EDITOR'S NOTE
Last summer, Emily Yang was supposed to start a "dream job" at Apple as a digital artist, only to have it rescinded amidst visa issues stemming from the pandemic. So she started applying to any other job opening she could find--and even, for the first time, started creating her own digital art. She grabbed the Twitter handle "pplpleasr," sent her creations out into the nether, and is now one of the biggest stars in the NFT world.
She recently recounted her story for Fortune magazine, along with creating the issue's cover art. And she shared it with Mike Novogratz on his podcast, in an episode I highly recommend everyone listen to. Their twenty-minute chat will blow your mind.
Emily did not begin as some crypto-world specialist. She wasn't deeply moved by the code behind the Ethereum blockchain. She simply found an audience for her digital creations--and a highly passionate one. By March, she was selling an animated ad she made for Uniswap (a decentralized crypto exchange) for $525,000. In fact, her fans formed a decentralized autonomous organization they called "PleasrDAO" to pool their funds together and buy her ad when she auctioned it off for charity.
An "NFT SPAC," some jokingly called it at the time. But PleasrDAO has gone on to become a major buyer of high-profile NFTs and other digital works. Remember that unreleased Wu-Tang album that "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli bought, which was later seized by the feds when he went to jail? It was sold to PleasrDAO for $4 million last month, and they just minted the album's ownership deed as an NFT.
Several things are noteworthy about all of this. For starters, it doesn't involve the traditional art and finance worlds, although the auction houses are quickly catching up. Sotheby's, for instance, just launched the "Sotheby's Metaverse," offering "a highly curated selection of NFTs." But Emily recounts a story about speaking at a dinner full of the world's top art buyers recently--all extremely wealthy--only to tell them, basically, "I don't need you."
Second, these pieces of "artwork" prove that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the rising generation has vastly different tastes. That's what I mean about Picasso collapsing. Picasso isn't edgy anymore, it's Boomer. It's stuck on some rich person's wall in the real world. Until Picassos are minted into NFTs, no one in PleasrDAO cares. And any billionaire who wants to impress people these days--at least, younger people--is going to need NFTs to do it.
And lastly, these digital creations are ones that primarily exist with the support of metaverses that haven't even been created yet, but soon will, and blockchains like Ethereum. It's extremely early days still. The Beeple that was sold for $69 million earlier this year has, according to Novogratz, collapsed 90% in value.
But don't let that fool you. People are salivating over the prospects that NFTs represent. "In some future metaverse you'll be showing off your Gucci jacket that I can't see in the real world," Novogratz said in a different episode, joking that he'll meanwhile be hiding NFT "surprise" eggs all over his house for his wife to find.
Tell me what you think of when you read that early critics of Picasso's work called it "degenerate," "odd," and a product of "diseased nerves." CryptoPunks, perhaps? If the 1920s establishment couldn't wrap its head around cubism, the 2020s is similarly dismissive right now of NFTs. But that's exactly the sign that the times are a-changing.
See you at 1 p.m!
Kelly
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Rabu, 03 November 2021
Could Picasso collapse?
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