Topic: Does the Dark Side of the Art Industry Foretell NFTs Future (Read 263 times)

There is a reason why certain people dance around ancient trees, and that could be worth alot to them but meaningless and worthless to those who do not know the truth behind the whole thing.   If a mere image of a beautiful woman starring at you in your eyes could have a profound effect on your body and mind imagine what an intricately designed arts could do.
There is a good reason why our CREATOR forbids humans from arts idolatry.

Yes, and that's why they see such a complication, but seeing them in NFT already changes everything, of course if we start to see, worldwide very few people know about art, and how there are so many types of art (at least in paintings ) is one of the things that cost the most to value, but if something very good can be done, if a work of art costs $ X, in the NFT market it can start a possible pre-sale with that value, and then end up with $ XX, or more significant figures, that cannot be dismissed, if we put the business in that perspective the art will not lose, otherwise it will be for connoisseurs only, the market will be very small.

This is nothing new in the world of collectibles, whenever you see something like limited edition sports memorabilia or similar those are objects that were made to be collected as the only ones that will be interested to buy such an object for an inflated price are collectors, and as such they will never worth much.

However objects that are worthy to be collected are the ones that are that way by accident, so while I see the NFT market lasting for some time, at some point the hype will diminish and a great deal of the ones that invested in those NFTs will lose everything they invested in that market.

People need to look deeper so they will understand more the art industry and maybe change their perspectives and not call it a scam. Maybe, some people will see it differently because some artworks really fetch high prices, but there's reason for it. Now, when we talk about NFT art, it is a different story. As we can see, basically anyone can create their own NFT art today and sell it in the market. However, it depends on the buyer how you will see it as a valuable item. So right now, it depends on the buyer if he will buy an expensive NFT art but the actual value is really questionable. It is not a scam per se but it is up to you how you will assess its true value in the market, and think of its future value.

I also agree with you, when it comes to art, everything changes, it is synonymous with having a lot of knowledge about art, in my case I am also an expert appraiser and when it comes to works of art framed in pictures, for me they are appraisals more complicated than they are made, their assessment takes a lot of work, in addition to knowing the history and how and why art painting was generated, the value must be put in a qualitative way based on many historical arguments and taking into account even the value that is given in museums, I really do not see the art NFT as a scam, but as knowing how to understand this type of business, firstly as art and secondly to be able to mix it with NFT.

I am not ready to accept that it is a scam just because of only very few people are running it. Are you ready to call real estate boom a scam because mostly salaried people are buying 90% of houses with the help of loans? Art market is just another speculative market where people are spending just for the reason of their personal interest or with the hope of finding another rich person to sell.

Scam is something which hides the real part from you to get you participated with that. In art industry, the value of something may vary person to person hence if you agree for a price then you may go for it or else you may call it too expensive. But, calling it scam seems more inappropriate to me.

You got a point there but there are new users in the cryptocurrency space because of NFT, not sure what the future would be, they need to come up with something interesting to carry on with the hype. I am also eager to see how the NFT market would be when the market turns red. NFT games are coming to some of these projects and there are many coming up but only a few will survive.

The thing is I am not so sure that the majority of the NFTs can be classified as art at all, most of the NFTs we see in the market are more closely related to collectibles, however while collectibles can be classified in an infinite amount of ways, we can classify them on collectibles that are that way just out of luck and ready-made collectibles.

There is a big difference between a one hundred year old one dollar bill which happens to be in mint condition as this was not supposed to happen with what we see in this market in which NFTs have no other goal but to be bought and be collected, and as such I do not think this market will amount to much once it crashes as people realize it is a waste of money and time to try to collect something that no one cares about.

I do think art has value based on the perspective of the person viewing it, therefore we cannot just evaluate it just like that.
- for some people the same art might be worth a million dollars and for some it might not even be remotely important, therefore we have auctions.
Plus how an art is perceived is something which one person cannot predict. Most of the artists who died without getting any recognition generally are valued more when they died broke, shows us how fragile the Predictions might be.
I do not think that predicting the value might be a good thing and there is no concept of intrinsic or extrinsic value in terms of art especially NFT's, it's more of an artistic eye if I may.

Cringe clip..couldn't watch it fully, it's just somebody on a mission to send his own message without considering anything else.

The first thing is wrong with this approach is just putting the whole art stuff in one bag and that's it!
Art is not just some paintings or some million-per-pound sculptures, art is such a huge category you can't just classify it so easily.

