Italians like tokens (for now)

The last, in chronological order, to embark on the Non Fungible Token adventure, are Andrea Prince, former artist and performer, now art director of digital events and self-described visionary, and the historical agent of the VIPs Lele Mora, who announce the entry into the world of cryptoart to transform sculptures, photographs and videos into unique and indivisible tokens. The project is not yet public, but Andrea Prince has announced that he is on the finishing straight. Those who have already left are Lapo Elkann, who with his creative hub, specialized in car customization and restoration, Garage Italia has decided to focus on NFTs, creating unique tokens for each car that will pass through the workshop. The first model to be tokenized is a Suzuki Jimny with special fittings made by the Milanese atelier, and an Alfa Romeo Spider and a Datsun 240Z are arriving in the coming months. The NFTs may or may not be linked to the possession of the physical work, such as in the case of the operation initiated by the Uffizi, which sold the DAW (Digital Art Work) of Michelangelo’s Tondo Doni but retained ownership of the work. The DAW is nothing more than a transposition in high definition and in 1: 1 scale of the original, made with an all-Italian patent. 140 thousand euros of proceeds, divided 50% between the company that holds the patent and the Gallery. Even in the world of music they do not stand by and watch: Sfera Ebbasta, Shablo and Charlie Charles with their company BHMG are ready to present their conceptual works digital (a mix of music, visual arts, video clips) that will be marketed in the form of NFT. More in line with the tradition of the memorabilia trade is Morgan, who at the beginning of April put up for sale on Opensea the file (clearly tokenized) of his song Premessa della premessa, which in a very tight auction, however, brought home 10 ethereum, that is about 21 thousand dollars. On the one hand the digitization of physical works, on the other hand the mania for the collection of stickers that never leaves us: after all, owning an NFT of a gif, a photo, a video clip , even a meme, is nothing other than having the “rare card”, the one autographed and numbered. So much so that auction houses are well determined to ride the wave: Sotheby’s will sell online the first NFT ever created, Quantum, by Kevin McCoy, dated 2014. The offers, which will be accepted from 3 to 10 June, will start from $ 100 (or the equivalent in cryptocurrency) but are to be expected to skyrocket, as previous auctions indicate. First of all, Beeple, the digital artist who saw his work Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold by Christie’s for $ 69 million in mid-March. He was the first to be surprised by the result: “I could be the one who earned the most from something that turns out to be a big bubble,” he said in an interview with CNN after the auction. Beeple’s thinking is not isolated. The NFTmania already shows some cracks, with the average value of an NFT which, according to the data published on the NonFungible.com portal, dropped from the end of February to the beginning of April from 4 thousand to just over a thousand dollars.