I HAVE come to notice that in Bahrain news outlets announce and celebrate the NFT space without proper scrutiny.
The NFT, or non-fungible tokens, is a receipt in the cryptocurrency blockchain that grants supposed ownership over a piece of digital asset, and has followed a series of supporters who rally behind this new technology being a virtual haven for artists.
However, time has shown that this virtual space is filled to the brim with holes.
If the intention of NFT was ever to be a haven for artists, then NFT has long since failed.
As it is now, the system is an endless trade of art, recreated again and again by a digitilised anomaly to pump as much disgusting variation of the same picture.
When you see the NFT monkey or the NFT Arab variations being bought, it is not the art or the identity that people buy, it is the number attached to that art.
The entire market is built upon forcing a scarcity – there are hundreds of arts, all limited, buy them fast, because they will rise in price later on which means that you will eventually get rich.
But this entire concept is nothing but a fool’s gold, scammers scamming one another in an endless loop till it reaches the last unfortunate hands that would not be able to sell it.
Putting aside NFTs’ current system as merely a pyramid scheme with extra steps, supporters of NFT would still shout that it has a lot of benefits for the indie artist, the one who toils day and night mastering the craft to create pieces that touch the human soul.
But even then, the system becomes a space of immoral acts when you find out that people would upload art that’s not theirs by right, to be minted and sold, with examples ranging from artists who have no understanding of blockchain to artists that have passed away two years ago.
My fear is that innocent bystanders, who have no inkling about the maliciousness of the system, become victims to the empty promises of celebrities and, at times, companies, who wave the flag of this soulless space for their own financial gain.
H A
&uuid=(email))