For some pottery is the most interesting form of art, for others is decorating eggs, for others is paintings, some are interested in metal works, art it's not just about business, I have a few paintings in my house, I didn't buy them because of the price, the artist or anything else, I bought them because they look good in my living room and bedrooms and they are matching the mood I want to rule in here.

NFT are nothing like this, those are just pieces of data with one sole purpose, money!
You can't hang an NFT on a wall and claim it's something special, it will act just like any printed copy, you can't say there is any kind of history behind it, the only thing it represents is money, and it can go up and down and most likely to zero. What would be the use for that?

A friend of mine has a fountain in his garden, it's a damn cheap copy from a well known one, its artistic value is zero, is probably worth just the concrete is made out of, but still it's a nice thing and it looks great especially in summer, now, what would you do with an NFT, even if it's an original, the only picture in that angle from the Trevi fountain? Zero!
Comparing art with NFT is just stupid.
Comparing card collecting with NFT, that's a lot more accurate!



In order for somebody to make money out of NFTs you need somebody to pay for that.
For 1 million poeple to make 1000$ out of it you need somebody to invest 1 billion$ in that NFT people sell.
NFTs do not produce money out of thin air, they are just redistributing them.

1 billion poor poeple with one lousy NFT each won't make a cent until someone with at least 1$ in his pocket guy decides to buy some, that's the harsh reality, no matter how much you're criticizing the art industry the NFT profit and losses are based on the same principle.

The art market is full of scam, because nowadays is quite difficult to tell what is really conceptual and well conceived art, that responds to a trajectory of an artist, versus something made just for money-grab.

This is an artwork that is currently at the Royal Academy of Arts in London - in fact is the catalogue's front page:



Only people who are in the know can tell this from a more or less funny Carnival dress. The field is open with NFT or any other form of encapsulating art.

This is the reality that we really need to face. So it is up to you how will you be a victim of this dilemma.
Maybe, just buy what you can consider a valuable item in your standard. Because each one of us has different outlook on artworks.
We also have different preferences in terms of what form of art you are into like modernism, impressionism, abstract art and many others.
So if you can see the art as a "garbage", some may see it as a valuable piece of abstract art.
But if you feel that the art is just done by like a toddler, why waste your money for something that may be piece of trash in the future?

Unfortunately very few people can do this, great masters can sell even their worst works for a lot of money because they have work behind them that prove that they are that great and as such they can sell almost anything, even that ugly work can sell because people want to have an example of bad art coming from the artist and some may even find beauty in it.

Unfortunately this is not possible for the average person, or at least it should not be possible, because they do not have the works that demonstrate their greatness and as such even if whatever you produce is limited it will have no value as there is no demand for it.

This is completely true.A piece of garbage might cost millions of dollars,only because it is considered 'art' or some 'artist' created it.I want to become an artist as well and I want to sell BS paintings for ridiculous amounts of money.Unfortunately,I will have to die,so the cost of my paintings could rise,due to the scarcity.  
Selling overrated shit,just because the overrated shit is scarce...
This might seem unfair,but this is how capitalism works.Supply and demand.Limited supply and big demand leads to a high price.The object being sold doesn't matter,as long as there is demand for that object,and the supply of that object is extremely limited.
The sellers on the NFT market really want to exploit that side of capitalism/market economy.

I agree that you can't just call the whole art market as a scam, but what comes to corrupt side of NFTs, it's just obvious imho. There are a LOT of people that have shady history when it comes to source of their cryptocurrencies, and especially now if FATF travel rule comes into action, the source of that money needs to be documented.

What would be better way to wash your money then make "art" and buy it from yourself.

"No your honor, i didn't make my millions with drugs or with ico scams, i drew thise stoner frogs with my left hand and sold them with millions"

Things like this make sense when you think about it as money loundering:
https://twitter.com/etherrockprice/status/1429908317015445509

Gamers don't want to earn money from games, they want to play them and have fun, and they are ready to pay big money for that. The only ones who want to earn are people from third world countries who are ready to jump at any opportunity.


Most of the people who profited from NFT were already rich, either it's the famous artists or rich investors/speculators.


That's exactly what's happening, rich people make fake buys of NFTs, hoping that another rich sucker will buy it at an inflated price.

We all know that when it comes to art and collectibles the prices are artificially inflated, however I am not so sure we will reach the level of what we see in the art industry unless we begin to see some masters of the level of Picasso or similar selling digital art.

