work seems strangely prophetic.
Maybe Banksy will even come forward, reveal his identity, and agree to be burned alive. Who knows what can happen anymore in this clown world 🤡🌎. Imagine the 🔥 “burn witness" NFTs they could sell for that. Maybe 🔥 @BurntBanksy could burn the real Banksy alive and then mint a Non-Fungible Token representing ownership of the artificial intelligence derived from the scientific study of Banksy's brain. It's just all too absurd. It's entertaining and interesting, but also a frightening and destructive path for art and technology. I want to mint a NFT of Banksy's "Morons" modified to say, "I can't believe you morons actually burned this shit".
WILL BURNT BANKSY DESTROY THE WORLD?
As I began to project this trend forward to imagine where it would end in the most hyperbolic implementation, I wondered how far we might be from an actual "Burnt Mona Lisa". That's when I came across this comment, "What about The Mona-Liza?" by @NaWolverine. Of course, someone else was thinking the same thing. How far could this brain virus spread? Burning Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa to mint a Non-Fungible Token would represent the complete conquest of the digital realm over the physical realm.
I suddenly felt unwell... like anything and everything could suddenly be destroyed by fire and minted as a digital asset. NFTs had become a black hole prepared to gobble up every rare and beautiful physical thing and convert them all into NFTs. @Lost_Dog apparently saw the same thing I saw, but it appears to have driven the poor bastard insane. He's become a cross between Elmo and one of the reavers from Firefly.
A BURNT NFT IS ONLY AS LEGITIMATE AS THE MARKET FOR IT
It's really interesting to see where all of this is going. I pretty much agree with @lifestyle4travl who said, "Lame....dumbest idea to destroy an actual piece of art.” But I'm also able to see the resulting NFT as a new form of art that has the potential to actually increase the value of the remaining physical art as well. But please someone tell me this has all just been a sick April fools joke that's gone on too long.
It appears that this is actually our reality now. And it seems that Injective Protocol ($INJ) has had something to do with this. I'm very curious to learn more about that because I recently bought a small amount of INJ after I heard Mark Cuban mention that he's invested in the project and I’d been looking for the next generation synthetic stock trading DEX on the blockchain. But I was surprised to see Injective involved with this. It just gives it all too much legitimacy.
WHAT DO WE BURN FROM HERE?
Since it doesn't appear to be a bad dream, why don't we see if we can take a step closer to the real Mona Lisa? I found this authentic signed Banksy "Mona Lisa Bazooka" print for 27,000 EUR. Is the 🔥 @BurntBanksy team prepared to light this beauty on fire and mint another NFT worth 100 times as much? If I had this much money to blow right now, I might actually consider buying and burning this because it's ridiculous and crazy and potentially very lucrative. However, if we continue down this path there won't be anything beautiful left in the physical world. Immersing ourselves in the virtual world will become more and more enticing.
IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ALREADY GAMING HUMANITY INTO DESTROYING ITSELF?
I have long suspected that cryptocurrency mining could be a malevolent artificial intelligence's covert way of motivating all of us to build the super computer it needs to finally vanquish mankind forever. I have joked a lot about that over the years and it's really not too far off from my actual views on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency potentially serving as a tool of tyranny in the long run, rather than the foundation of the libertarian utopia many of us have hoped for. Although, I think there is a ton of opportunity in these early laboratory years of cryptocurrency. But as things become increasingly regulated and integrated into every aspect of our lives and mainstream culture, we won't be able to escape the permanence of our digital footprint. But it's also increasingly common for our real world foot steps to be shaped by our relationship with the digital world.
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