Category Archives: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

The vast majority of NFTs are now worthless, new report shows

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Two years after tech trend that swept up artists and celebrities, researchers estimate 23 million people hold worthless investments

Tens of thousands of NFTs that were once deemed the newest rage in tech and dragged in celebrities, artists and even Melania Trump have now been declared virtually worthless.

According to a new report by dappGambl that reviewed data from NFT Scan and CoinMarketCap, 69,795 out of 73,257 NFT collections have a market cap of 0 Ether, leaving 95% of those holding NFT collections – or 23 million people – with worthless investments.

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UK government drops plans for NFT made by Royal Mint

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Labour criticises Rishi Sunak ‘vanity project’ announced weeks before collapse in value of cryptocurrencies

The UK government has dropped its plans to produce a non-fungible token for sale through the Royal Mint, just under a year after it first announced the project.

In response to a question from the Conservative MP Harriett Baldwin, the Treasury’s economic secretary, Andrew Griffith, confirmed the abandonment, saying: “In consultation with HM Treasury, the Royal Mint is not proceeding with the launch of a non-fungible token at this time but will keep this proposal under review.”

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Donald Trump’s digital trading card collection sells out in less than a day

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NFTs were priced at $99 each and depict the former US president in guises including superhero, astronaut and race car driver

Despite being widely mocked online, former US president Donald Trump’s collection of digital trading cards have sold out in less than a day, netting US$4.5m in sales.

On Wednesday, Trump alerted fans to a “major announcement” on his Truth social media platform. A day later, the 45th president of the United States revealed he was offering “limited edition cards featur[ing] amazing ART of my Life & Career”, which he promised would prove “very much like a baseball card but hopefully much more exciting”.

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UK forces crypto exchanges to report suspected sanction breaches

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New rules in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cover all notionally valuable digital assets

Crypto exchanges must report suspected sanctions breaches to UK authorities under new rules brought in amid concerns that bitcoin and other cryptoassets are being used to dodge restrictions imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Official guidance was updated on 30 August to explicitly include “cryptoassets” among those that must be frozen if sanctions are imposed on a person or company. As well as digital currencies, such as bitcoin, ether and tether, cryptoassets could include other notionally valuable digital assets such as non-fungible tokens.

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‘Profiting off suffering’: AP cancels sale of migrant boat NFT amid backlash

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The news agency has since deleted the tweet promoting the sale and called it ‘poor choice of imagery’

The Associated Press has withdrawn plans to sell a video “of migrants drifting in an overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean” as an NFT after facing a backlash online.

The news outlet’s Thursday tweet advertising the clip, which came as Russia’s invasion raised fears of widespread displacement of Ukrainians, provoked accusations that the AP was seeking to profit off of suffering.

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Row about Congolese statue loan escalates into legal battle over NFTs

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Gallery at site of uprising against colonial rule accuses US museum of stonewalling request for artefact

A statue depicting the angry spirit of a Belgian officer beheaded during an uprising in Congo in 1931 is at the centre of a tug of war between a US museum and a Congolese gallery at the site of the rebellion.

The statue of Maximilien Balot, a colonial administrator, has travelled to Europe but the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is accused of stonewalling requests for a loan to the White Cube gallery in Lusanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

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Surgeon faces legal action for trying to sell Bataclan victim X-ray as NFT

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Surgeon said attempted sale of image showing forearm containing a Kalashnikov bullet without patient consent was ‘an error’

A senior French surgeon faces legal action and a possible disciplinary charge after attempting to sell an X-ray of a concert-goer who was shot during the 2015 attack on the Bataclan music hall in Paris.

Emmanuel Masmejean, an orthopaedic surgeon who practises at the Georges Pompidou public hospital in south-west Paris, was first reported by the Mediapart website on Saturday to be selling an image of the X-ray as a digital artwork, without the patient’s consent.

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Hermès suing American artist over NFTs inspired by its Birkin bags

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French luxury brand says Mason Rothschild’s furry MetaBirkins digital tokens ‘rip off’ its trademark

French luxury group Hermès has started legal proceedings against an American artist over virtual versions inspired by its famous Birkin bags.

Mason Rothschild creates digital art that he sells as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which can be traded online but ownership cannot be forged.