At most we will see what we see with collectibles, and it is doubtful we will get to that point as even if someone can declare they own the original copy of a digital file we need to wonder why should they care? When anyone can download the same image for free and obtain the same level of enjoyment without spending a single dollar.

A coin has two sides, so let me flip it to the other side.
You said NFTs are worst. I'm not a fan of NFT industry, but let me tell you some facts about NFTs:

NFTs are digital artwork and yes, it's true that there is no guarantee about anything here, but there are mints which are evidence that you are the owner.

NFTs have various use cases, one of which is gaming and it has added a lot of value to this industry because players wanted to earn while playing games and this gave them an opportunity.

NFTs made enough money to a set of poor and middle class people and has the ability to grow more.

NFTs have given freedom to gamers to choose whether they want to play with them, upgrade them, stake them or sell them.

Does the modern art industry provide these features? Like Op determined, it is only for the riches and they are using that industry to make huge profits which are out of poor and middle class' reach. These rich guys have not yet looked into NFT markets, else you may also see them manipulating this market for their own monetary benefits.

IMO NFT is way worse than art market, because art actually can have a legitimate value and it's always an item that you actually own, but with NFT you only own a digital token and someone said it represents something, but in most cases there's actually no way to enforce your ownership. Like how Dorsey sold the first tweet as NFT - where's guarantee that he will not delete or edit it? Without government's legal recognition of NFT they are nothing more than pinky promises.

I believe, we will not avoid this from happening as there are people that will find this new NFT industry as very good option to hide their money. But how? Maybe, they need to make arrangements with the seller. Or better yet, they can create their own account, and buy their own art. We don't know the identities of these sellers. So basically, right now, a seller has the freedom to dictate the price of his NFT, even if it is a crap. So we don't know what is the real value of an NFT item. If this NFT industry will be penetrated by money launderers, then, I can say it is very possible. And I don't think we can escape from this reality.

There has been a lot of talk about how the art world was just a way to wash the dirty money that they have. That way they would basically just pay millions of dollars for stuff that they would pay with the dirty money they have.

It is a marvelous method of doing money laundering and this was true while the art was something physical as well, this was going around for a long time and people are not understanding the differences right now we are in the NFT world. Why? Because, there are regular people spending thousands of dollars into stuff that makes no sense at all, and there are people who are doing money laundering on NFT as well by doing the exact the same thing. How could you understand the difference when regular people are making investment wrongly as well? We are in a weird world right now and it will take some time before we understand the difference.

I think it's impossible to find a proof for any money laundering on unregulated market of NFT industry unless they admit themselves or the marketplace requires KYC tomall user. I think I read about your thread about an expensive NFT bought by a random user without any further ado.

I read an article about big scam group using NFT to steal people money, They will pump the value of the NFT they target by buying and selling themselves then abandon then dumping all there NFT once people FOMO and buy it. This is the only I see that might give negative impact in the long run for NFT since NFT value is determined via speculation while fake price pump is free on current marketplace.

I think I have made many comments on the NFT and how they are actually helping the wealthy peeps to launder their money. Though no conclusive proof have been found for this one, then also one can simply tell, rich peeps were using the art exchanges since very long under the name of perseverance and what not so that they can smoothly launder the money and show government a token of favour. This way they can also exempt the taxation for the particular value. They know very well they get to keep rare form of the art which can be easily auctioned out after few years by gaining capital on the same.

Some of them are also into art restoration and donate heavily for this particular thing. I think slowly NFT's will be best home to all riches so that they can also make this transaction more confident and save more money by hiding the tax.

Might look broad to read this but I think that's what NFT's will actually do. No one care if they own a art or not, all they want is good price in exchange!

Frankly, I do not think that NFT tokens can add to any value to Art Industry. In the end, it requires that there be a rich person who is willing to pay money to buy something that only himself knows its value.
In other words, I do not see that such pixels deserve to be paid for in dollars, let alone cryptos.


When there is regulation and taxation of matters, tokens may add to the transparency of the art market.

Generally, if digital art gains a place, NFT tokens will be the primary market for buying and selling.

Most of us here already know that the art industry is just a hub for the wealthy elites to exchange collections that they think is priceless and of value. I wouldn't say though that the art industry as a whole is corrupt as was portrayed in the video. Only those on the uber-extravagant side of it has that corruption the video describes, but the rest of it remains pretty neutral, and is unfortunately deprived of the attention that they deserve.

I believe that some of the corruption exhibited on the elite side of the art industry already exists within the NFT art market. It's not surprising at all, considering that crypto in general is still considered as good vehicles for such activities anyway, though of course people will turn a blind eye on the art industry and will focus more on NFTs because it's crypto and cryptos = bad.

And of course, who the hell pays millions on digital artworks that can easily be reproduced anyway? You can say that NFT art is protected by the blockchain, or that you 'own' that thing, but I don't really see the point of owning them at all.


But at the least you have some pretty cool looking pixels displayed on your screen which you can place on your socials or websites

Hydrogen, I actually appreciated the link to the video.  Even though I didn't like the insinuations or conclusion, I did find aspects of it interesting at least.  I know very little about the art market, and I did watch the whole video (unlike many that other members post links to).

NFTs are a form of art, but a digital one, and I find it absolutely crazy that some people are paying astronomical prices for some of them.  That video maker mentioned that art has no intrinsic value (and he's correct), but usually expensive art pieces have some kind of history behind them that makes the art valuable in the eyes of those wealthy people who buy them.  Whether an artist is dead, under what circumstances the piece was made, the age of it, etc., are all important factors.

But NFTs?  You can't even hang them on your wall unless you print them out or have a digital screen to display them....and they're not physical.  That's what gets me.  Who collects digital anything, even if there's only one of them?  It's certainly a new concept, but it's one that I don't think will stand the test of time.

Is it fair to say, the youtube clip posted in OP does the best job putting the future NFT market into perspective, out of anything that anyone has seen so far? If people have seen better content posted on the future of NFTs anywhere, I would like to see it.

If anyone is unhappy with post in OP. What type of content would they prefer to see posted. I can try to shift to topics people are more enthusiastic about.

Give me examples of what you think good crypto content is.

Who cares?

Who cares?

Also, who cares?  Plus the documentary did mention that the IRS does audit art donated for the purpose of tax write-offs, though only a small percentage of them get audited.  But what do you expect?  The art market is relatively small (which the video states right in the beginning), and there's not a government agency in the US that audits every single transaction or company that's within their purview.  

Here's my impression of that video:  It's made by a professional Youtuber looking to create a "This is an outrage!" type of video, though he's not exactly screaming into his microphone.  He's probably another one of these zoomer/millenial Youtubers so common on that site who think they've stumbled upon something that no one else knows, while in reality he's just telling people what's been known for many years.  

The art market is small; caters to wealthy people; there are only a few auction houses; value is in the eye of the beholder; there's possible corruption (though the video creator doesn't provide a good argument that it's significant); centralization, life is unfair, blah blah blah.  So what's new?  And who benefits from a video like this?  The guy who made it.  And that's why he made it, because he wants to be a Youtuber instead of doing something to really help people (though that's an assumption on my part that this is the only thing he does for a living, but I see these professional Youtubers a lot and it's not unreasonable).

Oh yeah, video sponsored by CuriosityStream.

First off, what the video talks about is simply a single aspect of the art market. So it is rather unfair to call the entire art market a scam. The video is particularly referring to a very small yet very influential portion of the market. Influential not necessarily because the artworks auctioned are highly venerated works of genius artists but because they are very expensive. Expensive, again, not necessarily because of the artworks themselves but because of the people and the companies involved. It is therefore an art market sans the art. That's probably what happens when crazy, rich, vain elites are the main players. They badly need to appear sophisticated.

I don't think the corrupt side of the modern art market has already reached the NFT market. I don't think we can discuss about the same art donation ploy, tax evasion, money laundering, and the likes within the NFT market. What is already reaching the NFT market very early on is the ludicrous price tags. But that's normal when crazy rich elites join the game. They always tend to show off. They have that unquenchable thirst.

The Art Market is a Scam (And Rich People Run It)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ3F3zWiEmc


....


This is a really good, detail oriented, overview of the modern day art industry for a 20 minute watch. Its information and data heavy with both good and relevant statistics.

There are good points made about the art industry remaining unregulated despite some art pieces being valued and sold in the $400 million dollar range. Good points made about the modern art industry being extremely centralized within only 3 nations. Good points made about art lacking intrinsic value. And good points made about organizations like the IRS largely ignoring the art industry.

All current trends in modern day art could illustrate what the future holds for NFTs. While NFTs are relatively new, it may be possible to predict exactly what the future NFT market will resemble, simply by comparing it to modern day analogues like art and collectibles which have many years of history behind them.