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Melania’s latest NFT is selling for £180,000 – at last one of the Trumps is showing entrepreneurial spirit | Arwa Mahdawi

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The former first lady has launched a jewellery line and caviar moisturiser, but digital portraits could be her real money maker

There’s no rest for the wicked, eh? While a lot of people have spent the past few weeks trying to do as little as possible, it has been go-go-go for the Trump family. Donald, Ivanka and Donald Jr have been issued with subpoenas as part of a fraud inquiry into the family’s businesses. Melania, meanwhile, has been busy building a business of her own. The former first lady, turned crypto queen, has jumped on the non-fungible token (NFT) trend: last month she was flogging a digital painting of her eyes titled Melania’s Vision (and promising an unspecified portion of the proceeds from her digital ventures would go to children ageing out of foster care). The price? One SOL (Solana, the cryptocurrency, is worth about £128). Now, she has released a picture of herself dressed in white for a starting bid of just 1,415.86 SOL (£180,000).

Melania’s NFT venture isn’t her first brush with entrepreneurship. She had a jewellery line and once developed a skincare range called Melania Trump’s Caviar Complexe C6™ with Lipid Matrix Receptor™ Technology. She tested her caviar creams on her then seven-year-old son Barron (“It smells very, very fresh … He likes it!” Melania told reporters at the time). Alas, no one else got a chance to use them due to a complicated lawsuit that killed the product before it got to the shops.

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‘I went from having to borrow money to making $4m in a day’: how NFTs are shaking up the art world

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Digital art is a billion-dollar business, with everyone from Paris Hilton to Damien Hirst trading in ‘non-fungible tokens’. But are NFTs just a get-rich-quick scheme masquerading as culture?

“It’s actually a lot simpler than you think.” It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and somewhat to my surprise, I’m on the phone to Paris Hilton, who is graciously explaining the world of NFTs.

Hilton is many things – a reality star, an heiress, an unlikely lockdown fitness guru who uses designer handbags instead of weights. But until now, she has never been considered a significant player in the art world. When artists have acknowledged her, often they’ve done so to fetishise her image. In 2008, Damien Hirst bought a portrait of her by the artist Jonathan Yeo, in which her body is constructed from collaged images cut from porn magazines.

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Boy, 12, makes £290,000 in non-fungible tokens with digital whale art

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Benyamin Ahmed’s Weird Whales sell in cryptocurrency and ownership is stored on blockchain

A 12-year-old boy had made about £290,000 after creating digital pictures of whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.

Benyamin Ahmed’s collection of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales went viral during the school holidays. His success may be a harbinger of the digital business models that could disrupt the banking sector.

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Tim Berners-Lee’s NFT of world wide web source code sold for $5.4m

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Crypto asset represents ownership of various digital items from when Berners-Lee invented the web in 1989

An NFT of the original source code for the world wide web, written by its inventor Tim Berners-Lee, has sold for $5.4m at Sotheby’s in an online auction, the auction house said on Wednesday.

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a kind of crypto asset that records ownership of digital items, and has recently become a major asset in the creative world, with NFTs of artwork, music and internet memes selling for millions of dollars.

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NFTs and me: meet the people trying to sell their memes for millions

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Once, people who owned viral photos made little money from them. Now, the ‘original’ can potentially sell for an enormous sum. But are buyers savvy investors – or unwitting dupes?

The photographer Jeff McCurry’s favourite Harambe memes are the ones where the dead gorilla is in heaven, Photoshopped alongside Diana, Princess of Wales, Tupac and Muhammad Ali. “It’s like: wow,” says McCurry. “What greater spot can you be placed in? Harambe’s at the top of the hill, waiting to meet you there.”

McCurry took the photograph of the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla that went on to become a meme. In it, Harambe kneels, projecting a fearsome aura of strength, nobility and calm. A former volunteer photographer at Cincinnati zoo, McCurry was there on 28 May 2016, the fateful day a three-year-old boy climbed into the gorilla’s enclosure, forcing zookeepers to shoot Harambe dead. “It didn’t seem real at first,” says McCurry, who was a regular visitor to the zoo. “When any of your friends die, it’s hard to process. I was in shock.”

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Can anyone become an NFT collector? I tried it to find out

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This year non-fungible tokens burst into the mainstream after several digital images and animations sold for absurd amounts – so I entered the world of NFTs myself

For years, I’ve kept an ever-growing record of interesting pictures I discover online in a folder entitled Images on my desktop: a fox sauntering through an art gallery; a pixelated rendering of a Tokyo streetscape; Jon Bon Jovi doing yoga. They’re sentimental reminders of things I’ve seen online, but I am under no illusion that I somehow own these images. They come from the internet and can be copied, shared and experienced by many people all at once. My collection really is worthless to anyone but me.

Related: Art, amulets and cryptokitties: the new frontier of cryptocurrencies

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